Strange Fruit

Is it ok for a woman to cry in public? What about a man? What about an NBA player on the bench before a playoff game? According to former player Charles Barkley, it's "not a good look" — even if the player's sister was just killed in a car crash. On today's show we're talking about this and other recent episodes of public figures attempting to police behavior based on gender. Joining us to talk through it is Explore Kentucky founder Gerry James.

The news has been full of stories in the past few weeks relevant to what we cover here on Strange Fruit. So rather than put them into a Juicy Fruit segment, we decided to do a whole news round-up show, to provide some analysis of the systemic and historic context behind the current headlines. We cover Dr. David Dao's rough treatment by United Airlines, and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's remarks about Hitler. Both include examples of soft language, where "re-accommodation" means a concussion, a broken nose, and two missing teeth, and "holocaust centers," are better known as concentration camps. The phrase concentration camp conjures up images that are unspeakably awful but seem safely behind us, but reports out of Chechnya this month call that safety into question. Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reports that gay men in Chechnya are being subjected to torture, forced into camps, and in some cases, killed. The Chechan government says those reports can't be true, because there are no gay people in Chechnya. “You cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic,” government spokesperson Alvi Karimov told Interfax news agency. “If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.”

This just in, Fruitcakes! Racism is over. Kendall Jenner solved it by giving a cop a soft drink in a commercial. We're talking, of course, about the commercial Pepsi released (and has since pulled) wherein Jenner attends a Black-Lives-Matter-style protest, offers a police officer a Pepsi, and there is much rejoicing and U-N-I-T-Y all around. We talk about the many ways in which this is problematic this week on Strange Fruit. Our guest is Minda Honey, sex and relationship advice columnist for LEO Weekly. She's writing a book about the dating misadventures that have befallen her as a woman of color. While we had her in the studio, we couldn't resist telling a few tales of our own dating disasters. If you have a sex or relationship question, you can ask Minda at [email protected] (Jai's already signed up for several anonymous email accounts, so watch your inbox, Minda).

Almost as soon as the new Dave Chappelle comedy specials hit Netflix, we could tell there were problems. Our twitter timelines lit up with people talking about homophobia, transphobia, and jokes about sexual assault. We watched, and we agreed. Whatever Dave's been doing for the last twelve years, it didn't involve evolving along with the rest of us. Also this week, RuPaul spoke about something that's been a scourge of gay bars ever since straight people found out about them: bachelorette parties. And Bill O'Reilly had the nerve to come for America's favorite Auntie, Congresswoman Maxine Waters - not by challenging her policies or political positions, but by saying she wore a "James Brown wig." The clap back could be heard from outer space, and continues to reverberate through every dusty corner of the internet and cable TV. Finally, closer to home, the Kentucky General Assembly wrapped up its session this week. One bill that made it through the session was SB 120, which seeks to address some of the challenges faced by incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated people. We learn more this week from Holly Harris, Executive Director of the U.S. Justice Action Network.

Gospel singer Kim Burrell performed on the song "I See Victory" on the soundtrack to the award-winning film "Hidden Figures." She was scheduled to perform the song, along with Pharrell Williams, on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. But then, a video of one of her sermons went viral. "Everybody in this room who’s filled with the homosexual spirit, pray to God to free you," the sermon warned. "You play with it! What does that mean? You’ll die from it. You’ll die! You play with it in God’s house in 2017, you’ll die from it." And just like that, everyone was talking — again — about homophobia in the black church. And on this week's episode, so our we, with guest is Dr. Michael Brandon McCormack, Assistant Professor of Pan-African Studies and Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville. Dr. McCormack says at the root of some of homophobia in black congregations lies an old familiar culprit: respectability politics. "There's a sense in which black Christians have always wanted to seem rather orthodox in terms of their doctrinal beliefs and convictions," McCormack says. "We are true believers, but more than that, our morality is not to be questioned. There would be a push to take holiness very seriously. That comes across against the backdrop of the racialization of black bodies as being deviant, as already being violent and already being hyper-sexual, so there's this whole notion of respectability politics that is pushed by a certain kind of religious orientation toward what it means to be holy or what it means to be right with God."

Now that smartphones all have cameras and photo editing software, sending sexy pictures has become an every day part of a lot of folks' sex lives. But with the normalization of sending nudes there's the risk that they could be shared with people they weren't intended for, or even posted publicly online. When that happens — usually to women — we hear lots of shaming and victim blaming. But a new art exhibit in Louisville asks what would happen if a woman refused to be shamed for taking and sending nudes and instead, leaked them herself? Tamika Dozier is one of the organizers of the LYON Urban Art Exhibit, happening on March 25 at Louisville's Black Lives Matter House. Dozier says the shame surrounding sexual photos is unnecessary. "If I take ownership and I stand in my own glory, you can't shame me about something I'm not shameful of." She joins us this week to talk about the exhibit, and some of the stories and photos that inspired it. And in our Juicy Fruit segment, we address feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's comments about trans women.

You saw them on stage at the Oscars, looking stunning and accepting awards for their phenomenal work on the film "Moonlight." But did you know that before they were Academy Award winners, Janelle Monáe and Tarell Alvin McCraney were each guests on Strange Fruit? This week, we're listening back to those conversations!

You can't be as prominent and opinionated as Bravo TV's Andy Cohen without making a few mistakes along the way. But the way celebrities respond to being called out for their mistakes says the most about their character. For example, in July 2015, during his talk show, Watch What Happens Live, Cohen gave his "Jackhole of the Day" award to Amandla Stenberg and Kylie Jenner. ""Today's Jackhole goes to the Instagram feud between Kylie Jenner and Hunger Games star/Jaden Smith's prom date Amandla Stenberg," Cohen said on the show, "who criticized Kylie for her cornrows, calling it cultural appropriation." Many viewers bristled at Cohen dumping on the 16-year-old Stenberg, who had spoken out about cultural appropriation before. "I stuck my nose into something that I knew nothing about and I knew nothing of what I was saying, and was tone deaf to," Cohen says, "and got really shut down by Black Twitter." Cohen apologized, listened to the people of color in his life, and talks with us about it this week on the show. "She had written a really impassioned, eloquent thing on her Instagram about cultural appropriation, which was a term that I had never heard of at the time," Cohen says, "which I know, looking back, is the very definition of what white privilege is, which is a term that I also didn't know much about, which was a double white privilege moment that I was involved in." Andy Cohen will be at the Louisville Palace on March 11, with a show called "AC2: An Intimate Evening With Anderson Cooper & Andy Cohen."

“We are professional code-switchers, hair-flippers, hip-shakers, and go-getters. We hold Ph.Ds and listen to trap music; we twerk and we work. We hold it down while lifting each other up, and we don’t have to justify or explain our reason for being. This is us.” That's how Dr. Yaba Blay describes the inspiration for her latest project, Professional Black Girl. The video series features interviews with seventeen Black women and girls ranging in age from 2 to 52, and aims to challenge racist expectations of what is "respectable." And a lot of the interviewees talk about a topic that sits right on top of their heads. "Some of my closest friends, one of the things that we tend to bond over, laugh about, kiki, has to do with hair memories," Blay says. "Whether it's old-school hairstyles or old-school products." Blay joins us this week to talk about the project, which debuts on YouTube September 9th (and features our own Dr. Story in one episode!). And two stories from the world of sports have us scratching our heads this week: Professional boxer Yusaf Mack had been the victim of homophobic slurs online, so he found his harasser at a barbershop and gave him a professional-strength beating. The whole thing was caught on video, and the man who got whooped said he would fight the boxer again. And former WNBA guard Candice Wiggins made headlines this week when she told the Chicago Tribune she was bullied by teammates for being straight. "So many people think you have to look like a man, play like a man to get respect," she was quoted as saying. "I was the opposite. I was proud to a be a woman, and it didn’t fit well in that culture." Other WNBA players have denounced Wiggins' comments as untrue.

Coming up on Saturday's show, we talk with Dr. Yaba Blay about her new video series, "Professional Black Girl." Learn more here & listen this Saturday at strangefruitpod.org: http://yabablay.com/professional-black-girl/