Strange Fruit

"He looked at me and smiled and put his hand in the sand, and put some sand into my hand. I didn't think much about it. And I looked at it, and it was full of trade beads. It was  full of the beads that were actually traded for people." Even after studying it for years, Madeleine Burnside says the reality and magnitude of the Transatlantic Slave trade hit her in this moment, at the bottom of the ocean, exploring the shipwreck site of the Henrietta Marie. Dr. Burnside is the Executive Director of the Frazier History Museum, and she curated their current original exhibit, Spirits of the Passage. Dr. Burnside has studied the history of the slave trade for the last twenty years. "It's one of those subjects that when you start at all, it will not let you go," she says. For her, the story begins once you get past the horrific (but dry) statistics you learn in school. "You start to think about maybe just 200 people on a ship," she explains. "You start to imagine that you know these people as individuals, and I really sort of started to feel a really big responsibility to tell that story." This week we went to see the exhibit, then sat down for a chat with Dr. Burnside about putting it all together. She says for her, it's not about the past at all (strange words coming from a historian!). "There's only one reason to study history, and that's to understand the future, not the past." To that point, she draws comparisons between the rebellion and resistance of enslaved Africans straight through to the struggles we still face today. "There's Civil Rights, there's women's rights, there's gay and lesbian rights, and then there's ADA. All of those people really built on Civil Rights and that struggle. And the 1960s struggle comes out of the 1860s struggle comes out of the 1760s struggle." One disturbing part of the exhibit is a collection of shackles that were used on enslaved people during transport. Within this case, among the battered-looking metal ankle and wrist restraints, is one very tiny set of shackles that could have only been used on a very small woman or on a child. But even this somewhat heart-wrenching artifact points to a strength of spirit. "There's no reason to restrain someone who doesn't fight," Dr. Burnside points out. "These people fought back." While at the museum, we also ran into friend to the show Brian Lee West (you might remember him from our conversation about his work in the play Top Dog/Underdog). For the Spirits of the Passage Exhibit, he portrays Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian man who was captured as a child and sold into slavery. Brian tells us the story of Equiano's life and the amazing series of events that lead to his eventual freedom and authorship of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, a major work among North American slave narratives. Spirits of the Passage will be on display at the Frazier through June 16th. In this week's Juicy Fruit Segment, we congratulate Magic Johnson's son EJ on coming out (or maybe he was already out, but TMZ didn't know about it yet) and give kudos to Magic and Cookie for their public response to the story. And our recap of 

This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two marriage equality cases. The Prop 8 case is a constitutional challenge to California's ban on same-sex marriage. The justices seem divided on the issue and there are even hints the case could get thrown out on standing. Tuesday's arguments brought us gems like whether gay marriage is newer than cell phones, whether it's harmful to children, and whether couples over age 55 should be able to marry even if they can't procreate. The DOMA case, heard on Wednesday, is a challenge to 1996's Defense of Marriage Act, which legally defined marriage as between "one man and one woman as husband and wife." The future of this case also seems uncertain, although many folks think it has a better chance to swing in favor of marriage equality. In Wednesday's session, Justice Ruth Baden Ginsberg coined the term 'skim-milk marriage' to mean a union that is seen as less-than in the eyes of the law. To give us some background on these cases, and help us understand the legal intricacies of each, we were joined this week by Michael Aldridge, Executive Director of the ACLU of Kentucky. Also on our minds this week was food justice. Filmmaker Byron Hurt was in Louisville for screenings f his latest work, Soul Food Junkies, which looks at the effects of soul food on health. Hurt grew up eating soul food and formed the emotional connections to it so many of share, but when his father's health started declining, he decided to look into why we eat what we do, and why so many of the health problems that disproportionately affect African Americans are preventable We spoke to Hurt this week about some of the systemic factors that lead to poor nutrition, from soul food to fast food, and how food justice activists are trying to make healthier food more accessible and affordable in working-class black communities.

It's been a week full of political news on the LGBTQ front, so we asked WFPL's political editor, Phillip M. Bailey, to join us for our Juicy Fruit segment this week and help us talk through some of the finer points of these issues. Here in Kentucky, we've been watching and waiting to see what Governor Beshear would do with House Bill 279, the so-called 'religious freedom' bill that would let people ignore civil rights laws that go against their religious beliefs. On Monday, we learned the city of Covington had joined the chorus of those opposing the bill and urging a veto. Covington Mayor Sherry Carran sent Beshear a separate letter warning the bill could "do harm and will present a poor image of our state to progressive professionals and companies who understand and appreciate the value of diversity and open-mindedness." Naturally, opponents of the bill in Louisville then collectively turned their heads and raised an eyebrow at our own Mayor Greg Fischer, and on Tuesday he sent a letter of his own to the capitol, saying the law was unnecessary. "We don’t need this proposed law, full of ambiguity and question, to prove our religious freedom and protect our citizens from some perceived threat. We have plenty of laws and a Constitution adopted by our citizens that provide us ample protections—no matter our faith, our profession, or our other rights and traits as human beings." Indeed, on Friday, Governor Beshear did veto the bill, and now it comes down to whether the General Assembly will override the gubernatorial veto—which it appears to have enough votes to do. In national news, Senator Rob Portman became the first GOP senator to publicly support marriage equality for LGBTQ folks. He revealed this week that he changed his mind on the issue because his son is gay. Hillary Clinton also released a video statement this week voicing her unequivocal support of same gender marriage, saying "Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights." But Phillip, who covers politics full time, didn't have the same warm fuzzy feelings as many did over these announcements. He pointed out that Senator Portman has known his son is gay for two years, and that Clinton is widely rumored to be planning a run for president in 2016. So the cynical observer could see these moves as exactly that: PR maneuvers, carefully timed for maximum political advantage. Jaison, so often the voice of activism and idealism on our show, preferred the less cynical explanation. "Are there any politicians who do the right thing just for the sake of doing it?" We'll let you listen for the discussion that followed. Earlier this month we mentioned in a Juicy Fruit segment that people in Michigan were suffering legal consequences for supposedly-confidential HIV tests. To learn more, we called Trevor Hoppe. He's a graduate student at the University of Michigan who's studying sexuality, medicine, and the law. Trevor told us there are indeed cases of no- or very-low-risk behavior on the part of HIV-positive folks being treated like deliberate endangerment in the eyes of the law. Trevor says the criminalization of these seemingly-innocuous acts is a method of social control that has little to do with actually protecting public health. "I think it's just another way that HIV-positive people face a particular kind of stigma, despite the fact that there's no risk in these cases. It's not about that. It's about punishing HIV-positive people as much as the law can facilitate." Trevor's report, "Public Health": Social Control and Michigan HIV Law is behind a paywall online, but he's graciously offered to send a free copy to any of our Fruitcakes who'd like to learn more. Just email him at trevor@trevorhoppe.com. In HIV work, we often hear the phrase "knowledge is power," so we thank Trevor for empowering us all this week!

Kentucky's LGBTQ activists are all watching Governor Steve Beshear this week, as he decides whether or not to veto House Bill 279, the so-called 'religious freedom' bill. The bill would allow people to ignore civil rights laws that go against their religious beliefs, and while many of those protections have federal law to back them up, protections for LGBTQ status do not. So hard-won Fairness laws where they exist today—Louisville, Lexington, Covington, and Vicco—would no longer be enforceable. Since this is the issue on so many minds, we asked Fairness Campaign director and friend to the show Chris Hartman top stop by this week and give us the latest. He said Fairness has been busily encouraging supporters to call and write the governor urging a veto, but no one knows what Beshear will do. Chris also stuck around for the rest of our Juicy Fruit segment, which we happened to be recording just a few minutes after the Catholic Church announced the new pope. Jaison and Chris both grew up Catholic and tried to figure out one of the church's most pervasive mysteries: why do priests get to wear the most festive vestments, even though they are some of the least festive people? In our feature interview this week, we spoke with Dr. Brittney Cooper, professor of Women's Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, and co-founder of The Crunk Feminist Collective, about the perils of black girlhood. Dr. Cooper was with Dr. Story at the Pleasure Principle panel when The Onion  called Academy Award Nominee Quvenzhané Wallis the c-word on twitter, and we used that incident as our jumping off point for the conversation. "We live in a moment in which black women are routinely verbally assaulted within social media and within the popular press," Dr. Cooper explained. "I think that her being a black girl does play a significant role in the really tepid responses from white feminists. The reality is that black girls are largely invisible." This week's closing thoughts lead us to talk about how our sexual desires and performance change as we age and have fewer sexual hang-ups. Note: We use the full version of the c-word and cover some mature subjects in this week's show.

Our friend Reverend Bojangles Blanchard is always up to something. On any given day, he could be getting ordained, arrested, or interviewed on MSNBC. But this week, the leader of True Colors Ministry took some time out of his busy activist life to stop by the studio and catch us up on the latest. He'll be marching at the State Capitol on March 26th in support of marriage equality.  We spoke with the good Reverend about the event he has planned, why faith remains important in LGBTQ life, and the fine line between paying homage to civil rights leaders of the past and co-opting their tactics and images. And in this week's Juicy Fruit segment, a look at Kevin Hart's Pope Quvenzhané Wallis sketch on Saturday Night Live lead to a discussion of drag used by heterosexual male comedians—when it's respectful, and when it's not. We also looked into reports that Dr. Story's home state of Michigan has been keeping records of confidential HIV testing results, and possibly using the results to criminally prosecute gay men for having sex.

Brandie Ford, founder and CEO of Poodle Assassin Cosmetic company, grew up in the ball scene. "It's always been a part of my life," she explains, and says she started walking the runway in hair shows when she was eight years old, for an uncle who did hair. "You get your life! You get to feel like whoever it is you think you want to be right then." Brandie's love of drag pageantry, combined with an entrepreneurial spirit ("I always knew I was going to be in business for myself," she says) lead her to start her own company: Poodle Assassin Cosmetics. What got our attention about the company was its strong focus on trans women, both as consumers and in prominent spokesmodel positions. Trans women of color are the faces of Brandie's marketing material. "It's important to me for so many reasons," she says. "Most of my closer girlfriends are, and have been trans women, and I've had the luxury of watching these butch queens flourish into who they really want to be." We speak with Brandie this week about her company, and also dig into deeper issues about violence against trans women, and how rarely their attackers are brought to justice. "It's kind of a personal thing for me," explains Brandie, who has lost trans friends to violence. "They're like an endangered species. They die, and the police just kind of brush everything under the rug." Dr. Story is in California this week, so we'll catch up with her about the exciting work she's doing as a panelist on The Pleasure Principle: A Post Hip-Hop Search for a Black Feminist Politics of Pleasure, at Stanford University. While Doc is away, Jai's friend Yana Boo (stage name: Sparklez) sat in with us for Juicy Fruit, and talked about why, as a trans woman of color, she's not a fan of RuPaul (a sentiment shared by our Auntie Monica). Ru has made some serious missteps regarding race—specifically in supporting racist drag acts like Shirley Q. Liquor, and allowing blackface performances by Drag Race contestants. Our guest Yana had a run-in of her own with one former Drag Race winner Sharon Needles, which she shares during this week's Juicy Fruit segment.

Drag artist Penny Tration has a local icon to thank for her performing career. "I grew up in L.A., so I've seen a couple drag queens," she explains. But for the longest time, it wasn't something she thought of doing herself. "I've also seen people garden, but I'm not attracted to doing that." All that changed one night at The Connection, the first time she saw our local Mistress of Mayhem, Hurricane Summers, on stage. "Hurricane kind of embodied for me, for the first time, somebody who wasn't just doing drag. She was hilarious. She picked up the mic, and she was really funny. And that's something I hadn't seen before." Penny was a contestant on Season Five of RuPaul's Drag Race, and though she didn't win, she was a fan favorite, and says the experience opened up more opportunities to act, perform, and, according to some of her fans, even change lives. "Now let's be clear: how did drag change anyone's lives? I don't get it," she concedes. But she once met an audience member who told her she'd lost her partner two years before. "She hadn't been able to leave her house, and it was the first time she'd smiled in years." Penny says she knows drag isn't forever, and like any job, it has its ups and downs. "It's kind of like being a nurse in a nursing home. Half the time your cleaning up vomit and poop, and then you'll get somebody who's like, 'Oh my god, you changed my whole day because you were here!'" She's in town to perform tonight at Pandora Productions' fundraiser, Masquerade Fire and Ice, and she took a few minutes earlier this week to talk to us about her work. Elsewhere in the news this week, President Obama gave a speech about violence, which seemed to implicate absent black fathers. As Kaila explained, this idea is nothing new. "This idea that the problem of the Black community is the problem of absent Black men—this has been reiterating and resounding commentary, probably since the Moynihan Report," she reminds us. In his report, Daniel Moynihan said the problem in Black communities was largely the fault of Black women. "They were too strong, they drove their men away, and their men either ended up in jail, on drugs, or absent fathers." Dr. Brittney Cooper had some great analysis of the problems with Obama's speech, and we talked about it this week in our Juicy Fruit segment. Clive Davis came out of the closet as bisexual this week (at age 80!), and a gay porn star broke into a Louisville Fire Station and performed a lewd act over the equipment (yes, really!). And we wish Kaila bon voyage as she heads to Stanford this week to be a panelist at The Pleasure Principle: A Post Hip-Hop Search for a Black Feminist Politics of Pleasure! She'll be checking in with us by phone for next week's show, and we can't wait to hear all about her trip. Until then, have a great week, Fruitcakes!

Today would have been the great Nina Simone's 80th birthday. A few months ago we interviewed professor, activist, and friend to the show Dr. Yaba Blay. During the conversation we talked about the controversy surrounding the upcoming Nina Simone biopic. Dr. Blay looks at colorism and black identity in her work (especially her (1)ne Drop project) and spoke on CNN's special, Who Is Black in America? She spoke with us about why it's upsetting for an actress who looks like Zoe Saldana to put on darker makeup and a prosthetic nose and play Nina Simone—a musical icon known as much for her politics and embracing her Blackness as for her beautiful music. This portion of the conversation didn't make it into the episode, but we're sharing it with you today, in honor of Miss Simone's birthday.

It's been a whirlwind week to be a Catholic! The church was shocked by the announcement that Pope Benedict XVI would retire, due to ill health. Popes don't retire! At least not in the past 600 years.But retire he did, and the question on everyone's mind is, who will be the queen bee of the Vatican? Some have mentioned Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, who'd be the first African pope— a cool prospect, except he has defended the so-called Kill the Gays Bill in Uganda. Let's face it: none of the papal contenders are likely to stick a rainbow flag sticker on the bumper of the Popemobile. But that doesn't mean all Papists are anti-LGBTQ. In fact, right here in Louisville we have a group of Catholics for Fairness. This Sunday they're holding a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of the Assumption, urging the Archbishop Joseph Kurtz to support statewide Fairness via Senate Bill 28 and House Bill 171.We spoke with one of the organization's leaders, Father Joseph Fowler, about the pilgrimage, and why he felt called to anti-discrimination activism. Jai also talked about growing up in the Black Catholic Church, and how faith can coexist with critical thinking.

Society treats Black boys like men, and Black men like animals.  That assertion is what stood out to us, and many who were lucky enough to be in the audience last week, for Mark Anthony Neal's lecture at UofL. Dr. Neal is a professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University, and he came to Louisville courtesy of our friend Dr. Ricky L. Jones and the Center for Race and Inequality.  Dr. Neal's latest book, Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities, examines depictions of Black men in popular culture, and while he was in town, he stopped by our studios to tell us more about his work. Our conversation covered Tiger Woods, Jay-Z, Muddy Waters, and even Stringer Bell and Omar Little, as we tried to make some sense of how pop culture interprets and positions Black masculinity. In our Juicy Fruit segment we talked about the Boy Scouts of America delaying their decision on whether to accept gay scouts and scout leaders. And you know we had to talk about Beyonce's display of femininity and power during last weekend's halftime show, and how she manages to perform in revealing costumes but maintain her sexual agency and control. As our guest Dr. Neal wrote this week about Beyonce and M.I.A. (who performed last year), "Their bodies and the agency they exhibit in the control over their bodies disrupt dominant conventions and the accepted place for women, particularly women of color, in public spaces." Follow Up: Mark Anthony Neal's Webcast, Left of Black VIDEO: Ciara's "Like a Boy" VIDEO: Beyonce's "If I Were a Boy" Tiger Woods on Vanity Fair cover, shot by Annie Leibovitz

Huddle up, sports fans! It's time for the Super Bowl (or so we hear), and it's been a huge week for LGBTQ sports news! Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo has gotten lots of positive attention for being an advocate of LGBTQ rights, and for using the spotlight of the Super Bowl to get the word out. And Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried released an adorable video in praise of his two moms. Sadly, not all the news was good. Kwame Harris was essentially outed this week when he had to appear in court on charges he assaulted his ex-boyfriend (Harris had never publicly said he's gay, but for what it's worth, his former teammates say it wouldn't matter to them). In what was probably the biggest LGBTQ-related story of this Super Bowl season, San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver had a not-quite-progressive reaction when asked whether he'd be comfortable playing football with gay people. In the quote heard 'round the sports world, he said: "I don't do the gay guys, man. I don't do that. No, we don't got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do. Can't be with that sweet stuff. Nah…can't be…in the locker room man." This did not go over well. Culliver apologized, the 49ers apologized, and the NFL so far has made no move to suspend Culliver from the big game. After we covered all that in our Juicy Fruit segment, we got to the main event: A conversation with the marvellous Wade Davis. Davis is a former NFL player who came out as gay after his retirement from the game. He's now an activist who a co-authors the Tongues Untied column with our friend Darnell Moore. Davis also works with the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a New York City based non-profit organization devoted to serving the needs of LGBTQ youth.Many looked to Davis for some insight into Culliver's remarks this week, and Davis didn't disappoint. "[W]hile we should be concerned with outright acts of discrimination, we should also address the silence of countless other players, coaches, and executives who don’t or won’t speak out against homophobia and discrimination as loudly as those who are spewing hate speech," he wrote in an op-ed for The Advocate. "Silence can be just as harmful as raucous noise."We spoke to Wade Davis before the Chris Culliver story broke (which is a good thing, since his calendar quickly filled up with national media seeking comment!). He told us about his time in the NFL, homophobia in locker room banter, and his post-retirement activism. Thanks for listening to our Super Strange Fruit Bowl, Fruitcakes! Enjoy the big game—we understand they'll be playing it sometime near this Sunday's Beyonce performance. Break, set, hut!

Our fearless hosts, Jaison and Kaila, are in Atlanta this week for the National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change. So instead of a full show this week, here's part two of the conversation we started last week, with Fairness Campaign Director Chris Hartman. Last week, we talked about Vicco. This week we broaden the scope a bit, and talk about fairness gains across the Commonwealth, and the country.

Vicco, Kentucky brought national attention to the Commonwealth this week by becoming the smallest town in the United States to pass a fairness law. Like many of you (we're guessing), we'd never even heard of Vicco until the news broke. So we invited Fairness Campaign director Chris Hartman to join us this week and tell us more.  "It's about three and a half hours east," Chris explains, "and several hundred feet up." He and others from the Fairness Coalition worked directly with Vicco community leaders on the law. He says folks in Vicco are what we might call "non-traditional allies" who may not fit our idea of what LGBTQ-rights supporters are. "But that may just be because we all have some inappropriate stereotypes about what rural Americans are like, about what Appalachian folks are like, and about what people who live in coal country are like." Since we had Chris in the studio, we invited him to stay for our whole Juicy Fruit segment, in which a conversation about Jodie Foster's coming-out speech at the Golden Globes lead to a larger discussion of whether coming out still matters, and to whom. We may or may not have concluded with celebrity crush confessions and some wildly inappropriate speculation about famous folks we wish would come out (ok, we totally did). We also spoke this week with Louisville native John Keen. Keen grew up dancing and choreographing, and moved to New York to continue his career. But he says "reality hit when I did not fit the ideal dancer type." So he started his own dance company, based on this quote by African-American choreographer and activist Alvin Ailey: "Dance is from the people and should be given back to the people." Now he's bringing Keen Dance Theater back to his hometown, for a performance in Louisville. He talked to us about what we can expect from the show, and about his intersecting identities as a black gay choreographer. Make sure you stick around for our closing thoughts, in which we learn about Dr. Story's many childhood nicknames. Next week, we'll be at Creating Change in Atlanta, and we'll also bring you part two of our interview with Chris Hartman, where we broaden our scope beyond Vicco and check in on the state of LGBTQ rights across the Commonwealth and the nation.

This week the Strange Fruit team got to sit in on a dress rehearsal of a local production of Suzan Lori-Parks' play, Top Dog/Underdog. The play looks at a pair of brothers whose dysfunctional relationship provides a framework for questions about family dynamics and what defines black masculinity. We spoke with the play's cast, Brian Lee West and Keith McGill, about working on the piece, and how their own lived experiences informed the choices they made on stage. McGill portrays Lincoln, the play's older brother. "When [director] Kathi Ellis first approached me with this play," he explains, "I read it, and I went, 'Oh my god, that's my brother and me.'" He says the play mirrors the real relationships between brothers. "Once you're the younger brother you're always the younger brother. Once you're the older brother you're always the older brother, whatever happens. And in certain situations, you go right back to those roles." West says the play forces you to think about what shapes our self-identities. "How do you define yourself as a black man? Is it how many women you have, is it holding a steady job, is it being able to get it over on The Man and prevailing?" Linc was once the best three-card monte hustler around, and Booth wants to follow in his footsteps, so lots of conversation in the play revolves around the hustle. Linc gave it up and now holds a legitimate, if somewhat bizarre, job. He dresses up as Abraham Lincoln (in whiteface) and people in an arcade pay money to pretend to shoot him—a job Booth maintains is a hustle in its own way. West says that line between selling out and getting by is confronted in real life too, when African Americans have to decide whether to try to 'tone down' their blackness in certain situations. "Not to get too metaphysical," he says, "I don't know sometimes whether or not... am I wearing a mask? Or is there a mask?" "What's great about this play is that there is part of these characters in everyone," McGill says. "There's the abandonment, and there's the how do I relate to you as a sibling, and why is it that we can't completely fit together, and what happens when we start to get close and then we back off?" Top Dog/Underdog runs through January 20 in the Henry Clay Theater. We also spoke this week about the twitter beef between rapper Azealia Banks and blogger Perez Hilton, in which Banks called Hilton a "messy faggot." GLAAD condemned her use of the slur (as did many fans), but Azealia herself identifies as a queer woman of color. Was she merely reclaiming a word, the way the word queer has been reclaimed? And does one LGBTQ-identified person using a slur against another mean something different in black gay culture than it does to white people? We dissect it in our Juicy Fruit segment this week. We close our show by remembering Louisville educator and activist Dr. J. Blaine Hudson, who passed away this week. As a young man he participated in protests on UofL's campus, including a takeover of the Dean's office, when negotiations with school administrators over diversity measures broke down. Later in life, he would occupy that same office again—this time as the Dean. He was a friend to the show and to the social justice community in Louisville. He'll be greatly missed, but he leaves behind important work and the inspiration, in us, to carry it on.

"At the university level, when I teach about sexism and racism, I insert humor into a lot of these things, because you have to point out the absurdity that is a part of racism. Racism, sexism, homophobia—these things are not logical processes of thought. These things are taught and socialized. They're not real." Those were some of Dr. Story's thoughts about the movie Django Unchained, and why its use of humor works, despite some horrific subject matter. The film looks at enslavement in the U.S. and one particular slave who kills his oppressors—in classically graphic Tarantino style. We liked the movie, but not everyone feels the same way, so we addressed some common criticisms of the film. We also took a few minutes this week talking about the movie this week, but still took a few minutes to address Fantasia Barrino's questionable Instagram comments about gay marriage, and to congratulate Puerto Rican boxer Orlando Cruz for coming out of the closet. We've got lots of good things planned for 2013, including next week when we look at a local production of the play Topdog/Underdog. Happy New Year, Fruitcakes!