January 8, 2026 • 28 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Still broadcasting from the Civic Cipher Studios. This is the
QR code where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes.
The man you are about to hear from is a
man who will.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Cut me up and won't let me down. He is
the QUE and QR code goes by the name of
q Ward.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Sometimes you give me too high of praise for what
you just said is a fact. I will turn you up,
not turn you down. That's my brother.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
He's the RN. QR code goes by the name ramses Jah,
And we need you to stick around a little.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Later on in the show, we are going to be
talking about the end of the Corporation.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
For Public Broadcasting. It is shutting down. That is very sad.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
For all of us that grew up with Sesame Street
and Reading Rainbow and the children's television workout. Part of that,
we're going to ask each other the question, something that
you've learned from a faith other than your own?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
What is it? Right now?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Though it is Q words clap back, and he's talking
to us, to us about how doctor Umar is wrong
about interracial relationships.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Q take it away, and you know not to pick
on the good doctor, but he seems to be the
champion of this nonsense rhetoric, so.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
That's kind of what started the thought.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
He's the person that put me in this space to
care about talking about this out loud. Just like other
things we talk about, there's nuance at play here, So
it's important to acknowledge self hate is a real thing.
We do see it happening in public spaces daily, Black
(01:41):
people who adopt white supremacist positions and help fortify those
positions and drive them home and teach other people to
believe in them, like that's a real thing. However, love
is not a loyalty test to your blackness. Before we eat,
(02:01):
let me set the table. In twenty twenty six, I
think it's about time to acknowledge that interracial relationships are
not a referendum on black identity.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Period. That could have been the whole segment.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I could kind of give you the mic back, because
that's the whole point of what I'm going to say next. However,
we also cannot pretend that the other extreme doesn't exist,
because yes, you and I have both heard and I'm
sure other people have as well. Folks who openly refuse.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
To date black people, who brag about it who trotted
out on TV shows and podcasts and all over the Internet,
and they trout out these same dusty tropes and stereotypes
that white supremacists use.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Unfortunately, some of these people look like us. That's not
about dating preference. That's racism. And some fancy cologne with
good cameras and good microphones, and those people deserve all
the critiquing that comes their way. Trust me, they get
it from ramse den I as.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Often as possible. But that's not the same.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
And this is again why this story came to prominence
and why it came across my feed. That's not the
same as Serena and Venus Williams choosing partners who love them,
who respect them, and want to build families with them,
regardless of their ethnicity. What's happening online is people keep
(03:42):
mixing those things together like they're the same, and they're not.
On one side, people of all races, somehow, including black folks,
have been conditioned to believe black isn't beautiful enough, Black
families are too difficult to maintain, Black women are too angry,
(04:06):
black men are too dangerous. Those narratives are sad, lazy,
and violent, but they are learned and taught, and it's
about time that we help people unlearn that. Let's call
it what it is, that's anti black propaganda that's been
(04:28):
adopted and internalized by black people, and then repeat it
out loud. On the other side of this discussion, there
are people who choose relationships across racial lines. Those people
stay rooted in their culture, honor their communities, live in
(04:53):
their blackness quite boldly and unapologetically. Those people are not
looking for some identity escape. They're simply expanding their definition
of family and the love that comes with it. And
in many cases, this is a proximity choice. I work
with this young lady, I go to school with this
(05:15):
young man, the community that I live in or grew
up in, all the people that don't look like me,
and everybody isn't upwardly mobile to go find that somewhere.
The person you come across at the grocery store, the mall,
the movies, work that you're attracted to, you just don't
stop and do an ethnicity test. So here's the line
(05:41):
that I'm going to draw on the saying, because hitting
people with the self hate label, you end up creating
villains where there are none. You create a problem that
doesn't exist the systems that taught us about anti blackness
in the first place. There's a line drawn in the
(06:03):
sand here. If a black person says I don't date
black people, the sentence by itself is already problematic. But
what you will find if you dig deeper. You hear
them say something insane like black people are too loud,
too angry, to ghetto, or too difficult. That's exactly what
(06:28):
self hate sounds like. But if a black person says,
I married the person that I connected with most easily
and most deeply, that's not betrayal people. That's not self hate.
That's just how life works. And if we can't tell
the difference, maybe we're not fighting for black liberation in
(06:51):
the first place. We're just fighting for control. The William's
sisters don't owe us some fantasy marriage so they can
validate their blackness. This is the Williams sisters we're talking
about from Compton. They from Compton, their careers, their philanthropy,
their global impact on little black girls and just black
(07:12):
people all over the world. They kicked open doors for
us in a space that did not hold much room
for us at all. And some of the women who
are dominating now their line goes directly to the Williams sisters,
and they'll tell you in a heartbeat, so we know
(07:34):
where their heart is. We don't get to demand that
they love the way that we require them to. They
don't carry the burden of the entire race as a people.
We can walk into gum at the same time, all
out internalized racism where it exists, and respect black people's
(07:55):
agency when they know exactly what and who they love
and want to be in love with. Love is not
and never has been, the enemy. Self hate is. Stop
conflating them, confusing the two.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
It is how we end up policing each other instead
of freeing each other. Joh fantastic. It's funny because I
came across.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
A like a statistic recently, and I think it was
something to the effect of, like, you know, between like
eighty and eighty five percent of black men are married
to black women, right, there's the majority. So for people
like doctor Umar to take a problem that doesn't exist
and then introduce it is crazy. And you know, like you,
(08:48):
I think that that narrative is dangerous and it's it's
inhuman because people it's special enough for two people to
find love, especially nowadays, you know what I mean, But
where they find it that should be celebrated. I look
(09:09):
at it like friendships. I don't choose friendships based on race.
That's crazy, that's racist. And so you know, why would
I choose somebody that not choose somebody from love? Usually
that happens on its own.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But you know what I mean? So well, said sir.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
All right, Uh, something you've learned from a faith other
than your own, I want you to go first, Q, sure,
my way.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I think it's important to point out that that's not
a I don't have a singular lesson, like, there's not
this one thing I learned from this one faith, Okay,
But what I want to point out that I think
is important there's this belief, I'm sorry, in some religious people,
(10:08):
some spiritual people, that their view on spirituality and morality
is the singular view. They have access to eternal life
through the God that they worship. All other gods are beneath, invalid,
(10:30):
made up.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Lesser than.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I've even heard people condemn or damn other people to
hell because they don't pray the way that they do.
I know, the idea of ritual. Many of the foundational
pieces of what we view as organized religion pre date writing.
(11:02):
We're talking thousands of years ago, and there's nothing from
that time historically that holds up to today because in
those thousands of years, too many things have happened. Nothing
about the world is the same. And people actually once
(11:23):
upon a time believed, because we didn't have vehicles that
flew in the air up above the clouds, that God
lived up there. Yeah, the sun's up there, and we
can't get up there, so Heaven had a direction and
it was up There's a story of the Tower of
(11:46):
Babel when you talk about tongues and language and linguistics
in the Bible, where this tower was being built and
it got too close to Heaven to confuse the people
so that they could not continue to work together and
see God. God gave different languages so that people couldn't
(12:10):
keep building this thing up there to see him. Except
we know better now, everybody. You know, when you fly
from New York to la and you go up above
the clouds and there's just more sky, or when you
see footage of cameras leaving the atmosphere into outer space
(12:32):
and it's just nothingness. You got to kind of acknowledge
that some of these text just predated what men knew,
and that God, whichever deity you pray to, believe in
(12:52):
subscribe to, did not use his or her finger to
write these texts. They were written by people, by us.
So I'll say this, and then I will volue this
back to my brother. I think there has to be
(13:16):
an affirmation across faiths that none of us own morality.
You're not a lesser human being, you are not less
deserving of the love of what we think of God
a spirit than me, because you call him or her
(13:40):
Yah or Allah, and I call him or her God.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Wisdom is global.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Most faiths are based in some geographical place their origins,
and the people in that place felt, as every conquering
nation throughout history felt, that how they loved, how they built,
how they governed, and how they prayed was the way.
(14:14):
And if you were captured by that people, conquered by
that people, you were forced to adopt the way they govern,
the way they live, in the way that they pray.
You do that for enough generations and you no longer
feel like you were subjected to someone else's teaching you.
You adopted as yours division. This is a fact, This
(14:34):
is not q's opinion. Division is manufactured. Read the Quran,
Read the Bible, read every version of it, Read the
holy scriptures of whatever religion you choose, and what you
will learn is that the basis of a lot of
the stories is saying the names might be different, the messaging,
(14:59):
the core values are shared across all religions. So again,
this division was intentionally manufactured, the same way it is
with race, the same way it is with class. I've
said this on every platform you've ever been on. If
we had to sit down and make a list of
(15:19):
all the things that are different about us one side
of one sheet of paper, and you still wouldn't get
the whole paper done. Name your religion is different than mine.
Name your ethnicity is different than mine. Name your gender
that's different than mine. Maybe like the Beatles, and I
like Michael Jackson. Like it's The list is not going
(15:40):
to be very long. Even today, you're going to say
you're racist, you're a maga, you're a Republican, and I'm
going to say three things opposite to that. That's still
only three more things. The list is very short. We
could write pages and pages, the things that we have
(16:00):
in common, the things that we want for our families
and for our children today, the most top common disconnect
for me is, Yeah, those things you want for you
and your kids, can we have those for us and
our kids too?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Damn Ramses, I love that man.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Uh. The one that came to mind because I know
we're short on time here. The one that came to
mind for me that I learned from a faith other
than my own, uh was in high school. I went
to high school in a neighborhood where there were a
lot of Jewish people.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Uh. I had a friend named Ari Ari Block. That
was my guy. He's he's passed away, rest in peace,
but he was. He was my friend. We used to
listen to Bone Thugs and Army together as my dude
played basketball together. He had a like a yamaca or keeper.
He was my guy. And Ari was the person that told.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Me about pork not being a part of.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Jewish people's diet. So you know, mental note taken.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Later on, I was in a program called the Career
Leadership Development Program. I might have been like fourteen or
something when I was in this program, and I met
a young man I forget his name, but he was Muslim,
and I remember.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
We ordered a pizza, like it was a party we're celebrating.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Got a pizza and he had to like take the
pepperonis off the pizza and like put tissue on it
because he couldn't have the pepperonis.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
And he said the same thing that Ari told me.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
He's like, no, we can't eat pork. Honestly, He's like,
I'm not even supposed to eat this. But you know,
he's a young man. Here's pizza, video games, everything like that.
He's like, I'm not supposed to eat this. But in
our faith, if there's pork at the table, then we
consider the table unclean. And I learned at a young
(18:03):
age that if I have pork on a table, I
could potentially upset a person that observes their faith to
this degree. Offend is a better word. Offend, Okay, okay.
I could potentially offend someone who was willing to sit
(18:23):
down at a table a fellowship with me, and I
never wanted to make that mistake. I always wanted to
be able to share a table a meal with my
Jewish brothers and sisters and my Muslim brothers and sisters,
and if they don't eat pork, then I cannot introduce
(18:44):
pork to a table where they're sitting right now, because
I'm forgetful to a point. I kind of deal in absolutes.
Absolutes are easier for me. I've never drank alcohol in
my life. Right, the last time I drank a soda,
I was twelve years old. I made the decision. It's
never happened since then. Right, absolutes work for me. I
(19:06):
wouldn't have a problem with a diet because I would
deal with absolutes right or whatever. When I was fourteen,
that was the last time I ate pork knowingly, willingly.
You know, maybe I've come across something, you know, I
had learned later that you can't eat gummy bears, But no,
never eating pork since then. And my son's same thing
(19:27):
for them, because I always want them to be able
to sit down at a table of brotherhood and fellowship
with people of those faiths. And that taught me to
grieve humility, and it taught me that brotherhood, the brotherhood
that I offer, could extend beyond my own religious worldview.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Because I've told this.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Story to many Jewish people over the years, many Muslim
people over the years, bosses, coworkers, friends, you know whatever.
Acquaintances even and friendships were born because I have observed
a facet of their faith for their for the benefit
of fellowship potentially so that we could potentially share a meal.
(20:13):
And it's been very flattering and it's opened a lot
of doors for me.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
So that's one of the things that I that comes
to mind when I think of that. I know we
went over a little bit.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
But before you move on rams, because you referenced Judaism,
Jewish people, and Muslim people. Do you know what Bible
Christians use? Yeah, because you didn't mention Christians, but could
you tell us what what what Bible Christians use?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, they so they use the Old Testament and the
New Testament. Christians use what Bible though most people use
the King James Bible.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
That's the King James Bible. I'm glad you said that.
I wanted to point this out before we moved on.
Leviticus eleven.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
That's it. Yeah, you made any animal that has us
split hoof and chews of the cut, except for the swine.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Though he divide the hoof and be clothing footed, he
is not the cud. He is unclean to you of
their flesh, you shall not eat. This is in the
King James Bible that Christians use. That you did not
(21:28):
reference Christians as ever pointing out to you that you
shouldn't eat pork. And I point that out because the
reason why seemingly an entire generation has kind of veered
away from the Church is that there are some blatant
hypocrisies playing out in front of us. And one of
(21:49):
those that is the most loud is the kind of
picking out the part of the Bible that you want
to apply to people so that you can judge them out.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Man made division. Religion should not be used for that.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
So I just thought it was important Christian parts of
the Bible that they want to use to judge people
and make them lesser than. But just like you've never
been brought that message from a Christian me either. My
mother stopped eating pork because she got a Muslim friend,
even though this Bible that we learned and taught and
(22:30):
studied daily says the same thing. So I just thought
that was a very very important thing to point out because,
just like you, a Christian person has never said that
to me.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
All right, well, that's what we learned I love these questions.
All right, let's move on entertainment. We got to get
through this pretty quick. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is
shutting down, all right. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which
helped fund in PRPBS and many local radio and TV stations,
is officially shutting down. Months after Congress pass spending cuts
(23:06):
that stripped it of more than one billion dollars in funding.
CPB's board of directors voted to dissolve the private, nonprofit
corporation after fifty eight years of service, the organization announced
in a news release on Monday. Quote more than half
a century, CPB existed to ensure that all Americans, regardless
of geography, income, or background, had access to trusted news,
educational programming, and local storytelling unquote, said Patricia Harrison, CBP's
(23:29):
president and CEO. Harrison added that when President Donald Trump
signed into law last summer a measure to rescind funding
by Congress, cppe's board quote faced a profound responsibility. CPB's
final act would be to protect the integrity of the
public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather
than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to
(23:50):
additional attacks.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
CPB said its leaders determined that quote, without the resources
to fulfill its congressionally mandated responsibilities, maintaining the corporate as
a non functional entity would not serve the public interest
or advance the goals of public media. The organization announced
in August that it would begin shutting down after Congress
passed the funding cuts. At the time, it said that
most staff positions would be eliminated by the end of
(24:14):
September and that a small team would remain through January.
In a statement Monday, the organization said it would distribute
all of its remaining funds over the summer. The Republican
led House and Senate passed a package of funding cuts
targeting CPB and other government agencies, canceling money that Congress
had previously allocated them and fulfilling a request by the
Trump administration. CPB, which Congress created in nineteen sixty seven,
(24:37):
helped support more than fifteen hundred local radio and television
stations nationwide. It also funded popular programs like Sesame Street.
Programs on PBS and NPR have been able to remain
on air because of other sources of funding. QW I
want you to go first. I want to add something
here that I missed here, So thoughts.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
We did a lot in the way of covering the
last election cycle, and part of the reason why my
stomach caved in on election night because it was clear
to me where things were going very early, It's like
six PM.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
I realized we're not going to win this thing.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
And then I think for like a week I didn't
talk to you or nobody else because I was devastated.
I knew what was coming and everything I said was coming.
As people have treated me like I was being dramatic
or fear mongering or you know that I was brainwashed
by left wing media. Every single thing I predicted has happened.
(25:41):
And we are broadcasters and I knew that that was
going to be something that was under attack.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
It's just a heartbreaking thing.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
The places where they've gone out of there a way
to make a negative impact show a flat lack of
decency and this is just another example of that.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I wanted to add that the article that we read
that was from NBC News, So if you wanted to
check out the rest of the article, it's that's that's
where we got it from. But yeah, I think that
you know, for me, the first thing that jumps out
is that for for many years this sort of thing
(26:33):
was off limits. You know, the the sesame streets of
the world, and I you know, a lot of us
think of children's programming, but you know that CPB is
responsible for more than that. And one of the things
that we've said on a lot of microphones around this
(26:56):
country is that the truth has a liberal bias to it.
I believe that to be a fact. The truth, in
its fullness, unspun.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Just does.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Humanity overall has tended toward more inclusivity, It has tended
toward more cooperation, It has tended toward more you know.
Now there's instances, of course, of regression. We see that
all around us. But overall, one of the things that
(27:34):
I say from time to time is I was not
born a slate, right, So some people have done some things.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
To move this nation forward.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
The scale of a country, of a planet is a
lot slower and a lot longer than that of an
individual lifetime. But yeah, we just kind of lost sight
of the goal. And a lot of people we're pushing
back or pushing back against something that was truthful, and
(28:06):
they did so by saying that it had a left
bias to it, and Donald Trump doubled down on it,
took their money away, and now we lose something that
actually brought truth to people, sanity, and this is just
another development under this regime anyway that's going to do
it for us. Here on the qr CO Today Show
(28:28):
is produced by Chris Thompson. If you have some thought
you'd like to share, please use the red microphone talk
back feature on the iHeartRadio app, and while you're there,
be sure to hit subscribe.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
And download all of our episodes.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Also, be sure to check us out on all social
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p h e R.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I am your host.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
You can find me on all social media platforms at
ramsis ja.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I, mq ward.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
You can find me at CIVI, c CI pH e
R on all platforms and join.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Us next time as we share our news with our
voice from our perspective right here on the QR Code.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Peace
Still broadcasting from the Civic Cipher Studios. This is the
QR code where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes.
The man you are about to hear from is a
man who will.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Cut me up and won't let me down. He is
the QUE and QR code goes by the name of
q Ward.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Sometimes you give me too high of praise for what
you just said is a fact. I will turn you up,
not turn you down. That's my brother.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
He's the RN. QR code goes by the name ramses Jah,
And we need you to stick around a little.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Later on in the show, we are going to be
talking about the end of the Corporation.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
For Public Broadcasting. It is shutting down. That is very sad.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
For all of us that grew up with Sesame Street
and Reading Rainbow and the children's television workout. Part of that,
we're going to ask each other the question, something that
you've learned from a faith other than your own?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
What is it? Right now?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Though it is Q words clap back, and he's talking
to us, to us about how doctor Umar is wrong
about interracial relationships.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Q take it away, and you know not to pick
on the good doctor, but he seems to be the
champion of this nonsense rhetoric, so.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
That's kind of what started the thought.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
He's the person that put me in this space to
care about talking about this out loud. Just like other
things we talk about, there's nuance at play here, So
it's important to acknowledge self hate is a real thing.
We do see it happening in public spaces daily, Black
(01:41):
people who adopt white supremacist positions and help fortify those
positions and drive them home and teach other people to
believe in them, like that's a real thing. However, love
is not a loyalty test to your blackness. Before we eat,
(02:01):
let me set the table. In twenty twenty six, I
think it's about time to acknowledge that interracial relationships are
not a referendum on black identity.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Period. That could have been the whole segment.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I could kind of give you the mic back, because
that's the whole point of what I'm going to say next. However,
we also cannot pretend that the other extreme doesn't exist,
because yes, you and I have both heard and I'm
sure other people have as well. Folks who openly refuse.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
To date black people, who brag about it who trotted
out on TV shows and podcasts and all over the Internet,
and they trout out these same dusty tropes and stereotypes
that white supremacists use.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Unfortunately, some of these people look like us. That's not
about dating preference. That's racism. And some fancy cologne with
good cameras and good microphones, and those people deserve all
the critiquing that comes their way. Trust me, they get
it from ramse den I as.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Often as possible. But that's not the same.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
And this is again why this story came to prominence
and why it came across my feed. That's not the
same as Serena and Venus Williams choosing partners who love them,
who respect them, and want to build families with them,
regardless of their ethnicity. What's happening online is people keep
(03:42):
mixing those things together like they're the same, and they're not.
On one side, people of all races, somehow, including black folks,
have been conditioned to believe black isn't beautiful enough, Black
families are too difficult to maintain, Black women are too angry,
(04:06):
black men are too dangerous. Those narratives are sad, lazy,
and violent, but they are learned and taught, and it's
about time that we help people unlearn that. Let's call
it what it is, that's anti black propaganda that's been
(04:28):
adopted and internalized by black people, and then repeat it
out loud. On the other side of this discussion, there
are people who choose relationships across racial lines. Those people
stay rooted in their culture, honor their communities, live in
(04:53):
their blackness quite boldly and unapologetically. Those people are not
looking for some identity escape. They're simply expanding their definition
of family and the love that comes with it. And
in many cases, this is a proximity choice. I work
with this young lady, I go to school with this
(05:15):
young man, the community that I live in or grew
up in, all the people that don't look like me,
and everybody isn't upwardly mobile to go find that somewhere.
The person you come across at the grocery store, the mall,
the movies, work that you're attracted to, you just don't
stop and do an ethnicity test. So here's the line
(05:41):
that I'm going to draw on the saying, because hitting
people with the self hate label, you end up creating
villains where there are none. You create a problem that
doesn't exist the systems that taught us about anti blackness
in the first place. There's a line drawn in the
(06:03):
sand here. If a black person says I don't date
black people, the sentence by itself is already problematic. But
what you will find if you dig deeper. You hear
them say something insane like black people are too loud,
too angry, to ghetto, or too difficult. That's exactly what
(06:28):
self hate sounds like. But if a black person says,
I married the person that I connected with most easily
and most deeply, that's not betrayal people. That's not self hate.
That's just how life works. And if we can't tell
the difference, maybe we're not fighting for black liberation in
(06:51):
the first place. We're just fighting for control. The William's
sisters don't owe us some fantasy marriage so they can
validate their blackness. This is the Williams sisters we're talking
about from Compton. They from Compton, their careers, their philanthropy,
their global impact on little black girls and just black
(07:12):
people all over the world. They kicked open doors for
us in a space that did not hold much room
for us at all. And some of the women who
are dominating now their line goes directly to the Williams sisters,
and they'll tell you in a heartbeat, so we know
(07:34):
where their heart is. We don't get to demand that
they love the way that we require them to. They
don't carry the burden of the entire race as a people.
We can walk into gum at the same time, all
out internalized racism where it exists, and respect black people's
(07:55):
agency when they know exactly what and who they love
and want to be in love with. Love is not
and never has been, the enemy. Self hate is. Stop
conflating them, confusing the two.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
It is how we end up policing each other instead
of freeing each other. Joh fantastic. It's funny because I
came across.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
A like a statistic recently, and I think it was
something to the effect of, like, you know, between like
eighty and eighty five percent of black men are married
to black women, right, there's the majority. So for people
like doctor Umar to take a problem that doesn't exist
and then introduce it is crazy. And you know, like you,
(08:48):
I think that that narrative is dangerous and it's it's
inhuman because people it's special enough for two people to
find love, especially nowadays, you know what I mean, But
where they find it that should be celebrated. I look
(09:09):
at it like friendships. I don't choose friendships based on race.
That's crazy, that's racist. And so you know, why would
I choose somebody that not choose somebody from love? Usually
that happens on its own.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But you know what I mean? So well, said sir.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
All right, Uh, something you've learned from a faith other
than your own, I want you to go first, Q, sure,
my way.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I think it's important to point out that that's not
a I don't have a singular lesson, like, there's not
this one thing I learned from this one faith, Okay,
But what I want to point out that I think
is important there's this belief, I'm sorry, in some religious people,
(10:08):
some spiritual people, that their view on spirituality and morality
is the singular view. They have access to eternal life
through the God that they worship. All other gods are beneath, invalid,
(10:30):
made up.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Lesser than.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I've even heard people condemn or damn other people to
hell because they don't pray the way that they do.
I know, the idea of ritual. Many of the foundational
pieces of what we view as organized religion pre date writing.
(11:02):
We're talking thousands of years ago, and there's nothing from
that time historically that holds up to today because in
those thousands of years, too many things have happened. Nothing
about the world is the same. And people actually once
(11:23):
upon a time believed, because we didn't have vehicles that
flew in the air up above the clouds, that God
lived up there. Yeah, the sun's up there, and we
can't get up there, so Heaven had a direction and
it was up There's a story of the Tower of
(11:46):
Babel when you talk about tongues and language and linguistics
in the Bible, where this tower was being built and
it got too close to Heaven to confuse the people
so that they could not continue to work together and
see God. God gave different languages so that people couldn't
(12:10):
keep building this thing up there to see him. Except
we know better now, everybody. You know, when you fly
from New York to la and you go up above
the clouds and there's just more sky, or when you
see footage of cameras leaving the atmosphere into outer space
(12:32):
and it's just nothingness. You got to kind of acknowledge
that some of these text just predated what men knew,
and that God, whichever deity you pray to, believe in
(12:52):
subscribe to, did not use his or her finger to
write these texts. They were written by people, by us.
So I'll say this, and then I will volue this
back to my brother. I think there has to be
(13:16):
an affirmation across faiths that none of us own morality.
You're not a lesser human being, you are not less
deserving of the love of what we think of God
a spirit than me, because you call him or her
(13:40):
Yah or Allah, and I call him or her God.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Wisdom is global.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Most faiths are based in some geographical place their origins,
and the people in that place felt, as every conquering
nation throughout history felt, that how they loved, how they built,
how they governed, and how they prayed was the way.
(14:14):
And if you were captured by that people, conquered by
that people, you were forced to adopt the way they govern,
the way they live, in the way that they pray.
You do that for enough generations and you no longer
feel like you were subjected to someone else's teaching you.
You adopted as yours division. This is a fact, This
(14:34):
is not q's opinion. Division is manufactured. Read the Quran,
Read the Bible, read every version of it, Read the
holy scriptures of whatever religion you choose, and what you
will learn is that the basis of a lot of
the stories is saying the names might be different, the messaging,
(14:59):
the core values are shared across all religions. So again,
this division was intentionally manufactured, the same way it is
with race, the same way it is with class. I've
said this on every platform you've ever been on. If
we had to sit down and make a list of
(15:19):
all the things that are different about us one side
of one sheet of paper, and you still wouldn't get
the whole paper done. Name your religion is different than mine.
Name your ethnicity is different than mine. Name your gender
that's different than mine. Maybe like the Beatles, and I
like Michael Jackson. Like it's The list is not going
(15:40):
to be very long. Even today, you're going to say
you're racist, you're a maga, you're a Republican, and I'm
going to say three things opposite to that. That's still
only three more things. The list is very short. We
could write pages and pages, the things that we have
(16:00):
in common, the things that we want for our families
and for our children today, the most top common disconnect
for me is, Yeah, those things you want for you
and your kids, can we have those for us and
our kids too?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Damn Ramses, I love that man.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Uh. The one that came to mind because I know
we're short on time here. The one that came to
mind for me that I learned from a faith other
than my own, uh was in high school. I went
to high school in a neighborhood where there were a
lot of Jewish people.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Uh. I had a friend named Ari Ari Block. That
was my guy. He's he's passed away, rest in peace,
but he was. He was my friend. We used to
listen to Bone Thugs and Army together as my dude
played basketball together. He had a like a yamaca or keeper.
He was my guy. And Ari was the person that told.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Me about pork not being a part of.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Jewish people's diet. So you know, mental note taken.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Later on, I was in a program called the Career
Leadership Development Program. I might have been like fourteen or
something when I was in this program, and I met
a young man I forget his name, but he was Muslim,
and I remember.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
We ordered a pizza, like it was a party we're celebrating.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Got a pizza and he had to like take the
pepperonis off the pizza and like put tissue on it
because he couldn't have the pepperonis.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
And he said the same thing that Ari told me.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
He's like, no, we can't eat pork. Honestly, He's like,
I'm not even supposed to eat this. But you know,
he's a young man. Here's pizza, video games, everything like that.
He's like, I'm not supposed to eat this. But in
our faith, if there's pork at the table, then we
consider the table unclean. And I learned at a young
(18:03):
age that if I have pork on a table, I
could potentially upset a person that observes their faith to
this degree. Offend is a better word. Offend, Okay, okay.
I could potentially offend someone who was willing to sit
(18:23):
down at a table a fellowship with me, and I
never wanted to make that mistake. I always wanted to
be able to share a table a meal with my
Jewish brothers and sisters and my Muslim brothers and sisters,
and if they don't eat pork, then I cannot introduce
(18:44):
pork to a table where they're sitting right now, because
I'm forgetful to a point. I kind of deal in absolutes.
Absolutes are easier for me. I've never drank alcohol in
my life. Right, the last time I drank a soda,
I was twelve years old. I made the decision. It's
never happened since then. Right, absolutes work for me. I
(19:06):
wouldn't have a problem with a diet because I would
deal with absolutes right or whatever. When I was fourteen,
that was the last time I ate pork knowingly, willingly.
You know, maybe I've come across something, you know, I
had learned later that you can't eat gummy bears, But no,
never eating pork since then. And my son's same thing
(19:27):
for them, because I always want them to be able
to sit down at a table of brotherhood and fellowship
with people of those faiths. And that taught me to
grieve humility, and it taught me that brotherhood, the brotherhood
that I offer, could extend beyond my own religious worldview.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Because I've told this.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Story to many Jewish people over the years, many Muslim
people over the years, bosses, coworkers, friends, you know whatever.
Acquaintances even and friendships were born because I have observed
a facet of their faith for their for the benefit
of fellowship potentially so that we could potentially share a meal.
(20:13):
And it's been very flattering and it's opened a lot
of doors for me.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
So that's one of the things that I that comes
to mind when I think of that. I know we
went over a little bit.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
But before you move on rams, because you referenced Judaism,
Jewish people, and Muslim people. Do you know what Bible
Christians use? Yeah, because you didn't mention Christians, but could
you tell us what what what Bible Christians use?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, they so they use the Old Testament and the
New Testament. Christians use what Bible though most people use
the King James Bible.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
That's the King James Bible. I'm glad you said that.
I wanted to point this out before we moved on.
Leviticus eleven.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
That's it. Yeah, you made any animal that has us
split hoof and chews of the cut, except for the swine.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Though he divide the hoof and be clothing footed, he
is not the cud. He is unclean to you of
their flesh, you shall not eat. This is in the
King James Bible that Christians use. That you did not
(21:28):
reference Christians as ever pointing out to you that you
shouldn't eat pork. And I point that out because the
reason why seemingly an entire generation has kind of veered
away from the Church is that there are some blatant
hypocrisies playing out in front of us. And one of
(21:49):
those that is the most loud is the kind of
picking out the part of the Bible that you want
to apply to people so that you can judge them out.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Man made division. Religion should not be used for that.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
So I just thought it was important Christian parts of
the Bible that they want to use to judge people
and make them lesser than. But just like you've never
been brought that message from a Christian me either. My
mother stopped eating pork because she got a Muslim friend,
even though this Bible that we learned and taught and
(22:30):
studied daily says the same thing. So I just thought
that was a very very important thing to point out because,
just like you, a Christian person has never said that
to me.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
All right, well, that's what we learned I love these questions.
All right, let's move on entertainment. We got to get
through this pretty quick. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is
shutting down, all right. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which
helped fund in PRPBS and many local radio and TV stations,
is officially shutting down. Months after Congress pass spending cuts
(23:06):
that stripped it of more than one billion dollars in funding.
CPB's board of directors voted to dissolve the private, nonprofit
corporation after fifty eight years of service, the organization announced
in a news release on Monday. Quote more than half
a century, CPB existed to ensure that all Americans, regardless
of geography, income, or background, had access to trusted news,
educational programming, and local storytelling unquote, said Patricia Harrison, CBP's
(23:29):
president and CEO. Harrison added that when President Donald Trump
signed into law last summer a measure to rescind funding
by Congress, cppe's board quote faced a profound responsibility. CPB's
final act would be to protect the integrity of the
public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather
than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to
(23:50):
additional attacks.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
CPB said its leaders determined that quote, without the resources
to fulfill its congressionally mandated responsibilities, maintaining the corporate as
a non functional entity would not serve the public interest
or advance the goals of public media. The organization announced
in August that it would begin shutting down after Congress
passed the funding cuts. At the time, it said that
most staff positions would be eliminated by the end of
(24:14):
September and that a small team would remain through January.
In a statement Monday, the organization said it would distribute
all of its remaining funds over the summer. The Republican
led House and Senate passed a package of funding cuts
targeting CPB and other government agencies, canceling money that Congress
had previously allocated them and fulfilling a request by the
Trump administration. CPB, which Congress created in nineteen sixty seven,
(24:37):
helped support more than fifteen hundred local radio and television
stations nationwide. It also funded popular programs like Sesame Street.
Programs on PBS and NPR have been able to remain
on air because of other sources of funding. QW I
want you to go first. I want to add something
here that I missed here, So thoughts.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
We did a lot in the way of covering the
last election cycle, and part of the reason why my
stomach caved in on election night because it was clear
to me where things were going very early, It's like
six PM.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
I realized we're not going to win this thing.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
And then I think for like a week I didn't
talk to you or nobody else because I was devastated.
I knew what was coming and everything I said was coming.
As people have treated me like I was being dramatic
or fear mongering or you know that I was brainwashed
by left wing media. Every single thing I predicted has happened.
(25:41):
And we are broadcasters and I knew that that was
going to be something that was under attack.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
It's just a heartbreaking thing.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
The places where they've gone out of there a way
to make a negative impact show a flat lack of
decency and this is just another example of that.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I wanted to add that the article that we read
that was from NBC News, So if you wanted to
check out the rest of the article, it's that's that's
where we got it from. But yeah, I think that
you know, for me, the first thing that jumps out
is that for for many years this sort of thing
(26:33):
was off limits. You know, the the sesame streets of
the world, and I you know, a lot of us
think of children's programming, but you know that CPB is
responsible for more than that. And one of the things
that we've said on a lot of microphones around this
(26:56):
country is that the truth has a liberal bias to it.
I believe that to be a fact. The truth, in
its fullness, unspun.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Just does.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Humanity overall has tended toward more inclusivity, It has tended
toward more cooperation, It has tended toward more you know.
Now there's instances, of course, of regression. We see that
all around us. But overall, one of the things that
(27:34):
I say from time to time is I was not
born a slate, right, So some people have done some things.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
To move this nation forward.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
The scale of a country, of a planet is a
lot slower and a lot longer than that of an
individual lifetime. But yeah, we just kind of lost sight
of the goal. And a lot of people we're pushing
back or pushing back against something that was truthful, and
(28:06):
they did so by saying that it had a left
bias to it, and Donald Trump doubled down on it,
took their money away, and now we lose something that
actually brought truth to people, sanity, and this is just
another development under this regime anyway that's going to do
it for us. Here on the qr CO Today Show
(28:28):
is produced by Chris Thompson. If you have some thought
you'd like to share, please use the red microphone talk
back feature on the iHeartRadio app, and while you're there,
be sure to hit subscribe.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
And download all of our episodes.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Also, be sure to check us out on all social
media at Civic cipher that civ I, c c I
p h e R.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I am your host.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
You can find me on all social media platforms at
ramsis ja.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I, mq ward.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
You can find me at CIVI, c CI pH e
R on all platforms and join.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Us next time as we share our news with our
voice from our perspective right here on the QR Code.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Peace
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