Strange Fruit

Fall is in the air, and that means IdeaFestival, and jokes about pumpkins and white people. Luckily, we cover both on this week's show. One of our favorite people, Janelle Monáe, came back to Louisville this week for IdeaFestival, and brought along some folks from her Wondaland Arts Society. We caught up with them in the green room just before they caught their plane out of town (she had to perform at Madison Square Garden a day later - totally no big deal). We talked to the artists about their recent visit to a drag ball in New York, and about "Hellyoutalmbout," the police brutality protest anthem that's been ringing out from rallies and marches all summer long. "We wanted to use it as a vessel, and as a tool," she says of the song. "We're speaking out against the abuse of power because we believe that silence is our enemy, and sound is our weapon." As a team of folks trying to make a difference through the power of radio, we could not agree more! In Juicy Fruit this week, America loses its warm fuzzy feelings about the Pope when it's revealed that he met with Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis during his recent U.S. visit. Since we recorded, the Vatican has downplayed the visit and said Davis was just one of many in a greet line. Elsewhere in Christian news, a 5-year-old girl was barred from returning to her school in southern California, because she has two moms. A spokesperson for the privately-run Christian school told KGTV in San Diego, "The Bible says homosexuality is a sin. We don't condone any sinful lifestyles." And Azealia Banks called said the LGBT community is like the "white KKK's." Banks has been criticized by gay activists recently for her use of the f-word slur. We talk about how her black and queer identity plays into her troubles with the press. And finally, what's up with white people and pumpkins? A mic.com article looks at the political history and symbolism of the seasonal food. Did you know pumpkins had a political history? See, you learn something new every week on Strange Fruit. Happy Fall!

After spending January looking back at some of our favorite conversations, we're back this week with a brand new episode — and we have a lot of hot topics to catch up on! So this week, we're doing an all-Juicy-Fruit episode, and we're joined by PR guru and friend-to-the-show, Walter Walker (you might remember him from WFPL's 2013 Defining Fairness series: http://wfpl.org/life-without-labels-walter-w-walker-ii-defining-fairness/). We talk about a Huffington Post article last week by Mike Alvear, which looked at racial dynamics in gay porn. The piece, "Why Are Whites Always the Bottom in Interracial Porn?" says the porn industry caters to white people, who they say are their highest-paying customers. We talk about the ways in which we're socialized to view black men as hypersexual and aggressive, and how those images are perpetuated (and even exaggerated) in the fantasy world of porn. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-alvear/why-are-whites-always-the_b_6503674.html) We also talk about the Ghostbusters reboot — both our own opinions, and internet fanboys' sexist reactions. Also, remember Mary Cheney? She's the white lesbian daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and she was apparently confused this week about drag and blackface. She wrote on her facebook wall, "Why is it socially acceptable — as a form of entertainment — for men to put on dresses, make-up and high heels and act out every offensive stereotype of women (bitchy, catty, dumb, slutty, etc.) — but it is not socially acceptable — as a form of entertainment — for a white person to put on blackface and act out offensive stereotypes of African Americans? Shouldn't both be OK or neither?" As a public service to Mary (because our Fruitcakes already know) we break down the differences between subversive and oppressive entertainment, and talk about the roots of each phenomenon. We're also not sure what kind of drag shows she's been to; when we see drag done in queer spaces, it doesn't tend to poke fun at women at all. And finally, while we were on break, Empire took television completely by storm! We talk about the new resurgence in scripted black television, and the importance of three-dimensional characters of color with complex relationships and lives.

On Friday, state’s attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn J. Mosby, announced that six officers would be charged in the death of Freddie Gray. Mosby made the announcement soon after the medical examiner's report classified Gray's death as a homicide. This week, hip hop artist Born Divine (@borndivine) brings us a local perspective on this week's protesting in Baltimore, and a sense of how people are feeling in the middle of it. He says over-aggressive policing is a long-time issue there, and that only full-scale reform will solve it. "We're looking for justice from a system that was never created with us in mind to begin with," he says. "When the foundation is cracked on a house, what happens to the house? It falls apart. And until you fix that crack in the foundation, it's not going to get any better. It going to get worse." He says poverty and joblessness are to blame for some of the violence in Baltimore this week, and that despite some media reports, the vast majority of protesters have peaceful aims. "We're just trying to get justice," Divine says. "We don't want to tear the city down. We don't want a war with nobody. We don't want to beef with the officers. We just want justice." This week, we also spoke with author Jim Grimsley about his memoir, "How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Lessons of a Racist Childhood." Grimsely grew up in a small town in North Carolina, and was in sixth grade in 1966, the year federally-mandated integration of the schools went into effect. "I didn't really understand anything about the prejudice built into me until in the sixth grade, when three black girls came to my all white classroom," he says. He reacted by calling one of the girls a name, not expecting her to respond. She called him the same name back. "Then she looked at me and said you didn't think I'd say that did you?" His book recounts how those personal interactions challenged, and eventually overcame, the racist ideas he'd been raised with. "By encountering them, I came to understand that I had all kinds of racist programming in myself," he says. Many activists' attention was divided this week between the Supreme Court hearing on gay marriage, in Washington, and the unrest in Baltimore. Grimsley, himself a gay man, helps us parse out how black people and gay people are sometimes pitted against each other in what he calls a divide and conquer strategy. "You want to set them against each other and get them to quarrel against each other," he says, "because that way they're less effective at working to better themselves and to better their position, and to help one another out in their strategies to move toward equal rights with the white majority." We also shared with Grimsley some frustrations about this week's events. "It breaks my heart to see people misreading what's happening in Baltimore so deliberately," he says. "We've gone through this set of steps so may times just in the last two years [...] white people don't chime in until they see the anger and the violence, and then they start talking about the issue." And here at home, it's Derby Week! In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we learn about the history of black jockeys in the Derby, and how their contributions to the sport are honored—or not—by racing fans today.

Kamen Edwards, author of "The One and Only Dylan St. Claire"

What was the best, biggest, most important album released in 2016? Last weekend at the Grammy Awards, that honor went not to Beyoncé's "Lemonade," but to Adele's "25," leading many of us to wonder what Adele herself asked backstage: "What the f*** does she have to do to win album of the year?" But it was her comments on stage, while accepting the award, that got most of the attention. She praised "Lemonade" and called Beyoncé, "the artist of my life." And then she said this: "And the way that you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel, is empowering. And you make them stand up for themselves. And I love you. I always have and I always will." While the speech sounds complimentary, there's history behind the phrase "black friends" coming out of a white person's mouth. It's been called the "some of my best friends" defense, deployed in response to being accused of racism. Like, "I can't be racist. I have black friends." For some viewers, who have heard that tired phrase a time too many, Adele's remark provoked a knee-jerk reaction. "I was trying to understand the context where she was coming from," Kaila explains in this week's episode. "I didn't like that response." Rutgers professor Dr. Brittney Cooper had a similar reaction—at first. "I was like, why'd she have to say it like that?" But she says upon reflection, Adele's comment made sense. "If you are going to be a white person who invokes your black friends, this is the way that you do it," Cooper says. "She stands up and says, look, I felt lots of things about this, as an artist, as a woman, but I celebrate the fact that it did particular kinds of emotional work for my black women friends." So while Adele may be off the hook, the Grammy Awards themselves are not. The awards show's producers love to have black artists perform during the show and book many musicians of color. But they seem to have less love for actually giving awards to those black artists. "They really just want the visibility and ratings of black folks," Cooper says. "They want the cultural labor that we do, but they want all the awards for themselves."