June 15, 2024 • 22 mins
The first part of today’s episode sees us discussing the history of successful attacks on concepts based in human decency that have been rebranded by the Right as “radical.” We discuss the history of the attack on ‘political correctness’ and the parallels of the attacks on the term ‘woke.’
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I'm your host,
ramses Job.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
He is Rams's Jaw. I am q Ward and you
are tuned in a Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yes you are, and we have a very special show
in store for you. June teenth is just around the corner,
and so we're going to spend a decent amount of
time talking about June teenth. So first up, this will
be for the second part of the show, but we're
going to discuss how to celebrate June teenth. Juneteenth is
(00:38):
still a relatively new federal holiday, and we recognize that
there are there can be some apprehension in engaging and
in celebrating. But you know, when you think about it,
if you celebrate single Demile, whatever you do, if you
celebrate Saint Patrick's Dave, you celebrate you know, any number
(01:01):
of holidays that are really based around a particular ethnicity
or national origin or something like that that is outside
of you know, America. Here you have learned how to
celebrate that and you can do so without fear that
you might offend someone or overstep or anything like that,
whereas with June Team it's a little newer. So we're
(01:22):
going to hopefully provide you a little bit of a
framework to approach the holiday and you know, and enjoy
yourself because it is a holiday for all of us.
We're also going to be talking about June Team for
our Way Black History factor, so you definitely want to
stick around for that as well. And first up, we
are going to be talking about political correctness and woke
(01:45):
miss and how we went from PC to woke or
the label went from PC to woke and the constant
attacks from the right on how they reframe the language
so that it can be attacked. But before we get there,
we are going to, as always start things off with
some ebony excellence, shall we? I think we shall.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Today's Ebony Excellence sponsored by Actively Black There is greatness
in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com. The story
comes from the Grillo. Jalen Hurts etched his name in
NFL history books, securing a record breaking five year, two
hundred and fifty five million dollar contract and becoming at
the time, the highest paid player in the NFL. This
(02:28):
landmark includes a whopping one hundred and seventy nine point
three million dollars in guaranteed money and a no trade
clause binding Hurts to the Philadelphia Eagles until twenty twenty eight.
Now the more important part of this story, more impressively even,
is that a black woman, Nicole Lynn of Clutch Sports,
negotiated the deal. So happy for my little brother at
(02:51):
Jalen Hurts on becoming the highest paid player in NFL
history end quote, Lynn said in an Instagram post, she said, quote,
thank you for trusting me with something of this magnitude.
I remember sitting in your old high school interviewing to
be your agent. I am a dreamer, but I'm not
sure I could have ever imagined this is where we'd land.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
The partnership between Hurts and his agent is nothing short
of groundbreaking at just thirty four years old, and Colon
is the only It's sorry, not only a prominent figure
in the industry, but has made history in more ways
than one. After starting her career as an NFL agent
in twenty fifteen, she quickly made a name for herself
as the first woman to join Players Rep, one of
(03:33):
the league's top agencies at the time. Little did she
know that. Years later, one Instagram DM would lead her
to become the first woman of any ethnicity to represent
a Super Bowl starting quarterback. This story happened last season,
but I was with Nicole over the weekend, told her
how proud of her we both were, and just told
(03:56):
her to keep pushing forward on her legacy. Nicole, keep going.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I love that, all right. Woke, wokeness, wokeness. You know
we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of this,
but think about this for a second. In my lifetime,
(04:21):
I remember being woke meaning being educated, being enlightened, being
being aware, aware, right, informed, informed, That's a great way
to say it. And there was a degree of being
sort of like spiritually in tune as well. Right. In
(04:45):
other words, woke went beyond just you know, being informed,
being aware, that sort of thing, But it also implied
a degree of forgive me, but spiritual connectedness, concern, empathy
for each other. Right, So, wokeness or if you were woke,
(05:08):
it meant that you were knew what was going on
in the world, but you also had a predisposition toward
making things better for yourself, your people, your community, you know,
et cetera. So if that was what woke meant, and
it never the meaning never changed. That would have been perfect.
(05:30):
That's great. Right, Now we can go back a little
bit further or discuss indeed the actual meaning of woke,
which means to be what not asleep, to be awake awake, right,
which for anyone having an intellectual conversation of philosophical debate,
(05:56):
anyone who's engaging politically social you know, you need to
be awake for that. Anyone who's aware of what's going
on in the world, you need to be awake because
the idea of being asleep kind of implies that you
are unaware literally or figuratively. Sure, So, woke has always
(06:20):
historically meant something positive, something good, something.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Always had a positive connotation until it was hijacked.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Right, And we're going to discuss something. This is not
the first time a word has been hijacked or a
concept has been represented to us. We branded under something
(06:50):
that was more attackable. In other words, if wokeness means
a general awareness and empathy, the term has been taken
and rebranded. Right. So I'm going to tell a little
bit of a story and then we're going to get
into more of the nuts and bolts here please, So
(07:12):
this is how we went from political correctness to wokeness
and how both of those things ended up becoming bad things.
And Q knows all this, so she's going to jump
in a few times, but I'm going to do the
reading here. And this came from Quora, of all places.
You know, this is a kind of a forum where
people kind of share ideas on the internet. So this
(07:36):
isn't necessarily a scholarly source, but the information is accurate,
absolutely accurate. I just love this one individual's interpretation of
the events. Right. So this individual's name for if you
wanted to go check it out. His name is Douglas Whiteside,
and he's answering the question why do liberals love wokeness?
So here's his response. So here's what happened. A couple
(07:59):
of decades go. Some Republicans decided that being polite was
interfering with their agenda. They needed to make Democrats sound
like radicals, even though the Democrats were offering popular and
reasonable policy proposals. So they needed a weigh to make
politeness itself sound silly and delusional. Enter the phrase political correctness. Right.
(08:23):
I want to stop here real quick, because political correctness
and you mentioned this to me when political correctness first
became a term that was used in popular culture. You know,
you mentioned that it was not a bad thing. It
wasn't a scary thing. It wasn't used as an attack.
Oh you're just being PC. No, it was like, hey, listen,
(08:46):
we all need a degree of political correct It was
an inclusive way of instructing society at large to be,
as you said, polite. It was not deeper than that initially,
but that's kind of the point. Even the term political
correctness had to have some acceptance first before it could
be rebranded and weaponized. They said, if they called it
(09:08):
something ridiculous, they would have been viewed that way themselves.
So they had to first construct this thing that they
could then rebrand however they wanted. And that you start
to see how unfortunately brilliant it is, because again, you
can take a word like woke. There's no bad way
(09:30):
to interpret the word woke. But now it's about how
is that a bad thing?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, we saw them do something similar with critical race theory.
There you go, right, let's change the entire meaning of that,
make it mean something else, make it negative and pejorative,
and then attack it. It is a masterful thing that
they quote. They, for those who are listening and not watching,
have done throughout history very effectively, sadly, very effective to
(10:01):
all of our detriments. Because for those that know, those
that actually are woke, we're aware that critical race theory.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
In their definition, those on the far right, in their
definition and their estimation is simply American history. But they
could not They can't attack American or attack Americ American history.
So they had to rebrand a section of American history,
which is ours rebranded and under the umbrella race theory. Yeah,
(10:35):
and critical race theory is a collegiate level pursuit that
connects systemic elements to outcomes for marginalized people. Right, it's
not in your schools, not in your public so no,
none of that sort of stuff. This is a class
that you have to sign up for in college and
they took like and if you don't know this, it
(10:56):
shows how far they went with the rebrand. See I
know this, doctor Westernberg is our teacher up hear being cute,
So we knew this, but so many people don't know this.
And the craziest part about it is that the specific
group of people that don't know this on the right
don't care because you could educate the know. Some know
(11:20):
and don't don't care, right, but you could educate those
that don't.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
They've taken advantage of those that don't know and doctrinated them,
and in the way that some would protect and pursue
their religious ideology. You can't tell them that it's wrong.
And then again, there are those, like you said, who
simply don't care.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, rather dig in than be enlightened or awaken.
All right, so let's read a little bit more from
Douglas Whiteside's response. Again, why do liberals love wokeness? So
continuing on now, he says, obviously, since nearly all of
us were raised to be polite and respect politeness, it
(12:00):
isn't possible to attack politeness itself. But if you can
relabel it first, then it's much easier to attack. So
being polite to others became political correctness, and political correctness
became a bad thing. Now the same thing is happening
to empathy. It's very very important data here. Basic human
(12:24):
empathy is a good thing. Like politeness, empathy helps us
survive as a society, but it also leads to governmental
policies to help disadvantaged people. Obviously, this is something Republicans
cannot appide. But how can they attack basic human empathy. Well,
the same way they attacked politeness, relabel it, so empathy
(12:48):
is now called wokeness and that can be attacked. So again,
they took something that already existed, right, something that wasn't
widely used in terms of its uh, its role, its
(13:10):
place in the in our lexicon. Right, Wokeness was something
that was shared. It was like kind of arcane knowledge.
Not everyone wasn't walking around talking about yeah, woke or
are you know we're woke? You know, people weren't saying that.
That was just a few people that would talk like that,
you know, people that wear unks, people that are well
educated that understand, people that were very engaged politically those people,
(13:33):
but you know, the masses would not walk around saying
woke or wokeness or anything like that. It wasn't popularized.
So this was this really tiny sliver of the population
using that term in the same way that a very
tiny sliver of the population was using critical race theory.
I'm so glad you mentioned that, because, again, a very
(13:54):
tiny sliver of the population actually goes to college and
gets to the point in college where they even have
access to enroll in a class that teaches critical race theory.
But because that term existed, Republicans as often as you know,
(14:15):
at one hundred percent of the time, let me be honest,
can find this term and then discuss this term as
though everyone is using it, as though everyone is taking
critical race theory class.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And as if they have some innate understanding of the
term in the way that they use it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
But they don't, because to them, it means American history.
To them, it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that
you're right, you're right, good catch, But they want it
to encompass American history so that they can attack the
specific part of American history that includes us from being
taught to younger students in the classroom. Right, So we
(14:55):
lose the term because they've been successful at rebranding it.
I want to add something else here, Okay, the American flag.
The American flag. Funnily enough, the same woman who was
our teacher, doctor Camilla Westernberg. I went with her to
(15:18):
meet with Jesse Jackson. Isn't that cool? And at that meeting,
you know, I wasn't the only person, there was a
lot of people there. They had these flags, these little
tiny flags that they would give out. And lately the
past four years, maybe eight year, past twenty years, well,
(15:47):
let me let me, let me, let me delineate a
specific amount of time. So since let's call it twenty sixteen,
twenty fifteen, right when Donald Trump was campaigning for the presidency,
my relationship with the American flag has changed. There are
(16:07):
still moments when I will watch movies, you know, and
I'll see, you know, the soldiers at the end mount
the flag and feel that sense of pride, or I'll
watch the astronauts plant the flag and I'll be like, yeah,
you know, we did it, you know. But if I'm
being honest, my relationship with the flag has changed because
there's a whole entire new facet that has been introduced
(16:29):
since the Trump presidency, which is, as we've discussed on
the show many times, a very angry, right leaning group
of people using the flag almost to intimidate people who
are not white, almost to say that we're in America
(16:51):
their country, not we're in America full stop. And then
we've seen the flag in places where the flag normally
doesn't go, like if you go to a post office, Yeah,
that's a federal agency. The flag should be there. You
go to a public school, yeah, fly the flag. That's
a government building. Right. But when you go to like
(17:11):
an outing in the park and you see some some group,
a group that's you know, they're using a you know,
one of the picnic tables and they just have a
flag there or on the bed of the pickup truck
next to you in traffic. Sure, that sort of stuff
where it's like, I mean, I know where we are, right.
(17:32):
So anyway, my relationship with the flag has changed. My
point is that when I went with doctor Westernberg to
meet with Jesse Jackson and they were handing out these
little flags, she said, no, Ramses, you take one of
those flags and you wave that flag. That flag belongs
to all of us. Don't let them take the flag
(17:52):
from us. We fought for that flag too. And you
know how she talks. I mean you in all people
now she talks so and what do you say to
her other than yes, ma'am right. For those that don't know,
doctor Westernberg is an old black woman. She would get
mad at me for me. She would get mad at
me for describing her that way. She is wisdom in flesh. Yes,
(18:13):
there you go, That's how I describe her. But you know,
for us, we you know there, if I close my
eyes and imagine God, it may as well have doctor
Westernbrook's face on it. Right, that's the closest that we
get to God on this earth. Is something we always say.
So she was saying, don't let them take the flag.
(18:33):
And I think that on some level she knew how
they tend to take these things and rework the angles
around them and use them against us. Right, And so
at present there is a flag in front of my
house that is waving, and there are neighbors around here
who have the flags waving in front of their house too,
I suspect for different reasons. My job is to reclaim it,
(18:56):
just like I'm trying to reclaim woke. It's like I'm
trying to reclaim p These aren't bad things, all right,
So let's continue. So empathy is now called wokeness. When
a Democrat calls for measures to help protect minority citizens
from police violence, it isn't because of empathy a good thing.
It's because that Democrat is all woke a bad thing.
(19:18):
It isn't simply liberals loving wokeness. It's that liberals are
generally liberal because they have basic human empathy. Now, this
is this other person's words, not mine. Republicans hate basic
human empathy because it will eventually lead to the uber
wealthy having to pay their fair share of taxes to
help the less fortunate. Republicans cannot stand even the thought
of that happening. That's probably an oversimplification, and I don't
(19:43):
want to be unfair to Republicans. I wish you guys
could see my face. You know that we have to
have good faith debates, even though this is what this
is who we are.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
We have to have good faith debates in the absence
of good faith on the other side of the debate.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That is a very differ sessions. I know to be
in it all the time. But listen, that's why we
keep you around. You're the enforcer man. Now, I want
to share something else that I think illustrates this point perfectly,
and illustrates a lot of Q's points perfectly. This is
from Fox thirteen news dot com if you want to
(20:20):
check it out. I'm just pulling a paragraph from the
article talking about Ronda Santis, the person who's known for
attacking wokeness right in the state of Florida. So Ronda
stantis the governor's general Council, Ryan Newman said in a
in general, and he's trying to define wokeness because he
was asked what wokeness means. So this is the governor's council, okay,
(20:41):
Ryan Newman, He says, in general, it means quote, the
belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the
need to address them in quote. He added that DeSantis
doesn't believe there are systemic injustices in the country reports
Florida politics.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So so again, is very difficult to have good faith debate.
You're not wrong on the other side is not You're
not wrong with faith, you're not wrong.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
The only the only reason why I do that, though,
is because I recognize that we funnily enough, you know this,
We have a lot of people who listen to our
show who are those deeply conservative people, right, and for
us to remind them, well, not to remind them, they know,
but for us to condemn them further, I don't think
(21:29):
that that really creates the pathway to having the types
of conversations that even those people who are listening to
try to pick us apart might be willing to have
at some point in the future. So it's a strategy.
I'm not delusional. And for all of you who are
listening to to me, yeah, I mean, there's my hand,
but we love you and we'll get there one way
or another.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I'm glad you believe that. I think optimism is necessary
because I don't possess it.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah. Well that's why there's two of us. You know,
you're you're the enforcer man, You're you're the You're you
take care of me, you protect me man, so you
allow me to be what all butterflies and rainbow as
you describe it. So anyway, I just thought it was
really interesting that in those discussions, and you know behind
those doors, you know, when you ask those people what
(22:18):
does wokeness mean, that they can give an answer that's
so encompassing like this, as you mentioned, they know exactly
what they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
That's the thing that's so terrifying about what's happening with
our courts. Our courts are the last place where you
have to mean what you say, where you have to
back up what you're you have to back up what
you're saying. You have to give facts, You have to
give evidence to support what you're saying, and now seeing
our leaders and politicians allow for even that place to
(22:49):
be corrupted by money is a very very scary place
for not just us but all Americans.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Well, I feel like we'll get there.
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I'm your host,
ramses Job.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
He is Rams's Jaw. I am q Ward and you
are tuned in a Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yes you are, and we have a very special show
in store for you. June teenth is just around the corner,
and so we're going to spend a decent amount of
time talking about June teenth. So first up, this will
be for the second part of the show, but we're
going to discuss how to celebrate June teenth. Juneteenth is
(00:38):
still a relatively new federal holiday, and we recognize that
there are there can be some apprehension in engaging and
in celebrating. But you know, when you think about it,
if you celebrate single Demile, whatever you do, if you
celebrate Saint Patrick's Dave, you celebrate you know, any number
(01:01):
of holidays that are really based around a particular ethnicity
or national origin or something like that that is outside
of you know, America. Here you have learned how to
celebrate that and you can do so without fear that
you might offend someone or overstep or anything like that,
whereas with June Team it's a little newer. So we're
(01:22):
going to hopefully provide you a little bit of a
framework to approach the holiday and you know, and enjoy
yourself because it is a holiday for all of us.
We're also going to be talking about June Team for
our Way Black History factor, so you definitely want to
stick around for that as well. And first up, we
are going to be talking about political correctness and woke
(01:45):
miss and how we went from PC to woke or
the label went from PC to woke and the constant
attacks from the right on how they reframe the language
so that it can be attacked. But before we get there,
we are going to, as always start things off with
some ebony excellence, shall we? I think we shall.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Today's Ebony Excellence sponsored by Actively Black There is greatness
in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com. The story
comes from the Grillo. Jalen Hurts etched his name in
NFL history books, securing a record breaking five year, two
hundred and fifty five million dollar contract and becoming at
the time, the highest paid player in the NFL. This
(02:28):
landmark includes a whopping one hundred and seventy nine point
three million dollars in guaranteed money and a no trade
clause binding Hurts to the Philadelphia Eagles until twenty twenty eight.
Now the more important part of this story, more impressively even,
is that a black woman, Nicole Lynn of Clutch Sports,
negotiated the deal. So happy for my little brother at
(02:51):
Jalen Hurts on becoming the highest paid player in NFL
history end quote, Lynn said in an Instagram post, she said, quote,
thank you for trusting me with something of this magnitude.
I remember sitting in your old high school interviewing to
be your agent. I am a dreamer, but I'm not
sure I could have ever imagined this is where we'd land.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
The partnership between Hurts and his agent is nothing short
of groundbreaking at just thirty four years old, and Colon
is the only It's sorry, not only a prominent figure
in the industry, but has made history in more ways
than one. After starting her career as an NFL agent
in twenty fifteen, she quickly made a name for herself
as the first woman to join Players Rep, one of
(03:33):
the league's top agencies at the time. Little did she
know that. Years later, one Instagram DM would lead her
to become the first woman of any ethnicity to represent
a Super Bowl starting quarterback. This story happened last season,
but I was with Nicole over the weekend, told her
how proud of her we both were, and just told
(03:56):
her to keep pushing forward on her legacy. Nicole, keep going.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I love that, all right. Woke, wokeness, wokeness. You know
we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of this,
but think about this for a second. In my lifetime,
(04:21):
I remember being woke meaning being educated, being enlightened, being
being aware, aware, right, informed, informed, That's a great way
to say it. And there was a degree of being
sort of like spiritually in tune as well. Right. In
(04:45):
other words, woke went beyond just you know, being informed,
being aware, that sort of thing, But it also implied
a degree of forgive me, but spiritual connectedness, concern, empathy
for each other. Right, So, wokeness or if you were woke,
(05:08):
it meant that you were knew what was going on
in the world, but you also had a predisposition toward
making things better for yourself, your people, your community, you know,
et cetera. So if that was what woke meant, and
it never the meaning never changed. That would have been perfect.
(05:30):
That's great. Right, Now we can go back a little
bit further or discuss indeed the actual meaning of woke,
which means to be what not asleep, to be awake awake, right,
which for anyone having an intellectual conversation of philosophical debate,
(05:56):
anyone who's engaging politically social you know, you need to
be awake for that. Anyone who's aware of what's going
on in the world, you need to be awake because
the idea of being asleep kind of implies that you
are unaware literally or figuratively. Sure, So, woke has always
(06:20):
historically meant something positive, something good, something.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Always had a positive connotation until it was hijacked.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Right, And we're going to discuss something. This is not
the first time a word has been hijacked or a
concept has been represented to us. We branded under something
(06:50):
that was more attackable. In other words, if wokeness means
a general awareness and empathy, the term has been taken
and rebranded. Right. So I'm going to tell a little
bit of a story and then we're going to get
into more of the nuts and bolts here please, So
(07:12):
this is how we went from political correctness to wokeness
and how both of those things ended up becoming bad things.
And Q knows all this, so she's going to jump
in a few times, but I'm going to do the
reading here. And this came from Quora, of all places.
You know, this is a kind of a forum where
people kind of share ideas on the internet. So this
(07:36):
isn't necessarily a scholarly source, but the information is accurate,
absolutely accurate. I just love this one individual's interpretation of
the events. Right. So this individual's name for if you
wanted to go check it out. His name is Douglas Whiteside,
and he's answering the question why do liberals love wokeness?
So here's his response. So here's what happened. A couple
(07:59):
of decades go. Some Republicans decided that being polite was
interfering with their agenda. They needed to make Democrats sound
like radicals, even though the Democrats were offering popular and
reasonable policy proposals. So they needed a weigh to make
politeness itself sound silly and delusional. Enter the phrase political correctness. Right.
(08:23):
I want to stop here real quick, because political correctness
and you mentioned this to me when political correctness first
became a term that was used in popular culture. You know,
you mentioned that it was not a bad thing. It
wasn't a scary thing. It wasn't used as an attack.
Oh you're just being PC. No, it was like, hey, listen,
(08:46):
we all need a degree of political correct It was
an inclusive way of instructing society at large to be,
as you said, polite. It was not deeper than that initially,
but that's kind of the point. Even the term political
correctness had to have some acceptance first before it could
be rebranded and weaponized. They said, if they called it
(09:08):
something ridiculous, they would have been viewed that way themselves.
So they had to first construct this thing that they
could then rebrand however they wanted. And that you start
to see how unfortunately brilliant it is, because again, you
can take a word like woke. There's no bad way
(09:30):
to interpret the word woke. But now it's about how
is that a bad thing?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, we saw them do something similar with critical race theory.
There you go, right, let's change the entire meaning of that,
make it mean something else, make it negative and pejorative,
and then attack it. It is a masterful thing that
they quote. They, for those who are listening and not watching,
have done throughout history very effectively, sadly, very effective to
(10:01):
all of our detriments. Because for those that know, those
that actually are woke, we're aware that critical race theory.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
In their definition, those on the far right, in their
definition and their estimation is simply American history. But they
could not They can't attack American or attack Americ American history.
So they had to rebrand a section of American history,
which is ours rebranded and under the umbrella race theory. Yeah,
(10:35):
and critical race theory is a collegiate level pursuit that
connects systemic elements to outcomes for marginalized people. Right, it's
not in your schools, not in your public so no,
none of that sort of stuff. This is a class
that you have to sign up for in college and
they took like and if you don't know this, it
(10:56):
shows how far they went with the rebrand. See I
know this, doctor Westernberg is our teacher up hear being cute,
So we knew this, but so many people don't know this.
And the craziest part about it is that the specific
group of people that don't know this on the right
don't care because you could educate the know. Some know
(11:20):
and don't don't care, right, but you could educate those
that don't.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
They've taken advantage of those that don't know and doctrinated them,
and in the way that some would protect and pursue
their religious ideology. You can't tell them that it's wrong.
And then again, there are those, like you said, who
simply don't care.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, rather dig in than be enlightened or awaken.
All right, so let's read a little bit more from
Douglas Whiteside's response. Again, why do liberals love wokeness? So
continuing on now, he says, obviously, since nearly all of
us were raised to be polite and respect politeness, it
(12:00):
isn't possible to attack politeness itself. But if you can
relabel it first, then it's much easier to attack. So
being polite to others became political correctness, and political correctness
became a bad thing. Now the same thing is happening
to empathy. It's very very important data here. Basic human
(12:24):
empathy is a good thing. Like politeness, empathy helps us
survive as a society, but it also leads to governmental
policies to help disadvantaged people. Obviously, this is something Republicans
cannot appide. But how can they attack basic human empathy. Well,
the same way they attacked politeness, relabel it, so empathy
(12:48):
is now called wokeness and that can be attacked. So again,
they took something that already existed, right, something that wasn't
widely used in terms of its uh, its role, its
(13:10):
place in the in our lexicon. Right, Wokeness was something
that was shared. It was like kind of arcane knowledge.
Not everyone wasn't walking around talking about yeah, woke or
are you know we're woke? You know, people weren't saying that.
That was just a few people that would talk like that,
you know, people that wear unks, people that are well
educated that understand, people that were very engaged politically those people,
(13:33):
but you know, the masses would not walk around saying
woke or wokeness or anything like that. It wasn't popularized.
So this was this really tiny sliver of the population
using that term in the same way that a very
tiny sliver of the population was using critical race theory.
I'm so glad you mentioned that, because, again, a very
(13:54):
tiny sliver of the population actually goes to college and
gets to the point in college where they even have
access to enroll in a class that teaches critical race theory.
But because that term existed, Republicans as often as you know,
(14:15):
at one hundred percent of the time, let me be honest,
can find this term and then discuss this term as
though everyone is using it, as though everyone is taking
critical race theory class.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And as if they have some innate understanding of the
term in the way that they use it.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
But they don't, because to them, it means American history.
To them, it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that
you're right, you're right, good catch, But they want it
to encompass American history so that they can attack the
specific part of American history that includes us from being
taught to younger students in the classroom. Right, So we
(14:55):
lose the term because they've been successful at rebranding it.
I want to add something else here, Okay, the American flag.
The American flag. Funnily enough, the same woman who was
our teacher, doctor Camilla Westernberg. I went with her to
(15:18):
meet with Jesse Jackson. Isn't that cool? And at that meeting,
you know, I wasn't the only person, there was a
lot of people there. They had these flags, these little
tiny flags that they would give out. And lately the
past four years, maybe eight year, past twenty years, well,
(15:47):
let me let me, let me, let me delineate a
specific amount of time. So since let's call it twenty sixteen,
twenty fifteen, right when Donald Trump was campaigning for the presidency,
my relationship with the American flag has changed. There are
(16:07):
still moments when I will watch movies, you know, and
I'll see, you know, the soldiers at the end mount
the flag and feel that sense of pride, or I'll
watch the astronauts plant the flag and I'll be like, yeah,
you know, we did it, you know. But if I'm
being honest, my relationship with the flag has changed because
there's a whole entire new facet that has been introduced
(16:29):
since the Trump presidency, which is, as we've discussed on
the show many times, a very angry, right leaning group
of people using the flag almost to intimidate people who
are not white, almost to say that we're in America
(16:51):
their country, not we're in America full stop. And then
we've seen the flag in places where the flag normally
doesn't go, like if you go to a post office, Yeah,
that's a federal agency. The flag should be there. You
go to a public school, yeah, fly the flag. That's
a government building. Right. But when you go to like
(17:11):
an outing in the park and you see some some group,
a group that's you know, they're using a you know,
one of the picnic tables and they just have a
flag there or on the bed of the pickup truck
next to you in traffic. Sure, that sort of stuff
where it's like, I mean, I know where we are, right.
(17:32):
So anyway, my relationship with the flag has changed. My
point is that when I went with doctor Westernberg to
meet with Jesse Jackson and they were handing out these
little flags, she said, no, Ramses, you take one of
those flags and you wave that flag. That flag belongs
to all of us. Don't let them take the flag
(17:52):
from us. We fought for that flag too. And you
know how she talks. I mean you in all people
now she talks so and what do you say to
her other than yes, ma'am right. For those that don't know,
doctor Westernberg is an old black woman. She would get
mad at me for me. She would get mad at
me for describing her that way. She is wisdom in flesh. Yes,
(18:13):
there you go, That's how I describe her. But you know,
for us, we you know there, if I close my
eyes and imagine God, it may as well have doctor
Westernbrook's face on it. Right, that's the closest that we
get to God on this earth. Is something we always say.
So she was saying, don't let them take the flag.
(18:33):
And I think that on some level she knew how
they tend to take these things and rework the angles
around them and use them against us. Right, And so
at present there is a flag in front of my
house that is waving, and there are neighbors around here
who have the flags waving in front of their house too,
I suspect for different reasons. My job is to reclaim it,
(18:56):
just like I'm trying to reclaim woke. It's like I'm
trying to reclaim p These aren't bad things, all right,
So let's continue. So empathy is now called wokeness. When
a Democrat calls for measures to help protect minority citizens
from police violence, it isn't because of empathy a good thing.
It's because that Democrat is all woke a bad thing.
(19:18):
It isn't simply liberals loving wokeness. It's that liberals are
generally liberal because they have basic human empathy. Now, this
is this other person's words, not mine. Republicans hate basic
human empathy because it will eventually lead to the uber
wealthy having to pay their fair share of taxes to
help the less fortunate. Republicans cannot stand even the thought
of that happening. That's probably an oversimplification, and I don't
(19:43):
want to be unfair to Republicans. I wish you guys
could see my face. You know that we have to
have good faith debates, even though this is what this
is who we are.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
We have to have good faith debates in the absence
of good faith on the other side of the debate.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That is a very differ sessions. I know to be
in it all the time. But listen, that's why we
keep you around. You're the enforcer man. Now, I want
to share something else that I think illustrates this point perfectly,
and illustrates a lot of Q's points perfectly. This is
from Fox thirteen news dot com if you want to
(20:20):
check it out. I'm just pulling a paragraph from the
article talking about Ronda Santis, the person who's known for
attacking wokeness right in the state of Florida. So Ronda
stantis the governor's general Council, Ryan Newman said in a
in general, and he's trying to define wokeness because he
was asked what wokeness means. So this is the governor's council, okay,
(20:41):
Ryan Newman, He says, in general, it means quote, the
belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the
need to address them in quote. He added that DeSantis
doesn't believe there are systemic injustices in the country reports
Florida politics.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So so again, is very difficult to have good faith debate.
You're not wrong on the other side is not You're
not wrong with faith, you're not wrong.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
The only the only reason why I do that, though,
is because I recognize that we funnily enough, you know this,
We have a lot of people who listen to our
show who are those deeply conservative people, right, and for
us to remind them, well, not to remind them, they know,
but for us to condemn them further, I don't think
(21:29):
that that really creates the pathway to having the types
of conversations that even those people who are listening to
try to pick us apart might be willing to have
at some point in the future. So it's a strategy.
I'm not delusional. And for all of you who are
listening to to me, yeah, I mean, there's my hand,
but we love you and we'll get there one way
or another.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I'm glad you believe that. I think optimism is necessary
because I don't possess it.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah. Well that's why there's two of us. You know,
you're you're the enforcer man, You're you're the You're you
take care of me, you protect me man, so you
allow me to be what all butterflies and rainbow as
you describe it. So anyway, I just thought it was
really interesting that in those discussions, and you know behind
those doors, you know, when you ask those people what
(22:18):
does wokeness mean, that they can give an answer that's
so encompassing like this, as you mentioned, they know exactly
what they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
That's the thing that's so terrifying about what's happening with
our courts. Our courts are the last place where you
have to mean what you say, where you have to
back up what you're you have to back up what
you're saying. You have to give facts, You have to
give evidence to support what you're saying, and now seeing
our leaders and politicians allow for even that place to
(22:49):
be corrupted by money is a very very scary place
for not just us but all Americans.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Well, I feel like we'll get there.
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