One of my favorite radio shows is The Takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry on National Public Radio. She can get me to rethink some of my ideas and get me to see things a little differently. She also often surprises me, and I like her interview style and the love that she often shows to her guests.
Yesterday she really surprised me. She had James Spooner on. He directed the documentary Afro-Punk in 2003 and co-launched the Afropunk music festival in 2005, and he has a graphic novel or memoir out that I'm looking forward to reading. He came up in a small California town where white supremacy flourished.
I'm probably the least likely person to get interested in Afro-Punk, but Melissa Harris-Perry and James Spooner pulled me in. He has a compelling story that stands by itself, but then Melissa Harris-Perry talks a little about what music means to young people and how that gets interpreted. This raises a question in my mind---when we judge music, are we also judging people? And I think that I get much of what James Spooner is talking about when he talks about small towns and the invisibilities of rural people. But then what nails it for me is the part of the interview when he talks about white youth in the punk or skinhead scenes torn between the white supremacists and their Black friends and aspects of Black culture and where this puts punk. I think that Melissa Harris-Perry's questioning at that point shows real love and a genuine concern that had not occurred to me.
Please listen. I hope that you hear the faith here that I do. Please listen in to The Takeaway if you can.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444253/pri-the-takeaway
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