white people, black music and liberation

i went into the episode of code switch linked below as someone who always thought DEI was imperfect but necessary. i came out questioning it. guest jennifer c. penn argues that corporate DEI programs often signal virtue without changing anything real. this episode also gets into how race and class work together in ways the show doesn't always have space for. with the racial reckoning of 2020 feeling distant and white supremacy getting louder, this feels like exactly the right time to ask whether our tools are working.

Hate it or love it, is DEI a distraction? (Code Switch, NPR)






white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
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have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
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follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

original show notes:

— from Code Switch

The Trump administration has been very candid about their disdain for all things DEI. But it's not just conservatives who have critiques. On this episode, we're talking to Jennifer C. Pan, author of Selling Social Justice: Why the Rich Love Antiracism, about why she thinks people on the left should be skeptical of DEI programs as well. We get into how DEI programs are frequently used as a tool for large corporations to assert their moral authority — without actually sacrificing their bottom line, or improving conditions for workers writ large.

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white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

apu is a lovable, funny cartoon character from the simpsons, voiced by hank azaria. he also happens to be voiced by a white guy doing an impression of another white guy’s brownface impression of an indian man.
Indian-american hari kondabolu grows up haunted by Apu. he makes a documentary about it, spending years trying to get hank azaria to sit down with him, to talk about the impact apu has had on him. azaria says no.
six years later, they finally talk. on the record. and what gets said is more interesting than either man coming out looking good or bad. it’s about who gets to choose how they’re seen, and who never gets that choice at all.
as always, this one is personal, too. i have my own version of apu, and i still don’t have a clean answer for what to do with it.

links from this episode:

1. the problem with apu
2. NPR code switch: the fallout of a callout
3. man enough: hank azaria's journey to radical accountability
4. unpacking the invisible knapsack by peggy mcintosh
5. soul focused group
6. human solidarity project

white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

a black hip hop crew in detroit gave a rich white kid named bob ritchie his start. that kid became kid rock. this episode is about what he did with that gift and what eric clapton did with a similar one decades earlier in england. i trace both stories then turn the question on myself: how am i giving back for everything black music has given me? i still do not have a compelling answer ☉

white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

i've been slowly waking up to how segregated the music industry is. when you consider how much black music has shaped the sound of this country, it's striking that most of the gatekeepers are still white. i wanted to talk to someone who works inside that world and sees it clearly.
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winter williams is a community builder, event producer and financial feminist based in the bay area. she's worked in finance, raised kids, and found her way back to the arts.
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we talk about nepotism, willful blindness, the difference between lip service and actual change, and why racism is fundamentally about power and not about what color your friends are.

white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

this beautiful episode of scene on radio's "seeing white" series (link below) asks what white southerners can teach the rest of us about our own unconscious racial biases. the central idea is one i find really powerful: the most entrenched racial biases are often held by people who are completely certain they don't have any. recorded in 2017, it speaks directly to where we are right now.

That's Not Us, So We're Clean (Seeing White, Part 6) | Scene On Radio














white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

original show notes:

— from Scene on Radio

When it comes to America’s racial sins, past and present, a lot of us see people in one region of the country as guiltier than the rest. Host John Biewen spoke with some white Southern friends about that tendency. Part Six of our ongoing series, Seeing White. With recurring guest, Chenjerai Kumanyika.


Image: A lynching on Clarkson Street, New York City, during the Draft Riots of 1863. Credit: Greenwich Village Society of Historical Preservation.


Shannon Sullivan’s books, Revealing Whiteness and Good White People.


 Thanks to Chris Julin, whose 1991 NPR report on the Wisconsin fishing rights dispute we featured.

white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

you're white, you play black music, and you didn't get the gig because the organizer wanted a black musician. is that reverse racism? is it fair? how do you hold it without making it about you? ben isaacs and i go deep on the gray area that working musicians navigate constantly, what it means to pass opportunities to black artists, and why the frame of liberation serves us better than the frame of butthurt.

white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶

my friend ben isaacs has been playing west african drumming in oakland for years. in this first conversation we get into the systemic reality hiding beneath the bay area's multicultural image, what it means that so much american music traces back to black culture, and what responsibility actually looks like for white musicians who love and benefit from that music.

white people, black music, and liberation is an independent podcast exploring race, music, and what it means to move from *programming* into liberation. 
.
have a thought, a question, or a story of your own? reach out at [email protected] 
.
follow the journey at whitepeopleblackmusic.com
✶