Strange Fruit

New information continues to surface about the Stanford rape case. The latest news is that Brock Turner, who was caught raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, will serve only 3 months of his 6 month sentence — a sentence already surprisingly short, given that he was convicted of three felony counts of sexual assault. New York Daily News's Senior Justice Writer Shaun King wrote a piece contrasting Turner's outcome with the sentence handed down to Corey Batey, a Vanderbilt student who raped an unconscious woman in a dorm room. The similarities are striking: Both were star athletes on campus, both were 19 years old, both had ample evidence against them, and both were convicted on three felony counts. But there are two big differences: Batey is black. Turner is white. And Batey is serving a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 to 25 years in prison, while Turner is scheduled to be released before the pools close at the end of this summer. King joins us this week to talk about the case, and Turner's short sentence. "All of us know, and some of us have family and friends, who've served devastating hard time for doing far less than this young man," King says. "He was given breaks that black folks never get. And it's desicable." Research consistently show that black defendants tend to get longer sentences than white defendants, even for the same offenses. A 2014 study by the ACLU found the disparity around 20% — in the federal system, black males tended to receive, on average, a 20% longer sentence than white males for the same crimes. "In this case between Batey and turner, you're talking about a 3000% difference," King says. We spend this episode talking about the different ways the criminal justice system treats people according to race — including incidents where black people have died in police custody or while being arrested. And we explore how efforts to bring more equality to the justice system, like Louisville Judge Olu Stevens' attempts at bringing diversity to the jury box, have been met with resistance.

It's an all-Juicy-Fruit episode of Strange Fruit, where we tackle some topics that have been in the news, on the timelines, and on everyone's minds. Joining us in the studio are attorney Joe Dunman and PR guru Walter Walker. We start off talking race and racism in the national conversation about the child who fell into the gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo. Then we bring you the story of Black Lives Matter activist Jasmine Richards, who recently became the first black person in U.S. History to be convicted of lynching (we didn't get it either - it was a good week to have a lawyer in the room!). And we close out the show with reactions to a new Angel Soft commercial where people who were raised by single moms wish their mothers a happy Father's Day. They mention things like how their moms taught them to fight, and knew how to fix the car. So we wondered, is there a difference between mothering and fathering? Are they antiquated concepts? Is parenting just parenting?

“I just tested positive for syphilis.” That's the text message Andrew Gurza received from a recent partner, and like any responsible queer man, he knew what to do — if not exactly how to do it. Andrew wasn't sure if the local clinic would be able to accommodate the wheelchair he uses. "STI and STD clinics are kind of crammed in these really small areas where somebody with a big power chair like mine can't go," he says. He would also need people or equipment to lift him out of his chair and help him disrobe (unlike some other STDs, like HIV, the test for syphilis involves more than just drawing blood). He thought the hospital might be his best bet. "I think they were just surprised that I had come into an ER and not to a clinic that was for STI testing," he says. A doctor initially tried to persuade Andrew that he didn't need the test, but he insisted and the test was eventually administered. The whole long process (including an hour-long bus ride each way) made him realize that something needs to change in order for people with disabilities to more easily access sexual health resources. Andrew Gurza joins us this week to talk about an article he wrote on the subject for Out.com. He's also the co-founder of Deliciously Disabled Consulting and the host of the Deliciously Disabled podcast. He says gay culture, with its focus on aesthetics, is not always kind to those with different bodies. Potential partners often seem to see his disability and assume he isn't sexual at all. "All guys can ask me in the club or online or on Grindr is, 'Uh, can you have an erection? Can you have sex?'" he says. "Why can't you ask me something more nuanced and sexier than that?" We spoke with Andrew about the intersection of disability, queerness, and sexuality, and why our thinking about these things should matter, even to folks without disabilities. "In ten, twenty, thirty years, you might need some help too, and you might need a cane or a walker, and you might need some sort of assistive device," he says. "And when you do, wouldn't you want somebody to still find you sexy?" In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we talk about a Maryland theater's plan to stage a production based on the life of Paris Is Burning star Dorian Corey. And we pay our respects to Mercedes Successful, the 12th (known) transgender person to be killed in 2016. As our Auntie Monica Roberts at TransGriot reports, the 32-year-old drag and pageant performer was found murdered in Haines City, Florida, and local media misgendered her in their coverage of the crime.

You could be forgiven if your first reaction to "Laocoon" is laughter. Even Dr. Chris Reitz, gallery director of the University of Louisville's Hite Art Institute, admits to laughing when he first saw the piece in Miami. Simply put, it's a 10-foot-tall inflatable Fat Albert laying face down, hooked up to an air pump so it appears to be breathing. But when you learn more about the original Laocoon, and the identity of the artist, there's more to the piece than a pop culture reference. Remember the Trojan horse? A supposed peace offering that was actually stuffed with enemies trying to get inside the gates? In "The Aenid," Laocoon was the only one who smelled a rat — and he was killed for his protests. You might say he was #woke ahead of his time. Who would be Laocoon's modern-day American counterpart? Eric Garner? Mike Brown? Any number of black bodies we've seen in news footage, lying face-down, struggling to breathe? That's what Laocoon asks its viewers to think about. Also, there's no thinking about Fat Albert now without thinking of Bill Cosby — another layer of meaning as the piece evokes fallen idols. This week we're joined by Laocoon's creator, Sanford Biggers, an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and art professor, and Dr. Reitz, who brought the exhibit to Louisville. Laocoon is on exhibit at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts through July 2. And in our Juicy Fruit segment this week, a truly hot topic: Do you stay friends with your exes? A recent study suggests your motivation might be rooted in narcissism.

You've heard of white privilege, male privilege, and any number of other unearned advantages some of us are born with. But what about food privilege? University of Louisville graduate student Tyler Short got in touch with Team Strange Fruit after hearing our recent special about privilege. He says just like race, gender, and sexuality, access to food is often determined by circumstances of birth. In Louisville, that usually means geography. "Folks in the East End have disproportionate access to fresh and healthy food compared to folks in the West End," he says. "Food justice is a platform to overcome that historical problem." Tyler's scholarship focuses on food access issues, but his work isn't just academic. He's also part of La Minga, a 15-acre farming cooperative in Prospect, Kentucky. La Minga (which translates to "community work for community good") brings together people from different walks of life to grow, eat, and sell organic food. In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch gives us chills with her strong statement against North Carolina's anti-transgender bathroom law. She announced this week that the Department of Justice will file a civil rights lawsuit against the state of North Carolina and Gov. Pat McCrory because the state's bathroom bill violates federal protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. At one point in her speech, she addressed trans Americans directly, saying, "We see you. We stand with you, and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward. And please know that history is on your side." And to close out or show this week, we introduce you to another young person doing great things in our community. 15-year-old Jalen Posey is the co-founder and president of the Black Student Union at Central High School (while Central is a historically black high school, only a handful of teachers there are people of color). Posey was also involved in the formation of a city-wide BSU that serves students from throughout Louisville who may or may not have BSUs at their own schools. Jalen and other students recently appeared before the the Metro Council to advocate for funding for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, where he recited a poem he wrote about poverty and housing injustice. He stopped by the studio to share that poem with us and our Fruitcakes, and tell us about the other work he and his fellow BSU leaders are doing.

You've heard about them on the news, and probably read poorly-informed opinions about them on Facebook: laws designed to tell transgender people which public restrooms they can and can't use. What will be the consequences of laws like this in the lives of trans folks? We talk about it this week, with trans Louisvillians Katherine Waddell and James Alcantara. And when photos of a nearly-unrecognizable Li'l Kim showed up on Instagram, who else could we turn to to help make sense of it all, but Dr. Yaba Blay? Blay is the author of (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race, and work often touches on issues of colorism and skin tone. She joined us to talk about skin bleaching as a phenomenon, and the social pressures that contribute to women - famous or otherwise - choosing to drastically alter their appearances.

This week, the music world bows down to its Queen, while saying a sad goodbye to its Prince. In this special hour-long episode of Strange Fruit, we talk about these two groundbreaking black artists — one who’s still building her musical empire, and one whose legacy is now complete. You’ve read the think pieces and seen online commentators picking apart stories of infidelity and scandal in Beyoncé's visual album, "Lemonade." But our regular fruitcakes will know, we’re going deeper than that. To help, we've enlisted some of the Pleasure Ninjas, a group of black feminist scholars, cultural workers and activists. Joan Morgan is an award-winning author and journalist who wrote "When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost," and coined the term hip-hop feminism. But what you might not know about her is that she's also a practitioner of Yoruba, an African religious tradition. And as it happens, "Lemonade" is chock full of Yoruba imagery. Morgan joins us to help us understand these symbols. The album also included nods to the Black Lives Matter movement, and police violence against black citizens. We speak to Brittany Cooper and Treva Lindsey about what some of those images evoked for them. And of course, the day after we recorded our last show, the world lost Prince - an icon not just because of his music, but for the way he redefined ideas about black masculinity and what it means to be sexually powerful. And despite the fact that he broke most gender norms (or maybe because of it!), the world loved him. Chauncey DeVega is a political essayist, cultural critic, educator, and host of a podcast called The Chauncey DeVega show. He wrote an article for Salon last week called “Prince was the weirdo we needed: On race, masculinity & the indelible legacy of a musical icon.” He joins us to talk about what Prince meant to all of us. And in honor of National Honesty Day (April 30 — according to Wikipedia, at least), Doc tells the story of the best/worst lie she ever got caught in. And we ponder the question of whether it's possible to go an entire day without stretching the truth.

Hours before we went into the studio this week, rumors started swirling on the internet: Harriet Tubman would be on the twenty dollar bill. It's something we'd heard before, as part of a wider effort to get a woman on U.S. paper currency. But when it looked like it would be Tubman specifically, we had mixed emotions. Tubman fought against enslavement, a system that made money off the oppression of black people. Is putting her on money disrespectful of that legacy? Or is it poetic justice? We spent most of this week's episode unpacking the pros and cons, along with activist Chaz Briscoe, and WFPL's new online managing editor, Jonese Franklin. Brisco felt less ambivalent than some. He hated it. "It's a complete betrayal of Harriet Tubman's legacy as an abolitionist. To codify her within a system that was built on the backs and oppression of black people does a huge disservice to her legacy," Briscoe says. "Harriet Tubman was about the freedom of black people, so why re-inscribe that into a system that still has no space for black people?" But Jaison points out the importance of representation. "I know what it means for me as a black gay man to turn on the television and see Jussie Smollett," he says. "So to what degree is it an important gesture, even if it is just a gesture, that young people now will see a black woman on a dollar bill?" After we recorded the show, we learned that Andrew Jackson wouldn't be removed from the bill, but moved to the back, with Tubman on the front. So Tubman will share a bill with Jackson — himself an enslaver, who was also famously ruthless to Native Americans. Later in the show, a discussion about a teen who was arrested for filling his McDonald's water cup with soda leads to some true confessions of fast-food misbehavior.

We want you to listen to the whole show. But if you don't have time, this is a pretty accurate summary.

In 2014, Facebook introduced new gender options users could ascribe to themselves. Where before, you had to select male or female, now you could suddenly be agender, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, non-binary, transgender, or nearly 60 others. The move was hailed as progressive, and folks patted the social network on the back. But under the surface of the user interface, the story was different. We see Facebook as a place to keep up with friends, argue with relatives, and laugh at memes (and keep tabs on your favorite public radio shows). But in reality, Facebook is in the business of data collection - learning all they can about their users, and selling the data to marketers. And in Facebook's data-gathering underbelly in 2014... nothing changed. You might have selected agender on your public profile, but Facebook's algorithm continued to identify you as male or female, based on your posting habits and other profile information. Why did they do this? And, since it's hidden, does it matter? Dr. Rena Bivens is an assistant professor of Journalism and Communications at Carleton University in Ottowa, Canada. She's been studying the way Facebook and other social networks handle gender, and she joins us this week to share what she's learned. In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we address the recent comments of American Idol finalist La'Porsha Ranae, who, when asked about anti-LGBT laws in her home state of Mississippi, said, "I am one of the people who don’t really agree with that lifestyle."

It's music festival season in Louisville, and this year, there's a new event on the calendar. This week we talk with Tay G, one of the organizers of Louievolve, a two-day festival celebrating Louisville hip-hop scene and culture. Tay G says the festival will be more than just music—much like hip-hop itself. "The music is just one part of it," he explains. Live graffiti and break dancing have their place in hip-hop culture too, and will be part of the festival. "Just as an MC is trying to make himself look like the best MC out, writing your name on the wall does that same thing, it's just not through the audio," he says. "It's all tied into that culture and the foundations of hip-hop, and the people that came from different places to create it." The Louievolve Festival will be at the Tim Faulkner Gallery on April 16-17. For the past 30 years, Dr. Michael Kimmel has been studying what it means to be a man, and trying to engage men in the work of gender equality (the Atlantic has called him "The Bro Whisperer"). When he was in Louisville to deliver the Minx Auerbach lecture at the University of Louisville, Kimmel told us the story of his appearance on a television segment with four white men who believed that affirmative action was victimizing white men. One of his fellow panelists talked about being qualified for a job that was eventually given to another candidate — a situation he summarized as, "a black woman stole my job." "I want to know about the word 'my,'" Kimmel says. "Where did you get the idea it was your job? Why isn't it, 'A black woman got the job,' or 'A black woman got a job?'" Examining that sense of ownership became the kernel of his book, Angry White Men. "Because without confronting men's sense of entitlement, we can never understand why so many men resist gender equality." And in our closing thoughts, we invite you to follow the hashtag #StoryJacksonWeddingOnTheRun this weekend. The big day is finally here! WFPL and #TeamStrangeFruit congratulate our very own Kaila Story and her fiancée Missy Jackson, who are getting married this weekend!

In lieu of our regular show this week, here's a special project #TeamStrangeFruit did with our station, WFPL. This special is part of WFPL's year-long project, The Next Louisville: Race, Ethnicity and Culture. In the United States, we like to think that our success is determined only by how hard we work. But in reality, some of it’s just luck. And some of that luck has to do with things we can’t control: Our race. Our gender. Our sexual orientation. What language we grow up speaking. We might not ask for the advantages we get from those things, but we still get them. And that’s what’s known as privilege. In "Privilege Check," we explore the concept of privilege, how it affects our lives and how it can be used to make everyone more equal. It's part of the Next Louisville, a partnership of WFPL News and the Community Foundation. Listen to the hour-long discussion — hosted by WFPL's Tara Anderson and Strange Fruit's Kaila Story — in the player above. (Photo by Nathan Gibbs)

If you think of poetry slams as sedate affairs where people sip wine and read monotonously from notebooks, you might want to go visit one. Louisville's vibrant poetry slam scene is made up of a diverse groups of poets reciting works that often tackle deeply personal topics, and encourage audience reaction and participation. But as encouraging as these spaces are of free expression, Louisville poet Rheonna Thornton noticed they didn't always feel welcoming to women poets. "And when they did go up," she said, "you'd hear, 'another angry black woman piece.'" So Thornton started her own poetry slam, for women: Lipstick Wars. Thornton joins us this week to talk about how she made that happen, and to look ahead at her next project, The Lip gloss Diaries, a poetry slam for girls ages 15-18. She also sits in for our Juicy Fruit segment, where this week, where we keep the Women's History Month love going by celebrating 10th grader Akilah Johnson. Her Google doodle, which honors her African-American heritage, was selected from 100,000 submissions to the "Doodle 4 Google" competition for young artists.

Sixth grader Marley Dias loves to read. But the books she was assigned in school never seemed to have protagonists who looked like her. So she started a nationwide book drive to collect 1,000 books featuring black girls as main characters. By the time her self-imposed deadline came around (February 1st), Marley had amassed a book collection she says is important not just for black girls, but for everyone. "We all know that America is er very, very, very diverse," she says, "but we're not really seeing it in the literature that we're pushed to read." Marley says reading books about black girls' lives makes her feel like her own experiences are part of a bigger, more universal story. "I know who I am," she says, "but you still want to see it in other places, so you don't feel like something that's rare and that's never really been around." In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we talk about how a lynching postcard made its way into the table decor at a Joe's Crab Shack in Minnesota (and how referring to a lynching as a "public execution" ignores the historical context of the act). And we also send love to a young gay couple, Marquez Tolbert and Anthony Gooden, in Georgia. They're recovering from injuries sustained when Gooden's mother's boyfriend poured boiling water on them as they slept. Georgia doesn't have a hate crime law, so their assailant Martin Blackwell won't be charged with a hate crime, though he allegedly told them, "Get out of my house with all that gay," after the attack. According to a police report, Blackwell told officers, "They were stuck together like two hot dogs … so I poured a little hot water on them and help them out […] They’ll be alright. It was just a little hot water.” In fact, they suffered severe burns that required skin grafts and are still in physical therapy and counseling. Gooden was placed in a medically-induced coma for several weeks, and Tolbert has to wear compression garments for two years to help him heal. The couple has a GoFundMe page to raise money for their medical treatment.

A few weeks ago we introduced you to oSha Shireman and Charles Booker, two of the people who are working on the West Louisville Food Port. The proposed project would bring together farmers, distributors, retailers, educators and other food-related endeavors to a 24-acre campus at 30th and W. Market Streets. But not everyone is convinced that the plan is what's best for the neighborhood, and questions have been raised about whether proper procedures were followed as the proposal moved through the planning process. This week we talk to three community leaders who oppose the Food Port. Councilwoman Mary Woolridge represents Louisville Third District, where the project would be. Martina Kunnecke is the president of Neighborhood Planning & Preservation, Inc., and John Owen is a business owner in Portland. Owen says neighborhood leaders proposed a similar project in 2000, but the city didn't approve. He also worries that the Food Port food will be too expensive for its own neighbors to purchase. "If you're spending on a tight dollar in a community like Portland or Russell, you can't afford a six dollar bell pepper," he says. "They're being unrealistic." Owen also points out that Seed Capital (the company behind the Food Port) refused to sign a promise that the site won't include a biodigester in the the future (a biodigester was part of the Food Port plan at one time, but neighbors objected, and it was eventually scrapped). "They wouldn't even consider signing such a document," he says. Councilwoman Mary Woolridge believes she was intentionally misled when she asked to see the development agreement between Seed Capital and the city. Such an agreement is what ensures a developer will do what they say they'll do with a site — in this case, a site they acquired from the city for $1. When she asked to see the agreement, she was told it was still a draft, so she couldn't see it. Woolridge sees this as a case of well-connected outsiders trying to circumvent the process and disregarding resident needs. "We need to be asking West Louisville, what do you want in West Louisville?" she says. Kunnicke says that disregard for the needs and wants of the neighborhood is rooted in classism, because West Louisville residents tend to have lower incomes than some other communities. "Unfortunately we live in a society where we think that folks that have more wealth have more power, they have more knowledge, they have a greater right to shape their environments," she says. "These are cultural things that we have to address. We have to recognize them, call them out, and address them directly." We appreciate them sharing their point of view this week (although we may have learned more than we wanted to know about the shady inner workings of Metro government!). We'll keep you posted on further developments regarding the future of the Food Port and how it will affect the surrounding neighborhood. In this week's Juicy Fruit, one of our favorites, Janelle Monáe, has just been cast in a movie called "Hidden Figures," about three African-American women who worked at NASA in the 1960s, on the mission that made John Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth. The cast also includes Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer, and the movie is due out in September.