Speaker 1: Pushkin Stevie Lane, Hello, Jonathan, I thought your generation doesn't
Speaker 1: abide by telephone calls.
Speaker 2: When my name popped up. Did you think this is
Speaker 2: an emergency?
Speaker 1: Is it an emergency?
Speaker 2: It is sort of an emergency. It's a story emergency.
Speaker 3: Oh that is an emergency. Yeah, okay, you need my help.
Speaker 2: No, I actually I don't need your help. I have
Speaker 2: a story for you today.
Speaker 1: So you need my help listening to it? Well, why
Speaker 1: don't you just ask me to listen to your story?
Speaker 2: Will you please listen to my story?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say no, what Yes, of course, you're gonna
Speaker 3: press the play button.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna start it right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, there you go.
Speaker 2: Boom from Pushkin Industries. I'm Stevie Lane and this is
Speaker 2: Heavyweight Today's episode Jasmine right after the break. There are
Speaker 2: moments in life that unfold like a movie, moments we
Speaker 2: replay over and over in our heads. Hello, how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good? How are you? Jasmine has a moment like that,
Speaker 2: a pivotal scene in the story of her life, and
Speaker 2: it's a scene that takes place where many pivotal movie
Speaker 2: moments do. At a high school dance fourteen years ago.
Speaker 2: It isn't as pig bloody as the prom and Carrie
Speaker 2: nor as teen Wolfe as the one from Teen Wolf,
Speaker 2: but it's every bit as cinematic. And to fully understand
Speaker 2: that night of spaghetti strap dresses and party rock anthem
Speaker 2: on gymnasium speakers, I have to zoom out and start
Speaker 2: with the setting where the dance took place, the city
Speaker 2: where Jasmine grew up, Springfield, Oregon.
Speaker 4: There's hardly any black people, and in every class I
Speaker 4: was in, it would be just me and like one
Speaker 4: or two other girls.
Speaker 2: Census estimates put the population of black residents in Springfield
Speaker 2: at around one percent.
Speaker 4: Oregon was one of the first states to outlaw slavery,
Speaker 4: but not because they believed that black people were worthy
Speaker 4: of not being slaves, because they didn't want black people
Speaker 4: in the state at all. They outlawed slavery in order
Speaker 4: to keep black folks.
Speaker 2: From being there.
Speaker 4: So there's just this ignorance and this like odd energy.
Speaker 2: There by odd energy, Jasmine is talking about the unapologetic
Speaker 2: racism she experienced all the time from a very young age,
Speaker 2: Like when Jasmine was seven and told by her friend
Speaker 2: that her friend's dad wouldn't like Jasmine because he quote
Speaker 2: didn't like black people. Or when in a high school
Speaker 2: drama class, everyone was instructed to write each other nice notes,
Speaker 2: Jasmine reads me one, I love your positive attitude, and
Speaker 2: I believe it's an exception to your ethnicity. You are
Speaker 2: a credit to your race. Or when Jasmine was in
Speaker 2: a school play and had a stage kiss with her
Speaker 2: scene partner who was white.
Speaker 4: And we kissed and then he goes, m tastes like
Speaker 4: black cherry, like that kind of stuff all the time,
Speaker 4: to the point that you know, you just laugh and
Speaker 4: you're like ha ha ha, but don't know why it
Speaker 4: makes you feel a certain way because everyone is laughing,
Speaker 4: like even in your close friends, because they also, like,
Speaker 4: do think it's funny? I think we actually sometimes even
Speaker 4: participated in the jokes at our own expense, because it's like,
Speaker 4: if you can get ahead of it, then it won't
Speaker 4: hurt as bad.
Speaker 2: How is it talked about in your family?
Speaker 4: You know, it just wasn't. And we always like prided
Speaker 4: ourselves on being a family that can talk about things,
Speaker 4: but race was never brought up.
Speaker 2: Jasmine's dad is black, but they didn't have much of
Speaker 2: a relationship growing up. She was raised by her mom,
Speaker 2: who was white. Among her white aunts and white uncles
Speaker 2: and white cousins, Jasmine was the only person of color
Speaker 2: within her family.
Speaker 4: I don't think I even heard anyone in my family
Speaker 4: say the word black. It almost felt like a bad
Speaker 4: word kind of. I just always felt so ugly, honestly,
Speaker 4: like just ugly and frizzy and not shiny.
Speaker 2: It was a feeling that falls Jasmine all the way
Speaker 2: until senior year, all the way until homecoming.
Speaker 4: So you know, it's September and it's time to vote
Speaker 4: for homecoming Queen, and it's like such a big deal
Speaker 4: and a marker of popularity and beauty and worth and importance.
Speaker 2: So this was like a big deal. Like did you
Speaker 2: remember those seniors that were king and queen in previous years?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I think it was Jessica Ray and James
Speaker 4: Quinn the year before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's a thing. Jasmine was sitting in class
Speaker 2: when the PA system came on. Everyone was listening for
Speaker 2: who would be named homecoming royalty first, the homecoming court
Speaker 2: was announced princes and princesses.
Speaker 4: And I'm pretty sure they saved the queen for last,
Speaker 4: and they said my name, and I was in shock, Like,
Speaker 4: not only did they announce me as homecoming queen. But
Speaker 4: Jacob King, who was like the most popular boy all
Speaker 4: American football player, he was homecoming King. I was like,
Speaker 4: how is it him and me? And I remember being like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, Like did they mess up?
Speaker 2: The homecoming queen was usually someone popular and cool, two
Speaker 2: things Jasmine says that she wasn't in high school. She
Speaker 2: was a self proclaimed theater nerd from a conservative Christian
Speaker 2: household who was never invited to a single house party
Speaker 2: or asked out on a date. But it wasn't a
Speaker 2: mess up or a prank. After the announcement, kids came
Speaker 2: up and congratulated her. Maybe Jasmine had been wrong about
Speaker 2: how her classmates saw her. The rest of the day,
Speaker 2: Jasmine walked through the hallways as though floating through a dream.
Speaker 2: A few days later, Jasmine's queendom was announced at the
Speaker 2: homecoming football game. There on the field, Jasmine received a
Speaker 2: sash and a bouquet. The Springfield Times came to take
Speaker 2: her picture. But the thing Jasmine was most excited for
Speaker 2: was the homecoming dance. The night of the dance, Jasmine's
Speaker 2: mom helped her with her hair and makeup. She met
Speaker 2: up at a friend's house beforehand to have dinner Martin
Speaker 2: Ellie's and mac and cheese and get ready. Jasmine wore
Speaker 2: her coolest outfit, a short, black strapless dress with lime
Speaker 2: green feather earrings, lime green half leggings, and lime green
Speaker 2: fingerless gloves. And in case you're thinking geez, that's a
Speaker 2: lot of lime green, I'd like to remind you that
Speaker 2: this was high school in twenty eleven. My favorite outfit
Speaker 2: was a lime green skirt with a lime green tank top.
Speaker 2: I had a lime green cell phone and lime green
Speaker 2: floaty flip flops. Lime Green was cool, okay, and Jasmine
Speaker 2: looked cool on her way to the dance. What were
Speaker 2: your expectations for the night. What did you think was
Speaker 2: going to happen?
Speaker 4: I thought that they would call my name and it
Speaker 4: would be my movie moment, Like everyone would clap and
Speaker 4: shout and a spotlight would hit the center of the
Speaker 4: room and I would make my way toward Jacob King
Speaker 4: and maybe he would even whisper in my ear I've
Speaker 4: always been in love with you. And then you know,
Speaker 4: everyone would slowly like dance around us and it would
Speaker 4: be like, Wow, you've always been so beautiful and.
Speaker 2: Cool, Jasmon, you really had big expectations.
Speaker 5: I really did.
Speaker 4: I mean, I grew up watching like a Cinderella story
Speaker 4: and what a girl wants and that's how they all end.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, I thought it would change everything. In fact,
Speaker 2: it did not. And here is the moment that's been
Speaker 2: plaguing Jasmine for years.
Speaker 4: I don't know if they cut the music or if they.
Speaker 2: Just turned it down.
Speaker 4: And they announced and now it's time for our homecoming dance.
Speaker 4: My heart's beating so fast, you know, my stomach is
Speaker 4: like about to fall out of my butt.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited.
Speaker 4: And then they go.
Speaker 2: Our homecoming King Jacob.
Speaker 4: And everyone's like, whooh, crappy.
Speaker 2: And our homecoming Clean Whitney.
Speaker 4: Whitney, and it was really like a record scratch. Like
Speaker 4: in my head, I was like, wait what.
Speaker 2: Whitney was one of the few other black girls in
Speaker 2: Jasmine's grade.
Speaker 4: And I thought I mishard and I but I was
Speaker 4: kind of frozen, and I'm just looking around and it's
Speaker 4: like the room is spinning and I'm feeling crazy and
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh my god, oh that just happened.
Speaker 2: Overcome humiliated, Jasmine ran out of the gym to the
Speaker 2: courtyard or she collapsed at a table and cried. When
Speaker 2: eventually she dried her eyes and returned to the dance,
Speaker 2: no one said anything to her about it, so she
Speaker 2: just did what everyone else was doing. She danced, she
Speaker 2: talked to friends, she went home. I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't know what happened. And this is what Jasmine has
Speaker 2: wondered ever since. Why Whitney's name was called instead of hers.
Speaker 2: Over the years, she's developed two possible theories. First, was
Speaker 2: one black girl mistaken for another. That's what Jasmine's best
Speaker 2: friend from high school, Danika, has always thought. Danika is
Speaker 2: also biracial, and remembers the moment the wrong name was
Speaker 2: called to her. It didn't seem that crazy that at
Speaker 2: their high school one black girl might be confused for another.
Speaker 2: I think that we were all a little bit interchangeable,
Speaker 2: she tells me. But then there's Jasmine's second theory, and
Speaker 2: even worse possibility. Could it be? Jasmine wonders that the
Speaker 2: announcement had been rigged. Whitney as an athlete, she was
Speaker 2: well liked, and she was their senior class president. In
Speaker 2: other words, Whitney was the popular black girl. She was
Speaker 2: part of the tight knit group of popular girls in
Speaker 2: Jasmine's grade.
Speaker 4: Like she was considered, like she was a pretty black
Speaker 4: girl and always straightened her hair. Like I used to
Speaker 4: remember thinking, when does suck girl sleep? Because she is
Speaker 4: in every single honors class and she's always wearing makeup
Speaker 4: and she streams her hair every day. There's no way
Speaker 4: she gets more than three hours of sleep at night.
Speaker 4: Like it just blew my mind.
Speaker 2: In many ways, Whitney was the more obvious choice for
Speaker 2: homecoming queen, which is why it felt to Jasmine like
Speaker 2: some secret decision had been made, Like if we're going
Speaker 2: to have a black homecoming queen, it's going to be
Speaker 2: the popular black girl, not you. After all, it didn't
Speaker 2: feel like a mistake.
Speaker 4: In my memory, no one was looking at me like wait, what,
Speaker 4: Like it felt like everyone in the room wasn't on
Speaker 4: something I wasn't in on, like there had been a
Speaker 4: consensus reached that on the day it would be a.
Speaker 2: Whitney and not me, because no one else seemed shocked.
Speaker 2: But Jasmine never found out what happened that night or
Speaker 2: why was it a mix up?
Speaker 4: Or like is the why that there could only be
Speaker 4: one black girl at the top? Is the why that
Speaker 4: they hated me? For some reason. It's like, even in
Speaker 4: this moment and throughout this conversation, I've oscillated between Okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 4: of course it was totally an accident and fuck that,
Speaker 4: no it wasn't, and both of those feel intense, And
Speaker 4: so it's like.
Speaker 2: Where where to land? It's been fourteen years since homecoming,
Speaker 2: but Jasmine thinks about it often, like once a week
Speaker 2: for the last seven hundred and twenty eight weeks, not
Speaker 2: that anyone's counting. Jasmine is an actor and success full one,
Speaker 2: with major roles in Yellowjackets and The Leftovers. In twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, she was included in Forbes thirty Under thirty
Speaker 2: list for Hollywood and Entertainment. She has a partner, a
Speaker 2: beloved cat and dog, and a news podcast for the
Speaker 2: queer community. By every metric, she's living a full and
Speaker 2: happy life. And yet it's a moment she returns to
Speaker 2: I just want to know why, Jasmine says, the popular
Speaker 2: girls ran the homecoming committee. They might have the answer,
Speaker 2: and Jasmine is still Facebook friends with a few and
Speaker 2: can reach out. Sounds easy, right, No it doesn't.
Speaker 4: I'm still scared of these girls, you know what I mean? Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: the thought of that makes me feel nauseous.
Speaker 2: But that's what I'm here for, to walk up to
Speaker 2: the cool kids at their lunch table, so Jasmine doesn't
Speaker 2: have to after the break. The popular girls popular girls.
Speaker 2: When I google the names Jasmine gives me, I find
Speaker 2: photos of them from high school. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of high ponytails and straight toothed smiles. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of sports action shots midspike and volleyball, or dribbling
Speaker 2: down the basketball court. There's a lot of eyeliner. These
Speaker 2: are girls who knew how to dress and would never
Speaker 2: be caught dead in head to toe lime green, which yeah, fine,
Speaker 2: I'll admit it was never that cool. And the names
Speaker 2: they just sound like the names of popular girls. Ashley Bailey, Stephanie, Ali,
Speaker 2: Caitlin with a Y, Cassidy with a K. But the
Speaker 2: thing about the popular kids, their power is weakened with
Speaker 2: time outside of high school, a decade even beyond college,
Speaker 2: which they get much less intimidating. Or this is what
Speaker 2: I'm telling myself as I clear my throat and make
Speaker 2: the calls.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm calling for Ali, Hi, Stephanie, Hi, Cassidy. My name
Speaker 2: is I'm trying to reach Keaitland, who the story is
Speaker 2: actually about homecoming. Story I'm working on about homecoming. I'm
Speaker 2: sure this is sort of a strange message, Rucy, You're
Speaker 2: having a good day. Take care bye. Most of my
Speaker 2: messages aren't returned. The couple of women who do call
Speaker 2: me back say they remember Jasmine winning and the announcement
Speaker 2: at the game, but not the incident at the dance.
Speaker 2: So I phone Jacob King, the homecoming King. He's at
Speaker 2: work and says he can talk later, but then texts
Speaker 2: me minutes after backing out. I text asking if he
Speaker 2: remembers the mix up and see the three dots typing,
Speaker 2: then the three dots stop, ha ha, you were typing,
Speaker 2: and then stop typing. I write the three dots reap here,
Speaker 2: and this time he hit send. I don't have a
Speaker 2: memory of that, and then, like everyone else, he stops
Speaker 2: answering me.
Speaker 4: Doesn't that point to something like, what are you defensive of?
Speaker 4: If there's nothing to be defensive of.
Speaker 2: It's true, and maybe they all have something to hide,
Speaker 2: but maybe they just don't like the implication that a
Speaker 2: racist mistake was made.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, if only someone would just like talk the talk.
Speaker 2: And one popular girl does Bailey and Bailey talks the
Speaker 2: talk to me about a key piece of information. The
Speaker 2: popular girls I've been calling they weren't actually part of
Speaker 2: planning homecoming, as Jasmine had thought. That job fell to
Speaker 2: one person, the senior class president, aka Whitney, the very
Speaker 2: same Whitney who was pronounced queen at the dance that
Speaker 2: she apparently planned. And not only that, it turns out
Speaker 2: Whitney was a princess on the homecoming court, the homecoming
Speaker 2: queen runner up, a lady in waiting who dethrones the queen.
Speaker 2: Was this an act of regicide, or at least the
Speaker 2: high school version of it? At this point, it looks
Speaker 2: like the only person who might have the answers Jasmine's
Speaker 2: looking for is Whitney. Jasmine says, asking Whitney feels scary,
Speaker 2: even scarier in some ways than asking the other popular girls.
Speaker 2: Because Whitney was a popular black girl, Jasmine, if only
Speaker 2: in her own mind, often felt pitted against her, comparing
Speaker 2: herself to Whitney coming up short, which the whole homecoming
Speaker 2: debacle only reinforced. But recently, sitting at home late one night,
Speaker 2: Jasmine googled Whitney's name. What popped up was an article
Speaker 2: from the Guardian that Whitney wrote in twenty twenty eight
Speaker 2: years after high school, and the subject of the article
Speaker 2: Whitney wrote was what it was like growing up black
Speaker 2: in Springfield. The racist jobs at school, the comments about
Speaker 2: her hair, the jokes she made at her own expense,
Speaker 2: and how confusing it was to navigate alone. There were
Speaker 2: parts that felt lifted out of Jasmine's own life, Like
Speaker 2: Jasmine Whitney's family didn't talk about race, Like Jasmine, Whitney
Speaker 2: had a white mom and a black dad who wasn't home.
Speaker 2: From the article, Jasmine learned that Whitney's father was incarcerated
Speaker 2: for most of her childhood.
Speaker 4: And that she would visit him weekly and was dealing
Speaker 4: with this very heavy, very adult thing. I had these
Speaker 4: stories about her and these assumptions. Meanwhile she was fighting
Speaker 4: her own battles. How sad that we never and I
Speaker 4: never knew that, and that we never connected on that.
Speaker 2: Jasmine wonders, outside of the context of high school and
Speaker 2: popular groups and homecoming and Springfield, maybe they can. Maybe
Speaker 2: Jasmine can ask her what happened that night, addressing her
Speaker 2: not as the girl she'd felt pitted against, but as
Speaker 2: a woman with a shared past. After the break Whitney.
Speaker 2: When I reach out to Whitney, I tell her about
Speaker 2: this homecoming project, how Jasmine has questions about that night.
Speaker 2: I expect that, like the other popular girls, she won't
Speaker 2: want to talk, but she wants to help Jasmine, so
Speaker 2: she agrees. Whitney now lives in Portland, Oregon, where she
Speaker 2: works as a creative producer, and it just so happens
Speaker 2: that in about a week Jasmine will be home for
Speaker 2: a visit. So we meet up at a small Airbnb
Speaker 2: I booked for the reunion. Hi, Bhi. Whitney and Jasmine
Speaker 2: hug and greeting, Ah, you look great. They get settled
Speaker 2: on two chairs facing each other. Whitney has her feet
Speaker 2: up on her seat, Jasmine is smiling. This is crazy.
Speaker 4: I feel like last time we saw each other was
Speaker 4: high school, probably graduation day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a ten year reunion, but Jasmine didn't go.
Speaker 2: Neither did Whitney, even though she was supposed to organize it.
Speaker 2: Apparently that's the job of the senior class president, which,
Speaker 2: if you ask me, falls a little outside the term
Speaker 2: for an elected high school official.
Speaker 6: I promised an open bar.
Speaker 2: I ran on that. You promised, who was going to
Speaker 2: pay for that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a great question, but like seventeen, you don't
Speaker 6: think about that.
Speaker 2: But then Whitney spent the next ten years thinking about it,
Speaker 2: stressing about disappointing people if she couldn't deliver.
Speaker 6: Someone tweeted me five years later and said we didn't forget.
Speaker 6: I was like, I'm gonna bar that's really funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they both seem a little nervous, and so at first,
Speaker 2: Jasmine tries to make Whitney feel comfortable. She tells Whitney
Speaker 2: how much she liked her article. They trade horror stories
Speaker 2: from high school.
Speaker 6: Sophomore year, two of my friends came into my math
Speaker 6: class and we're like, so, we've decided we're going to
Speaker 6: initiate you as our black friend. It's going to rap
Speaker 6: you in toilet paper and roll you down a hill.
Speaker 4: What.
Speaker 6: Yes, it's crazy, crazy.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure it hurt. But I also there wasn't
Speaker 4: even space to allow ourselves to be hurt because it
Speaker 4: was so constant.
Speaker 2: And for Whitney, it wasn't just the racism. Whitney says
Speaker 2: she from a poor family. She grew up picking up
Speaker 2: food boxes, getting her Thanksgiving meals from the school. Whitney
Speaker 2: had to work hard to fit into that tight knit
Speaker 2: group of middle class white girls. When she was going
Speaker 2: to school every day without breakfast. Whitney says she acted
Speaker 2: like a happy, go lucky kid, when in fact, from
Speaker 2: a really young age, she was in survival mode.
Speaker 6: Like I remember being in third grade being like I
Speaker 6: can't even imagine high school because I'll probably die before then,
Speaker 6: Like there's no way I'm actually ever going to make
Speaker 6: it there.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Jasmine brings up homecoming.
Speaker 4: I want to get into the stuff.
Speaker 2: And Whitney, without hesitation, is game. I'm sad, let's do.
Speaker 4: It, Like I've just wanted to know your version of
Speaker 4: what happened.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so just to like go back, like I remember
Speaker 6: the football game where it was like now it's so
Speaker 6: like we all knew you had already won, I thought.
Speaker 2: At that point, yeah right, yeah.
Speaker 6: And then the night of the dance, I don't remember
Speaker 6: a lot except I was really stressed because I was
Speaker 6: planning it.
Speaker 2: As class president, Whitney was in charge of everything, picking
Speaker 2: out the crowns, selling the tickets, buying the decorations, setting
Speaker 2: up the gym, all largely by herself. So when Whitney
Speaker 2: thinks about homecoming, what she remembers, is how stressed out
Speaker 2: she was leading up to the dance, But the night
Speaker 2: of the dance itself.
Speaker 6: I want to be honest, I don't really remember the
Speaker 6: night like at all, Like not even I remember like
Speaker 6: getting everything like set up, trying to make sure everything
Speaker 6: was like in place, like the people working who are
Speaker 6: going to take the tickets, but the actual like that moment.
Speaker 2: The moment Jasmine remembers so clearly Whitney's name being announced instead.
Speaker 6: Of her own, I don't remember it.
Speaker 2: If Homecoming was a pivotal scene in the movie of
Speaker 2: Jasmine's life, once she's played over and over until the
Speaker 2: tape has worn thin. For Whitney, it's been taped over,
Speaker 2: but she says she's sure that if she was announced
Speaker 2: as Homecoming Queen, she never would have gone up and
Speaker 2: accepted the crown or joined Jacob King for a dance.
Speaker 6: If they called my name, I would have been horrified
Speaker 6: because I wanted everything to like just like go well,
Speaker 6: so like I would have been absolutely horrified, and I
Speaker 6: would have went somewhere and been like, hey, like that
Speaker 6: was wrong name. Can we like reset?
Speaker 2: Is there a chance that you would have been so?
Speaker 2: Like this night has to go smoothly that if you
Speaker 2: were called, you would just be like, Okay, I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna dan like you know what I mean, Like keep
Speaker 2: it moving.
Speaker 6: No, what happened to the crown?
Speaker 4: Did they put it on your head? No?
Speaker 6: Because I didn't win. I already knew I didn't win,
Speaker 6: So like I wasn't like up there like yet that
Speaker 6: crown on me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jasmine has been waiting fourteen years to ask what
Speaker 2: happened that night and getting such a non answer is
Speaker 2: a letdown. But if Jasmine is disappointed, she isn't showing it.
Speaker 2: As they keep talking, though, Whitney reminds Jasmine of another
Speaker 2: key player from that night, someone who was at the
Speaker 2: center of everything. And by everything, I mean the dance floor.
Speaker 6: Do you remember who announced the names? Like?
Speaker 2: Was it the DJ?
Speaker 4: I don't, I don't remember.
Speaker 2: I feel like it was the DJ. One of Whitney's
Speaker 2: many party planning responsibilities was hiring the DJ, a man
Speaker 2: named DJ Sip. She was his point person for the
Speaker 2: whole event, and Whitney thinks that because she was runner up,
Speaker 2: her name would have been on the list of students
Speaker 2: on the homecoming court given to DJ Sip at the dance.
Speaker 2: So when it came time to announce the queen.
Speaker 6: I feel like he just saw my name and got confused.
Speaker 6: Like we had been like talking right for like weeks.
Speaker 6: I helped set him up, and I wonder if he
Speaker 6: just like saw my name and was like, oh, like
Speaker 6: just read mine first.
Speaker 2: In other words, Whitney is saying she thinks it was
Speaker 2: just an accident, and an innocent one, not a racist one.
Speaker 2: Jasmine is skeptical.
Speaker 4: But even the mistake, I'm like, Okay, this man DJ Sip,
Speaker 4: like I'm imagining it was a white DJ.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't it, DJ Sip.
Speaker 4: Look, we grew up in Springfield.
Speaker 5: You're certainly could be a white guy.
Speaker 6: Was like a big black guy.
Speaker 2: And anyway, Whitney says, DJ Sip wouldn't have even known
Speaker 2: that Jasmine is black. He'd never met her before. She'd
Speaker 2: have been nothing more than a name on a slip
Speaker 2: of paper.
Speaker 4: Okay, he really did just read.
Speaker 2: Our names wrong? And is that how you feel?
Speaker 4: Right now?
Speaker 2: You're like, like, do you like just to ask the
Speaker 2: blue question, like, do you believe that that's what happened?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I have no reason not to believe, Whitney.
Speaker 2: Whitney jumps in to say plainly what she's been trying
Speaker 2: to say politely.
Speaker 6: I didn't do shit. So just to be clear, I
Speaker 6: didn't do shit, and like I know, like I didn't
Speaker 6: do anything maliciously. I don't think anyone would do anything maliciously.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't believe. I feel that I will never
Speaker 4: relinquish the possibility that there was foubl play, like there
Speaker 4: will forever be a part of me that's like some
Speaker 4: because at the end of the day, we did grow
Speaker 4: up with these people who like called us racist names
Speaker 4: and like said all kinds of shit we can't even remember.
Speaker 4: So I one hundred percent believe it is a possibility
Speaker 4: that someone did do something racist, whether it was to
Speaker 4: hurt me or not, like that just is possible.
Speaker 2: Outside it's gone from us to dark. It's time to go,
Speaker 2: and we say our goodbyes. In the days after the conversation,
Speaker 2: I do reach out to DJ Sip to see if
Speaker 2: he made a DJ slip, but DJ Sip tells me
Speaker 2: he has no recollection of that specific homecoming. He does
Speaker 2: tons of school gigs every year. He does say that
Speaker 2: as Whitney remembered, the names are usually provided to him
Speaker 2: on a piece of paper. He doesn't think he'd read
Speaker 2: the wrong name, though he can't be sure. I also
Speaker 2: finally get a hold of a teacher who is there,
Speaker 2: who remembers the mix up. She says, contrary to how
Speaker 2: Jasmine remembered it, everyone seemed shocked, Whitney in particular. She
Speaker 2: also thinks that, yes, the names of all the students
Speaker 2: on the court were written on a piece of paper,
Speaker 2: but whether it was the DJ's innocent misread or someone's
Speaker 2: not so innocent misright, we can't say for certain. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure where it leaves us. We still don't have
Speaker 2: a definitive answer, and in the absence of that, what
Speaker 2: we have is two women who shared many similar experiences
Speaker 2: in the same town where they both grew up, with
Speaker 2: two opposite takeaways from the night of homecoming, one who
Speaker 2: knows that it must be about race, and the other
Speaker 2: who thinks that in this particular scenario, it just wasn't.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: A few weeks later, I reach out to Jasmine to
Speaker 2: see what she took away from the conversation with Whitney.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know, toggling between what Whitney is trying to
Speaker 2: suggest to her and what she knows that feels like
Speaker 2: a familiar place for her to be. Jasmine tells me
Speaker 2: about a number of auditions she's been on lately, big opportunities.
Speaker 4: And my manager and my team are so excited, and
Speaker 4: I'm like, guys, they're going to cast a white girl.
Speaker 4: I've been right every time. But my manager is like
Speaker 4: so tired of me saying that, and she's like, you're
Speaker 4: speaking that into existence, Like you need to come into
Speaker 4: these opportunities in spaces like open and give it your
Speaker 4: all and like prove to them that you're the one.
Speaker 2: Jasmine says she can see her manager's point. Assuming it's
Speaker 2: about race and going in with that defeatist attitude, it
Speaker 2: isn't helping her. But at the same time, auditioning over
Speaker 2: and over for roles she has no chance of getting,
Speaker 2: it's frustrating and demoralizing.
Speaker 4: Especially in that industry where it's just like projection, rejection, rejection, rejection.
Speaker 4: I want to be rejected because my acting wasn't strong
Speaker 4: enough or my vibe wasn't right, not.
Speaker 2: Because they're like, well, we decided to go with a
Speaker 2: white girl. And it's completely crazy making because Jasmine can
Speaker 2: never know if a rejection is because of her performance
Speaker 2: or her skin color. It's like with the Homecoming story,
Speaker 2: Jasmine will never know if it was DJ SIP or
Speaker 2: something way worse. Whitney believes it was an accident, and
Speaker 2: so it's like she's asking Jasmine to see it outside
Speaker 2: of racial lines, Like she's saying, can't this just be
Speaker 2: a mistake, the kind of mistake that could happen to anybody,
Speaker 2: And Jasmine wants to believe so, but it goes against
Speaker 2: everything she's ever learned.
Speaker 4: At a certain point, you have to make a choice,
Speaker 4: and I want to make that choice.
Speaker 2: It's just really hard. I mean it's hard. It's hard because,
Speaker 2: like I think from everything I've learned about your childhood
Speaker 2: and everything growing up, like there probably were a lot
Speaker 2: of cases where like you were right to make those assumptions,
Speaker 2: like because it was the worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: But I'm tired, been a little sad. Yeah, And I
Speaker 4: do think that this way of viewing the world is
Speaker 4: harming me, like in various aspects of my life. It's like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's like a meeting the world with
Speaker 4: like a knife out.
Speaker 2: After their conversation, I'd reached out to Whitney too. I
Speaker 2: asked her why she doesn't draw the same conclusions from
Speaker 2: that night that Jasmine does. Whitney didn't want to speculate
Speaker 2: on Jasmine's experience, but she did offer this about her
Speaker 2: own life. After high school, Whitney went away to college
Speaker 2: somewhere that was way more racially diverse than Springfield. She
Speaker 2: found herself around more people of color than she'd ever
Speaker 2: been around before, and it gave her a new sense
Speaker 2: of self confidence. It was the first time, she says,
Speaker 2: that she felt beautiful. She took classes on race and inequality,
Speaker 2: spent semesters discussing and unpacking her own childhood. Then after graduating,
Speaker 2: she worked for many years and documentary film at a
Speaker 2: job where her voice was valued for being black. Jasmine's
Speaker 2: experience after high school was quite different. She didn't go
Speaker 2: to college, went straight to auditioning and hustling for acting roles,
Speaker 2: and because she's beautiful and talented, that worked out. But
Speaker 2: success also brought her to Hollywood, a place where it
Speaker 2: took until two thousand and two for a black woman
Speaker 2: to win an Oscar for Best Actress, not exactly an
Speaker 2: environment known for valuing diversity. In some ways, it would
Speaker 2: have been better if Whitney could have told Jasmine, yes,
Speaker 2: it was some malicious swap hearing that might have hurt,
Speaker 2: but at least it would have made sense. It's far
Speaker 2: scarier to imagine what Whitney is proposing that it was
Speaker 2: just a mistake.
Speaker 4: You know, like if I let that go and it
Speaker 4: was just an accident and things just happened. Whoa who
Speaker 4: who am I You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you're the homecoming queen.
Speaker 4: That feels really nice. That idea of just accepting that
Speaker 4: it seems like that might be.
Speaker 2: True about homecoming. Here's what I think. We don't know
Speaker 2: what happened, but we do know what didn't happen. No
Speaker 2: one came up to Jasmine after to say sorry. No
Speaker 2: one even came up to her to say, hey, that
Speaker 2: was weird, right. No one went to look for Jasmine
Speaker 2: or corrected the mistake, And in my conversations these last
Speaker 2: few months, most people didn't even remember it. So one
Speaker 2: black girl was substituted for another, and that went largely
Speaker 2: uncommented on and unapologized for because no one seemed to
Speaker 2: think it was a big enough deal. Jasmine had wanted
Speaker 2: to know why the mix up happened, but just as
Speaker 2: important is why it was never righted. There was never
Speaker 2: any acknowledgment, which is why it's hurt for so long.
Speaker 4: You want to know my first thought, Yeah, I had
Speaker 4: to take pictures in a little crown that might actually
Speaker 4: help it feel you know what I mean. I never
Speaker 4: got that crown. I know I didn't get it. I
Speaker 4: didn't just not.
Speaker 2: From under the table, I pull out a crown. It's
Speaker 2: shiny and gold and covered with crystals lime green of course.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's beautiful.
Speaker 4: Why am I crying?
Speaker 2: That's so sweet. Jasmine places the crown on her head.
Speaker 4: Wow, this feels awesome. I finally got my crown. This
Speaker 4: is definitely doing something.
Speaker 2: It's a hot day, but Jasmine says she wants to
Speaker 2: go for a long walk, feel the sun, and spend
Speaker 2: an hour with herself. We say our goodbyes. When she
Speaker 2: walks out the door onto the busy New York City street,
Speaker 2: she's still wearing her crown.
Speaker 5: Now that the furnitures rip, turn into it's good will home.
Speaker 5: Now that's the last monstrant is scheming with the.
Speaker 1: Damage to frob take this moment to DESO.
Speaker 5: If we message, if.
Speaker 4: We trash.
Speaker 5: We felt around for fo.
Speaker 2: To thanks that accidentally. This episode of Heavyweight was produced
Speaker 2: by me Stevie Lane, along with Jonathan Goldstein and Phoebe Flanagan.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Khalila Holt. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Robin Simeon, Zach Saint Louis Neil drumming,
Speaker 2: Chris Neary and Hanne Goldman. I'm Amonger mixed the episode
Speaker 2: with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson and
Speaker 2: Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions, Boxwood Orchestra,
Speaker 2: Distance and Lolotone. Our theme song is by the Week
Speaker 2: of Thems, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram
Speaker 2: at Heavyweight Podcast or email us at Heavyweight at pushkin
Speaker 2: dot FM. Jonathan will be back in two weeks to
Speaker 2: host a brand new episode, so stay tuned and time perl.
Speaker 5: We repainted