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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland

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Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: You know, I'll repeat this everywhere I go.

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Speaker 3: We're really clear, and I've been sort of trained to

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Speaker 3: name the feet that are situated on our nets, but

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Speaker 3: we've not really done the work of naming the nets

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Speaker 3: that our feet are situated on. And after having done that,

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Speaker 3: taking your feet off that I owe to bell Hooks.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. Language

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Speaker 1: is also a place of struggle, is the beginning of

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Speaker 1: My favorite quote from bell Hooks is from her nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety one book Yearning. And I am struggling with finding

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Speaker 1: the language right now to expe what bell Hooks means

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Speaker 1: to me and how important it is for me to

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Speaker 1: have this conversation and to continue since Belle Hooks has

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Speaker 1: passed away. Bell Hooks died in December of twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 1: and when she passed away, I knew that I wanted

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Speaker 1: to use every platform that I have to try to

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Speaker 1: continue to honor her work, honor her legacy. It's work

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Speaker 1: that shaped me when I was a young college student

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Speaker 1: in New York City in the early nineties. I often

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Speaker 1: say I came to critical consciousness reading her books. Black

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Speaker 1: Looks was the first book that I read of hers.

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Speaker 1: Bell Hooks's or Bell Hooks was a feminist author, a professor.

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Speaker 1: She taught at Oberlin at Yale University, City College of

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Speaker 1: New York. She ended her career at Beria College in Bria, Kentucky.

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Speaker 1: She wrote over thirty books. Was a public intellectual. She

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Speaker 1: for me is the mother of intersectional feminism. And Belle

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Speaker 1: Hooks is someone I got to know personally, and that

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Speaker 1: is really a dream come true. And at the honor

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Speaker 1: of speaking to her on the phone the day before

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Speaker 1: she passed away, And yeah, I love her so much.

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Speaker 1: I love her so much, and I am so deeply

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Speaker 1: honored to have two amazing people joined me today to

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Speaker 1: talk about her, her work, and her legacy. Imani Perry

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Speaker 1: is a multidisciplinary scholar, professor of African American Studies at

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Speaker 1: Princeton University, international speaker, and the author of seven books.

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Speaker 1: Her most recent book, South to Americajourney Below the Mason

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Speaker 1: Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation, won the

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty two National Book Award for Nonfiction. Perry writes

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Speaker 1: a newsletter for the Atlantic, and has written for The

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Speaker 1: New York Times, Harper's New York Magazine, and more. Darnell L.

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Speaker 1: Moore is an author and activist. His award winning memoir

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Speaker 1: No Ashes in the Fire, Coming of Age, Black and

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Speaker 1: Free in America, was listed as a twenty eighteen New

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Speaker 1: York Times Notable Book. Moore is also a writer in

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Speaker 1: residence at Columbia University and a twenty nineteen Senior Fellow

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Speaker 1: at the University of Southern California. His writings have appeared

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Speaker 1: in The New York Times, Book Review, Playboy, Vice, The Guardian,

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Speaker 1: The Nation, Ebony, and other outlets, and he gets currently

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Speaker 1: at work on his second book, tentatively titled Unbecoming Visions

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Speaker 1: Beyond the Limits of Manhood. Please enjoy our conversation in

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Speaker 1: Tribua to the singular bell hooks. Hello, Darnell and Imani,

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today? Darnell?

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Speaker 1: How are you feeling?

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Speaker 2: I feel better saying you all. Being in conversation with

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Speaker 2: your office is beautiful.

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Speaker 1: Emani, how are you, darling?

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Speaker 4: I think similarly. You know, this is an overwhelming time,

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Speaker 4: but it is wonderful to be in conversation with y'all.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I ough Bell Hooks. We all knew and loved

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Speaker 1: Bell Hooks. Her work, I know, transformed my life, and

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Speaker 1: since she has passed away, it's been really important to

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Speaker 1: me to honor her legacy, honor her work. She was

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Speaker 1: all about folks engaging with the work, and I wanted

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Speaker 1: to take this podcast as a moment to do that. Darnell,

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Speaker 1: can you start by telling us when you first encounter

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Speaker 1: at Belle's work any how that impacted you?

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Speaker 2: Sure?

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Speaker 3: I first encountered Belle's work when I was Wow, maybe

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Speaker 3: late nineties, early two thousands. I'm a late bloomer in

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Speaker 3: that way to Bell. And it's interesting because I had

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Speaker 3: been exposed to folk like Cheryl Clark and a lot

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Speaker 3: of sort of black lesbian feminists much earlier.

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Speaker 1: How old were you when you discovered Bell's work with

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Speaker 1: rough Law?

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Speaker 2: Undergrad? Was undergrad again, Yeah, so that's the sort of

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Speaker 2: timeframe for me.

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Speaker 3: And it's funny also because at the time, like as

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Speaker 3: a person who was who assumed that he would go

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Speaker 3: into like academia, there was this way that I was

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Speaker 3: I was groomed to believe that one needed to write

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Speaker 3: a certain way that the text need to sort of

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Speaker 3: like flow and appear a certain way that it needed

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Speaker 3: to be sort of like overly theoretical. And I remember

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Speaker 3: first reading it was like, huh, anybody could pick this

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Speaker 3: up in read this, you know, And it's interesting fast

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Speaker 3: forward all these years to think about knowing what it

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Speaker 3: takes to take really thoughtful, super super super like theoretical

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Speaker 3: concepts and actually making them accessible for anyone to be

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Speaker 3: able to pick it up and read, to do the

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Speaker 3: work of translation. Mm hmm, with such a gift. And

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Speaker 3: I look back at the self that was wanting something,

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Speaker 3: wanting Bell's writing to be something other than that, And

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Speaker 3: now where I am now thinking about the ways that

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Speaker 3: Fears taught me to step sort of behind all of

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Speaker 3: the sort of accoutrements that language can be to really

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Speaker 3: make our words make meaning for people that need them.

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Speaker 1: She was deeply committed to the work reaching the average

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Speaker 1: everyday person that was so important to her, reaching beyond

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Speaker 1: the academy. So your an initial intro to Bell, you

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Speaker 1: were like, why is she writing like this? This is

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Speaker 1: an academic enough that we're your initially impression when you

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Speaker 1: read the word, But it is academic.

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Speaker 2: It is academic it's very very much, so.

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Speaker 1: You know what I mean.

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Speaker 3: But there's you know, like there was certain writers in

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Speaker 3: a style of writing. Yeah, that I was being sort

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Speaker 3: of groomed to model my writing after and a model

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Speaker 3: my thinking after, and she her work became something of

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Speaker 3: a gift to me to free myself.

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Speaker 1: That's gorgeous. Yeah, money, When did you first encounter Bell's work?

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Speaker 4: So I met her and her work at the same time.

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Speaker 4: So I was an intern at South End Press, and

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Speaker 4: so you know, her books lined the walls, and then

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Speaker 4: she'd come in and so it's part of the reason

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Speaker 4: I still in my head I call her Gloria because

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Speaker 4: I met her as Gloria and from the outset. It

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Speaker 4: was interesting because to meet her in the page at

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Speaker 4: the same time one and you get this on the page.

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Speaker 4: It's part of how she's academic is she was such

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Speaker 4: a voracious reader, but her relationship to reading and knowledge

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Speaker 4: wasn't the sort of pomp of most academics, Like it

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Speaker 4: wasn't I know, more than it was like I'm passionate

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Speaker 4: about ideas and I want to talk about these things

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Speaker 4: I'm reading and I'm trying to figure this out, not

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Speaker 4: just on an intellectual level, but on an emotional level

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Speaker 4: and how I'm going to deal with my relationships and

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Speaker 4: how I'm going to deal with my broken heartedness and

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Speaker 4: how and so she was one of these people who

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Speaker 4: opens up what it means to live the life of

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Speaker 4: the mind and felt like, you know, so accessible, but

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Speaker 4: also an invitation to be a kind of person that

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Speaker 4: feels that I think it's often we feel like it's

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Speaker 4: not acceptable to be that kind of person who just

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Speaker 4: is passionate about ideas and big questions. And so I

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Speaker 4: encountered her as someone who taught a lesson about how

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Speaker 4: to be expansively and I was.

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Speaker 2: I was.

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Speaker 4: I was seventeen, eighteen years old, so as a young

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Speaker 4: person that was just amazing, you know. And she dressed

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Speaker 4: cute and she had a red Merceses like, you know,

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Speaker 4: it's like the whole thing, right, I was like, Oh,

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Speaker 4: like it's okay to be, you know, to.

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Speaker 1: Be you can be feminist and fly, yeah, and fly.

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Speaker 4: You know, and enjoy food and talk about sex and

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Speaker 4: like all this.

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Speaker 2: And it was so beautiful. She was beautiful.

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Speaker 1: It's in the work. There was a quest for transformation

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Speaker 1: to be made over to heal. There was so much

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Speaker 1: in the work. I think that really deeply spoke to

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Speaker 1: me is that it's critical iss she was Black Looks

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Speaker 1: was the first book I read of hers, and that's,

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Speaker 1: you know, ferocious and critical and provocative, with titles like

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Speaker 1: Selling Hot Pussy and Eating the Other, which I just

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Speaker 1: loved the provocation of it all. But there's healing in

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Speaker 1: all of it, the way that she writes and the

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Speaker 1: search that she's on as an academic and as a

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Speaker 1: human being and as an artist. I think that's she's

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Speaker 1: really an artist is about being transformed and being healed

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Speaker 1: and giving that as an offering to the world. So

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Speaker 1: I had the honor of speaking at Harvard University last year.

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Speaker 1: I received their W. E. B. Du Boyd's Medal, and

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Speaker 1: I evoked Bell's work in her words and evoked one

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Speaker 1: of her most famous phrases, imperialless white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

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Speaker 1: And she talked about coming up with this on what

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Speaker 1: she calls this jargonistic kind of phrase to speak to

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Speaker 1: the ways in which systems of oppression are interlocking, are intersecting,

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Speaker 1: and as a way to sort of understand what is

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Speaker 1: happening to her, and that if we only look through

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Speaker 1: the lens of race, that we're not seeing the whole picture.

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Speaker 1: For I only looked through the lens of gender. We're

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Speaker 1: not seeing the whole picture. She was talking about intersectionality

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Speaker 1: before we had the term intersectionality, right, and Black feminism

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Speaker 1: has always been intersectional. But I think that that for me,

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Speaker 1: that phrase is so important and it's a way to

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Speaker 1: understand and such a contribution to the to the work.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk about your relationship to Belle's intersectional approach

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Speaker 1: intersectional feminism, Black intersectional feminism. I mean, there's a whole

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Speaker 1: history of it, and how she does so much with

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Speaker 1: the phrase imperiless white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

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Speaker 4: I mean, I would say, you know, there's something really

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Speaker 4: brilliant about the weight of the language because it's heavy. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: And she was such a student of like social theory

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Speaker 4: of understand you know, sophisticated understanding way capitalism work, the

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Speaker 4: way transatlantic slave trade work, and so in some ways

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Speaker 4: what she was asking us to do with that phrase

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Speaker 4: is one to feel the weight, but also to understand systems. Right,

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Speaker 4: and obviously our identities are really important, but our identities

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Speaker 4: underneath these systems of domination. She always talked about domination, right,

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Speaker 4: And that I think is another piece of what was

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Speaker 4: so brilliant, not just you know, capitalism, not just sexism,

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Speaker 4: not just race domination. What are the ways in which

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Speaker 4: others are controlling the lives and the destinies of some right.

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Speaker 4: And so for me, the turn of phrase was just

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Speaker 4: so brilliant. She never wanted us to forget right, the complexity, right,

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Speaker 4: even though our language was plain. Where we're situated is complex,

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Speaker 4: and it reminds us of our ethical relationship to each other, right,

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Speaker 4: Because you know, if you're just like, well, I'm you know,

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Speaker 4: well I'm oppressed too, right, But if you have all

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Speaker 4: of those words, you have to be cute into the

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Speaker 4: fact that you're probably participating in the oppression of another.

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Speaker 1: Oh oh right, And that piece that we know, Bell

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Speaker 1: Hooks is the first person I heard say that we

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Speaker 1: can all be oppressors, and we can all become oppressors.

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Speaker 1: And that is oh girl, we need that so much.

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Speaker 1: And I think that what's so exciting for me about

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Speaker 1: her work right now is how much we need it,

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Speaker 1: how much that in the world right now, with everything

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Speaker 1: that's going we desperately need this work and it's actually

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Speaker 1: being I think It's important to note that Ron Desanders

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Speaker 1: wants to ban it in the state of Florida right now.

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Speaker 1: She's one of the authors that he wants to ban,

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Speaker 1: and the conversation abound your sectionality. He wants to ban, right,

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Speaker 1: so the stakes are high. Darnell, do you want to

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Speaker 1: speak to imperialless? White supremacist capitalist patriarchy is.

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Speaker 3: Just putting an exclamation point on what Amani shared about

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Speaker 3: her invitation for us to consider our complicity. And it

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Speaker 3: is a weighty term, and to the point about the

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Speaker 3: weightiness of it, you know, I often say, and this

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Speaker 3: is really modeled after her and her teaching.

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Speaker 2: You know, I repeat this everywhere I go.

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Speaker 3: We're really clear and been sort of trained to name

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Speaker 3: the feet that are situated on our next, but we've

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Speaker 3: not really done the work of naming the next that

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Speaker 3: our feet are situated on. And after having done that,

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Speaker 3: taking your feet off that I owe to Belle Hooks

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Speaker 3: really inviting me as a black.

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Speaker 1: Can we pause? Can we actually pause her? Now? Can

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Speaker 1: you say that one more time?

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Speaker 3: That we're really good at naming the feet that are

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Speaker 3: that are situated on our next, and we're not really

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Speaker 3: good at being honest about the next that our feet

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Speaker 3: are situated on, let alone removing them after we find

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Speaker 3: out that we are. And I often ask rooms when

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Speaker 3: I say that, how many of us know that we

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Speaker 3: all got our feet on somebody's neck?

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Speaker 2: That honest reckoning.

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Speaker 3: Is a part of what that waighty phrase invites us

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Speaker 3: to lean into. And I'll say even more specifically, as

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Speaker 3: a black male identified person, a cisgender man socialized in

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Speaker 3: the world to breathe domination like a brief.

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Speaker 2: Air and to love it and to love it.

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Speaker 3: It was Bell's work, along with others, you know, I

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Speaker 3: think about the work of June Jordan and Shroke. I mean, like,

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Speaker 3: these are folks that really did teach me that feminism

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Speaker 3: was expansive. It was for me too, in fact, that

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Speaker 3: patriarchy was more of a hindrance to my freedom, more

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Speaker 3: of a denier of my freedom than it was a gift.

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Speaker 3: Now I wouldn't have gotten there had Bell's words and

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Speaker 3: the words of other black feminists not invite me into

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Speaker 3: that work of self reckoning, which itself is a gift.

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Speaker 3: And to the points that you both made, it isn't

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Speaker 3: just a theoretical move like these words have shifted the

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Speaker 3: way I lived my life the way that I actually

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Speaker 3: engage with other people. It is an ethic like undergirding

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Speaker 3: it that shapes how I am living and how I

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Speaker 3: exist in community with other people in the world, how

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Speaker 3: I love, how I have sex, how I think about sex.

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Speaker 3: You know, all of those things are really shaped by

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Speaker 3: Bell's work, along with the work of so many other

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Speaker 3: black feminis.

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Speaker 1: And it really, I mean, it's just it's the genius

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Speaker 1: of Bell, but it is so important to acknowledge the

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Speaker 1: work of other black feminists because she, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: in conversation with those other feminists historically and her contemporaries

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Speaker 1: and built on that work. And I mean, the whole

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Speaker 1: point of her name being Laura Case is that it

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Speaker 1: was about a movement. It was about a collective. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't about like, you know, even though she became a

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Speaker 1: you know, a star and you know unintentionally so you know,

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Speaker 1: destiny is destiny, But it was about the collective in

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Speaker 1: such a beautiful, amazing way. Is there a particular book.

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Speaker 1: I mean, she wrote over thirty books and there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of books. Is there a moment from Bell that

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Speaker 1: feels like seminole, that feels critical for you and thinking

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Speaker 1: about her work and her legacy.

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Speaker 2: I mean the quote that I have in front of

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Speaker 2: me from feminism is for everybody.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Patriarchal masculinity teaches men that their sense of self and identity,

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Speaker 3: their reason for being, resides in their capacity to dominate

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Speaker 3: others and skipping down. Boys need healthy self esteem, They

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Speaker 3: need love, and a wise and loving feminist politics can

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Speaker 3: provide the only foundation to save the lives of male children.

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Speaker 3: Patriarchy will not heal them. If that were so, they

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Speaker 3: would all be well. Now, if this was contemporary, we'll

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Speaker 3: probably put period at the period.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but like that is it for me? Like that

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Speaker 2: is it for me?

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Speaker 3: Like this idea that we are attempting in this moment

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Speaker 3: to ban the very thing, to get out of the

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Speaker 3: curriculum and off of the bookshelves, the very doorways entry

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Speaker 3: points to a type of liberatory future, a type of

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Speaker 3: new way of being for folk who are socialized in

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Speaker 3: the world as boys and who go off to identify

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Speaker 3: as men.

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Speaker 2: Right, like.

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Speaker 3: Scares a hell out of me, Like this was a

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Speaker 3: gift for like the way I orient myself in the world,

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Speaker 3: the way that I exist, And it changed the course

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Speaker 3: of my thinking for sure.

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Speaker 1: It's so powerful to hear a male identified person speak

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Speaker 1: to this as well, because feminism is for everybody, you know.

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Speaker 1: And one of my favorite moments from Belle is that

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Speaker 1: you do not need man for patriarchy at all. Patriarchy

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Speaker 1: has no gender. Say that, againtch no gender, We do

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Speaker 1: not need it. You can't speak to ways in which

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Speaker 1: we all collude and can be in partnership in perpetuating

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh there's so much there. This is a

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Speaker 1: good time to take a little break. Alrighty, we're back. Emani.

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Speaker 1: Is there a moment from am Bell that for you

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Speaker 1: it's just like that, it's just the moment.

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Speaker 4: Well, yes, but I will say, Darnelle, reading that part

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Speaker 4: actually makes me rethink the moment because so much of

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Speaker 4: what she wrote, and I have been actually grappling with that,

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Speaker 4: this question of how much she influenced me in ways

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Speaker 4: that I wasn't even fully cognizant of, because when I

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Speaker 4: hear that quote, I'm like, right, but this is her

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Speaker 4: presence that has shaped the way that I parent, like

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Speaker 4: sort of wanting to have sons who can be free

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Speaker 4: of patriarchy, to raise them free.

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Speaker 2: I was thinking about your book as I was reading

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Speaker 2: that it's.

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Speaker 4: A direct, I mean direct connection to want them to

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Speaker 4: be free, right, So that part and then I would

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Speaker 4: say for my own development. And I don't even know

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Speaker 4: necessarily that it's my favorite piece of hers. But in Yearning,

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Speaker 4: there was something about and there's an essay in at

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Speaker 4: Third World Diva Girls which is about the students, so

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Speaker 4: she was mentoring. Yeah, but if there was something about

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Speaker 4: being considered, Like, here's this great intellectual who's thinking about

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Speaker 4: young women like us, right, Like, I mean, that was

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Speaker 4: so huge. It doesn't seem like it should be here,

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Speaker 4: this this amazing moment of black feminist literature and writing

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Speaker 4: and novels and stuff. But there was something about the

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Speaker 4: way she honed in on young women she cared about

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Speaker 4: and wanted to not just think about, but actually paid

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Speaker 4: tribute to their excellence and their beauty and how special

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Speaker 4: they were, and that being considered matters so much for us, right,

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Speaker 4: I mean, that's part of what she would do over

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Speaker 4: and over again in different ways. I'm going to pay

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Speaker 4: attention to you, right, not knowing us, that's it, but

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Speaker 4: the reader, right. And I think that's part of why

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Speaker 4: young people, everybody has to go through bell hooks. I

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Speaker 4: think for kind of sort of self actualization, honestly, particularly

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Speaker 4: young black people. But I really think there's something about

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Speaker 4: young people of conscience, right, like figuring themselves out. She's

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Speaker 4: a curate, She's a tender of souls in that way.

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Speaker 4: So for me, it was Yearning.

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Speaker 1: She shifted my mouth. He's Black Looks was the first

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Speaker 1: book of hers I read in Yearning was the second one,

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Speaker 1: and my favorite quote of hers is from Yearning that

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Speaker 1: I have friend Lucy. Language is also a place of struggle.

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Speaker 1: I was just a young girl coming slowly into womanhood

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Speaker 1: when I read Adrian Rich's words, this is the oppressor's language.

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Speaker 1: Yet I needed to talk to you. Language is also

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Speaker 1: a place of struggle. And there's more. I have it

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Speaker 1: written down. It's just and I got to when she

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Speaker 1: opened the Bail Hook's Institute, I got to be there

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Speaker 1: and I got to read that passage to her in

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Speaker 1: front of an audience, and it was really quite beautiful

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Speaker 1: for me because I had I discovered Bell's one work

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Speaker 1: in the early nineties when I was an undergraduate, and

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Speaker 1: it just shifted my molecules. And by the time that

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Speaker 1: Bale Hook's Institute opened in twenty fifteen, I think it

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Speaker 1: was I had lived with this work for so long

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Speaker 1: and had just contemplated, and it really just it changed

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Speaker 1: my life, and just in ways I can't even imagine.

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Speaker 1: I just like in the way in which I had

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Speaker 1: to confront my own internalized racism. And I feel like

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Speaker 1: we don't talk enough about internalized racism. Now there are

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Speaker 1: different ways in which we talk about it, but I

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Speaker 1: feel like we don't talk about it. And the way

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Speaker 1: Bell talks about it, it's so clear and it's so plain

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Speaker 1: when she talks about growing up in the segregated South

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Speaker 1: and the color caast system and she calls it a

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Speaker 1: colorcast system, and we don't really use that language anymore.

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Speaker 1: She tells the story of I'm going to her I

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Speaker 1: think her grandmother's house, who looked white and lived in

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Speaker 1: a white neighborhood and who said, you know, would say

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Speaker 1: I don't want that darkie referring to Belle's sister coming over,

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Speaker 1: and that white supremacy was something that we enacted as

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Speaker 1: black people on each other, that this is something that

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Speaker 1: we deeply internalized. And when I encountered her work, it

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Speaker 1: was like it hit me, like the internalized white supremacy

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Speaker 1: hit me so hard, that it just it was painful

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Speaker 1: and difficult, and it was a reckoning that was like fuck,

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Speaker 1: Like I got to decolonize my mind, and this is

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Speaker 1: like and it's an ongoing process, and it's an ongoing

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Speaker 1: process because of the ways in which we collude. I

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Speaker 1: mean in my conversation with her that we did at

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Speaker 1: the New School and she sort of called out my

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Speaker 1: blonde hair and high heels and the way in which

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Speaker 1: you know, white supremacy intersects with capitalism and patriarchy and

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Speaker 1: being a woman, a straight woman who has sex with

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Speaker 1: men and wanting to be seen and attractive in a

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Speaker 1: white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist context. So that like these things,

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Speaker 1: even with that knowledge, these things are working in our

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Speaker 1: lives and we have to negotiate them. She often also

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Speaker 1: said that we're often living in contradiction when we have

402
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Speaker 1: to navigate these systems, right, that this is it's so complicated,

403
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Speaker 1: and it's so and it's so often very painful as well,

404
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Speaker 1: and it's a place of struggle. I want to finish

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Speaker 1: reading that language is also a place of struggle, Coote,

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Speaker 1: because it's so good. She goes, this is this language

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Speaker 1: that enabled me to attend graduate school, to write a dissertation,

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Speaker 1: to speak at job interviews. Carries this of oppression. Language

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00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:05,040
Speaker 1: is also a place of struggle. We are wedded in language,

410
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Speaker 1: have our being in words. Language is also a place

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Speaker 1: of struggle. Dare I speak to oppressed and oppressor in

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Speaker 1: the same voice. Dare I speak to you in a

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Speaker 1: language that will move beyond the boundaries of domination, A

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Speaker 1: language that will not bind you, fence you in, or

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Speaker 1: hold you. Language is also a place of struggle. The

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Speaker 1: oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite,

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Speaker 1: to renew our words are not without meaning, They are

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Speaker 1: in action a resistance. Language is also a place of struggle.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, right, yeah, ah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was thinking about your point earlier, about

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Speaker 3: saying that being really clear at Bell was also an artist,

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Speaker 3: And you know, I think we think about Bell the

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Speaker 3: academic or social theorist, but she's a writer, yes, you know,

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Speaker 3: but I think the three of us will know. But

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Speaker 3: literally talking about the way she studied her craft, the

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Speaker 3: language the pro like read feverishly and was reading like

427
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Speaker 3: for understanding of new ideas. But I think, like also

428
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Speaker 3: what you just read, craft was craft. Here is someone

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Speaker 3: using craft to write, and I just want to acknowledge that.

430
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Speaker 3: And I don't think we celebrate that enough, you know,

431
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Speaker 3: but no, And I.

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Speaker 4: Think that's also, to be completely frank, part of the

433
00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:36,120
Speaker 4: reason why she hasn't been given her full due as

434
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:41,840
Speaker 4: an intellectualist because she was an artist because beauty was important. Yes, right,

435
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:45,199
Speaker 4: So beauty was not secondary to ideas. And there's a

436
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:49,479
Speaker 4: lot of resistance amongst, you know, amongst intellectuals, the idea

437
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:52,840
Speaker 4: that you do something beautifully. And also I just wanted

438
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 4: to go back to something you said Laburne that I

439
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:58,359
Speaker 4: think is so powerful because I think in her own

440
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:02,640
Speaker 4: life she was working through in a very open way

441
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 4: these questions around wanting to be attractive, wanting to be

442
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 4: you know, recognized, and also understanding that that wasn't what

443
00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 4: she was doing it for that internal tension. I just

444
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 4: loved that she was transparent about it. Yeah, because she

445
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:21,199
Speaker 4: gave us permission to be transparent about the way that

446
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:24,080
Speaker 4: we're you know that we struggle with those things, you know.

447
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:27,240
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Can we just say she was very transplant.

448
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:33,959
Speaker 4: Yes, there's nobody from me to day, right, Yeah, who

449
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:36,439
Speaker 4: I want to go out with? Right?

450
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,160
Speaker 2: All the time, like Beryl was a key.

451
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:46,119
Speaker 1: She was and she was and she and she was shady.

452
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: They all was shady. A like she was so shady, yes,

453
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:53,439
Speaker 1: Like she would read you to your face in a

454
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:59,479
Speaker 1: way with like elegance and poetry and history, but she

455
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:00,800
Speaker 1: would read beat you down.

456
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 4: Last time I saw no, she was like, so you

457
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 4: have expanded since the last time I saw you. And

458
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 4: I was like, okay, so okay, really.

459
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 2: Were listen.

460
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:17,000
Speaker 3: We were at the VAT and we were like, I

461
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:18,679
Speaker 3: think right about the start of panel, and I was

462
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 3: saying something, it's a book panel, and she turns to me,

463
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 3: she goes, if that was the case, you could have

464
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 3: said a little bit more about me and your book. Yes,

465
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:34,640
Speaker 3: And that was a thing, you know, But I always

466
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 3: I say this everywhere I go, like so easy it

467
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:42,200
Speaker 3: is to turn any artist, to any person who is

468
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 3: public facing in the world into an avatar and to

469
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:48,280
Speaker 3: someone who like who's sort of stripped of the full

470
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 3: complex person that they are and the person that I

471
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 3: got to sit across from on.

472
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:55,880
Speaker 2: Good and bad days, you know what I mean.

473
00:28:56,080 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 3: Where it's like, here is a person that was inviting us,

474
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 3: you know, she didn't sort of let us off the hook.

475
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 3: She also didn't let herself off the hook, and she

476
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:09,440
Speaker 3: set and reckoning. She was, you know, the same person

477
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 3: that writes all about love sits you down and says,

478
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 3: I really just want intimacy. I really just want to man,

479
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 3: I just want somebody to hold on, rubbed up next

480
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 3: to you know what I mean?

481
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 2: I want you know. I'm like, it was very honest

482
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 2: about that.

483
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 3: And on one hand, we'll be talking about Buddhist principles,

484
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 3: but the second hand like, oh and I can't stand

485
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 3: such and such, you know what I mean? And like, really, yeah,

486
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 3: fuly fully like shading.

487
00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:38,440
Speaker 1: Oh there's stuff I can't even talk about that she's

488
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: exactly saying.

489
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 2: But the thing is, here's what I'll say about that.

490
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 2: It gave me permission.

491
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 3: It gave me permission to be like, okay with my

492
00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:49,960
Speaker 3: full humanity.

493
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 4: Yeah, we are complicated beings.

494
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yes, And she was controversial throughout her life. Really,

495
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:00,959
Speaker 1: I was thinking a lot about different ideas that are

496
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 1: so important to her work. There's a wonderful YouTuber named

497
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:06,960
Speaker 1: Kimberly Foster who found it for Harriet, which is the

498
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,280
Speaker 1: great YouTube channel that I enjoy, and she often she

499
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:12,400
Speaker 1: does cultural criticism and she's read her bell Hooks, and

500
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 1: you know she's read her bell Hooks when she talks

501
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: about the Watt video and she talks about it in

502
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:19,160
Speaker 1: the context the spectacle. When she's when she started talking

503
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:22,480
Speaker 1: about it being spectacle and relationship to sexual liberation, it's

504
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: a spectacle undermine the idea. I was like, she's read

505
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 1: her bell Hooks and the concept obviously of society spectacle

506
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: comes from Gidah Boord's famous book. But the way that

507
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 1: Belle adapted it, that's a really good example of like

508
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: this French you know, post structuralist theorist who was a

509
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:44,239
Speaker 1: sort of Marxist theorist, that Belle took his work, as

510
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: she did with Fucoa and others, and made it accessible

511
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: in ways to talk about pop culture and ways to

512
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 1: talk about the world around us that are really crucial.

513
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 1: The way she talked about spectacles specifically, I find really

514
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: use full and looking at the world around us right

515
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: now interesting.

516
00:31:05,280 --> 00:31:07,719
Speaker 4: And I will say I didn't totally agree with her.

517
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 4: I mean we had some arguments over popular culture because

518
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 4: and there's this beautiful book that she did with Stuart

519
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:15,720
Speaker 4: Hall that's about that. Because propula culture is also a

520
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 4: place where people disrupt write the order and like challenge it.

521
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 4: But I think actually raising the question is incredibly important, right,

522
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 4: and trusting us to raise that question.

523
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And Danielle, did you want to hop in No.

524
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking more broadly about you said. You started

525
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 3: by saying, you know, and they'll raised critical points and

526
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 3: sometimes that weren't always popular. Oh no, No, like we

527
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:45,760
Speaker 3: just modeled something here. I mean, I think in many

528
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 3: cases we've all talked about at least I heard you

529
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 3: say the money. I can say it too. And Laverne,

530
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 3: I'm sure we've had moments where I just did not

531
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 3: agree with some of the things that you profit, right, Yeah, absolutely.

532
00:31:57,040 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 3: The thing that I am most thoughtful about now after

533
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 3: having witnessed the sort of collective and these things can

534
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 3: these are not mutuel exclusive, so hear me out. But

535
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 3: there was like this collective moan and this collective grief

536
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 3: that sort of we experience after she passed by some

537
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:16,120
Speaker 3: of the very people that you know, they dragged her,

538
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 3: they dragged and like her work was to do criticism.

539
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 3: And I can disagree with the point that you raised

540
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,880
Speaker 3: without demeaning your humanity, and like absolutely, just I just

541
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 3: want to name y'all, like, this is what it means.

542
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 3: You want to talk about the spectacle? Yeah, I just

543
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 3: had to get that off my chest. Yeah, and no

544
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:37,560
Speaker 3: matter you said this to me once before, you probably

545
00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 3: forgot years ago that somehow we're so if we look

546
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 3: at criticism, the way that I think about it is

547
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 3: like to love is to not lie, right. You would

548
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 3: not be dishonest to a thing, or offer a thing

549
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 3: that you love dishonesty. You would give it truth, even

550
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 3: if that truth is to say this could be better

551
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 3: or whatever the critique might be. Criticism is love when

552
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 3: it's grounded in love, and love.

553
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:05,719
Speaker 1: That love right, you know, I'll say that, you know.

554
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 1: After she wrote her piece about Lemonade, it was interesting

555
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: watching the academic beehive, the Black Beehive, swarm swarm on

556
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 1: bell Hooks like hardcore, like it was the whole symposium

557
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: that came together after Lemonade, and like did I gagged?

558
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 1: I really gagged, And as a member of the behive

559
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 1: myself as a hardcore Beyonce fan and as a hardcore

560
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:36,480
Speaker 1: bell Hooks fan, it was deeply painful for me to

561
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:43,160
Speaker 1: witness that. And I remember calling her. I remember calling

562
00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 1: her as as that was as that was happening. And

563
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:48,480
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys talked to her in

564
00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 1: the aftermath of that, after that hit, you know, the

565
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:55,440
Speaker 1: behot swarmed and they had the whole white form whatever

566
00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 1: that was. And I called I remember calling her and

567
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:04,240
Speaker 1: she was she was just so hurt. She was so hurt.

568
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: But I remember saying to her that you are the blueprint.

569
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: You are Black feminism is what it is because of

570
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: you and your work. And they've all convened in this

571
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:23,960
Speaker 1: way because you were so great, because you were so

572
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 1: important and you are so impactful, that that that that

573
00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:37,160
Speaker 1: she's that bitch, you know, to quote Beyonce, that she

574
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 1: mail was that bitch so much so that they they

575
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:43,600
Speaker 1: had to swarm, you know. And after the I got

576
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 1: off the phone with her. I remember her feeling better.

577
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,560
Speaker 1: Her mood seemed to shift after that. But that was

578
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 1: deeply painful for me to witness and watch and it

579
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:57,760
Speaker 1: and it's and I don't I don't agree with most

580
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: of her assessments of Beyonce, except was it was really interesting.

581
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:04,240
Speaker 1: There was a moment when I was I had my copy,

582
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:06,400
Speaker 1: my hard copy of Black Looks. I still have my

583
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:10,080
Speaker 1: original copies and my la plays, and I was I

584
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:12,919
Speaker 1: was traveling and I wanted to allude to an essay

585
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: from Black Looks, actually the Oppositional Gaze. And I didn't

586
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: have a book with me, and so I downloaded it

587
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: on Kindle and I reread the introduction and I was

588
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:23,840
Speaker 1: mentioned in the introduction me along with Beyonce, and Belle

589
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:26,360
Speaker 1: mentioned me on the cover of Time magazine with blonde

590
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:29,360
Speaker 1: hair and Beyonce on the cover of Time magazine with

591
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: blonde hair and underwear and how and she sort of

592
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: talked about, you know this, these blonde women, these black

593
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:38,600
Speaker 1: women in blonde hair and reinforcing im peerless wise of

594
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: premiss calpolist patriarchy. And I read it and I, you know,

595
00:35:44,160 --> 00:35:46,440
Speaker 1: I actually called her. I was like, girl, I just reread,

596
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 1: you know, and it was all and I can my

597
00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:53,640
Speaker 1: love for her never diminish with that critique, because it's

598
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 1: just it is, It is what it is, you know, right.

599
00:35:57,520 --> 00:35:59,360
Speaker 4: You know, one of the things that I think I

600
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:02,880
Speaker 4: think about her and how she came of age intellectually

601
00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 4: right so and politically. Beverly guys Chefteal tells a story

602
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,799
Speaker 4: about when they went to the National Women's Studies Association

603
00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:11,600
Speaker 4: the first time, and you know, there was a big

604
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:13,880
Speaker 4: up Peeve. I can't remember what I think it was.

605
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 4: It was either ourdel Lord or June Jordan. There was

606
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 4: fighting and deliberation, and then even on the intellectual side, right,

607
00:36:20,239 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 4: and thinking about her hanging out with people like Edward said,

608
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 4: who said, never solidarity before deliberation and debate, right, that

609
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 4: she assumed that we were in community and we could

610
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 4: fight in community, and so we need that time back.

611
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 4: And you know, you just modeled a way of getting

612
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:42,800
Speaker 4: that time back right in that that you can sustain

613
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 4: community and also be like, we don't think it the

614
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:49,359
Speaker 4: same way and not just be dispassionate but sometimes fight

615
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:50,360
Speaker 4: in the process.

616
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:50,759
Speaker 2: Right.

617
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,359
Speaker 4: But we trust each other enough for that. And I

618
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 4: just think that people missed that.

619
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: Yes, that's so crucially thank you for that. That is

620
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: so beautiful. That so and that's such a beautiful lesson

621
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: from that that period of feminism. And it reminds me

622
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: of a moment that Cornell, Wests and Bell had in

623
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 1: the nineties after the Million Man March and Bell this

624
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: is a great video where Belle's like, you know, it's

625
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:16,919
Speaker 1: hard for us to be in process. Sometimes it's hard

626
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:19,399
Speaker 1: for me to stand up here with you, Cornell after

627
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:21,640
Speaker 1: not seeing you for a while and say I don't

628
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:24,799
Speaker 1: agree with you. I disagree with you. I disagree with

629
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:27,720
Speaker 1: you vehemently. That's hard for me, but I don't agree

630
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,319
Speaker 1: with you. And she says like, I don't agree with you.

631
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:33,840
Speaker 1: And luckily for them, I believe they were able to

632
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: maintain that love over decades when they didn't always agree.

633
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 1: It feels like they were. I don't know the inner work.

634
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:49,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they definitely were, for sure. And it's you know,

635
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 3: when I think about Belle and Bell's work and Belle's

636
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:58,080
Speaker 3: just life and just the everyday ness of her life,

637
00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:00,399
Speaker 3: I am also thinking about what her career. We are

638
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 3: along with others you mentioned Cornell, and there's others that

639
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 3: we can sort of list that class of public intellectuals

640
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 3: who were about the work of bringing the sort of

641
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 3: ideas and debate to the public square. Like remember, this

642
00:38:13,920 --> 00:38:18,160
Speaker 3: is a period of like immense debate, and folk were

643
00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:21,080
Speaker 3: welcomed into debates so much so that they would convene

644
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 3: in stadiums on occasion, in front of the cameras right

645
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:29,160
Speaker 3: of the community and have differences of opinion and guess

646
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:32,439
Speaker 3: what it was all well, when the conversations were over

647
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:35,640
Speaker 3: because at the core of it was this understanding that

648
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 3: to engage in this way, particularly for an end of

649
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:43,759
Speaker 3: an expansive black liberation, is an act of law. To

650
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 3: disagree in this way, to push each other in this way,

651
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 3: and to the monis like we are in a stage

652
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 3: where when she went to have the sort of lemonade conversation,

653
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 3: we were in the stage of you talked about spectacle

654
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 3: of sort of one dimensionality, you know of like echo chambers,

655
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 3: and to dare say it like an inability to be

656
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 3: really honest and therefore loving with people when there are

657
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 3: things that we want to disagree with.

658
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 1: It really kind of evokes this whole time when folks

659
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:15,880
Speaker 1: were able to lovingly disagree, lovingly be in dialogue to

660
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 1: get because it was about the ideas. It was about

661
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:23,760
Speaker 1: getting to a better way of liberating ourselves and each other.

662
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: It wasn't about like the sort of gatekeeping who's right

663
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:31,719
Speaker 1: who's wrong. But I think that it feels like the

664
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: capitalist piece is operating right that that the spectacle. I'm

665
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: so glad we brought that in the spectacle. It works

666
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 1: in direct relationship to capitalism and direct relationship to clicks

667
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:46,799
Speaker 1: in a world of clicks and a world of algorithms,

668
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: that that kind of engaged dialogue across difference with love

669
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 1: and empathy does not really work in the capitalist structure

670
00:39:59,840 --> 00:40:02,920
Speaker 1: that that we live in now with media and social media.

671
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:05,719
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and I think that's right. I mean, even

672
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:09,120
Speaker 4: for example, and I've tried to write a bit about this, right,

673
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:13,840
Speaker 4: you can't actually deliberate. If somebody posts something, then it's

674
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 4: just over right, and the life even if a person

675
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:19,920
Speaker 4: then goes on to have a conversation and change their perspective,

676
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,839
Speaker 4: that thing exists out there as a representation of them

677
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 4: that circulates and has a life of its own that

678
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 4: at a certain point no longer has to do with

679
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:30,759
Speaker 4: the body and the mind of the person who initially posts. Right,

680
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:33,879
Speaker 4: So you can't even have like a real conversation where

681
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 4: people evolve, because people are held to the moment at

682
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:38,360
Speaker 4: the beginning of the conversation.

683
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: And this is really I mean, how trying to have

684
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 1: space to give people space to evolve where they don't

685
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 1: know where they might not understand something. You know, language

686
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:49,279
Speaker 1: is a place to stroll and that like the T

687
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 1: word that ends with the whys, everybody doesn't know that

688
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 1: that's offensive to some trans people and that in certain

689
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: spaces you might you know, be read and people might

690
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 1: be way about it. And we have to give people

691
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: space to evolve and to be able to grapple with ideas.

692
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:09,759
Speaker 1: You know, it's so hard and it's so tricky, but

693
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:11,399
Speaker 1: there has to be love and nuance there.

694
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:13,719
Speaker 4: And I think it also part of what makes it

695
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 4: so hard is something that you said earlier, which is

696
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:20,400
Speaker 4: they're also bad faith actors, right, So there are people

697
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:22,680
Speaker 4: who are evolving, and then there are people who are

698
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:27,600
Speaker 4: actually gaining their traction and their audience, right, and by

699
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:31,839
Speaker 4: being bad faith actors who are just being horrific, right,

700
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 4: And so we're so vulnerable in that scenario, right.

701
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:38,839
Speaker 1: And there's a whole there's an entire media ecosystem that

702
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: supports that bad faith, that the lies the propaganda so

703
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,920
Speaker 1: that they don't even the real truth or the nuance

704
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: certain people will never ever see because their funnels the lie,

705
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 1: the propaganda, through algorithms, through only watching whatever. And so

706
00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:57,840
Speaker 1: this is a it's a very tricky time for liberation

707
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 1: because there's a whole propaganda machine, right that didn't exist

708
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties that is so pervasive and effective,

709
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: deeply effective.

710
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:09,759
Speaker 3: Or existed, but in just you know, by way of

711
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 3: different sort of technological means and at a sort of

712
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:14,720
Speaker 3: different scale.

713
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:18,479
Speaker 1: You know, it's a scale that propaganda's always existed because

714
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 1: this whole most of the anti LGBTs, none of this

715
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: is new, but it's been scales with social media scale

716
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 1: and so it's reaching way more people and there's no

717
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: spaces of it being challenged. But what I love about

718
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:36,879
Speaker 1: Bell too is that, like speaking of intersectionality, is that

719
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:40,240
Speaker 1: she you know, historically there are a lot of feminists

720
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:43,000
Speaker 1: who have trinui fat issues with trans people, and Bell

721
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: just never, in my experience, is never that persons. She

722
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: was critical of, you know, my wigs and high heels

723
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:56,239
Speaker 1: and the trappings of patriarchy, and I think that is

724
00:42:56,239 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 1: certainly a conversation, right, But there was just she she

725
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:03,080
Speaker 1: loved me. I Yes, she loved me.

726
00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:07,440
Speaker 2: That's absolutely true. That's true, deeply.

727
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:11,880
Speaker 1: Deeply, and I I loved her and she saw me

728
00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:16,040
Speaker 1: and in a way that I needed to be seen.

729
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: I've always felt like, even before I met her, I

730
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 1: felt like she was my second mother, my feminist mother,

731
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,000
Speaker 1: that when I read her work, I was just it

732
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 1: was like I remember reading Sisters of the Yams and

733
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: it was just like, this is my mom. You know,

734
00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:31,080
Speaker 1: I don't know what, I don't know everybody else has

735
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:33,800
Speaker 1: that experience anyway, getting emotional.

736
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:38,400
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.

737
00:43:46,200 --> 00:43:51,279
Speaker 1: Without further ado. When I think about Belle's influence and

738
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 1: how we talk about pop culture, Reel to Reel is

739
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 1: one of my favorite books of hers, and it's just

740
00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:57,919
Speaker 1: all film criticism. I think it was in the mid

741
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:00,279
Speaker 1: nineties that she wrote it, and she reviews film like

742
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 1: The Crying Game and Bodyguard, Daughters of the Dust and

743
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 1: the idea that she wrote about and on black looks,

744
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 1: the oppositional gaze black female spectatorship, I think is so

745
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:17,800
Speaker 1: crucially important when we think about film criticism just in general,

746
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 1: when we think about feminist film criticism. It's a concept

747
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,279
Speaker 1: that really for me as a producer when I was

748
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:29,080
Speaker 1: making Disclosure, It's something I thought a lot about her

749
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 1: idea of the oppositional gaze. And I'm just going to

750
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 1: read a little bit from it. I'm accessed with like

751
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:38,360
Speaker 1: reading bell Hooks excerpts in The Oppositional Gaze Black Female

752
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:42,400
Speaker 1: Spectators Bell Wrights. When thinking about black female spectators, I

753
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 1: remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard, intense,

754
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:50,799
Speaker 1: direct looks children would give grown ups, looks that were

755
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 1: seen as confrontational, a's gestures of resistance, challenges to authority.

756
00:44:56,200 --> 00:44:59,360
Speaker 1: The gaze has always been political in my life. Imagine

757
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:02,839
Speaker 1: the terror fl by the child who has come to understand,

758
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:07,680
Speaker 1: through repeated punishments, that one's gaze can be dangerous. The

759
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:10,319
Speaker 1: child who has learned so well to look the other

760
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:14,360
Speaker 1: way when necessary, Yet when punished, the child is told

761
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:16,840
Speaker 1: by parents, look at me when I talk to you.

762
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:21,280
Speaker 1: Only the child is afraid to look, afraid to look,

763
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: but fascinated by the gaze. There's power in looking amazed.

764
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:29,680
Speaker 1: The first time I read in history classes that white

765
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:33,760
Speaker 1: slave owners, men, women, and children punished and slaved black

766
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:38,200
Speaker 1: people for looking, I wondered how this traumatic relationship to

767
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: the gaze had informed a black parenting and black spectatorship.

768
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:47,240
Speaker 1: The politics of slavery, of racialized power relations were such

769
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 1: that the slaves were denied their right to gaze. She

770
00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 1: continues years later, reading Michelle Lucot, I thought again about

771
00:45:56,080 --> 00:46:01,360
Speaker 1: these connections about the way's power. Its domination reproduces itself

772
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:08,840
Speaker 1: in different locations, employing similar apparatuses strategies and mechanisms of control.

773
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 1: Since I knew as a child that the dominating power

774
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:16,399
Speaker 1: adults exercised over me and over my gaze was never

775
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 1: so absolute that I did not dare to look, to

776
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: sneak a peek, to stare. Dangerously, I knew that the

777
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 1: slaves had looked, that all attempts to repress our black

778
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:34,080
Speaker 1: people's right to gaze had produced in us and overwhelming

779
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: longing to look, a rebellious desire and oppositional gaze. By

780
00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:45,880
Speaker 1: courageously looking, we defiantly declared, not only will I stare,

781
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 1: I want my look to change reality.

782
00:46:54,160 --> 00:46:57,960
Speaker 2: Oh and talking about craft by.

783
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:02,880
Speaker 1: The way, I want my look to change reality. And

784
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 1: that is really I mean for me as as an

785
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 1: image maker, as a producer where we're working on a

786
00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:11,839
Speaker 1: new show right now, I think so much about that,

787
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:18,799
Speaker 1: how how I can look differently and produce images differently,

788
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:21,279
Speaker 1: And it's it's tricky, it's hard, but it's like it's

789
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:24,480
Speaker 1: really about decentering. I think so much of it is

790
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:27,359
Speaker 1: about what does it mean to de center. I think,

791
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 1: here she's talking about the patriarchal white supremacist gaze, But

792
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 1: for me, it's that patriarchal, white supremacist gaze. But there's

793
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:37,799
Speaker 1: also the cis normative, heteronormative gaze. What does it look

794
00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: like to decenter that gaze? And then we can have

795
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: the conversations differently, so we're not having the conversations on

796
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 1: the terms of the oppressor. Yes, that we're having the

797
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 1: conversations and doing the representation from margin to center where

798
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:56,360
Speaker 1: we are now femas theory for marginalists center. Another Fels

799
00:47:56,400 --> 00:48:01,840
Speaker 1: reference that we can recenter the marginalized, the oppressed. But

800
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:05,640
Speaker 1: what comes up for you when you hear that gorgeous.

801
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:09,120
Speaker 3: Pros I instantly think about all of what you just said,

802
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:10,799
Speaker 3: by the way, and thank you for the beauty with

803
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 3: what you read that I'm listening to the like the

804
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:15,359
Speaker 3: beautiful way you're reading the words. And it's also just

805
00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:20,880
Speaker 3: animating them, Yes, decentering, but also oppositional in terms of

806
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:23,000
Speaker 3: being able to sort of revert the gaze, be honest

807
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:26,520
Speaker 3: about what it is that we are seeing. Yes, Yes,

808
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:30,000
Speaker 3: that's a critical political work for us to be able

809
00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:34,960
Speaker 3: to one sort of shape our lens, create a lens

810
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:40,280
Speaker 3: through which we can actually see things for what they are. Yeah,

811
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:42,720
Speaker 3: and do the work of averting.

812
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 4: That, yes, And it also it makes me think that

813
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 4: part of the reason she is such a resilient thinker

814
00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 4: for us is that right, so what happens how do

815
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 4: we decenter assists heteronormative gaze? Right? So, you know, the

816
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 4: Hopes doesn't have a long exegesis on that question, but

817
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:05,800
Speaker 4: she's given us the tools to pursue that kind of question.

818
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:09,160
Speaker 4: So often with thinkers when we and the way that

819
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:12,120
Speaker 4: you read that was so was gorgeous, both informed, but

820
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 4: also you sounded like sort of being given wings, right,

821
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 4: and that's the thing, right to be given the wings

822
00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:22,719
Speaker 4: to do the thinking. So often we just mimic what

823
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:25,120
Speaker 4: other folks. We're like, Oh, I like what that person said,

824
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 4: not this what this person said becomes something that then

825
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:32,680
Speaker 4: we can use to create on our own. And I

826
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:35,359
Speaker 4: think that's that's what comes up for me, you know,

827
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 4: is that Okay, my eyes, my eyes, my perspective, my

828
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:40,399
Speaker 4: witness right.

829
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, And Belle was so she said over

830
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: and over and over again as a teacher, as a

831
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:50,879
Speaker 1: professor that one of the most important things for her

832
00:49:51,520 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 1: to impart to her students is critical thinking, that they're

833
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:58,279
Speaker 1: able to engage with the work, to think critically and

834
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 1: then to come up with new things and to work

835
00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:02,920
Speaker 1: with the work. She would say, I want you to

836
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 1: work with the work. There was a moment in loving

837
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:08,760
Speaker 1: Blackness is political resistance. I think that is an essay

838
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 1: from I think it's from yearning I forget where. I

839
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:16,560
Speaker 1: remember reading that you Know twenty years no, twenty five

840
00:50:16,760 --> 00:50:20,280
Speaker 1: years ago or so, and she talked about black is beautiful,

841
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:24,000
Speaker 1: that jargon, that phrase that emerged in the late nineteen

842
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:26,880
Speaker 1: sixties and early seventies as a way to celebrate blackness,

843
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 1: to celebrate beauty standards that were not informed by white supremacy.

844
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking, how amazing would it be for

845
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:38,440
Speaker 1: trans people to have a movement of transit beautiful, movement

846
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 1: to celebrate all the things about trans people that you

847
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 1: know are not CIS normative. And I literally started the

848
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:49,759
Speaker 1: hashtag trans is beautiful in twenty twenty fifteen, inspired by that,

849
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:53,759
Speaker 1: inspired by this idea that I'm not beautiful despite my

850
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 1: big hands, my big feet, my deep voice, my wide shoulders,

851
00:50:57,120 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 1: all the things that make me noticeably trans. I'm beautiful

852
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:03,920
Speaker 1: because of those things. And that came directly from reading

853
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: Belle Hooks' work and thinking about loving blackness is political resistance.

854
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:15,719
Speaker 1: Loving transness as political resistance, right, And so that that's

855
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,120
Speaker 1: how I'm working with the world. You know, That's just

856
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 1: one way that I'm working with the work. How are you?

857
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:23,160
Speaker 1: How are you finding that you're working with the work?

858
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 3: You know, honestly, like, so much of what I have

859
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:31,279
Speaker 3: benefited from both her work and just her friendship is.

860
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:34,080
Speaker 2: Some sort of.

861
00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:39,359
Speaker 3: Tidbits on how I might live a life that is

862
00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:46,200
Speaker 3: deeply invested in connectivity, like profoundly in real ways, living

863
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:51,359
Speaker 3: out love in real time, Like I become so much

864
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:57,200
Speaker 3: more invested in living, loving the people that I have

865
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 3: around me and the strangers that I have that I

866
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 3: come in contact with, living, try my best to be

867
00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 3: better at not preaching a thing.

868
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:09,399
Speaker 2: But living it.

869
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:14,680
Speaker 3: And those are like the every day like in every

870
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 3: real like in very meaningful ways.

871
00:52:17,520 --> 00:52:19,319
Speaker 2: Like it's I try to take that up in the

872
00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:20,120
Speaker 2: way that I live.

873
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 3: And the last thing I'll say is, you know, like

874
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:27,960
Speaker 3: I'm profoundly shaped by her work as a black cisgender

875
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:31,439
Speaker 3: man who's in the world thinking about a world that's

876
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:35,480
Speaker 3: been freed up from the pangs of patriarchal violence.

877
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:38,080
Speaker 2: And it's an everyday work.

878
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 3: Every day I have to make decisions and negotiate the

879
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:44,440
Speaker 3: ways that I move in the world, the ways that

880
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:47,200
Speaker 3: I love, the ways that I am loved. Like and

881
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 3: that is like, you know, this second work that's been

882
00:52:49,760 --> 00:52:53,080
Speaker 3: taking me forever just sort of work through is directly

883
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:56,360
Speaker 3: connected to her teaching. I mean a book is the

884
00:52:56,400 --> 00:52:59,520
Speaker 3: first iteration of it was called unbecoming Visions Beyond the

885
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:00,800
Speaker 3: Limits of Manhood.

886
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 2: Right isn't that like such an homage to something that

887
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:05,480
Speaker 2: Bell would have us think about? Right?

888
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:07,239
Speaker 3: Like, what it means is sort of unravel to look

889
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:09,719
Speaker 3: back at the self and say, how can I pull out,

890
00:53:10,520 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 3: take away, do away with these things that aren't doing

891
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:19,440
Speaker 3: me any good. So my writing, my living, my political

892
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:22,520
Speaker 3: the texture of my political life has been shaped by

893
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:26,160
Speaker 3: her and so many other black feminists for whom, and

894
00:53:26,200 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 3: I say this with all honesty, I would not be here.

895
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 3: I would not be here if I didn't have these

896
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:37,920
Speaker 3: black women's books to pick up and help me to

897
00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:39,480
Speaker 3: love the black queer.

898
00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:44,080
Speaker 2: Man that I was taught to hate, to let that person.

899
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 1: Back, I wouldn't be here either. I wouldn't be here either.

900
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:53,040
Speaker 1: How are you working with the work, your money in

901
00:53:53,080 --> 00:53:53,600
Speaker 1: your life?

902
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know a lot of it is. I keep

903
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:02,040
Speaker 4: thinking about the word embodiment, and I think what I'm

904
00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 4: thinking about is her honesty and the vulnerability of my

905
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 4: body and witnessing the vulnerability of her body, and you

906
00:54:16,719 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 4: know what it means to have a body that in

907
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 4: some way feels as though it's betraying you and in

908
00:54:21,680 --> 00:54:25,720
Speaker 4: decline and the way that strips you down to what's

909
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:30,000
Speaker 4: the point? Why are we here? What's the point? And

910
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:33,879
Speaker 4: she was this reminder. You know, there are so many

911
00:54:33,920 --> 00:54:37,440
Speaker 4: ways that she was punished for not having conventional trappings

912
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:41,719
Speaker 4: to what she was doing, but she stayed true to

913
00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 4: the point, and that is why she will live. The

914
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:50,840
Speaker 4: work will live. And it's this reminder. Right. Wait, you

915
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:53,799
Speaker 4: know I turned fifty last year in this sort of

916
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,680
Speaker 4: to be that age, right, so you're this age and

917
00:54:56,719 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 4: you're like, okay, I'm over halfway done most likely? Why

918
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 4: why am I here? What am I?

919
00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:03,719
Speaker 2: And she.

920
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:08,360
Speaker 4: Her example You can't think it's gonna be easy. Living

921
00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:10,480
Speaker 4: in your purpose is not easy.

922
00:55:10,520 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 1: Yep, and going against the grain is not you know,

923
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 1: even her talking about opening the institute, it was her

924
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:22,040
Speaker 1: thinking intentionally about her legacy. Why am I here? What's

925
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:25,799
Speaker 1: the point? She did struggle with health things for many

926
00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:30,120
Speaker 1: years before she passed, and I think that prompted her

927
00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:34,600
Speaker 1: to think think very differently about that legacy. I think

928
00:55:34,640 --> 00:55:36,560
Speaker 1: those series of talks that she did at the New

929
00:55:36,600 --> 00:55:41,000
Speaker 1: School were so oh just they were just so good.

930
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:43,399
Speaker 1: I've gone back and watched them many many times. It's

931
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:46,719
Speaker 1: an honors I've gotten to participate in one of them.

932
00:55:46,760 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 1: I think that was her thinking about her legacy, thinking

933
00:55:49,120 --> 00:55:53,719
Speaker 1: about what she'll leave behind, and she really did want

934
00:55:53,960 --> 00:55:56,719
Speaker 1: she wanted people. She wanted love. She wanted people to

935
00:55:56,760 --> 00:55:59,400
Speaker 1: love on her. She wanted people to love on the work.

936
00:55:59,640 --> 00:56:03,080
Speaker 1: And she needed that and she needed that sense of

937
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:06,799
Speaker 1: I've written over thirty books, I've been like in this

938
00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:08,879
Speaker 1: for so long, and I've been on a no fly

939
00:56:09,080 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 1: list and band here and food and and like just

940
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:17,279
Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy stuff being She would refer to

941
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:20,680
Speaker 1: herself as an insurgent black you know, intellectual, you know

942
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:22,680
Speaker 1: in the early nineties that she was a real she

943
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:26,279
Speaker 1: was a revolutionary figure, like for real, for real, And

944
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:28,759
Speaker 1: that was not an easy rot a ho, you know,

945
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:34,520
Speaker 1: it really wasn't. And yet and yet there was so

946
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:40,480
Speaker 1: much love that she gave that she allowed herself to

947
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:47,000
Speaker 1: receive that is deeply inspiring and empowering to think about.

948
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:53,880
Speaker 1: I like to end every podcast with the question, what

949
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:59,279
Speaker 1: else is true? This comes from my from my somatic

950
00:56:59,480 --> 00:57:03,759
Speaker 1: trauma healing work. What else is true? It's like what

951
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:06,520
Speaker 1: it gets you through when the world is on fire,

952
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 1: when things are just deeply troubling. What is the thing

953
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:15,480
Speaker 1: that you turn to? A resource that it's also true?

954
00:57:15,560 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 1: Like Belle Hoops. Let us know this that multiple things

955
00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: can exist at the same time. So when things are

956
00:57:21,080 --> 00:57:23,880
Speaker 1: troubled for you, what else is true for you that

957
00:57:23,920 --> 00:57:26,880
Speaker 1: you can look to that'll help you get through? Imani

958
00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:28,520
Speaker 1: you look, you may be ready to answer.

959
00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 4: ROBERTA Flax recording of Afro BLUEO early nineteen seventies.

960
00:57:36,360 --> 00:57:36,640
Speaker 2: It is.

961
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:42,320
Speaker 4: It's genius and beautiful and healing.

962
00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:45,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know that. I'm going to go listen

963
00:57:45,520 --> 00:57:49,160
Speaker 1: to it right after this. Please Diterflac Afro Blue, Darnell.

964
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:50,960
Speaker 1: What else is true for you today?

965
00:57:51,560 --> 00:57:55,000
Speaker 3: A good bottle of red wine, a cab specifically, and

966
00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 3: my family.

967
00:57:56,200 --> 00:58:01,520
Speaker 1: Yes, my boyfriend loves a good Cabernet too, man after

968
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 1: my own heart. I love it. Thank you so much,

969
00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:09,560
Speaker 1: both of you. This is everything I hoped it would be.

970
00:58:09,960 --> 00:58:14,240
Speaker 1: Hope I hope Belle feels the spirit, this energy, this celebration.

971
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: I just thank you, I just thank you so much,

972
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:23,439
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Long live Bell Hooks. Yes, indeed, Oh,

973
00:58:23,480 --> 00:58:29,120
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to Darnell and Imani for that healing conversation.

974
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:31,720
Speaker 1: Love is what comes up for me over and over

975
00:58:31,720 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 1: and over again. And Belle has said about love that

976
00:58:34,200 --> 00:58:40,920
Speaker 1: love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect,

977
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:46,440
Speaker 1: and trust. And it was wonderful talk that I alluded

978
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 1: to earlier with Cornell West and Bell Hooks from the

979
00:58:49,120 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 1: mid nineties, and they begin with the quote from from

980
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:54,840
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King, and the beginning of the quote is

981
00:58:54,880 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: I have chosen to love. I have chosen to love.

982
00:59:00,160 --> 00:59:03,240
Speaker 1: Belle Hooks was a Buddhist, but she was deeply steeped

983
00:59:03,440 --> 00:59:10,400
Speaker 1: in that tradition in the civil rights movement of the

984
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:15,080
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, that Christian thing that Martin Luther King

985
00:59:15,240 --> 00:59:17,840
Speaker 1: talked about, that we had to figure out a way

986
00:59:18,240 --> 00:59:22,480
Speaker 1: to love each other, to be loved warriors, as Cornell

987
00:59:22,560 --> 00:59:26,680
Speaker 1: West would say. And so it's really all about love.

988
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:32,800
Speaker 1: And I hope that this podcast has inspired you to

989
00:59:32,920 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 1: go and explore her work to grapple with it, feel

990
00:59:36,640 --> 00:59:40,520
Speaker 1: free to disagree with it, and hopefully be inspired to

991
00:59:40,520 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 1: think more critically about your life, think more critically about

992
00:59:44,880 --> 00:59:48,440
Speaker 1: the world around you. This is what she would want

993
00:59:48,720 --> 00:59:50,920
Speaker 1: for you to engage with the work, to work with

994
00:59:51,040 --> 00:59:55,120
Speaker 1: the work so that you can live a better life

995
00:59:55,120 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: for yourself and make the world better around you. So yeah,

996
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 1: go read your bell hooks.

997
01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:12,880
Speaker 5: Often we respond negatively to the moment of process, you know,

998
01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:15,840
Speaker 5: even myself. You know, one of the things when I

999
01:00:15,880 --> 01:00:18,720
Speaker 5: said to cornellis, you know, I don't agree with some

1000
01:00:18,840 --> 01:00:21,880
Speaker 5: of the things you're saying lately, But I didn't really

1001
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:24,439
Speaker 5: want to greet him after not seeing him for such

1002
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:28,600
Speaker 5: a while, with having to admit that I don't agree. Now,

1003
01:00:28,640 --> 01:00:31,520
Speaker 5: think about that, we're two people who forge so much

1004
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:36,240
Speaker 5: in dialogue, and I can still feel afraid to say

1005
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:39,840
Speaker 5: to him, I don't agree with you. And I think

1006
01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:44,000
Speaker 5: that so much of our shying away from anti racist

1007
01:00:44,080 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 5: struggle is the fear that we have that when we

1008
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 5: come together in our differences and there is disagreement, we

1009
01:00:52,240 --> 01:00:56,680
Speaker 5: will have conflict and everything will fall apart. So many

1010
01:00:56,720 --> 01:00:59,959
Speaker 5: people feel it's better not to come together, It's better

1011
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 5: to stay with people that are just like yourself, where

1012
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:06,520
Speaker 5: you can feel safe, where the smooth running can happen

1013
01:01:06,840 --> 01:01:10,600
Speaker 5: without any moment of chaos or conflict, but in the

1014
01:01:10,640 --> 01:01:14,920
Speaker 5: true spirit of both spiritual and political revolution in the

1015
01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:20,240
Speaker 5: best sense. We cannot begin to build beloved community without

1016
01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:24,960
Speaker 5: embracing the moments of tension and conflict as part of

1017
01:01:25,080 --> 01:01:27,360
Speaker 5: the struggle, as part of what we're seeking.

1018
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:35,080
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to The Laverne Cox Show.

1019
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:38,200
Speaker 1: Please rate, review, subscribe and share with everyone you know.

1020
01:01:38,800 --> 01:01:41,440
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at

1021
01:01:41,520 --> 01:01:45,160
Speaker 1: Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real.

1022
01:01:46,920 --> 01:01:53,040
Speaker 1: Until next time, stay in the love. The Laverne Cox

1023
01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 1: Show is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.

1024
01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:01,200
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1025
01:02:01,520 --> 01:02:05,080
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.