March 4, 2025 • 40 mins
George is joined Sabrina Strings PhD, author and professor at UC Santa Barbara. They discuss why dating feels like such a disaster, the history and meaning of DEI, how white supremacy has coopted rap music, and how romance has colonized love. This week's Queer Artist Spotlight is ‘The Front Row’ by Bang Garçon.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What we thought love was based on these romantic narratives
is absolutely racist, sexist, horseshit shit.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
That's Sabrina strings. And as you can hear, she has
strong opinions. She's a master at making you think about
universal concepts like love in a whole new way.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Instead of trying to salvage it by trying to force
people to figure out, Okay, wait, how do I need.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
To behave to be loved?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Instead, notice the fact that that kind of love is conditional.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Romance is conditional.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Sabrina is a professor of sociology at the University of California.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
In early twenty twenty four, she published.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
A book called The End of Love, which examines where
our modern understanding of romance came from.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
It was literally a story that was written in the
Middle Ages by powerful Western European Christians to be able
to explain why they were worthy of romantic fairy tales,
even as they were explaining why other individuals who were
not of their same class and status were not. And
so when I talk about the end of bluff, I
talk about the end of that kind of toxic, white centric,
(01:09):
heteronormative form of glove.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Singing in the heavy handed some of the world tickets.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Super brandy and spoken guy. You know what the plan is?
Speaker 4 (01:23):
O pajama Latin?
Speaker 5 (01:24):
You know when to seem to stand me.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
My name is George M. Johnson.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I am the Immy nominated New York Times bestselling author
of the book All Boys Aren't Blue, which is also
the second most BAM book in the United States.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
This is Fighting Words.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
A show where we take you to the front lines
of the culture wars with the people who are using
their words to make change and who refuse to be silenced.
Today's guest is Sabrina Strings, PhD. We're going to talk
about racism on campus, how white supremacy shows up, and
rap and what you thought was love versus the real
thing and heads up. We recorded this interview as the
(02:03):
fires were happening in La where I live. I am
here today with the amazing Savarina Strings. How are you
doing today?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I'm great. How are you doing, George?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
You know, Los Angeles is an interesting space right now,
but you know, despite the current climate of the country,
I'm doing pretty well today. Just wanted to introduce you
to all of the listeners out there. Who is Sabrina Strings.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Let's see I am a writer, a teacher, I'm a meditator,
and I'm a Los Angeles native. So I understand the
pain that so many people are feeling right now.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
I'm feeling it too.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, it's been very very interesting out here where I
really wanted to start though. I'm an author and I
travel to a lot of colleges, and so I speak
at HBCUs pwi's for those who don't know HBCUs. Historically
black colleges and universities pwy's are predominantly white institutions. How
did you meetage to enter American academia was considered like
(03:04):
an elite white space. What has like your journey been
through entering the academia space as a black woman?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, managers right, because when I was in graduate school,
I was pretty sure that the academy was not going
to be a space for me. I remember having a
conversation with a white woman who was my mentor in
graduate school, and I was sort of coming to her like, gosh,
I don't feel like I belong here. I don't see
any reflection of myself here. And this woman said to me,
(03:31):
you know, Sabrina, some very very very very very very
very She put like fifty barriers on it to be
ultra patronizing.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Some very very very.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Very very smart people just realize that, you know, graduate
school is not for them. So even though I was
doing well, I had the white woman who was assigned
to be my mentor trying to convince me to drop
out of graduate school. It's worth saying that in our
careers I made full professor faster in terms of years
than she did, so there's that.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
But it was a lot of struggle.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
It was a lot of facing down people who tried
to tell me that I didn't belong if I wasn't
willing to try to force myself into the white mold.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Do you think that it was seen as maybe, like
I don't know, competition in a sense, or is it
like I don't know if you've ever seen Insecure, but
oh I always.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Think about that episode when the white woman.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Like she sticks out her hands to EASA when she's
working at the nonprofit and she's like like, you know,
like we got y'all, like I have you and she
sticks her hands out, She's like see you all, like
sit in my hands. I always think about that scene
because like it is very interesting. I think like when
white people are assigned to shepherd in black people, and
like they get like this savior complex, but that savior
(04:40):
ship sometimes looks like opposition or is opposition. What has
that experience been like for you navigating like the space right,
because I'm sure many times you're probably the only black
woman in certain rooms and in certain situations.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Oh yeah, that's one of the difficulties because when you
apply to graduate school, you're not aware of the fact
that there's going to be so few people who look
like you, because undergrad there's usually a decent representation of
black students, and they need that representation there in order
to justify this project. How could we say that we
are a public university if we don't serve the public right,
(05:20):
So they need those black faces to put them in
the brochures. The higher you go up in the academy,
the less of an impetus there is for them to
feel like they need representation across race. And so as
I got to graduate school, there are more questions like wait,
does she belong here? You know, you can almost like
feel the people saying it. I was the only person
(05:42):
in my cohort who wasn't white. There were no Asians
there were no latinos, right, no indigenous folks, nobody but
me who was not white, and so you can imagine
that there was a lot of questions as to what
I was even doing there. So after I finished graduate school,
I did a post doc in philosophy and Black studies,
and that was also a very eye opening experience. I
(06:04):
learned so much from the people that I was working
with on my postdoc, and yet there was still a sense,
and this time it was black people, and so that
needs to be underscored that maybe she's just not ready
to be a professor, perhaps she's not quite good enough.
I had a mentor who was a black guy who
(06:25):
was uninterested in offering me a position, and their eyes
grew the size of dinner plates when they saw that
I had a new postdoc at Berkeley for the upcoming year.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So a lot of.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
These sort of like racist logics that we expect to
circulate in exclusively white spaces do ooze into spaces where
black people are in charge.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
And do you think that's a byproduct of assimilation.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I do.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I think there's a great deal of pressure within the
academic space for black people to perform a certain way,
to prove that they are intellectuals, right, Like we know
that there are so many poets and rappers and activists
who are the deepest intellectuals in our communities. But if
you want to show up in an academic space, there's
a particular type of performance that's expected. People are going
(07:07):
to start asking you about antiquity.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Do you know about the classics? Do you know about
Aristotle and Plato?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Because if you don't, they're going to take that as
a sign that you're not truly an intellectual. So there
is a certain type of line that they expect you
to walk. And fortunately for me, I figured out how
to know about the classics, to be able to speak
antiquity with the best of them and still keep my
black vernacular when I am showing them that they don't
know about me.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about
like DEI, you know, diversity, the equity and inclusion, and
we know George Floyd happened, everybody had a DEI program.
Once the heat goes down, people lose their vigor to fight,
or just don't realize that we're still in a fight.
All of that stuff starts to get erased, and it's
really really affected college campuses across the country. How has
(07:58):
DEI played a role in your careers? And what does
diversity really mean to you?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
You know, DII is so complex because the history and
legacy of these institutions, especially the public schools and in
places like California, is that they were racially exclusive until
the Civil rights movement. So, in a sense, if we
want to have full inclusion in these spaces, what we
need to realize is that the civil rights movement should
not have ended, and we need to think of ourselves
(08:22):
as continuing that legacy. The gains that we thought we made,
let's say in the sixties and seventies, with a variety
of different forms of legislation to finally include us in
spaces where we had been excluded, has been undermined, reversed
through Supreme Court decisions, tipped away at, and really turned
into a shell of its former self. The idea behind diversity, equity,
(08:44):
and inclusion is a good one. It says, no matter
your identity, you have a right to be in the space.
The practices behind them are abysmal. They say, Okay, we're
going to tokenize a few people who are visibly disabled,
visibly black, visibly queer so that we don't look like
we're being homophobic, ablest racists, etc. It's all about the optics.
(09:09):
And so one of the major issues with DEI, for instance,
especially in the wake of something like the George Floyd murder,
was that there was a renewed interest in what these
things were doing for our college campuses. At the school
that I was at when this took place, there was
almost like a town hall meeting in which there was
a prominent black professor on campus who was trying to
(09:32):
explain why there was a relationship between the murder of
black folks in the streets by police and the absence,
relatively of black people on that campus. You would not
be surprised by the sheer number of white people who
spoke about this meeting to say things like, but we
have our DEI programs that are supposed to enable us
(09:54):
to hire black people, so why do we need to
worry about hiring black people on the open market. In
other words, whenever we have a job at we get
to hire whoever we want, and that's a white guy.
We have these specific portals for black people, that's.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
The only way that will hire them.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
This mild mannered black man shouted down so many white people.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It was so eye opening for everyone.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
But it's a reminder when we talk about de I,
what a lot of people want to turn that into
is tokenism. Real inclusion should not involve special policies. Amadu
my thang Amma do my thang.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
I did not come to play.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I don't limit yes m And now the queer artist
Spotlight of Belief. This week's song is the front Row
by bang Garsan. If you know anything about ballroom, then
(10:57):
you will know who this song is from.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
It is the best dress.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Legend icon in my opinion, Bang Garsan, please give a
listen to the front Row and if you would like
to hear the full song, please listen at the end
of the episode. IM and now back to my conversation
(11:35):
with author and professor Sabrina Strings, PhD. I want to
switch though to talking about your writing because you have
a book called The End of Love. I remember reading
the title and thinking to myself like, ooh, like as
a black bear person, I have struggled in the department
with love. I know that the structures of monogamy and
(11:57):
the structures of certain systems and structure, certain things don't
necessarily work for me. I don't like the whole, like
looking for my better half, because I'm not half a
person exactly, even though that's what we're taught, right, We're
supposed to like fill the void with someone else, and
it's like, no, I've already filled my voys that also
has their voice feel so that I'm not using a
person to fill a void because when that person then
(12:17):
removes themselves, that void comes right back. But you talk
about it from the way of how traditional relationships, specifically
for women and black women, long term relationships are like
on a downward spiral. So what do you mean when
you say you know the end of love? Especially because
we have like Bell Hook's book All about Love, So
(12:37):
it's like, oh, okay, like the end of love?
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Okay, So what do you mean when you say that?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
You know, I'm so glad that you invoked Bell Hooks,
my literary godmother, because I have gotten so much from her.
And you know, All about Love is trying to re
educate us about what love is, and that's such an
important project and the End of Love is a companion
to that. So my book is asking the question, what
is causing the die off of so called romantic relationships.
(13:05):
In the Western world, and especially in the United States,
we see that romance is absolutely going away, especially amongst
the younger generations millennial gen z. And we think, okay, well,
it's just a matter of social media. That's because they're
meeting people on the apps and there's no depth there,
or it's just a matter of you know, the economy,
and those things do matter. But the number one reason
(13:27):
why romance is dying is that the gender and sexual
binary that we have been challenging is going away, and
romance turns on these binaries. And so in reality, rather
than crying about the loss of romance, we need to
celebrate it because now we can let go of these
historical forms of creating relationships that did not benefit the
(13:48):
majority and move toward a more encompassing love that can
benefit the majority.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Could you just give us a brief? You know, what
was the catalyst for like writing the book?
Speaker 1 (13:59):
You know, I was in graduate school. I just have
a lot of graduate school fiels today. And I was
on a New Year's Eve vacation with a couple of friends,
and per usual, I was regaling them with my latest
dating disaster. Can you believe I went out with this
guy and in the middle of one of our dates,
he starts making eyes with another woman and trying to
(14:19):
have a conversation with another one, which is a thing
that did indeed happen to me. As I'm trying to
tell them about the horribility that I've experienced yet again
and sort of giggling through it, one of my friends
looks at me with a bit of gravity and is like,
are you okay. I think that was the first time
I decided to reflect on the fact that, well, actually,
perhaps these are traumatic incidents and not skits on SNL
(14:41):
that I should just joke about and then move on.
These are the substance of my dating life, and I'm
supposed to, you know, according to the rhetoric of the West,
find a lifetime partner through dating, and it's not happening.
And so then I started asking myself, what if I
were to start journaling about my experience such that rather
(15:03):
than simply thinking that it's cocktail party fodder to get
people the kiki a little bit and make a couple
of new friends, what if it was a way to
connect with other people who are black, other people who
are queer, the people who are women around the unmitigated
disaster that dating often is for those of us who
are not white, cis gender thin and considered conventionally attractive.
(15:25):
So that was the genesis of the work. I get
a lot of Black women in particular, who telling me,
thank you so much for writing this book. I had
no idea you were going to go so hard, especially
as an academic. People think I'm going to be tiptoeing
(15:45):
and trying to use academies. But instead of all that,
I just hit people with the facts, and there are
so many black women who have appreciated that.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
However, I get a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Of stank ass looks from so many women, some of
them being black, because so many people have bought into
the lie that they need to have a romance to
feel special, to be loved, to have status, to have respect.
You know what, just yesterday I was speaking to one
of my good friends who was married for years and
has decided to separate, and what she said to me was,
(16:17):
you know what, I got married to take off a
box and that WHOA. That really just rattled my chest
because I was like, I think that's why a lot
of women get married. I think that's why a lot
of women choose the trad wife life because you know, oh,
that's how I get status, that's how I earned respect.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I often think about love as community, which Belle talks
about right like, it really is a communal thing. And
I don't hope I've ever said this publicly, but you're
pushing me there, which I love.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Probably I've told people like I am in love with
some of my friends, and not in the way that
you think. It's like, there's a deeper connection than just
friendship that I have with some of my friends.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
I guess, like, would you would.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Depict that love right, like, Oh, I'm able to lay
on my partner's lap while we're watching a movie. I
can do that with friends and not feel some type
of like need for like a sexual connection. That's why
I always think about love like in a much different way.
And maybe it's because, like I've been in a queer
community my whole life, and I got to see like
(17:20):
how we had to create communities, and we had to
create communities of love, whether it was ballroom, whether it
was like our own spaces, but we had to create
love that looked like something outside of the box because
we weren't ever meant to fit in the narrative of love.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
And so what do you think.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That people like straight people in particular, can learn from,
like queer love.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, you know, so often when we even simply say
the word love, what's invoked is romance. And that is
such a serious problem because it displays the way in
which romance has fundamentally colonized our understanding of love. It's
made it seem as if when we say love, we're
ultimately talking about something that is sexual.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Historically, throughout the world, people have understood that love involves
your children, your parents, your friends, your neighbors, It involves
so many different types of people. But what white supremacy
and capitalism are very good at is creating hierarchies, and
within white supremacists capitalist society, a sexual hetero sexual, especially
(18:27):
love that is supposed to somehow last for the rest
of your life is the epitome of love's expression. Notice
that it is possessive, Notice that it is conditional, and
it doesn't extend to everyone in your network. What queer
people have taught us is that loving bonds, familial bonds,
are chosen and they don't have to be about spending
(18:47):
time with one person forever. Instead, it's about expanding our
understanding of our own humanity by allowing other people into
our hearts in a variety of different ways. And so
when we understand that in one can be our love
so long as they show us that they support us,
so long as we reciprocate that energy, and so long
as we want to be with them, we can say
(19:10):
that we are in love. And when we don't try
to hold on to it forever, we're not like possessing
it like this is my person. We can experience it
in a way that is so much more fulfilling than
what most of these sad ass relationships with fuck boys
look like.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I'm glad you went into that. That was where I
was about to go. Is possession right? Because I think
possession leads to toxicity, which typically is birth out of masculinity.
I remember being a baby queer and like chasing masculinity
in a sense, like chasing my own, but chasing it
in others right, because I thought, like, well, I'm the
effeminate one, so I have to then chase this protector
(19:44):
archetype that has been created, or like this breadwinner archetype
or this archetype. But you know, being a scorpio virgo Gemini,
that was never going to happen. I was always going
to be the dominator. Do you think that like now,
like when we say like toxic masculinity, that toxic has
like lost some of the steam that went behind it.
But could you also just kind of talk about like
(20:07):
your thoughts on male toxicity.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
You know, in a way, I really feel for men
because there are a number of men who actually want
to show up and be proud and display their power
and also they're concerned for other human beings. But unfortunately
for men, so much of masculinity is this tight control
amongst themselves.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
In other words, there's.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Usually some older men, and if we're honest, it's often
older white men who are dictating how men need to
behave in order to have the respect of other men,
which is to say, they have the respect of the
people who matter.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
And so there's this fear of appearing feminine. You know, what.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Masculinity actually is is just the antithesis of femininity. It's
a bunch of people who are male identified saying, no,
we are not there whatever they are, We are above
whatever they are, and so whatever power they have, we
are going to deny and we are going to show
that we are the exact opposite of that. That in
and of itself is the toxicity. It's the suggestion that
(21:05):
identifying with various characteristics aggression, stoicism, being aloof, and being
i suppose domineering, that these are the ways in which
we show society that we are worthy of respect. But
in reality, these are the ways in which you show
that you do not respect other individuals. So how is
(21:25):
it possible that we can actually cultivate a type of
masculinity that says men are worthy of respect and love,
men should show respect and love, and that these qualities
that we have labeled toxic are not the sum total
of who they are. There are actually some of the
worst aspects of the things that they have been taught
to valorize. And once we start to soften that, we
(21:47):
can start to build a kind of world in which
men aren't afraid that someone is going to be taking
something away from them by suggesting that they have feminine qualities.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
That is so point I talk about in my first book,
Always Aren't Blue. I talk about how, like the first
time my father ever said I love you.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
I think I was twenty one, Oh wow, and like
gave me a huge hug and like all of that.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And this was after he had a health scare where
he thought he was gonna die, and I was like, damn,
it almost took death to push you to this place
where you, you know, you broke a wall of what
you thought masculinity had to look like before that time.
His way of expressing love was through gifts. He would,
you know, Christmases were huge and all of those things,
(22:31):
and he would always make sure we had what we wanted.
And I often think it tied back to his dad,
who was from what I know, I never met the man,
but everybody always just told me that his dad was
very mean and very sourly. Surely is a very old word,
so you're gonna have to google it, but mean necessarily
was what he used to tell me. As you said,
there are times where you do feel for men because
(22:53):
the construct is so heavy on them that they can't
fully have the freedom to express themselves. And sometimes it
comes from women, right who are like, if my man
drinks a mimosa, that's a problem, and you're like, what.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Why he can drink orange juice.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
He can drinking together.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
I see, my man, they drinking mimosa.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
And now back to my conversation with author and professor
Sabrina Strings, PhD. You know, I wanted to stay on
the same subject but kind of go into let's say,
a subculture of like vasculinity, toxic masculinity. There were a
lot of black rappers recently who performed at a particular inauguration.
(23:58):
A lot of thoughts came from all yards of the internet,
specifically because rap hip hop, you always thought that was
like the incubator of radical thought. Not for every rapper,
let's be very clear, but rap has always been seen
as a way to raise social awareness, social consciousness, to
kind of talk about the narrative of the black experience.
But do you still feel though that like it is
(24:20):
a way to challenge the status quo or is it
just another branch of patriarchy that kind of is now
having the veil lifted.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
So a lot of people don't realize that rap was
a direct outgrowth of the civil rights movement. At the
tell end of the civil rights movement, as we were
moving into the Black power era, there was all of
this discontent's talking about the nineteen seventies in which black
people were like, we have all these demands, they are
still not met. Our communities are not being serviced. And
so some of the earliest forms of rap, some of
(24:53):
the earliest hip hop tracks, you know, as black men
wearing a bunch of outfits with beads on, you.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Know, like see Quinz.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
You know, we're talking about that nineteen seventies and also
early eighties rap, they were talking about black and miseration.
They were talking about all of the ills that were
still going on in the black community. Just go back
and take a look at what rap used to be about.
Rap stopped being about that the moment it became profitable
when rap was commercialized in the late eighties, largely through
(25:21):
the work of you know, acts like NWA. Now we're
starting to see rap taking on a lot more of
the contours of things that we like to talk about
as toxic masculinity, aggression, power, dominating women in particular. Now
NWA is an interesting group because they didn't have just
one message. Their message wasn't just you know, about bitches
(25:43):
and holes, but that was in there. It was also
about challenging the police, and so there were many different
aspects of life in the ghetto that they were exploring.
But over time we're the message about challenging the police.
Speaker 7 (25:54):
Go.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Rap is now the number one form of music in
America and its largest audience is white, cis gender, heterosexual men.
Do you think they want to hear about challenging the police. No,
they want to hear about women dropping it low. They
want to hear about black men shooting other blacke men.
They want to hear about black men's hunting drugs because
that is the racist lower. So many rap acts have
absolutely did a one eighty from the history of rap
(26:18):
and are now, unfortunately many of them simply representing white supremacy.
If you don't believe me, go listen to J. Coles
nineteen eighty five. So rap is variegated. It's many different things.
But we have to remember what a man who many
of us regard as the godfather of rap, Gil Scott Heron, said,
the Revolution will not be televised. So once something makes
(26:40):
it to TV, when something makes it big in the media,
it's probably simply going to be representing white's interests.
Speaker 8 (26:48):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Powerful, Yeah, black men historically have been conservative.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Come on, let's get into it.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
You know, and people are like, what do you mean.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I'm like, listen, Like, even if you look at black sitcoms,
I'm like, most of the black men who we love
on most sitcoms were Republicans. Like even like their characters were.
Uncle Phil was a Republican, Bill Cosby, Bill Cosby was
a Republican. Even one of my favorite characters from a
Different World, Colonel Taylor, he was a Republican. And I'm like,
(27:26):
y'all have to realize, like black men historically have been conservative.
Even if what they thought they were doing was radical
or dynamic, it still was wrapped in a conservatism, which
was wrapped in a patriarchy, which is wrapped in whiteness.
But a lot of those sitcoms, if you think about
when they came out, were also coming out as a
tool to combat the other side, which looked like hip hop.
Speaker 8 (27:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
It was like, now we're going to show black people
in this particular light to almost push back against it.
And I always think about the episode of a Different
World where Whitley was so upset that Heavy D was
coming to rap, and it was like Heavy D wasn't
even right, you know, like like the rapper that you
like that was talking about the police or anything. But
like I always think about like how certain black rappers
or whatever, like how they were looked upon just by
(28:11):
certain aspects of the community, and how rap was just
looked at as just people throwing words together that didn't
make sense or getting people rouled up for no reason
right when things were good.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
And so it is.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
It's been interesting to watch the transformation of it to
where we are today, where I mean, most rap music
sounds the same Ja Cole puts me to sleep, but
but it's like a surface level narrative of consciousness, right,
and it doesn't really get to the heart of like
the matters that happen. And there are certain you know,
rappers who clearly are pushing the bounds and trying, but
(28:43):
also who need to still read. You know, I don't
know when reading stopped, but like people got to start reading.
I understand your analysis is coming from like this place
of experience, but also like faith without works is dead
and the work should be reading.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So a couple of years ago, this woman that I know,
let's just say, like this is a white woman and
I'm gonna just BEPI a hall of the tea right now,
we were working together, and she's in her seventies and
at a certain point her son reached out to me
and she was like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
You know, would you mind if my son contacts you?
And I was like sure.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Her son was like fourteen years younger than me, so
I thought he was going to ask me something having
to do with college, but it turns out that he
was trying to holler at me. Now I was a
little bit like what, but I was still like, you
know what, I'm still going to talk to him because
he's a nice guy. And I wasn't convinced at all
that I was going to get into anything sexual with
this person. But what killed it was the fact that
(29:35):
we would have conversations and you know, this person identifies
as black. He's biracial, but identifies as black, And frequently
he'd wanted to tell me about rep and I'd be like,
but what are you reading and he.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Would be like, well, I haven't read such in a while.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And I'm thinking, here's a man in college not reading,
trying to holler at a professor. And he kept saying
things like you know, I know reading is fundamental, but.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
I was like, nah, it's scared.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Let's stop, right there because he wants to be an activist.
He wants to be involved with someone who is doing
work as a scholar activists such as myself, and he
don't want to know anything about any books. I was like,
here's an email with a list of black feminition you
need to read, and there get after it. When we
talk about black activism the Black Panthers, for example, an
important part of their tenpoint program was studying. Knowing about capitalism,
(30:25):
knowing about the history of race, knowing about the aspects
of this world that impact us as black people was
foundational to the work that they were doing. So the
very idea that you could be a young black person
today and not read and somehow think of yourself as
being knowledgeable as an activist, the whole thing is preposterous.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
What I am tired of this week is the binary
miracle will now only have two genders, and that's male
and female. So confirmation that the person who is running
the country doesn't read because male and female is not
gener that's that.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
So that's number one, number two.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
That's already the standard of the United States unless you
were intersex. But I think that I am just tired
of the binary of itself, which is a two party
political system, the binary of gender, the binary of sexuality.
When we know that most things are gray, everything is
a gray area. To me, I am tired of black
folks having to choose the lesser of two evils when
(31:35):
there's always a third option of choosing no evil at all, right,
and people thinking that we should be bullied into having
to always make those decisions, and pretty much every aspect
of our lives. And so I want people to get
rid of the binaries. When you think it's either this
or either that, try and find that third thing, because
that is what pushes us and saves us. And so
(31:57):
I want to ask you, is there anything that you
are tired of this week?
Speaker 1 (32:01):
I'm tired this week the same thing that I'm tired
of most weeks of living in America, which is the
pretense that we're in a multi racial democracy.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
We are not in a multi racial democracy.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
America has never been that, and significantly, America will never
be that. And here's why the whole concept of race
is hierarchical. It says that there are white people at
the top, there are other people of color in the middle,
and there are black people at the bottom. How in
the hell are we going to use a hierarchy and
turn it into a democracy that will never work Unless
we abolish race, We're always going to have racism, and
(32:34):
so we are not going to create a multi racial
democracy in this place. But you can understand how the
very idea of that keeps all of us striving for
something that will never be and therefore keeps us complacent
in a way and keeps us in this system.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
We need to be making revolution.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
We need to know that we will not ever have
a multiracial democracy.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
You heard it here first.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
So I always like to end by everybody having their
quote of the year for twenty twenty five that you want.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
To live by the love that you are seeking is
within you. You will not find it in other people.
You will find it within yourself.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Ooh so beautiful. I love that.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I'm so grateful to have had this conversation today with
Saverna Strings.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
Remember that love is within yourself, all right.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
That was fun.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships,
not just romantic bonds. That's from Black feminist scholar and
pioneer Belle Hooks. Sabrina mentioned her two thousand book All
About Love. Hooks is known for writing at the intersection
of race, gender, class, and sexuality, but was never interested
(33:50):
in being reduced to her identity, choosing to spell her
name in lowercase to shift attention away from her and
towards her ideas MHM. Loving well being a task means
that it is an action, an action that should be
taken in romantic relationships, but not just romantic relationships. It
should also be taken in any friendships, and it could
(34:11):
even be taken in people that you may not really know.
The biggest thing about loving well, though, is the reminder
that we must love ourselves just as well as we
love others, because we all know that you cannot pour
love from an empty cup.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
And here in full is the Front Row by bang
Gar Song.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Thanks for listening to Fighting Words and hope you'll join
us for another round next week.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
I want to one.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
I'm going to.
Speaker 8 (34:53):
I'm going to one on the front row.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
I'm on the front row.
Speaker 8 (35:23):
I'm on the front bro. I'm on the front Bro.
I'm on the front pro. I'm on the front Bro.
I'm on the front Bro. I'm on the fun croup.
I on the fun pro.
Speaker 9 (35:29):
I'm on the front Prop. I'm on the front grow.
I'm on the fun Bro. I'm on the f Bro.
Speaker 5 (35:33):
I'm on the Roman.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
Then I'm on the run.
Speaker 8 (35:36):
I'm on them, on the row. I'm on the front.
I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (35:59):
I'm on the front job.
Speaker 9 (36:05):
I'm on the front Job. I'm on the g I'm
(36:27):
on the fun Group. I'm on the group.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
I know the Glop.
Speaker 8 (36:29):
I'm on the fun group. I'm on the fun group.
I'm on the group.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
I know the group. Then glop. I'm on the funny group.
Speaker 8 (36:35):
I'm on the group.
Speaker 5 (36:36):
I'm on the group. I'm on the job.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
I'm on the fun group.
Speaker 8 (36:39):
I'm on the fun group.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
I know the.
Speaker 6 (36:43):
Where's your seat, Where's your seat? Where's your seat? Where's
your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seat?
Where's your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seat?
Speaker 5 (36:55):
Where's your sad? Sounds? After talk to do the funny Rock.
Speaker 8 (37:22):
I want the money drop.
Speaker 5 (37:23):
IM on the drop. I'm on the fun Prop.
Speaker 8 (37:24):
I want the funny rock. I want the funk Prop.
I want the mon Rock.
Speaker 10 (37:27):
I'm going the fun Up.
Speaker 8 (37:28):
I want the funning Rock.
Speaker 5 (37:29):
I want the f Bro. I'm on the rock.
Speaker 10 (37:31):
I'm going then the fun rob, I want the fun
row you want, I want the flow you want to.
Speaker 8 (37:57):
I'm on the front, pro, I want the fun prop.
I'm on the funny Up. I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
Bro, I'm on the front.
Speaker 8 (38:01):
Bro, I'm on the front. Im on the f Bro,
I'm on the front. Bro, I'm on the front.
Speaker 7 (38:05):
Bro.
Speaker 8 (38:05):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
Bro.
Speaker 8 (38:06):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (38:07):
Bro.
Speaker 8 (38:07):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Bro.
Speaker 8 (38:08):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 6 (38:09):
Bro.
Speaker 10 (38:09):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 6 (38:10):
Bro.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Bro, I'm on the front.
Speaker 8 (38:12):
Brow I'm on the front. I'm on the front. I'm
(38:36):
on the front. I'm on the front.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
From Brow, from the.
Speaker 7 (39:05):
Want where's your seats?
Speaker 6 (39:18):
Where's your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seats? Where's
your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seats? Where's your seats?
Where's your seat? Where's your seat?
Speaker 5 (39:29):
Where's your.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Fighting words?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
It is production of iHeart Podcast in partnership with bets
Case Studios. I'm Georgian Johnson. This episode was produced by
Charlotte Morley as that Can. Producers are myself and Tweaky
pu Gi Guar Song with Adam Pinks and Brick Cats
for Best Case Studios. The theme song was written and
composed by cole Vos, Bambianna and myself. Original music by Colevas.
(40:13):
This episode was edited and scored by Max Michael Miller.
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Carl Ketel following
rap Fighting Words Wherever you get your Podcast
What we thought love was based on these romantic narratives
is absolutely racist, sexist, horseshit shit.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
That's Sabrina strings. And as you can hear, she has
strong opinions. She's a master at making you think about
universal concepts like love in a whole new way.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Instead of trying to salvage it by trying to force
people to figure out, Okay, wait, how do I need.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
To behave to be loved?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Instead, notice the fact that that kind of love is conditional.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Romance is conditional.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Sabrina is a professor of sociology at the University of California.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
In early twenty twenty four, she published.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
A book called The End of Love, which examines where
our modern understanding of romance came from.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
It was literally a story that was written in the
Middle Ages by powerful Western European Christians to be able
to explain why they were worthy of romantic fairy tales,
even as they were explaining why other individuals who were
not of their same class and status were not. And
so when I talk about the end of bluff, I
talk about the end of that kind of toxic, white centric,
(01:09):
heteronormative form of glove.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Singing in the heavy handed some of the world tickets.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
Super brandy and spoken guy. You know what the plan is?
Speaker 4 (01:23):
O pajama Latin?
Speaker 5 (01:24):
You know when to seem to stand me.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
My name is George M. Johnson.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I am the Immy nominated New York Times bestselling author
of the book All Boys Aren't Blue, which is also
the second most BAM book in the United States.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
This is Fighting Words.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
A show where we take you to the front lines
of the culture wars with the people who are using
their words to make change and who refuse to be silenced.
Today's guest is Sabrina Strings, PhD. We're going to talk
about racism on campus, how white supremacy shows up, and
rap and what you thought was love versus the real
thing and heads up. We recorded this interview as the
(02:03):
fires were happening in La where I live. I am
here today with the amazing Savarina Strings. How are you
doing today?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I'm great. How are you doing, George?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
You know, Los Angeles is an interesting space right now,
but you know, despite the current climate of the country,
I'm doing pretty well today. Just wanted to introduce you
to all of the listeners out there. Who is Sabrina Strings.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Let's see I am a writer, a teacher, I'm a meditator,
and I'm a Los Angeles native. So I understand the
pain that so many people are feeling right now.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
I'm feeling it too.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, it's been very very interesting out here where I
really wanted to start though. I'm an author and I
travel to a lot of colleges, and so I speak
at HBCUs pwi's for those who don't know HBCUs. Historically
black colleges and universities pwy's are predominantly white institutions. How
did you meetage to enter American academia was considered like
(03:04):
an elite white space. What has like your journey been
through entering the academia space as a black woman?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, managers right, because when I was in graduate school,
I was pretty sure that the academy was not going
to be a space for me. I remember having a
conversation with a white woman who was my mentor in
graduate school, and I was sort of coming to her like, gosh,
I don't feel like I belong here. I don't see
any reflection of myself here. And this woman said to me,
(03:31):
you know, Sabrina, some very very very very very very
very She put like fifty barriers on it to be
ultra patronizing.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Some very very very.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Very very smart people just realize that, you know, graduate
school is not for them. So even though I was
doing well, I had the white woman who was assigned
to be my mentor trying to convince me to drop
out of graduate school. It's worth saying that in our
careers I made full professor faster in terms of years
than she did, so there's that.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
But it was a lot of struggle.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
It was a lot of facing down people who tried
to tell me that I didn't belong if I wasn't
willing to try to force myself into the white mold.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Do you think that it was seen as maybe, like
I don't know, competition in a sense, or is it
like I don't know if you've ever seen Insecure, but
oh I always.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Think about that episode when the white woman.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Like she sticks out her hands to EASA when she's
working at the nonprofit and she's like like, you know,
like we got y'all, like I have you and she
sticks her hands out, She's like see you all, like
sit in my hands. I always think about that scene
because like it is very interesting. I think like when
white people are assigned to shepherd in black people, and
like they get like this savior complex, but that savior
(04:40):
ship sometimes looks like opposition or is opposition. What has
that experience been like for you navigating like the space right,
because I'm sure many times you're probably the only black
woman in certain rooms and in certain situations.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Oh yeah, that's one of the difficulties because when you
apply to graduate school, you're not aware of the fact
that there's going to be so few people who look
like you, because undergrad there's usually a decent representation of
black students, and they need that representation there in order
to justify this project. How could we say that we
are a public university if we don't serve the public right,
(05:20):
So they need those black faces to put them in
the brochures. The higher you go up in the academy,
the less of an impetus there is for them to
feel like they need representation across race. And so as
I got to graduate school, there are more questions like wait,
does she belong here? You know, you can almost like
feel the people saying it. I was the only person
(05:42):
in my cohort who wasn't white. There were no Asians
there were no latinos, right, no indigenous folks, nobody but
me who was not white, and so you can imagine
that there was a lot of questions as to what
I was even doing there. So after I finished graduate school,
I did a post doc in philosophy and Black studies,
and that was also a very eye opening experience. I
(06:04):
learned so much from the people that I was working
with on my postdoc, and yet there was still a sense,
and this time it was black people, and so that
needs to be underscored that maybe she's just not ready
to be a professor, perhaps she's not quite good enough.
I had a mentor who was a black guy who
(06:25):
was uninterested in offering me a position, and their eyes
grew the size of dinner plates when they saw that
I had a new postdoc at Berkeley for the upcoming year.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So a lot of.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
These sort of like racist logics that we expect to
circulate in exclusively white spaces do ooze into spaces where
black people are in charge.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
And do you think that's a byproduct of assimilation.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I do.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I think there's a great deal of pressure within the
academic space for black people to perform a certain way,
to prove that they are intellectuals, right, Like we know
that there are so many poets and rappers and activists
who are the deepest intellectuals in our communities. But if
you want to show up in an academic space, there's
a particular type of performance that's expected. People are going
(07:07):
to start asking you about antiquity.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Do you know about the classics? Do you know about
Aristotle and Plato?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Because if you don't, they're going to take that as
a sign that you're not truly an intellectual. So there
is a certain type of line that they expect you
to walk. And fortunately for me, I figured out how
to know about the classics, to be able to speak
antiquity with the best of them and still keep my
black vernacular when I am showing them that they don't
know about me.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about
like DEI, you know, diversity, the equity and inclusion, and
we know George Floyd happened, everybody had a DEI program.
Once the heat goes down, people lose their vigor to fight,
or just don't realize that we're still in a fight.
All of that stuff starts to get erased, and it's
really really affected college campuses across the country. How has
(07:58):
DEI played a role in your careers? And what does
diversity really mean to you?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
You know, DII is so complex because the history and
legacy of these institutions, especially the public schools and in
places like California, is that they were racially exclusive until
the Civil rights movement. So, in a sense, if we
want to have full inclusion in these spaces, what we
need to realize is that the civil rights movement should
not have ended, and we need to think of ourselves
(08:22):
as continuing that legacy. The gains that we thought we made,
let's say in the sixties and seventies, with a variety
of different forms of legislation to finally include us in
spaces where we had been excluded, has been undermined, reversed
through Supreme Court decisions, tipped away at, and really turned
into a shell of its former self. The idea behind diversity, equity,
(08:44):
and inclusion is a good one. It says, no matter
your identity, you have a right to be in the space.
The practices behind them are abysmal. They say, Okay, we're
going to tokenize a few people who are visibly disabled,
visibly black, visibly queer so that we don't look like
we're being homophobic, ablest racists, etc. It's all about the optics.
(09:09):
And so one of the major issues with DEI, for instance,
especially in the wake of something like the George Floyd murder,
was that there was a renewed interest in what these
things were doing for our college campuses. At the school
that I was at when this took place, there was
almost like a town hall meeting in which there was
a prominent black professor on campus who was trying to
(09:32):
explain why there was a relationship between the murder of
black folks in the streets by police and the absence,
relatively of black people on that campus. You would not
be surprised by the sheer number of white people who
spoke about this meeting to say things like, but we
have our DEI programs that are supposed to enable us
(09:54):
to hire black people, so why do we need to
worry about hiring black people on the open market. In
other words, whenever we have a job at we get
to hire whoever we want, and that's a white guy.
We have these specific portals for black people, that's.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
The only way that will hire them.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
This mild mannered black man shouted down so many white people.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
It was so eye opening for everyone.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
But it's a reminder when we talk about de I,
what a lot of people want to turn that into
is tokenism. Real inclusion should not involve special policies. Amadu
my thang Amma do my thang.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
I did not come to play.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I don't limit yes m And now the queer artist
Spotlight of Belief. This week's song is the front Row
by bang Garsan. If you know anything about ballroom, then
(10:57):
you will know who this song is from.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
It is the best dress.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Legend icon in my opinion, Bang Garsan, please give a
listen to the front Row and if you would like
to hear the full song, please listen at the end
of the episode. IM and now back to my conversation
(11:35):
with author and professor Sabrina Strings, PhD. I want to
switch though to talking about your writing because you have
a book called The End of Love. I remember reading
the title and thinking to myself like, ooh, like as
a black bear person, I have struggled in the department
with love. I know that the structures of monogamy and
(11:57):
the structures of certain systems and structure, certain things don't
necessarily work for me. I don't like the whole, like
looking for my better half, because I'm not half a
person exactly, even though that's what we're taught, right, We're
supposed to like fill the void with someone else, and
it's like, no, I've already filled my voys that also
has their voice feel so that I'm not using a
person to fill a void because when that person then
(12:17):
removes themselves, that void comes right back. But you talk
about it from the way of how traditional relationships, specifically
for women and black women, long term relationships are like
on a downward spiral. So what do you mean when
you say you know the end of love? Especially because
we have like Bell Hook's book All about Love, So
(12:37):
it's like, oh, okay, like the end of love?
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Okay, So what do you mean when you say that?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
You know, I'm so glad that you invoked Bell Hooks,
my literary godmother, because I have gotten so much from her.
And you know, All about Love is trying to re
educate us about what love is, and that's such an
important project and the End of Love is a companion
to that. So my book is asking the question, what
is causing the die off of so called romantic relationships.
(13:05):
In the Western world, and especially in the United States,
we see that romance is absolutely going away, especially amongst
the younger generations millennial gen z. And we think, okay, well,
it's just a matter of social media. That's because they're
meeting people on the apps and there's no depth there,
or it's just a matter of you know, the economy,
and those things do matter. But the number one reason
(13:27):
why romance is dying is that the gender and sexual
binary that we have been challenging is going away, and
romance turns on these binaries. And so in reality, rather
than crying about the loss of romance, we need to
celebrate it because now we can let go of these
historical forms of creating relationships that did not benefit the
(13:48):
majority and move toward a more encompassing love that can
benefit the majority.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Could you just give us a brief? You know, what
was the catalyst for like writing the book?
Speaker 1 (13:59):
You know, I was in graduate school. I just have
a lot of graduate school fiels today. And I was
on a New Year's Eve vacation with a couple of friends,
and per usual, I was regaling them with my latest
dating disaster. Can you believe I went out with this
guy and in the middle of one of our dates,
he starts making eyes with another woman and trying to
(14:19):
have a conversation with another one, which is a thing
that did indeed happen to me. As I'm trying to
tell them about the horribility that I've experienced yet again
and sort of giggling through it, one of my friends
looks at me with a bit of gravity and is like,
are you okay. I think that was the first time
I decided to reflect on the fact that, well, actually,
perhaps these are traumatic incidents and not skits on SNL
(14:41):
that I should just joke about and then move on.
These are the substance of my dating life, and I'm
supposed to, you know, according to the rhetoric of the West,
find a lifetime partner through dating, and it's not happening.
And so then I started asking myself, what if I
were to start journaling about my experience such that rather
(15:03):
than simply thinking that it's cocktail party fodder to get
people the kiki a little bit and make a couple
of new friends, what if it was a way to
connect with other people who are black, other people who
are queer, the people who are women around the unmitigated
disaster that dating often is for those of us who
are not white, cis gender thin and considered conventionally attractive.
(15:25):
So that was the genesis of the work. I get
a lot of Black women in particular, who telling me,
thank you so much for writing this book. I had
no idea you were going to go so hard, especially
as an academic. People think I'm going to be tiptoeing
(15:45):
and trying to use academies. But instead of all that,
I just hit people with the facts, and there are
so many black women who have appreciated that.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
However, I get a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Of stank ass looks from so many women, some of
them being black, because so many people have bought into
the lie that they need to have a romance to
feel special, to be loved, to have status, to have respect.
You know what, just yesterday I was speaking to one
of my good friends who was married for years and
has decided to separate, and what she said to me was,
(16:17):
you know what, I got married to take off a
box and that WHOA. That really just rattled my chest
because I was like, I think that's why a lot
of women get married. I think that's why a lot
of women choose the trad wife life because you know, oh,
that's how I get status, that's how I earned respect.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I often think about love as community, which Belle talks
about right like, it really is a communal thing. And
I don't hope I've ever said this publicly, but you're
pushing me there, which I love.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Probably I've told people like I am in love with
some of my friends, and not in the way that
you think. It's like, there's a deeper connection than just
friendship that I have with some of my friends.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
I guess, like, would you would.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Depict that love right, like, Oh, I'm able to lay
on my partner's lap while we're watching a movie. I
can do that with friends and not feel some type
of like need for like a sexual connection. That's why
I always think about love like in a much different way.
And maybe it's because, like I've been in a queer
community my whole life, and I got to see like
(17:20):
how we had to create communities, and we had to
create communities of love, whether it was ballroom, whether it
was like our own spaces, but we had to create
love that looked like something outside of the box because
we weren't ever meant to fit in the narrative of love.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
And so what do you think.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That people like straight people in particular, can learn from,
like queer love.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, you know, so often when we even simply say
the word love, what's invoked is romance. And that is
such a serious problem because it displays the way in
which romance has fundamentally colonized our understanding of love. It's
made it seem as if when we say love, we're
ultimately talking about something that is sexual.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Historically, throughout the world, people have understood that love involves
your children, your parents, your friends, your neighbors, It involves
so many different types of people. But what white supremacy
and capitalism are very good at is creating hierarchies, and
within white supremacists capitalist society, a sexual hetero sexual, especially
(18:27):
love that is supposed to somehow last for the rest
of your life is the epitome of love's expression. Notice
that it is possessive, Notice that it is conditional, and
it doesn't extend to everyone in your network. What queer
people have taught us is that loving bonds, familial bonds,
are chosen and they don't have to be about spending
(18:47):
time with one person forever. Instead, it's about expanding our
understanding of our own humanity by allowing other people into
our hearts in a variety of different ways. And so
when we understand that in one can be our love
so long as they show us that they support us,
so long as we reciprocate that energy, and so long
as we want to be with them, we can say
(19:10):
that we are in love. And when we don't try
to hold on to it forever, we're not like possessing
it like this is my person. We can experience it
in a way that is so much more fulfilling than
what most of these sad ass relationships with fuck boys
look like.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I'm glad you went into that. That was where I
was about to go. Is possession right? Because I think
possession leads to toxicity, which typically is birth out of masculinity.
I remember being a baby queer and like chasing masculinity
in a sense, like chasing my own, but chasing it
in others right, because I thought, like, well, I'm the
effeminate one, so I have to then chase this protector
(19:44):
archetype that has been created, or like this breadwinner archetype
or this archetype. But you know, being a scorpio virgo Gemini,
that was never going to happen. I was always going
to be the dominator. Do you think that like now,
like when we say like toxic masculinity, that toxic has
like lost some of the steam that went behind it.
But could you also just kind of talk about like
(20:07):
your thoughts on male toxicity.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
You know, in a way, I really feel for men
because there are a number of men who actually want
to show up and be proud and display their power
and also they're concerned for other human beings. But unfortunately
for men, so much of masculinity is this tight control
amongst themselves.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
In other words, there's.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Usually some older men, and if we're honest, it's often
older white men who are dictating how men need to
behave in order to have the respect of other men,
which is to say, they have the respect of the
people who matter.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
And so there's this fear of appearing feminine. You know, what.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Masculinity actually is is just the antithesis of femininity. It's
a bunch of people who are male identified saying, no,
we are not there whatever they are, We are above
whatever they are, and so whatever power they have, we
are going to deny and we are going to show
that we are the exact opposite of that. That in
and of itself is the toxicity. It's the suggestion that
(21:05):
identifying with various characteristics aggression, stoicism, being aloof, and being
i suppose domineering, that these are the ways in which
we show society that we are worthy of respect. But
in reality, these are the ways in which you show
that you do not respect other individuals. So how is
(21:25):
it possible that we can actually cultivate a type of
masculinity that says men are worthy of respect and love,
men should show respect and love, and that these qualities
that we have labeled toxic are not the sum total
of who they are. There are actually some of the
worst aspects of the things that they have been taught
to valorize. And once we start to soften that, we
(21:47):
can start to build a kind of world in which
men aren't afraid that someone is going to be taking
something away from them by suggesting that they have feminine qualities.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
That is so point I talk about in my first book,
Always Aren't Blue. I talk about how, like the first
time my father ever said I love you.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
I think I was twenty one, Oh wow, and like
gave me a huge hug and like all of that.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And this was after he had a health scare where
he thought he was gonna die, and I was like, damn,
it almost took death to push you to this place
where you, you know, you broke a wall of what
you thought masculinity had to look like before that time.
His way of expressing love was through gifts. He would,
you know, Christmases were huge and all of those things,
(22:31):
and he would always make sure we had what we wanted.
And I often think it tied back to his dad,
who was from what I know, I never met the man,
but everybody always just told me that his dad was
very mean and very sourly. Surely is a very old word,
so you're gonna have to google it, but mean necessarily
was what he used to tell me. As you said,
there are times where you do feel for men because
(22:53):
the construct is so heavy on them that they can't
fully have the freedom to express themselves. And sometimes it
comes from women, right who are like, if my man
drinks a mimosa, that's a problem, and you're like, what.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Why he can drink orange juice.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
He can drinking together.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
I see, my man, they drinking mimosa.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
And now back to my conversation with author and professor
Sabrina Strings, PhD. You know, I wanted to stay on
the same subject but kind of go into let's say,
a subculture of like vasculinity, toxic masculinity. There were a
lot of black rappers recently who performed at a particular inauguration.
(23:58):
A lot of thoughts came from all yards of the internet,
specifically because rap hip hop, you always thought that was
like the incubator of radical thought. Not for every rapper,
let's be very clear, but rap has always been seen
as a way to raise social awareness, social consciousness, to
kind of talk about the narrative of the black experience.
But do you still feel though that like it is
(24:20):
a way to challenge the status quo or is it
just another branch of patriarchy that kind of is now
having the veil lifted.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
So a lot of people don't realize that rap was
a direct outgrowth of the civil rights movement. At the
tell end of the civil rights movement, as we were
moving into the Black power era, there was all of
this discontent's talking about the nineteen seventies in which black
people were like, we have all these demands, they are
still not met. Our communities are not being serviced. And
so some of the earliest forms of rap, some of
(24:53):
the earliest hip hop tracks, you know, as black men
wearing a bunch of outfits with beads on, you.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Know, like see Quinz.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
You know, we're talking about that nineteen seventies and also
early eighties rap, they were talking about black and miseration.
They were talking about all of the ills that were
still going on in the black community. Just go back
and take a look at what rap used to be about.
Rap stopped being about that the moment it became profitable
when rap was commercialized in the late eighties, largely through
(25:21):
the work of you know, acts like NWA. Now we're
starting to see rap taking on a lot more of
the contours of things that we like to talk about
as toxic masculinity, aggression, power, dominating women in particular. Now
NWA is an interesting group because they didn't have just
one message. Their message wasn't just you know, about bitches
(25:43):
and holes, but that was in there. It was also
about challenging the police, and so there were many different
aspects of life in the ghetto that they were exploring.
But over time we're the message about challenging the police.
Speaker 7 (25:54):
Go.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Rap is now the number one form of music in
America and its largest audience is white, cis gender, heterosexual men.
Do you think they want to hear about challenging the police. No,
they want to hear about women dropping it low. They
want to hear about black men shooting other blacke men.
They want to hear about black men's hunting drugs because
that is the racist lower. So many rap acts have
absolutely did a one eighty from the history of rap
(26:18):
and are now, unfortunately many of them simply representing white supremacy.
If you don't believe me, go listen to J. Coles
nineteen eighty five. So rap is variegated. It's many different things.
But we have to remember what a man who many
of us regard as the godfather of rap, Gil Scott Heron, said,
the Revolution will not be televised. So once something makes
(26:40):
it to TV, when something makes it big in the media,
it's probably simply going to be representing white's interests.
Speaker 8 (26:48):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Powerful, Yeah, black men historically have been conservative.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Come on, let's get into it.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
You know, and people are like, what do you mean.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I'm like, listen, Like, even if you look at black sitcoms,
I'm like, most of the black men who we love
on most sitcoms were Republicans. Like even like their characters were.
Uncle Phil was a Republican, Bill Cosby, Bill Cosby was
a Republican. Even one of my favorite characters from a
Different World, Colonel Taylor, he was a Republican. And I'm like,
(27:26):
y'all have to realize, like black men historically have been conservative.
Even if what they thought they were doing was radical
or dynamic, it still was wrapped in a conservatism, which
was wrapped in a patriarchy, which is wrapped in whiteness.
But a lot of those sitcoms, if you think about
when they came out, were also coming out as a
tool to combat the other side, which looked like hip hop.
Speaker 8 (27:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
It was like, now we're going to show black people
in this particular light to almost push back against it.
And I always think about the episode of a Different
World where Whitley was so upset that Heavy D was
coming to rap, and it was like Heavy D wasn't
even right, you know, like like the rapper that you
like that was talking about the police or anything. But
like I always think about like how certain black rappers
or whatever, like how they were looked upon just by
(28:11):
certain aspects of the community, and how rap was just
looked at as just people throwing words together that didn't
make sense or getting people rouled up for no reason
right when things were good.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
And so it is.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
It's been interesting to watch the transformation of it to
where we are today, where I mean, most rap music
sounds the same Ja Cole puts me to sleep, but
but it's like a surface level narrative of consciousness, right,
and it doesn't really get to the heart of like
the matters that happen. And there are certain you know,
rappers who clearly are pushing the bounds and trying, but
(28:43):
also who need to still read. You know, I don't
know when reading stopped, but like people got to start reading.
I understand your analysis is coming from like this place
of experience, but also like faith without works is dead
and the work should be reading.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So a couple of years ago, this woman that I know,
let's just say, like this is a white woman and
I'm gonna just BEPI a hall of the tea right now,
we were working together, and she's in her seventies and
at a certain point her son reached out to me
and she was like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
You know, would you mind if my son contacts you?
And I was like sure.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Her son was like fourteen years younger than me, so
I thought he was going to ask me something having
to do with college, but it turns out that he
was trying to holler at me. Now I was a
little bit like what, but I was still like, you
know what, I'm still going to talk to him because
he's a nice guy. And I wasn't convinced at all
that I was going to get into anything sexual with
this person. But what killed it was the fact that
(29:35):
we would have conversations and you know, this person identifies
as black. He's biracial, but identifies as black, And frequently
he'd wanted to tell me about rep and I'd be like,
but what are you reading and he.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Would be like, well, I haven't read such in a while.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And I'm thinking, here's a man in college not reading,
trying to holler at a professor. And he kept saying
things like you know, I know reading is fundamental, but.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
I was like, nah, it's scared.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Let's stop, right there because he wants to be an activist.
He wants to be involved with someone who is doing
work as a scholar activists such as myself, and he
don't want to know anything about any books. I was like,
here's an email with a list of black feminition you
need to read, and there get after it. When we
talk about black activism the Black Panthers, for example, an
important part of their tenpoint program was studying. Knowing about capitalism,
(30:25):
knowing about the history of race, knowing about the aspects
of this world that impact us as black people was
foundational to the work that they were doing. So the
very idea that you could be a young black person
today and not read and somehow think of yourself as
being knowledgeable as an activist, the whole thing is preposterous.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
What I am tired of this week is the binary
miracle will now only have two genders, and that's male
and female. So confirmation that the person who is running
the country doesn't read because male and female is not
gener that's that.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
So that's number one, number two.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
That's already the standard of the United States unless you
were intersex. But I think that I am just tired
of the binary of itself, which is a two party
political system, the binary of gender, the binary of sexuality.
When we know that most things are gray, everything is
a gray area. To me, I am tired of black
folks having to choose the lesser of two evils when
(31:35):
there's always a third option of choosing no evil at all, right,
and people thinking that we should be bullied into having
to always make those decisions, and pretty much every aspect
of our lives. And so I want people to get
rid of the binaries. When you think it's either this
or either that, try and find that third thing, because
that is what pushes us and saves us. And so
(31:57):
I want to ask you, is there anything that you
are tired of this week?
Speaker 1 (32:01):
I'm tired this week the same thing that I'm tired
of most weeks of living in America, which is the
pretense that we're in a multi racial democracy.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
We are not in a multi racial democracy.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
America has never been that, and significantly, America will never
be that. And here's why the whole concept of race
is hierarchical. It says that there are white people at
the top, there are other people of color in the middle,
and there are black people at the bottom. How in
the hell are we going to use a hierarchy and
turn it into a democracy that will never work Unless
we abolish race, We're always going to have racism, and
(32:34):
so we are not going to create a multi racial
democracy in this place. But you can understand how the
very idea of that keeps all of us striving for
something that will never be and therefore keeps us complacent
in a way and keeps us in this system.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
We need to be making revolution.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
We need to know that we will not ever have
a multiracial democracy.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
You heard it here first.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
So I always like to end by everybody having their
quote of the year for twenty twenty five that you want.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
To live by the love that you are seeking is
within you. You will not find it in other people.
You will find it within yourself.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Ooh so beautiful. I love that.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I'm so grateful to have had this conversation today with
Saverna Strings.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
Remember that love is within yourself, all right.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
That was fun.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships,
not just romantic bonds. That's from Black feminist scholar and
pioneer Belle Hooks. Sabrina mentioned her two thousand book All
About Love. Hooks is known for writing at the intersection
of race, gender, class, and sexuality, but was never interested
(33:50):
in being reduced to her identity, choosing to spell her
name in lowercase to shift attention away from her and
towards her ideas MHM. Loving well being a task means
that it is an action, an action that should be
taken in romantic relationships, but not just romantic relationships. It
should also be taken in any friendships, and it could
(34:11):
even be taken in people that you may not really know.
The biggest thing about loving well, though, is the reminder
that we must love ourselves just as well as we
love others, because we all know that you cannot pour
love from an empty cup.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
And here in full is the Front Row by bang
Gar Song.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Thanks for listening to Fighting Words and hope you'll join
us for another round next week.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
I want to one.
Speaker 6 (34:49):
I'm going to.
Speaker 8 (34:53):
I'm going to one on the front row.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
I'm on the front row.
Speaker 8 (35:23):
I'm on the front bro. I'm on the front Bro.
I'm on the front pro. I'm on the front Bro.
I'm on the front Bro. I'm on the fun croup.
I on the fun pro.
Speaker 9 (35:29):
I'm on the front Prop. I'm on the front grow.
I'm on the fun Bro. I'm on the f Bro.
Speaker 5 (35:33):
I'm on the Roman.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
Then I'm on the run.
Speaker 8 (35:36):
I'm on them, on the row. I'm on the front.
I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (35:59):
I'm on the front job.
Speaker 9 (36:05):
I'm on the front Job. I'm on the g I'm
(36:27):
on the fun Group. I'm on the group.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
I know the Glop.
Speaker 8 (36:29):
I'm on the fun group. I'm on the fun group.
I'm on the group.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
I know the group. Then glop. I'm on the funny group.
Speaker 8 (36:35):
I'm on the group.
Speaker 5 (36:36):
I'm on the group. I'm on the job.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
I'm on the fun group.
Speaker 8 (36:39):
I'm on the fun group.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
I know the.
Speaker 6 (36:43):
Where's your seat, Where's your seat? Where's your seat? Where's
your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seat?
Where's your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seat?
Speaker 5 (36:55):
Where's your sad? Sounds? After talk to do the funny Rock.
Speaker 8 (37:22):
I want the money drop.
Speaker 5 (37:23):
IM on the drop. I'm on the fun Prop.
Speaker 8 (37:24):
I want the funny rock. I want the funk Prop.
I want the mon Rock.
Speaker 10 (37:27):
I'm going the fun Up.
Speaker 8 (37:28):
I want the funning Rock.
Speaker 5 (37:29):
I want the f Bro. I'm on the rock.
Speaker 10 (37:31):
I'm going then the fun rob, I want the fun
row you want, I want the flow you want to.
Speaker 8 (37:57):
I'm on the front, pro, I want the fun prop.
I'm on the funny Up. I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
Bro, I'm on the front.
Speaker 8 (38:01):
Bro, I'm on the front. Im on the f Bro,
I'm on the front. Bro, I'm on the front.
Speaker 7 (38:05):
Bro.
Speaker 8 (38:05):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
Bro.
Speaker 8 (38:06):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (38:07):
Bro.
Speaker 8 (38:07):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Bro.
Speaker 8 (38:08):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 6 (38:09):
Bro.
Speaker 10 (38:09):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 6 (38:10):
Bro.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
I'm on the front.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Bro, I'm on the front.
Speaker 8 (38:12):
Brow I'm on the front. I'm on the front. I'm
(38:36):
on the front. I'm on the front.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
From Brow, from the.
Speaker 7 (39:05):
Want where's your seats?
Speaker 6 (39:18):
Where's your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seats? Where's
your seat? Where's your seat? Where's your seats? Where's your seats?
Where's your seat? Where's your seat?
Speaker 5 (39:29):
Where's your.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Fighting words?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
It is production of iHeart Podcast in partnership with bets
Case Studios. I'm Georgian Johnson. This episode was produced by
Charlotte Morley as that Can. Producers are myself and Tweaky
pu Gi Guar Song with Adam Pinks and Brick Cats
for Best Case Studios. The theme song was written and
composed by cole Vos, Bambianna and myself. Original music by Colevas.
(40:13):
This episode was edited and scored by Max Michael Miller.
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Carl Ketel following
rap Fighting Words Wherever you get your Podcast
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