BlaQueer of Left Podcast

We are joined by my best friend Taurean; while we recount and explore the important lessons we've learned about love and life, through our BlaQueer bond. This episode focus on BlaQueer friendships, relationships, life at HBCUs & PWIs, workplace issues, belonging, "coming out" vs "inviting in," mental health and the practice of what I've called, "critical love ethics."

This episode is an intimate conversation between friends, hosted on facebook live, with commentary from listeners far and near.

This episode is a poetic meditation on the week's events in Black and BlaQueer life; beginning with readings of historic Black poems. Here, we address the racial-sexual politics of policing as anti-Black violence; anti-immigration practices as afterlives of slavery; and Blackness and Queerness as inseperable, co-constituitive realities in BlaQueer life.

Poems: Essex Hemphill (Occupied Territories), Margaret Walker (For My People), Gwendolyn Brooks (We Real Cool), Lucille Clifton (won't you celebrate with me)

Topics: BlaQueerness, Liam Neeson and black fungibility; Jussie Smollet and BlaQueer testimony, racial-sexual terror; 21 Savage and anti-Black policing/unbelonging; whiteness as property and power to oppress.

A BlaQueer of Left "hot take" on the "black face" mess surrounding Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. Common talk with a deep BlaQueer, Black Feminist, Historicizing, Critical Race, Political analysis.

This mini episode is a brief reflection on BlaQueer life; and how BlaQueer people are rendered especially unbelievable, illegible and without credibility. It is a meditative and poetic reflection on the BlaQueer mystique; BlaQueer magic and the ways in which BlaQueer have always, already overcome more than this month--and the climate of anti-BlaQueerness--could ever muster. This ain't about Jussie, but it's for him too.

This episode--also recorded on facebook--analyzes a the current democratic field from a Black and BlaQueer gaze, while centering the Black poor. The question simple, yet hard to answer, "how tf do we choose a candidate?!" What does it mean to vote--is it harm reduction, a civic duty, a lost cause?--as a Black poor person? Who do you look for? Who are you voting on behalf of? Do we judge the candidates by how we vibe with them? By their policies? Their likability or authenticity? Should they share our backgrounds or identities? Do we center race or class first; or either? These are questions we tackle in this back and forth dialogue between myself and the facebook viewers.