December 29, 2025. Should the ‘W’ in White Be Capitalized?

Today's topics: Should the ‘W’ in White Be Capitalized?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Civic Cider Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. The
man you are about to hear from is a man
who keeps showing up to the fight even when it's hard.
He is the Q in the QR code. He goes
by the name of q Ward.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
The voice that you just heard is the r N
QR code. The captain of the ship, he goes by
the name Rams's.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Job and we need you to stick around. We are
winding down twenty twenty five. It was a year for us,
and we're gonna do this for the next couple of days.
But we are going to dedicate our entertainment segment later
on in the show to some of the Black pioneers
that we lost in twenty twenty five. We realize that,

(00:45):
you know, some of the names might be left off
of some of the other lists, and it's our job
to honor those that we lost, So stick around for that.
We're gonna have some dialogue. What was the most hurtful
thing you've experienced and talk about how you survive. So
I'm gonna ask that question to Q. He's gonna ask
the same me, Qwards clapback. Past few days have been tough.
Q is going to talk to us about how he's feeling,

(01:07):
so I'm anxious to hear what he has to say
for better, do Better. We are talking about your president
once again. Donald Trump is responsible for regulation of an
industry in which he's invested. We're going to take some
time to share our opinions on a state senator that

(01:27):
has put forth a bill to research Trump derangement syndrome.
It is a very odd story, but we're going to
share our thoughts and we're going to talk about what's
going on in the culture for the top of the show.
One of the things that came up and was making
headlines recently, Elon Musk weighed in on should the W

(01:47):
in white be capitalized when referring to white people. The
AP said the B and black should be capitalized, the
W and white should not be capitalized. In the Elon
Musk shared his thoughts that we're going to talk about that,
but right now is always its time for a feel
good feature, and today's fel good feature comes from Black
Enterprise Excuse me, Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice and

(02:11):
his wife Latasha Paleo have donated more than six hundred
and sixty seven thousand dollars to pay off lunch debt
at one hundred and three schools across the United States,
a move that school officials say will lift a weight
off thousands of families. Rice, known for his record setting
career with the San Francisco forty nine Ers, said the
donation comes from a place of quote no child should
ever step into a classroom hungry, quote, Rice reported, he said.

(02:34):
According to Afrotech, the donation is part of a broader
philanthropic campaign ignited after Rice visited an elementary school in
the Bay Area. The Hall of Famer observed how unpaid
lunch debt can affect student morale and learning. The donation
covers balances at more than one hundred schools in multiple states,
including districts in California and other regions. By clearing the debts,
Rice and his wife hope to reduce stigma and remove

(02:56):
a barrier to academic focus. District administrators from affected schools
praised the gesture as life changing for families. One district
reported that dozens of students would no longer have to
worry about owing money for meals. Or being restricted in
cafeteria access. The action arrives amid a national trend. Unpaid
lunch balances have increased since pandemic era waivers ended and

(03:16):
food costs rose. The School Nutrition Association reported that nearly
ninety percent of responding school districts say lunch debt is
growing faster than they can cover it, beyond the immediate relief.
Rice's gift may spur his peers to feed those in
neat so the Coon Valley entrepreneurs have pledged to match
his funding and expand the effort to additional California districts. Additionally,
former NFL player Steve Young has teamed with Rice to

(03:38):
fund food shelters this holiday season. Lunch debt nationwide has
climbed in recent years as pandemic era waivers expired and
districts resumed charging for meals. So, yeah, that just is
a feel good feature. Jerry Rice doing something that a
lot of folks wish they can do. And you know,
shout out to Jerry Rice. All right. Elon Musk. Elon

(04:04):
Musk is somebody that I'll say it this way. There's
a handful of people that we don't like to talk about,
but we have to talk about them because they exist
in the cultural zeitgeist in a way that is hard
to ignore. My in my estimation, Elon Musk is a Nazi.

(04:29):
And I've said before on the show and other shows,
you know, if it walks like a duck, and it
talks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
It's a duck.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
So he didn't need to do the Hitler salute. I
could just look at his tweets and his positions and
so forth, and who he aligns himself with. I think
there's a German saying that. You know, if you if
you see a person sit down at a table with
eight Nazis, then you're seeing nine Nazis. Right. So the

(04:56):
the positions that Elon Musk espouses tend to come from
the far right and literal Nazis, unapologetic Nazis. And so
certainly you can use social media and retweets and whatnot
as cover or your racist and fascist based belief system.

(05:19):
But I don't think that he's using any cover. You know, once,
I mean, we all see this, but anyway, I say
that to say that, rather than give light to Elon Musk,
we are simply talking about how he is fanning a
flame in the wider society, and to try to explain

(05:43):
some of the thinking behind his position and the position
of the Associated Press. So I guess I should paint
the rest of this picture for you. So I'm gonna
share a little bit of an article from News one.
I don't like the way that this article is written,
but it is a New One article talking about this
very subject, Elon Musk, and should the W in white

(06:05):
be capitalized? So if you want to read the whole article,
you're welcome to. I just don't like the way it
was written, but I'll share a piece. On Monday, translucent
billionaire Elon Musk retweeted another poor persecuted porcelain colored person's post,
whining that the style guidelines of the Associated Press, implemented
a few years ago, constitute anti white racism. That just

(06:27):
feels sorry, fuels more racism against white people. That's a
quote that redundant sentence just fuels more redundant sentences. Elon
agreed that the lowercase W is unfair and now share
what the AP put up in their position. The headline

(06:48):
reads why we will lowercase white? They say, AP style
will continue to lowercase the term white and racial, ethnic,
and cultural senses. This decision fall was our move last
month to capitalize black in such uses. We consulted with
a wide group of people internally and externally around the
globe and considered a variety of commentary in making these decisions. Okay,

(07:12):
so Elon Musk has emerged as the great defender of
white male in sell far right leaning in terms of
their politics. Males in this country. He's the guy with

(07:34):
a bunch of kids, He's the guy that has all
the money, and he's the whatever whatever they think of them,
and so they look at him as though he's this great,
you know, brilliant mind and what he says is got
to be valid whatever. But this is uh, in my estimation,

(07:59):
him trying to be a victim. Okay, it's unfair that
the W is not capitalized in white, but the B
is capitalized in black. And to people that don't look
beyond that initial headline, it might feel that way. Indeed,

(08:19):
you know you're listening to me say this right now,
it might sound crazy like, yeah, well black's capitalized, white
should be capitalized to So I will share why I
disagree with the Elon Musk's position I don't think it
is unfair. Okay, I'll start. White people exist in the

(08:46):
minds of you know, those of us really primarily in
this country. White people are usually one or two or
maybe a number of different types of individuals groups I

(09:08):
should say, mixed together. So you could be German and
Italian with a little bit of French, and you know,
maybe you have like some ancestry from Ireland, so you're,
you know whatever, Irish on your great grandma side or whatever.
And if you look at French and German and you know,
Italian and Irish, all of those would be capitalized. Right

(09:35):
when you say white, it is more of a descriptor right,
because these people, if you wanted to like give them
a proper noun of their ancestry, you would go back
to again Italian, you'd go back to French again. You'd
have your capital letters be right there. So if you
want to describe the skin of a person, you could

(09:56):
say it's white, or you could say it's bright, or
you could say it's clear. None of those things need
to be capitalized. That's just describing a person, right. Black people,
certainly in this country, it's part of the world we
don't have access to our countries. Q shares a story
frequently about being asked and I don't want to step

(10:19):
on your toes here, but being asked about where his
black comes from. When I think you were in was that?
Were you in Portugal or Spain?

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Spain?

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Okay, in Spain, he was on a beach. If i'm,
if i'm memory serveon correctly. So black people in this
part of the world we don't have access to like oh,
i'm I'm. I don't know Ethiopian, I'm Igboo, I'm you
know Singalese. You know, we wouldn't know that, And so

(10:53):
we have emerged as a I don't want to say
a new group, but a group of a separate identity
because American. You know, once upon a time, if you
would have said American, well American, the term didn't apply
to black people. We were the property of Americans, and

(11:14):
then for years after that we were still treated like
second class citizens. So the term American only fit us
in the strictest of definitions. But there is a unique
cultural identity. It binds our story, it binds our language, culture,
how we go to church, how we dress, music we
listen to, the way we dance, the way we talk
all that, and you could call it African American, that

(11:39):
would be capitalized. You could call it black means the
same thing that would be capitalized. Right, And so black
is less a descriptor of the color of our skin
and more a label for a group of people who
share a common identity. White is more of a descriptor

(12:01):
of people. If you want to find out their identity,
you can break it down by Italian, you know, as
I mentioned before. And so I think that this is
sort of the delineating factor that the AP chose to
use in making this determination. And of course people like
Elon Musk weighing and saying this is unfair, this will

(12:22):
contribute to anti white sentiment. I don't want to insult anybody,
so I won't say that, but I will say that
all it takes is just kind of a look behind
the first page, a look below the headline, and then
you'll see that there's a little bit more, you know,
to it.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
And so anything to add here, Q I mean, we're
here at this intersection again of the very people who
stripped away our culture, our history, our ethnicity, our origin
and named us black, creating that as our identifier, calling

(13:12):
what they did to us unfair to them, and that's
become a pattern. We were not allowed access to your universities,
so we created our own. We were not allowed access
to your wealth or your careers, so we created our own.

(13:34):
We weren't allowed access to your water fountains, or your communities,
or your public transportation, so we created our own. You
burn it down and tell us that we've somehow reverse
engineered this oppression and plight that you've placed us under.
And here we are again. We didn't choose black, you
did for us. And now somehow you're the one being

(13:56):
treated unfairly.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
All right, let's talk about the state senator from Arizona
sponsoring a bill to research Trump derangement syndrome. You're gonna
love this, Okay. This is from azfamily dot Com. A
GOP state senator has filed a bill ordering Arizona to
study what the legislation calls Trump derangement syndrome. State Senator

(14:29):
Janey shamp, a Republican from Surprise, filed Senate Bill ten
seventy HM, which would require the Arizona Department of Health
Services to conduct a study on Trump derangement syndrome, also
known as TDS. The phrase is used by Republicans to
dismiss Democrats who criticized President Donald Trump, and has no

(14:52):
official standing as a mental health disorder. The bill would
give the Health Department one year to produce a report
on the origins of TDS, along with its long term
effects on individuals, communities, and public discourse. Will Humble, former
director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, called the
proposal silly. Quote You're ordering a state agency to do

(15:12):
a bunch of work that has no objective, no meaningful outcome,
and by the way, it's outside their mission. They're not
social scientists, unquote, Humble said. Humble predicted the bill would
consume time and resources before ultimately receiving a gubernatorial veto.
He said, the legislation has no objective other than making
a political statement. Okay, I want to make sure that

(15:36):
you got plenty to way in here, but I want
to set you up if I can. Que People that
are critical of Donald Trump, people that are passionate in
their criticism of Donald Trump, are justified, just like anyone's

(16:01):
justified in being critical of the government of the president
of any elected official. Republicans have adopted this idea of
Trump derangement syndrome, to label anyone who is critical of

(16:23):
the president and consistent in their criticisms of him as
somehow having a mental health disorder. That's the cliffs notes.
What it does is it reframes the conversation. Instead of
having to listen to a person and take inventory of

(16:48):
their criticisms of Donald Trump, of the GOP, of the
Maga movement, whatever, they can now dismiss people as being crazy.
And there's at least half of the country that doesn't
buy it, but it certainly works for the magaverse. Right, Oh,
this person has TDSY, have Trump derangement syndrome. Don't listen

(17:12):
to what they have to say. Okay, so this is
how this is used, and they're they've gotten very good
at this. Invent something, or rewrite the definition of something,
or you know whatever, right, and then weaponize the language
and then use it as either a shield or a sword,
a shield to cover your hollow policies and beliefs, or

(17:42):
as a sword to attack those who are in pursuit
of a more equitable country for all of us. Now,
I want to turn this on its head before I
let you have a shot at this Trump derangement syndrome,

(18:04):
as we know, is something that they just made up.
Their Their strategy from Trump on the way down is
just make up something and then if you say it
enough times, it'll become real. It'll exist in the cultural zeitgeist,
even if it doesn't exist in science, even if it
doesn't exist in textbooks, even if it doesn't exist indeed

(18:25):
in the real world, it'll exist in the culture. It'll
be a buzzword. Right. But if I flip trump derangement
syndrome on its head, I could point at this very
state senator and say, you know what, these are the
actions of a person in a cult. And I famously

(18:49):
said in the past, you know, I don't like to
call the Maga movement a cult, And that's not what
I said. I said, these are the actions of a
person who was in a cult. Okay, but I don't
like to call it the Maga movement a cult because

(19:10):
and I just never circled back to it. But I
remember coming across some information that explained what a cult was,
and I think that the Maga movement only fit like
four of the five check for the five boxes of
a cult. So without that fifth one. As a journalist,
I couldn't call it a cult. But Q has made

(19:37):
some inroads as far as I'm concerned with, convincing me that,
you know what, there might be more than one way
to define cult. There might be more than one way
to define mass manipulation. There might be more than one
way to define collective hallucinations and the Mandela effect and whatever. Right,

(20:00):
And I'm not saying I'm qualified to do that, but
if these people can make up something out of the
thin blue sky, then I certainly can go back and
re examine everything that I've read. Indeed, this story itself,
and if I were to compare it to the actions

(20:20):
of a person and a cult, it would be virtually indistinguishable. Now.
I was talking about Elon Musk earlier, and I said,
if it walks like a duck, and it talks like
a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Right.
So QU, I will say to you that I appreciate
you allowing me to expand my view of the MAGA movement. Now,

(20:44):
of course I won't say anything with any authority here,
but it feels very cultish. So your thoughts here.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
This Once upon a time, stories like this conversations like
this would be left to the margins of conspiracy theorists,
laughed at by some, dismissed by others. But when the

(21:13):
most powerful man in the free world is responsible for
these types of thoughts and has tens of millions of
people that blindly follow him, you can no longer dismiss it.
You can no longer laugh at it, you can no
longer treat it like it's not serious. It shouldn't be,
but it very much is. When the people who get
to determine what goes in our textbooks, when our children

(21:37):
are allowed to learn, and what we're allowed to say,
start thinking and talking like this, it becomes very, very dangerous.
And it is not just something that exists in the
cultural zeitgeist. They can make it fact. And you might
think that sounds a bit dramatic, but billions of people

(22:04):
worship as Christians based on the teachings of the King
James Bible. The King James Bible is a very young
text in relation to Christianity Bible in relation to the
original text. The fact that there's a King James version

(22:26):
means that King James commissioned, commissioned a different version of
the Bible. That people worship God by as almost literal
because the person who was in charge of telling people
what was true came up with a different version, and

(22:51):
people have worshiped God according to that for centuries. So
do we get to shrug something off as unreal when
when this man says it, he gets real career politicians

(23:12):
to commission studies. How do you find subjects to study
for this? Oh, you also get to determine who you
think has symptoms of this made up syndrome. These can
get very dystopian, very dark, really fast. Sure, so it's

(23:32):
another uncomfortable conversation that we have to have about this
very uncomfortable moment in history that friends, neighbors, and countrymen
helped usher in and some are still too intentionally oubt
to admit that they were duped and that they were
wrong and that these people are dangerous.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
All right, well, let's move on to better, do better.
Donald Trump is responsible for the regulation of an industry
in which he has invested. How about that? Who would
have saw that coming? All right, I'm going to share
this from the Atlanta Black Star. President Donald Trump's net
worth jumped by hundreds of millions of dollars in a
single day last week, after shares of Trump Media and

(24:20):
Technology Group surged on news of a six billion dollar
merger with private nuclear fusion firm TAE Technologies. All Right,
buckle up, this is going to be a long read.
According to Forbes, Trump's net worth rose by five hundred
and four million dollars to an estimated six point seven
billion dollars last Thursday due to his majority ownership of

(24:40):
Trump Media, currently held revocable trust managed by his eldest son,
Donald Junior. The merger is controversial because it poses a
glaring conflict of interests. Ethics experts warn because it means
that Trump will soon simultaneously have a major financial interest
in a rapidly expanding energy company whose fortunes will be

(25:01):
influenced by the actions of a government that Trump himself
presides over. Noted CNN. Nuclear fusion companies are regulated by
the federal government and will likely need federally supported research
and development to become commercially viable. The merger needs to
be approved by federal regulators, some of whom were nominated
by Trump. The all stock merger with TAE will transform

(25:25):
Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, from an
underperforming niche social media and media platform into a speculative
venture and clean energy and advanced technology of great interest
to the financial markets. Forbes observed, fusion energy is considered
a possible Holy Grail of clean energy, as it offers
significant energy generation without carbon emissions. While government researchers have

(25:48):
achieved impressive results in recent years, no private company has
reached the point where the fusion reaction creates as much
energy as it consumes, reported The New York Times. In
twenty eighteen, tae's chief executive, Michelle I believe that's how
I say. Michelle Benderbauer said he expected the company to
achieve that milestone in five or six years. Last Thursday,

(26:10):
the merged company said they plan to create the first
utility scale fusion power plant next year. Meanwhile, the Department
of Energy recently created an Office of Fusion to support commercialization.
The deal, should it be completed, would put Trump in
competition with other energy companies over which his administration holds
financial and regulatory Sway, reported The Times, noting that the

(26:31):
president has sought to speed up safety reviews of nuclear
power plants and lower thresholds for acceptable radiation exposure. The
Trump administration has sought to accelerate nuclear power technology, including fusion,
which remains unproven, in its drive to meet America's quickly
growing demand for energy, particularly as tech companies built power
hungry data centers in the race for artificial intelligence. The

(26:52):
Times noted that support has come in the form of
federal loans and grants, as well as executive orders directing
the nrc TR review and approve applications more quickly. White
House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said in a statement last
week that neither the President nor his family have ever
engaged or will ever engage in conflicts of interest. That
was a quote, but it's a statement She's repeated word

(27:14):
for word nearly every time the subject of Trump's grifting
is raised. A spokeswoman for Trump Media said the company
was quote scrupulously following all applicable rules and regulations, and
any hypothetical speculation about ethics violations is wholly unsupported by
the facts.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Unquote.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Okay, I just a couple of things I want to say.
The first is, who wants to live in a world
where Donald Trump is rolling back the regulation for nuclear

(27:53):
fusion energy power plants so that he can make money.
That sounds awfully scary. And the other thing that I
have to note is this is technically not a crime. Now,

(28:18):
those of us that know that this is not right,
you know, can feel it, we just know it in
our bones. But this is technically not a crime. And
so this is simply unprecedented. But I think that it
doesn't need to be a crime to show that this

(28:41):
individual is everything that we've been saying. He's a person
who's out for himself. He's a person that is choosing
to line his pockets and those of his family and friends,
and he's not putting the American people first at all.
Deregulating you know, nuclear power is that's crazy. I Q

(29:06):
anything to add. I know, we just have a few seconds,
but I.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Mean you asked, who would want to live in a
country where Donald Trump would do those things? We already
lived there. Yeah, that's fair. Like, once upon a time,
people put far too much faith in a document and
gave far too little credit to the ideas of capitalism

(29:29):
and greed. Pair that with racism and white supremacy and
you get the reality that we have to live in now.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah. Well, this isn't the only grift that he has
managed since being elected. This is just the latest grift,
so congratulations to all that voted for him. This is
what you get. Stick around. We'll be back with more
right after this