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A Brief History of Race with Megan Madison
1.3k Plays5 years ago
Two Bi Guys is produced by Rob Cohen, Alex Boyd, and Moxie Peng
Music by Ross Mintzer
Cover art by Kaitlin Weinman
More info on our guest Megan Madison: https://meganpamelaruthmadison.wordpress.com/bio/
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Transcript
Introduction to Season Two
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Two Bye Guys. I'm Rob.
00:00:15
Speaker
And I'm Alex. And welcome back. This is the beginning of season two, which will take a different form than season one. We're remote right now. Hi, Alex on Zoom. We're not together. Two Bye Guys is a podcast about bisexuality, masculinity, intimacy, and more. Although at the moment, we wanted to come back to talk about some other stuff, which we will get to in a few minutes.
00:00:41
Speaker
But before we get there, how are you doing, Alex, with all that's going on in the world? What's going on in your neck of the woods? Yeah, it's definitely an interesting time to be starting a season two here. I'm feeling nostalgic for kind of the calm days of season one right now.
00:01:00
Speaker
But yeah, things are okay. I'm not necessarily struggling in any huge ways right now, but I think that like most people in our country right now, I think there's some feelings that are just kind of impossible to escape. So definitely been kind of feeling like a heavy weight lately in the midst of starting a new job recently and moving into a new apartment pretty soon. So there's a lot going on.
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm very grateful to be here, grateful to be around the people that I'm around on the daily.
00:01:35
Speaker
I'm similar. There have been times in my life, especially the year or two after I came out, that my sexuality felt like this big, important thing that was consumed a lot of my time and energy and thoughts.
Impact of Current Events
00:01:51
Speaker
We were going to start season two in March of this year, and we had interviews scheduled. We were ready to go in-person interviews.
00:02:00
Speaker
And then coronavirus happened, and lockdowns happened, and I have really not thought much about my sexuality because other things have taken precedence. And then since coronavirus, I had some personal stuff. My grandfather passed away in May, and I was unable to go visit him, and I still have not yet seen the rest of my family, my parents, my sisters since then.
00:02:26
Speaker
So all of that has been a lot and the podcast was not the top priority, but now with the protests and what's going on, Alex and I have been chatting and we decided to bring it back now. Not so much to talk about bisexuality today at least, but we do have a little piece of content that we want to share from an old episode that we think would be valuable this time.
00:02:55
Speaker
What really has happened is that, at least for me, and I don't know if this is true for you, Rob, I've seen a lot of my privilege lately. I've grown very appreciative of my white privilege at the very least lately, and I think it makes it hard to focus more on my own status as a minority, as a bisexual person, when I think my allyship to black folks is just much more necessary right now.
00:03:23
Speaker
I'm not going to pretend we have an Oprah level platform here, but we do have a platform and I think it would be a shame to not use that platform just to amplify at least one black voice that I very much so admire from season one and bring a piece of something that nobody's heard before and I think is especially valuable and I've been thinking about a lot since then.
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
Understanding Race as a Social Construct
00:03:46
Speaker
So this segment is from an interview with Megan Pamela Ruth Madison from Episode 9 of last season, which is called Race is a Salad, Gender is a Berry. I highly recommend going back and listening to that whole thing.
00:04:01
Speaker
And Megan leads trainings and workshops on anti-oppression, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism. In the episode that aired, Megan talked about race as a social construct and what a social construct is. It's really great. Go back and listen. But one thing that we didn't end up including was Megan went into a history of race and the origins of race in America.
00:04:26
Speaker
uh and is really instructive and great and I learned a lot from it and we've wanted to save it and put it out at some point and now it just feels like the time to do it. Yeah especially as two white guys like I don't I don't want you to to listen to our voice too much right like these two voices can only say so much and and we can talk about allyship and and things we've learned from people we know and and from
00:04:53
Speaker
you know, the ways we've educated ourselves, right? But I think it's really important right now to prioritize one black voice speaking extremely poignantly on something that's very related to what's going on in the world right now.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, indeed. Meghan has worked in various capacities with the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Center for Racial Justice in Education, formerly border crossers, the Human Route, New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute, Jewish Multiracial Network, Ben the Ark, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and much more. She has a master's degree in early childhood education, currently pursuing her PhD in social policy,
00:05:35
Speaker
Some of this clip might sound familiar. We're going to play a little bit of it that did air in last season's episode to give it a little context. But the majority of what you're about to hear is new. Alex and I are going to offer some of our thoughts and feelings on the other side. This is being presented with Megan's permission. We hope you enjoy it. Here is Megan.
00:06:01
Speaker
One thing I like to do to explain race being a social construct is to explain what a social construct is. And that's helpful. It can be helpful to use other examples of social constructs. So a favorite of mine that's a little bit silly is a salad. It's also a social construct.
00:06:20
Speaker
Turns out you can look up the definition of salad in the dictionary, but in everyday use, salad means different things to different people across space and time. And also, just because it's made up, though, doesn't mean that it doesn't have real life significance. You go to a restaurant and you order a salad, people have expectations around what salad means. And so, when it comes to race,
00:06:42
Speaker
It's similar, right? We have racial categories, but they have changed over space and time. There's not an essential thing to them. It turns out when you take a DNA test, there's more genetic variation among one flock of penguins than there are among human beings. There's no biological, essential nature to race.
00:07:06
Speaker
And yet, like how we are racialized, how people perceive me when I walk down the street really matters, sometimes in life and death ways. And also my identity, my racial identity is very real. So just because the categories are made up doesn't mean that they don't have a lived impact. And then we go into the workshops into a lot of the history around like, okay, well then who invented? If a social construct means human beings invented it,
00:07:32
Speaker
Who? Who were these human beings? And when? And why? Because also human beings, societies invent things for a purpose, not just for fun. And that leads us into the conversation about racism, because essentially race was constructed and serves the purpose of racism.
00:07:48
Speaker
What do you mean by that? Do you want me to do the whole history? Yeah, let's hear it. So I usually start with the 16th and 17th centuries. Or actually I start even before then. I start at the dawn of human history. I wasn't there. Y'all weren't there. There's very little documentation.
Historical Context of Race
00:08:05
Speaker
But my guess, and a lot of people's guesses, is that as soon as there were human beings, they were
00:08:11
Speaker
forming groups with shared identity and fighting with each other around those different identities and different group memberships. But the particular group membership that we call race did not exist at the beginning of human history. When we look at historical artifacts, we start seeing people using racial categories only around the 16th and 17th centuries. So that's pretty recent.
00:08:35
Speaker
And then we have to ask the question, all right, well, what's happening globally in the 16th and 17th centuries? Do y'all remember? No, I'm not fresh. You're fresh stuff on my history. People often say colonization. Okay. Right. So we've got Europeans like hopping on ships and camels and stuff going all over the global south, stealing stuff.
00:08:58
Speaker
raping people, doing really, really bad things. Often justifying it in the names of civilization, often in the name of Christianity. So that's kind of like global trend, what's hot in the 16th and 17th centuries. So, and then we've got the Enlightenment. You all remember the Enlightenment from like high school history? Yes. Yeah, what was hot in the Enlightenment? Like learning and education and arts and culture.
00:09:26
Speaker
Yes, and in particular this idea of like science as the way to achieve an understanding of truth. Yeah. And there were all kinds of dudes who were looking at the natural world, like Careless Linnaeus was one of those guys. And he's looking at the natural world and he's like, oh, did you ever have to learn in biology class, like zenysphylum class species, that kind of thing. That's when all that science is getting hot. They're just like super into
00:09:52
Speaker
which as a preschool teacher it's like very similar to three-year-olds like really into categories like where does this go right we're gonna sort stuff so they're really into sorting stuff they sort animals they sort plants and then there's a couple dudes one of whom his name is Johann Friedrich Blumenbach he's not the only guy but he was one of the more famous guys
00:10:13
Speaker
He's really creepy in my mind, because he is collecting skulls from around the world. He's literally got like a skull, right? Yeah, I like that. So bananas. Would've been me.
00:10:25
Speaker
So he's collecting these skulls from around the world. And he's like, hey, dudes, I figured something out. It's not just animals and plants that have different types. Human beings actually come in different types, too. He really thinks he's onto something. And he publishes this research. And there's different versions. One has 12 different types. One has eight. One has five. It doesn't really matter the different versions. What really matters is what sticks.
00:10:54
Speaker
And what sticks is this system that's not just like a different horizontal system of these are different types of human beings, but a hierarchy that like there's one type of human being, there's one skull in his collection that is more beautiful than all the other skulls. It's bigger, so it must have a bigger brain, they must be more intelligent. It's like the arc type of humanity. This is like the type of human that all other humans must be based off of.
00:11:19
Speaker
And he calls that skull the Coccazoid skull. He gets it from the Caucasus Mountains. Does that name sound familiar? I think I know where this might be going. Yeah, tell me. Where do you think it's going? Is this going to be the model of a Caucasian man, perhaps? Yes, exactly. Of which I assume he was one. Yes. Oh, shocking that he would place that at the top. Shocking, exactly. And so then he puts these other skulls kind of down the hierarchy. He's got...
00:11:48
Speaker
There's a PowerPoint slide that has these actual names, so I don't remember. We'll tweet it out later. Yeah, but there's like Mongoloid, Malayan, Australoid, and then the one that he puts at the bottom of the hierarchy is Negroid, which in one part is interesting because all those other ones, Australoid, Malayan, even Coccasoid connect to a geographic place in the world, but Negroid
00:12:14
Speaker
It's connected to a color. Already it's a part of the dehumanization of black people because he's separating that category even from an actual geographic place. Based on skin color. Based purely on skin color. And even though this is a skull.
00:12:30
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And that's kind of the origins of what we call white supremacy or the idea that whiteness is normal or superior and anti-blackness. Blackness being almost subhuman and at the bottom of that hierarchy. And then everybody being racialized, but everybody's in between. These two poles of white supremacy at the top and anti-blackness at the bottom. So he publishes this quote unquote science
00:12:57
Speaker
And all these other dudes are like, oh yeah, cool, good science, great science. Because they're cockaloid. You know, possessing, right? So it works for them. It totally works for them. And I'm so happy you said that too, right? Because the part is like, how does it work for them? It rationalizes a lot of the really bad behavior happening. So we also think about like, when is Johann Friedrich Blumenbach publishing this stuff? Like we live in the United States.
00:13:25
Speaker
And at the time, the US, the revolution, American Revolution was happening. What are the ideals of the American Revolution?
00:13:34
Speaker
freedom, independence, autonomy, and I don't know, fuck the king. Yeah, exactly, justice. All men are created equal, right? Oh yeah, right, that stuff, yeah. Yeah, all that good stuff. So we've got dudes, like James Madison is one of them. My last name is Madison because he likely enslaved my ancestors. Oh wow. So he's literally sitting down on, I imagine him on some fancy couch. He's got enslaved people bringing him tea. He's got like a feather pen and he's sitting down and he's writing,
00:14:03
Speaker
Fuck the British. This is slavery. Taxes are too high. I want tea for free. All men are created equal. This is our Constitution, blah, blah, blah. So he's writing all this stuff about freedom and justice and equality while he's also participating in the near genocide of indigenous people and the systematic legal kidnapping and enslavement of African people.
00:14:27
Speaker
And so this science that's coming out of Europe serves the function of essentially smoothing that giant cognitive dissonance between the ideals of justice and equality and the reality of massive inequalities and dehumanization of people of color.
Resistance and Activism
00:14:45
Speaker
So that stuff gets baked into our Constitution. Like James Madison also helped write the, he proposed the three-fifths compromise. So written into the United States Constitution is essentially this idea that enslaved African people aren't fully human, they're just three-fifths of a human being. So it's not just like cool ideas on the street, it like gets baked into the policies and practice of our country.
00:15:07
Speaker
And then here we are. Not actually all that like far from like that wasn't ancient history. That was like fairly recent history. So it explains a lot of like, oh, no wonder we are where we are.
00:15:19
Speaker
So how does that bring you, like how do you kind of see that arc that has kind of brought us from there to the present and kind of into the future even because things are changing in a faster way and you're a part of that obviously right now. Yeah well so every step of the way there was resistance so like even
00:15:40
Speaker
when James Madison and those other dudes are writing papers that are like, this is slavery. Don't make us pay all these taxes on our tea. There's legit people who are enslaved who are like, excuse me? What is slavery? I'm pretty sure this is slavery. That's taxes. So people were calling it out and pushing back and organizing and resisting every step of the way. And so we continue on in that legacy today, people organizing and resisting and pushing back.
00:16:09
Speaker
One really concrete example for me, if we zoom in on the three fist compromise, we can think about who today is counted for the purposes of population, but is legally disenfranchised. And there's lots of populations, but one that's a pretty salient one are people with felony convictions in many states.
00:16:32
Speaker
that pattern that was written into our Constitution is also existing today in the way that our policies and practices operate, in the way that the criminal justice system or injustice system operates. And just like then, there's also people organizing and resisting. How does it kind of impact these educators that you're talking to? Yeah. Oh, there's so many different ways. But one way is I feel like educators walk out of our workshops with
00:17:01
Speaker
Like when you learn that history, like especially if you've been teaching it, like some of the educators I get to work with have been teaching for 20, 30 years. And so all of a sudden they have an experience where they have a five minute mini lecture on the history of race and they learn history that
00:17:19
Speaker
was denied to them, they didn't have access to for all of these years, it creates an emotional experience of like, whoo, you can just feel how intense systemic racism is because it's like, how was this knowledge kept for me for so long? And like that feeling often leads to like an aha and like I hope leads to people like having a sense of like, whoa, I have so much more to learn and also I'm a part of this history. Like I have so much power
00:17:48
Speaker
like their teachers had so much power because they didn't teach that history to them and now they're like oh but now I'm in a position of power now I can make the choice to actually teach this history to my kids that I was denied when I was in school and so it's like both learning that history and and also having an emotional experience that's like whoa I can participate in in this piece of history like I matter and that I have power to make different decisions
00:18:18
Speaker
in my life that will impact the next generation. And so how do you teach the teachers to teach this to the kids and how do kids respond to this or look at race differently when they're exposed to this early on?
00:18:33
Speaker
What a good question. I think one of the ways that I try to teach it to the teachers is actually just modeling it like over time practicing giving that little mini lecture in a way that like I wish I would have gotten into high school and so then when teachers have that experience for themselves that's almost more meaningful than me handing them like a lesson plan like teach that it's like they they're like oh this is what it felt like to be taught that history and
00:18:59
Speaker
in a way that felt engaging, in a way that felt accurate, in a way that felt empowering. And so then they do that with their young people. And young people are amazing. I mostly work with teachers of really young children. And at that age, they haven't been exposed to too much misinformation. So their reactions are often like, ah, cool, great things. That explains everything.
00:19:24
Speaker
You know, they're usually at like three and four like seeing big racial disparities, especially in New York City. Like they see that all the people on the money have peachy colored skin that people would call white. And they see that the bus drivers and janitors have brown colored skin and the people call them black.
00:19:40
Speaker
They see these giant inequities and they have questions about why. And they also see their grownups aren't talking to them about those. And when people ask questions about it, they get really uncomfortable. And so when a teacher finally actually explains it to them, they're usually just like, ah, thank you. This makes sense now. I get it. I remember a great conversation I had with a four-year-old around the racial wealth gap.
00:20:09
Speaker
And he was like, oh yeah, so if there's a group of people who was kidnapped from another place and that they weren't able to save money and give it to their kids for about 350 years, and that was just a hundred years ago, it would make sense that on average those people would not have as much money as white people.
00:20:25
Speaker
And he was just like, okay, got it. Because it's not a complicated concept, really, unless you've been taught some alternative reality, as most of us have, unfortunately. Yeah, exactly. And then when you work with older kids, high schoolers are so fun because they're also coming in a sense of their own power. And in that sense, there's a natural developmental rebelliousness and also big fucking feelings, which I love.
00:20:50
Speaker
teenagers like my inner teenager included and so teenagers once they're like once they have this information or often like great where are we going what are we gonna do like who do I need to write where do I call like what action am I gonna plan what community organization am I gonna join like there's so much energy there that I love working with older kids
00:21:15
Speaker
And that is the kind of energy that we are seeing today. Rob, I don't know about you, but listening back on all of that, everything that Megan has said, right at the end she says that youth, especially those older youth, are looking for ways to get involved.
00:21:32
Speaker
like we reached a tipping point right like this month we reached like a tipping point where despite coronavirus despite all of the things reasons to stay inside and to not say anything everybody is speaking up for the first time right and
Reflections on Racial Justice
00:21:45
Speaker
not everybody unfortunately but but quite a few megan among millions of others have been making these same points again and again and now it just took you know unfortunately tragedy in this case with george floyd
00:22:00
Speaker
to put things into the national landscape in a new way. And it's just there's so much more to go in terms of education because there's still such a big portion of people who are denied that education that Megan just gave us and either denied it or choose not to engage with it, right? And I think what's been going on the past few weeks has hopefully sparked more people to engage and learn more and educate themselves.
00:22:27
Speaker
But, you know, it makes me feel guilty somewhat too because we heard that six months ago, but it's not like police brutality against black bodies has only existed for the last six months. Far from it. People have been trying to tell us this for decades and like not everyone is listening and white people have the privilege and luxury of
00:22:48
Speaker
of not having to listen to it because it doesn't necessarily always directly impact our safety and security but in the last few weeks i've talked to some white friends who this is the first time they're really engaging with this stuff and really
00:23:04
Speaker
starting to understand that black people do not feel safe in so many situations and it's so unfair and yet it makes me feel guilty not having engaged with this even sooner and there's so much more that I still need to educate myself about and even in the last few weeks just hearing the stories that are shared on social media and seeing the videos like
00:23:29
Speaker
I think at many stages in my life, I felt like, oh, I just learned this new thing. Now I know everything. And I know all about this. And then I learn more. And then I learn more. And what the past few weeks have taught me is like, there is just so much I still don't know. When you hear that, like, somebody just goes up, somebody is in their home, right? Somebody's in their home, as has happened this year, and is just a cop visits them at their home and then shoots them through the window.
00:23:59
Speaker
Like, that sounds absurd to me, right? And I forget who it was, I think it was...
00:24:05
Speaker
It was somebody on a late night show, I apologize, I don't remember the name, but they were talking about that. They were talking about like, I understand how white people maybe didn't believe it for so long, right? Because it's so absurd, right? Like why would cops kill like an unarmed teenager in a park, right? Like why? And of course I believe these things at face value went, like when I saw them come up more recently, I've educated myself though to make sure that I understood that it's kind of the reality of being black and American.
00:24:35
Speaker
It wasn't ever a fair excuse, but now it's truly impossible to understand how somebody could see everything going on in this country to me and not realize there's work that has to be done. There's conversation that has to be done, and it's not on black people. It's on us as white people. I feel that anyways.
00:24:57
Speaker
yeah seeing these videos makes me so angry and i think like like use it i'm feeling like to some level i know it's been going on but i'm shocked to see it and to see how bad it is and to see how often it happens like and i'm guilty that i feel shocked because a lot of people are saying
00:25:18
Speaker
This has been going on you shouldn't be shocked and it's great that like it's getting the attention that it is now and that's thanks to black lives matter and other activists like over many years, pushing for police accountability body cams like being able to record the police all of this is the result of many years of activism.
00:25:38
Speaker
but it is up to us now to engage with it. And also what you were saying, like you may not discriminate based on race, but that's different than being anti-racist. And I can say for myself, I have not always been anti-racist, like an actual advocate activist for anti-racism. And that requires engaging with this constantly and it being part of our politics always, not just when it's in the news,
00:26:06
Speaker
And it requires white people to dismantle white supremacy. And there's many, many ways we can do that, and there's many resources out there, and I'm still learning about how to do that. But that's our job, and everyone needs to register to vote and vote in every election that you are able to vote in.
00:26:27
Speaker
especially local elections, which decide on things like, you know, police review boards in your districts and such. You know, just a quick plug that like I was not there in Minneapolis. I wasn't there on the street, but I saw the 10 minute video or whatever it was.
00:26:43
Speaker
And for eight minutes and 40 some odd seconds or whatever, seeing a cop's knee on a black man's neck and then seeing and hearing the pleas from people around him to please just give him air, not even just from George Floyd. It's from people around who are filming who are saying he's literally going to die. I felt trauma watching that video.
00:27:08
Speaker
I remember the 48 hours following it. I remember how emotionally taxed I became just from seeing that incident. Seeing that murder.
00:27:21
Speaker
What I'm realizing more and more is the reality that that is just what it's like to be black to an extent, right? That that trauma exists in some form in so many encounters with police, right? So many encounters with white people who are in positions of authority or power, right?
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the trauma of it is real. And it's such an important aspect. And like, seeing the George Floyd video, I was just so angry that the officers won't listen to anyone and don't see what's happening. It makes me so angry. And also, just a few weeks earlier, the Ahmaud Arbery video made me sick to my stomach. I mean, that one is traumatic. Which took much to service.
00:28:10
Speaker
Which took months to even like register on a national radar right and only because if there was a video Shot by somebody who was behind that like lynching for for lack of any other word to use right now, right?
00:28:24
Speaker
Right. Just imagine how much stuff happens that isn't recorded and then is lied about by the investigators or the police if they're in charge of it.
Intersections of Queer and Racial Justice
00:28:34
Speaker
I want to relate this to not that this is the point, but it's just a way that, you know, it's a lens through which I have more empathy into this aspect of it, which is
00:28:46
Speaker
um the tree of life synagogue shooting in pittsburgh a couple years ago that was really scary for me as a jewish person and i remember i went to temple soon after that and there were armed guards outside the temple for the first time i remember sitting in the sanctuary and the tree of life shooting happened in a sanctuary a guy with a gun came inside
00:29:07
Speaker
And I sat there the whole hour-long service just imagining to myself what it would be like for somebody to come in with a gun and shoot a bunch of people. I imagined which direction I would run to escape and which door I would go out. Like, I ran through all these scenarios in my head the entire time. And it was, you know, this shooting that happened in Pittsburgh,
00:29:30
Speaker
Even though it didn't happen to me or anyone I knew because it could happen to a Jew based on your religion It could happen to me in my head and and that is traumatic whether it physically happens to you or not that thinking about that planning for that is traumatic and
00:29:50
Speaker
I am scared right now of cops with all these protests, but at least I can choose to go to a protest or not, and still, even if I go, I don't feel I'm gonna be targeted because of the color of my skin. I can escape that if I want, and that's a privilege. And if you can't escape that because of the color of your skin, it seems like it must be a constant burden. Yeah, and I think... I just can't imagine what that's like.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think a lot of queer people felt the same way after the Pulse nightclub shooting too, right? I think a lot of people right now, it's June. People are thinking about Pride too.
00:30:29
Speaker
Um, and I know we have like, we have a queer audience, right? This is at the center of this podcast is queerness, right? Um, and I think it's important to acknowledge that like, this is a different pride that's happening this year for seven and several different reasons, right? Like pride does not exist in the same way, but pride was started when black trans women rioted at Stonewall in 1969, right? You can't be sad about a pride promotion being lost.
00:30:58
Speaker
when it's being lost for similar reasons that would have probably halted things in 1969, right? And in 1969, that was black people, black trans women, and that was a riot.
00:31:11
Speaker
So I think any condemnation happening about kind of what's going on in the world in response to George Floyd's death and in response to Breonna Taylor's death, in response to so many others right now, you know, we can't see that in a vacuum without looking at what riots have done throughout history, giving us pride and sparking that movement that gave us marriage equality, gave us the ability to walk down the street openly holding hands with partners without being attacked.
00:31:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, people's basic human rights are worth fighting for. You can't celebrate pride unless we're all free to just exist. And none of us is free while others are oppressed.
00:31:58
Speaker
And actually, in many ways, it's a good thing that the Huge Pride Parade was cancelled this year because maybe that's something we need to rethink in the future anyway. You know, the parade does have some benefits, but lately it's much more about corporate interest than queer rights. It also has a kind of strange relationship with the police who essentially control the parade and corral the participants.
00:32:20
Speaker
which comes back to why you and I, Alex, marched in the Queer Liberation March last year, which I'd encourage everyone listening to support and follow on social media. Queer Liberation March was an alternative to the parade, and it was a protest march. There were no police or barricades, we all had signs, and the purpose of it was to demand equal rights for all, not just queer people. Well, because if we're going to speak about bi issues on a broader level,
00:32:47
Speaker
You can't disregard the portion of the bi community, the bi-male community, even that is Black, we have to support other folks who are being oppressed, right? Oppressed to need to support the oppressed.
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah and look like if you know we sometimes get annoyed when people ask us the same questions over and over about bisexuality and male bisexuality and masculinity and like we want people to understand and we get frustrated when we have to say over and over again you know some basic things and if we want people to understand that then like it's our job to to empathize with others and to learn about others too.
00:33:24
Speaker
Yeah, completely. It's important for us to view it through whatever lens we can, right? Whether you can kind of understand through some other way you're being oppressed, maybe personally or discriminated against personally, then use that. But use that in an effort to understand what Black people are experiencing on the daily and help other people around you understand.
00:33:49
Speaker
So that's what we want to talk about today. We are going to continue this season of Two Bye, guys. I cannot guarantee you that we will be putting out weekly episodes this year. It's going to kind of take on a different format this year since we're doing this remote. But hopefully that'll open up some of the people we can talk to and interviews we can
00:34:10
Speaker
have some other stuff we're up to. The confetti project is doing a virtual pride this year. Alex and I will be on their Instagram live channel sometime the week of June 15th, so we'll keep you posted on that. Alex and I were also on an episode of Hello Goodbyes while we were on hiatus. It's another great bisexual podcast you should check out. And other than that, stay tuned. Hopefully soon within the next few weeks, we will bring you some more
00:34:38
Speaker
episodes. We have some great people who have agreed to interviews already. We'll start tweeting about that. Follow us on social media, at 2byguys, we'll keep you updated about that. Yeah, so thanks for listening to this first episode. And keep staying safe with the coronavirus, keep staying well with everything else, and we hope to talk to you all soon.