Strange Fruit

How multi-racial is your circle of friends? Are any of your close friends of a different race than yours? Not the lady who works down the hall from your office or the dad you chat with while waiting for your kid to get out of school. Someone who's been to your house or invited you over for dinner. A recent poll by Reuters found that the many white people - 40% - have no friends outside their race. We on Strange Fruit figure this is probably no surprise to black folks. Among people of color, 25% of respondents said they didn't have friends outside their race. We wanted to talk more about the reasons why this might be the case, and what historical and demographic factors created the situation. So we spoke to Tanner Colby, author of Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America. Tanner realized while volunteering for Barack Obama's campaign in 2008 that he actually had no black friends. So he went on a cross-country research trip to examine interracial friendship, and on this week's show, he shared his findings with us. At the end of the show, we turned our focus inward to talk about some of our own experiences of interracial friendships (and speaking of personal narratives, we'd be remiss if we didn't point you to Friend to the Show Dr. Brittney Cooper's Salon piece, The Politics of Being Friends with White People). In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we of course had to address the Miley Cyrus Situation. While our hosts disagreed - Dr. Story has no time for Miley and Jaison thinks she's actually poking fun at ideas of race in music - it did lead to a larger conversation on the ways artists take on and cast off cultural and racial signifiers. We've seen it with white artists like Justin Timerblake, who started out poppy then moved into a more R&B aesthetic. We've also seen it with artists of color like J-Lo and Mariah Carey. Do non-white artists have to adopt a "mainstream" (read: white) sound to get a foot in the door, and can later be more real with their work? And why do white artists seem to use black culture when they want to seem more mature, sexual, or distant from their bubble-gum pop beginnings?

Lately, many mainstream (read: white) media outlets have taken notice of Black Twitter. Often their approach seems almost anthropological. "How did this amazing phenomenon come about? Who are these people and what is their motivation?" But as Dr. Story says on this week's show, "Black people talk about political issues amongst themselves, and they have been for centuries. And they sometimes write about it too." To dissect Black Twitter and the media's response to it, we're joined this week by Tracy Clayton, aka @BrokeyMcPoverty, who writes The Root's Grapevine blog and can also be found at PostBourgie. Tracy is one of the funniest voices on our timeline (in our opinion, and you know our opinion is never humble), and lucky for us, she's from right here in Louisville, so she was able to pop down to the studio for a visit.  Tracy's been called for several interviews now about the black twitter phenomenon, which she defines like so: "It's black people... who use twitter." Or in a more concrete example, "It's like the table of black kids in your school cafeteria."  She says the folks on twitter have been responsible for changes in the real world, both large (no book deal for you, Juror B37) and seemingly small (never come for @honesttoddler, Miss Alba). We agree, and we also appreciate the way black twitter uses very sharp humor to poke fun at those who need it. Witness the #PaulasBestDishes hashtag (we were partial to Strange Fruit Pies, of course). Tracy also sat in on our Juicy Fruit segment and we chatted about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's ban on conversion therapy in New Jersey, and how emotionally confusing it is when politicians we generally disagree with do things we love (and how we also love seeing folks with supposedly-unconventional body types in the news for positive reasons).  We also talked about the pastor who doesn't want female church members wearing weaves, and filmmaker Lee Daniels' questionable comments about black homophobia, and how an HIV clinic with women and children in the waiting room reminded him of a welfare office.  And it seems like we have to revisit the concept of linguistic reclamation every few months, because someone is always using language that doesn't belong to them. This time, it's a drag performer in Portland hosting an event whose name includes a slur commonly used against trans* folks. We've also heard lesbians using the f-word and gay men using the d-word. So does membership in any of the LGBTQ letters make it ok to use slurs again

Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney has been called the next August Wilson. Maybe that can be partially attributed to the fact that there are so few prominent African American playwrights, but there's still no doubt he is carrying an important mantle. 

At age 33, he's already had plays debut at the Royal Court London, New York's Vineyard Theatre, the Young Vic, and Steppenwolf Theatre, where he is an artist in residence. In March, he received the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize.

We spoke to McCraney this week about his career, and how and why he writes about black gay life. He told us the real-life roots of some of his most famous works, and about working as August Wilson's assistant at Yale (including an unforgettable story about buying Wilson an iPod).

In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we had lots of news to cover: The #solidarityisforwhitewomen and #blackpowerisforblackmen hashtags, "straight" men who sleep with men, Oprah's experience of racism in Sweden, black ESPN colleagues calling each other racial slurs, and more. 

Photo Credit: Playbill

This week we meet Coury Deeb, founder and director of Nadus Films. The Louisville filmmaker's latest film, Bboy for Life, takes us into Guatemala's breakdancing subculture, and shows how gang violence affects the lives of the dancers - many of whom are pacifists, themselves. In our Juicy Fruit segment we finally talk about Orange Is the New Black. And Jaison gives us an update on Marco McMillan's murder (McMillan was a black gay man running for mayor in Mississippi, and a friend of Jai's).

While we spent the week celebrating Jai's birthday and recovering from EOY, CNN's Don Lemon was busy making people mad and agreeing with Bill O'Reilly. In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we deconstruct his list of advice for black folks. The video is worth a watch, but if you're pressed for time, it boils down to pulling up your pants and not having babies out of wedlock. It was a disappointing reminder that just because someone's family doesn't make them immune to the lure of respectability politics. But as Doc said, he's certainly no Boykin (and we did agree with him that littering is gross). Also this week we bring you part two of our chat with Louisville activist Carla Wallace, and author Chris Crass. Chris was in town recently to celebrate the release of his book, Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racism Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy.

Miserable summer camp experiences are a staple in sitcoms and movies, where letters to home complain of mosquitos, inedible food, and obnoxious roommates. But for LGBTQ kids, the reality is often a lot less funny, and camp can be a scary place if you've been singled out as different. 

So teaming up with GLSENand with support from NBA Cares, friends to the show Darnell Moore and Wade Davis are spearheading a brand new basketball camp this year—one designed for LGBTQ kids and their allies. The camp is free and features a whole roster of NBA stars dropping by. It's called YOU Belong: LGBTQA Youth Sports and Leadership Initiative, and Darnell took a few minutes on the eve of the camp's opening to tell us how it came about.

While we had him on the phone, we also spoke about his article in this month's issue of The Advocate. They focused their entire July issue on LGBTQ people of color, and Darnell's article related some of his experiences of being 'too gay' in black spaces and 'too black' in gay spaces. 

In our main interview this week, we meet activist and author Chris Crass. His new book is called Toward Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy, and it features an interview with someone whose name is very familiar to Louisville's social justice community: Carla Wallace.

In case you're new to town, Carla is a long-time activist, co-founder of the Fairness Campaign, and founder of Showing Up for Racial Justice. Carla told us of a time when LGBTQ activists in Louisville threatened to stop contributing to the campaign if any of the money was used in anti-racism efforts. We've come a long way since then, but our chat with Carla and Chris shows that we also have a long way to go.

Chris Crass is in town this Sunday to celebrate the book's release. He and Carla had so many eye-opening things to say, we decided to split the interview into two parts; join us next week to hear the rest.

What's juiciest in Louisville this week is the ongoing competition for national Entertainer of the Year. In the spirit of the event, Dr. Story offers etiquette tips for drag shows (hint: tipping=life).

It's been a week since George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin. Most of us have spent this week reflecting, arguing, thinking, protesting, writing, organizing, praying, and unfriending people on social media. Yesterday, President Barack Obama made a statement about the verdict, outlining the effects of racism in America and on his own life. He was immediately accused by some of being divisive. Many prevailing voices are saying we need to move forward. That the system did its job, even if we don't like the result. They say Martin was partially to blame, while we ask what he could have done differently. They say that talking about racism and systemic injustice just perpetuates division. They say they are colorblind, justice is colorblind, and we should be too. These words hold little comfort for those upset by the verdict, and they especially ring hollow for the parents of black children. This week, we talk about the killing, the verdict, the system, the jurors, the law, and where to go from here. We're joined by our friend Lucie Brooks, who's an author, an attorney, women's studies professor, and a mom to four black sons.

Judging by political rhetoric alone, you might think immigration is a bigger issue now than ever before. But in his book, Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization and America, Alvaro Vargas Llosa argues that immigration rates have stayed fairly steady throughout the centuries. His book broadens the historical context of the immigration debate, and seeks to answer some contentious questions about why people risk their lives to come to America. We spoke to Vargas Llosa this week about some commonly-held immigration myths. We also asked him about what marriage equality means for international couples, and how the status quo fosters tension between immigrants and African Americans.

A few months ago we had an eye-opening conversation with author Yolo Akili about his article, Gay Men's Sexism and Women's Bodies. Today Yolo is back with us to talk about his new book, Dear Universe: Letters of Affirmation and Empowerment for All of Us. As always, Yolo is full of wisdom, and we hope he comes to Louisville one day and becomes Strange Fruit's official Life Coach. This week in Juicy Fruit we talk about an ugly incident that happened to one of our favorite people, Dr. Brittney Cooper. Dr. Cooper wrote about the experience in a piece for Salon: The N-word on the 4th of July.

Activism runs in Urmi Basu's family; her grandfather was a doctor who set up a school for dalit children (India's untouchable caste) in his own home. Urmi says her family "always challenged everything that's traditional in India." Thirteen years ago, she combined her passion for gender equality and her background and education in social work—along with 10,000 rupees, or $200—to found New Light India. New Light is non-profit organization based in the red light district of Calcutta, intended to help victims of sex trafficking and provide healthcare to people living with HIV/AIDS. With an estimated 40,000 new trafficked sex workers in the city each year, it's no small task. But Urmi is a woman of great determination. She was in Louisville recently and she sat down to talk with us about her work, and how sex trafficking in India is part of the larger global culture of gender inequality. In this week's Juicy Fruit segment, a look at the Kaitlyn Hunt case leads to a conversation about the application of statutory rape laws to queer relationships among teenagers. Follow Up: