I would say that sharing your truth, um, and getting to a point to share truth is probably the greatest battle of your life, whatever your truth is. So, Bridget, today we have a super special episode that's gonna go a little bit differently than our previous episodes, and that's because this one is about identity. How do you feel about that word, Bridget? I mean, identity has been a long journey most of my life, certainly my young life. It's always been complicated. I think that identity is complicated for everybody, but it's especially complicated when you're a black person, a marginalized person, because finding your footing can be really really hard, and it can be a process. Yeah. And I also think that a lot of times people as a marginalized person, you know, people think that they have an idea of how your life should go, how it should be. You know, all these stereotypes and stigmas that have forced upon you, and you too your identities, you know, you define yourself. So that's that's the process that is a lot different from marginalized people. Definitely, from a very early age, I knew that I was a queer person, and you know, all of the messages that I got from TV, from family members, from everybody was that black people who were gay or queer or trans or lesbians or whatever, like, we did not exist. And so the message that I, you know, absorbed, was you do not exist. And so I would think, well, I know that I'm a black person, and I know that I have these feelings and all of that. I remember like laying awake in bed at night thinking what does this mean? Like who am I? And this is gonna sound a bit strange, but my parents were really into music, and my tad had this vinyl copy of this Earthmen and Fire album All in All, which is a classic albums which definitely listened to it. But if you've ever seen it, it has this amazing cover that has this I mean I still see it when I closed my eyes. It has this pyramid on the top of this bright blue skyscape and these Egyptian looking statues. I mean. I always kind of walked around feeling like an alien, feeling like I didn't fit in, feeling like, you know, people like me didn't exist, and so I always identified with science fiction afro futurism. But as a kid, I would just stare at that Earth Wanden Fire cover and like run my hands along it and think, what does this mean? Like is this I mean it was. It was like finding an artifact that made me think, I feel like I'm from a different planet. This is also a relic from you know, black folks in space. Like I didn't understand it because I was very young, but that is what I like seized onto and they became a really big part of my identity. UM was sort of accepting that it was okay if you were an audiball, a weirdo or whatever. Um, but there were other folks like us out there. And thanks to that earth banden Fire album that I spent many, many many hours staring at as a child, I'm here with you on the up all weirdos, so you know, weirdos unite, but it seems like you kind of uh, there is this feeling of like being able to envision something beyond what you are in the present moment or what you are feeling in the present moment. And I feel like that's the thing that can come up a lot in art in music and something that that I really connected to in art in music too, And um, I think that books were that way for me, Like I I definitely have my nose in a book, and was that kid who was up reading under the cover super late at night, staying up just to have my nose in a book. One thing I always say, Um, you know, I loved books, but I also had a specific teacher who just was really serious about getting me to read all the black books possible, like you gotta read this, and you gotta read this, and you gotta read this, which you know, I really look back and appreciate her for. But it's funny because I say, all the reading that I did in the dark when I was a child is the reason that I wear glasses now. So yeah, I think I was also able to see worlds and see experiences and existences beyond where I was at the moment through books. So I think that we tell ourselves this story that media, TV, movies, books all of that they're just these frivolous distractions, are just entertainment, But really they can let you see yourself, and that's so important to our understanding of identity, being able to see yourself, you being able to read books and think, one day I can be a writer, I can be living out the stories that I'm reading in these books. You know, that's so important, and it's especially important for folks who are marginalized. You know, white folks see themselves reflected every day. They are considered to be the archetype, you know, the everyman, and we don't get that same that same luxury, and so it's so so important that we're able to see these things, to see ourselves so that one we can understand our identity and too so we have that license to dream. Yeah, it's you know, I'm so glad you brought up the whole the white archetype thing because it's something that I struggle with. You know, my my love for reading definitely turned into a love for writing, and then I had to I got to a point where I had to question, like, who were these automatic characters that I thought of in my head? You know, even though I did, you know, read a lot of black books, I also read a lot of white books with all white characters, and you know, when I was writing, I would default to that, there would be like this default character, um, even though I was surrounded by a lot of black people, and I really had to question why it was that that I had, you know, internalized that. So, yeah, it's very important and it's very impactful, and you might notice it and you might not. It might be something you see in hindsight. But media does shape a lot of our identity, right, But that's the trip of white supremacy, right, that we internalize it, and that we spend a lot of time on this show talking about dismantling white supremacy externally, but we all should also talk about the ways that we internalize it. And you know, that's that's the trip of living in a white supremacy of society. This, this ship is tenuous. The ship gets in your bone, to gets inside of you and get inside of your head and to pretend otherwise it's just wrong. And so those are the conversations I think that are really important and that can be tackled through art, through books, through media, through dance, through culture. Yeah, I think in thinking about identity, we have to remember that it's okay to constantly involve. It's okay to change our mindsets, it's okay to learn better, it's okay to change. So, now that you've gotten to know a little bit more about Bridget and I, we're going to introduce you to some people who have their own stories and have a lot to say about identity, which is a word that can seem really weighty but really means a lot of different things to different people. Right, Bridget That's true, and because it does, it can be pretty powerful to Black people to speak for ourselves about ourselves, because we've all got different perspectives and lives and express ourselves in different ways. Even though we may have certain characteristics we think really define us, like our blackness were more than that, We're complex. I'm Eve deaf Coote and I'm Bridget Tad. You're listening to afro Punk Solution sessions. Afro Punk is a safe place, a blank space to freak out in, to construct a new reality, to live our lives as we see fit while making sense of the world around us. Here at Afropunk, we have the conversations that matter to us, conversations that lead to solutions. So I've been thinking about those character descriptions at the beginning of place. The ones that try to sum up a character in a sentence are to you know, female black in her twenties, maybe a few more details. A lot of times people try to define black people in that super narrow, superficial way, but there are many other layers beneath the surface. So today we're going to break down those complexities by introducing you to the cast of characters, well real life people who have a lot to say about identity. First up, Mama Pixel, the creative. I didn't make you do what to do, Like, I'm a black grow and this is how I dress. Uh, it's like if you don't like it, I don't really care. Mamma describes herself as a professional creative. She's an art director, artist, and musician. What Mamma says this is how I dress. She means decked out in a bunch of different bright colors, multi colored braids, cotton candy color tutus, her own pixel art come to life. She does her own thing. We talked about her personal expression, me, my color, my last everything was in in defiance of my childhood and like to be honest with me and my blackness. That was something I had to learn about after college. Like that's crazy, But like my life, I was dealing with so much with my family and my childhood that I didn't I wasn't in a space that I'm black. I was in a space that, oh I need to make it till the next day. Oh, I need to figure out how I'm I'll be able to keep this homework? How am I going to make these grades when I like, when I don't have this? How am I going to do this when my dad is doing missed me? Like me navigating the space now, I mean, I'm just in it, you know what I mean? Like I didn't make you do what I do. Like I'm a black girl and this is how I address Uh. It's like if you don't like it, I don't really care. It's hard for me sometimes to navigate it because I'm multiple things. So I don't know if somebody's treating me back because I'm fat, you know what I mean, or chubby or whatever the fun you want to call it. I don't know if somebody treating me back because I'm a woman. I don't know if somebody's treating me back because I'm black. And I don't know if somebody's treating me back because of the way that I dressed. Yeah, I mean, so it's like the way that I navigated it's just by not giving a fun right. It's like people didn't like me for just being born. They didn't like the way that I would. I'm like, if people can't like me, off depolt, then of course it's on people. People who don't like me wants to come into myself. She lives importantly, which as we know, is super white. She says she literally has to stop people from touching her and that people take pictures of her through her job's windows. But working in a white space can be pretty frustrating at times. Mama says, it's like a double edged forward. It's like, yeah, I get to like put my voice out there and like say stuff as like, uh, I don't represent all black people, why you come into me like I represent us all? And then it also feels pressure because sometimes you feel like you're only there because they want a black voice. You're not there because they see your work, you know what I mean. Sometimes you're there as a checkmark. And it's like, regardless of how dope you are, they're only gonna put your own projects that have to do with blackness, because it's like Forrest, I'm I'm black, and you know there is a and in there like I am black and a gamer and a singer and this end of that, you know what I mean? Like, and I think sometimes companies just put you in black, and so that's all you have to offer is black. And I think there's pressure in that because sometimes I think people don't want to leave those jobs because it is a job. And then sometimes you don't want to let the community down because it's like fuck, if I don't do it, whouf is gonna do it? And if they do do if you know they're gonna do it wrong. But Mo Moe is super comfortable on who she is, her abilities, and her work. The advice to give to others to get to that point, she says, is to just allow yourself to be free. Freedom is the best thing about this world. As you yourself can allow yourself to be free, then how are you upset that nobody else's I have got to say my name in some places that's not even me too, my own horn, that's me. I can literally walking place with people. There is no low you know what I mean. But that's freedom in a sense, right. I don't have to open my mouth. I do not do ship. You already know who I am. You're probably gonna give me some food or something. And I'm dressed to where that I am. No I get paid in a sense to dress up at two tooos. I'm at work right now and a too a Pokemon hat and a and a in a Pokemon shirt and I'm getting paid. And you couldn't have told me that at six years old, you know what I mean? Or at seven my way of not caring is dressing up as a cat and still me mugging people and not talking to us. May be confused to say, all right, hold on, yeah, you know, yeah, like you know, I mean, that's that's like for me, that's like ultimate freedom or wearing a ball a girl because it's Tuesday. That's how I show that I don't care, because I'm just doing things that I like to do and I'm not reading for a special occasion to do it. So whatever way that it is for you to do that and give yourself that freedom, man, do it. The quicker you do it. The quicker you hold the power. And once you own that you've got it, you do active. Next up. Riquel willis the activist. You know, I'm not gonna give some full like essay on why I'm a woman. I'm a fucking woman. It is what it is. Riquel is a writer, a transgender rights activist, a national organizer for the Transgender Law Center. When we spoke with her, she talked about how for some folks coming to terms with identity can be a very long journey. I mean, I think in a basic sense, identity is like your sense of self. It's the things that you hold on to, and that doesn't necessarily mean the these are things that define you that you are at ease with. I think that there we're always going to have aspects of identity that we're trying to come to terms with and trying to figure out how to frame it in a way that is is um accepting, even for us as individuals. But then also there are aspects of identity that are just pure celebration um and and it can take some time to get there. So like for me, blackness is pure celebration. For me, it is something that is divorced from these ideas that we've been indoctrinated with in a white supremacist society and or kind of global society. But that also took work right, and I think for a lot of people, coming to that place where things like blackness or trans identity, or queerness or womanhood can be celebration um is a struggle for most of us because these are all marginalized identities that we've been told are cumbersome or are hindrance to us being seen as fully human. How did you get there? Like, what was that journey? Well, I think it's a never ending journey. So I don't want to say I figured it all out because I don't think that that is even possible, because I think these identities are so expensive. Um. But it's really been one figuring out how to tell myself my story, and that has been through writing things that I have shared and things I haven't shared yet, and things that I may never share. It's been finding community and exploring these things with people who are also struggling, right, because I think that there's a beauty in this kind of collective experience around our identity, and it's I think the third thing has been realizing that even the people, or the experiences or the systems that have tried to extinguish my fire around those identities have their place in this world for some reason, and coming to terms with that, and coming to terms with the fact that I am a person that I am because of those struggles. But there are so many people who turn their backs on marginalized folks because of their own expectations around identity. That's why this work is so important UM and why I think that there's a lot that everyone can gain from transgender and gender noncon formed people. I really believe that we are the future. I believe that we give a glimpse of a world where we are not encumbered by other people's expectations for us. And the truth is, honestly, we're not that different from everyone else, because everyone is inherently gender unconforming. This idea of the perfect woman or the perfect man, or the perfect feminine person or the perfect masculine person, it's just that it's just the concept is just an idea, it's just an image. But the reality is that we have all had points in our lives where we were told we weren't being the way that we were supposed to be. Whether it's little boys and men told that they can't have an emotional intelligence and cry and have a full range of emotions things that are aspects of being human, or whether it's little girls and women who are told that they can't be strong, and they can't be leaders, and they can't be in charge of their own destiny and have agencies. Those are elements of humanity and for all of the people in between who fit neither script and were forced to figure out their own path outside of all of that. Part of figuring out that path means finding an authentic voice. So what do you say if there's a little raquel listening right now? What do you say to that person who I mean you put it so beautifully wanting to share your truth? What do you say that person who wants to share their truth but feels like they can't. I would say that sharing your truth, UM and getting to a point to share your truth is probably the greatest battle of your life, whatever your truth is. And so I want to acknowledge that, because I think that we don't acknowledge that enough that yes, it is difficult UM to live your most authentic UM life. But I'll also say that there are more people out there rooting for you then you may know, right, and you have to figure out how to find those people, whether it means going to a group that you never would have imagine you would go to, or or an organization or something like that, or or moving to a place you need to spread your wings in a way that you can and your current UM environment do those things for yourself and don't feel guilty about that. And I'll also say that there is beauty and trying to get the people around you or the people that you've always known, to understand your truth. But that can't be your only impetus for this journey, right like those people can't be at the core of you as stopping yourself. You have to figure out how to do that on your own terms. You have to be selfish about your livelihood and about your survival. When we get back from the break, we'll talk to an artist with a very unique voice, Lonnie Holly, the artist. I try to tell everybody, if you could spend seven seconds of meditating, seven minutes of meditating into a mirror you're frying Daddy to take you to the depths of yourself, you will see your answer to developing your face. You'll get so scared you have to lead the mirror. You understand what I'm saying, but it's something that we just can't play with now. Lonnie seems like the type of person to make lemonade out of lemons. I am from a lot founding. My mother had twenty seven of us out of her thirty two pregnancy she gave breath to twenty seven children, and I'm in the seventh of her twenty seven children. So I was taking away from my mother when I was one and a half, and I went through a terrible, terrible ordeal of a life from almost getting killed to grow in a little bit, then almost getting killed the second time, to grow on some more and almost be embedient to death. All of this is trauma that had been on my brain. So for me to take all of that and brain it to a positive again, to the most positive print that I could say, and that would be I appreciate you mother. I'm so thankful that mother gave breath to me for for one thing, not that mother had to be around and take care of me to the duration of my life, but that she gave breath to me. And then the care of my grandmother taught me how to be considered consideration or consider it. Lonnie's bio says he's quote devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity unquote, and that's better than any other way I could put it. His art definitely reflects his identity. Danna want to hear some words from from Dr Martin Luther King Jr. He taught me to be the best that I could be, no matter what level of life I'm serving. Mostly everybody called me any trash man and gobbage man. The cause of the things I loved it to work with. So I had to learn that I have to be the best garbage man. The best trash man are the best jump man, are the best artists using the material that I'm using, that I can be. And then I showed my grandmama, which was the woman that delve three of the grades for four, the little girl that was bombed in the sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. My grandmama helped up three of their graves. So to do a piece of art honoring her, I took three selvers and I called it three shelves to bury you with. The instrument is described autter. The music lived out to the instrument is described I'm the instrument. Sooner or later I'm going to die. But all that I leave. I got a book over there on the table, call something to take my place after I'm dead and gone. These things will take my play fancying cocks to Givanni the performer, I am a black and culturally mixed woman, searching for racial answers. I like that. I like that. Do you want to add another one? Because you can be as many things as you want to be, So all right, okay um. I am a playwright, I am a producer. I am a storyteller. I am a truth speaker and a truth teller. I am in con sent pursuit of justice. Fashion does do a lot of things. She has a one woman show out now called One Drop of Love. She's the head of strategic outreach for the Pearl Street Films production company, and she's a producer. Oh and she co authur the inclusion writer Francis McDorman shouted out at the Oscars earlier this year. But her work in all those spaces touches on issues and representation. The kind of content that I want to help create at Pearl Street around black identity is is really making sure there are much broader representations of blackness than we have now. And now fortunately we've got lots more, and I think we're all you know, lots of people are moving in that direction, but I still think we're kind of limited and a lot of it essentialists and that we need really need to move into spaces for example, black disabled people which are thinking, you know, we do not have UM, we can't point to that story. UM going you know, knowing that story in kind of a mainstream way, UM lgbtwo Q communities, UM, Afro punk communities, right, people who may have been called nonconformists. But that does not in any way take away their blackness, I think to me, in many ways, actually reinforces their blackness. Those characteristics of blackness that again are about resilience and struggle and joy and you know, and just being, you know, just living to your fullest despite so many forces against that. And those are the stories that I want to share. And so yeah, I'm happy to say that I'm moving moving in that direction of doing development of those kinds of stories. But her personal story is what I've reckoning with identity. To excuse me, hi, I am so sorry to interrupt. Hello, Sorry, I Finton. Well, I heard you call me white twice now, and I have something to say about that. So I am black feat Indian and Cherokee and Danish. For the meaning of the title One Drop of Love, It's really connected to the importance of understanding our history and the ways that history affects who we are. Today and our relationships. And so I think many times and especially for people, So my my parents are and who are an interracial couple. Of my mother is white, she's Danish origin and also black Feet and Cherokee. My father's Jamaican and immigrated to the United States in the nineteen fifty and so, UM, I think people like me who are culturally mixed. Um, you know, coming out of interracial relationships, A lot of times people try to put a several different kinds of burdens on us, but one of the biggest ones being, oh, look at that. It's all about love. If we just love each other more than we can change. And I'm saying with this shown, no, that's not there to the answer, love comes last, and it comes last in the title very specifically because what we need first is truth and justice. And so the truth of the one drop rule is understanding that slave owners created that rule to enslave the children that they created by raping their slaves. So that's the truth of where this comes from. The justice piece is how do we take that rule and how do black folks empower ourselves with this understanding of this rule? UM, empower ourselves to say at that time and that period. That is why that rule was created. We now use it differently. We now use it to unify ourselves and to identify ourselves and to say that we are part of this tradition of of resilience and joy and struggle and survival. So our ideas of our identity can change over time, but the key is finding joy in our identities even when you don't fully know them. I think for Black identity, because so much of our kind of immediate ancestry was stripped of us. That um, part of the answer can be looking further back, and then also really really kind of like finding more moments of joy. And you know the slave narrative. There is no joy in the slave narrative, um, but there's joy and you know in that Turner and so journal truth, I mean the fact that we don't have a commercial mainstream movie about it to be wealth or so journal truth. What we need to do for ourselves, um, is to really find the things to be joyful about and who we are. So as far back as the you know, twelve hundreds who as you know contemporary as the journ of truth and so many people whose names I mean, pose is such a beautiful example. I have you watched Pose at all one episode? I haven't. I am planning on catching up very soon. Okay, oh my god, I mean like this is so you know, we we both need kind of the heroes, you know, the id b Wells, but we also need just like regular everyday folks that we're in this period of time. Those are our heroes, like living their lives in this way, living both through struggles but also like this show is so full of joy. And that again goes back to like broader representations, because if we're just stuck in these like small boxes of what we are, we're limited to that in terms of our identity, but we're so much more, so much more. Glenn Kyle Jones, the intellectual identities everything. If you know who you are, then you spend less time trying to find yourself. That's more time you can focus on on your path. Glenn lives in New Orleans and knows a lot about the historic city, but one thing he's really passionate about is cultural education. The more you know who you are, the easier you ought to identify your path. When you want to get into metaphysical things happened around us all the time you get signed all the time. You cannot recognize those signs to be on your path if you don't know what your identity is. Period. Identity is everything. He spends a lot of time making sure people know about black masking and Indigenous culture in America and how he can help support them and fight exploitations. Even though being immersed in that the culture of the black masking Indians, that history still eluded me. I knew what most tourists know and what many New Orleans know or think they know of it, which is that it's associated with Mardi Gras, and that's something that they do when everybody's getting together, get drunk in. You know, sometimes you gotta watch out because things can get violent. And that's pretty much the story. You knew they were beautiful, You knew it was some outstanding patentry going on and something that was royal. You just didn't know what it was. So UM being in my my family's business and and being able to travel UM, and and always understanding that there was something extremely different and special about New Orleans. UM. About three years ago, a cousin of mine that mask in the culture here UM asked me to help the community with raising fund for feathers. Now, for a lot of you guys that don't know, the most expensive thing for an Indian to put his soup together will be the cost of the feathers. The feathers can cost anywhere from three hundred and fifty dollars to five hundred and fifty dollars per pounds, a big cheap words, eight to ten pounds in his soup alone, So the cost can get extremely high. And you're not even talking about the beating the stone, the sequence, the crowns. You're just crashing the circuit. So when I under found that out in the process of trying to raise funds to support the feathers or by the feathers of these Indians can still um soup up every year, we found how hard it was to get funds for these guys because it was all allocated to others. So that's when we started the forty two Tribes, which is you can find on black Maskaking dot Org will be chronicle not the minogrd Indians, but the black mask culture. Mardi Gras Indians is the title that was giving to this culture. In the nineteen eighties when the city of New Rowland, Scott the World's Fair and they needed a tourism marketing schemes. So they took our culture and called the Mardi Gras Indians and gave it to the entire world and said that it's the only place you can get this when is all about unlearning myths about our culture, doing research and taking action based on that new knowledge, and that they have taken our culture. Like I said, the United Nations in recognized the Warship Tall Nations Indians of Louisiana and Texas. From all of the tribes of Louisiana, from the Shitamacha, the Shoptaw, the shot Tai, the home of Indians and more come from the band of the Warship Tall Nations in the nine they were recognizing with the oldest indigenous nation are people culture to North America. So with that said, um, we understand that this culture, this practice of black masking comes from our indigenous lineage and ancestors that were going and raised here on this plane. Now we are changing the narrative from Mighty guard Indian too, black masking Indian, because that is what our identity is. When it comes to identity, he really stresses the importance of knowing our truths, and he does. He's serious about education, he says. Anyone can fact check him if we need to, and even contact me after we speak to make sure. I bring up the penalties of the Code Noir, one of which is cutting an ear off that were applied to people of color practicing anything other than Christianity. I want people to not take the story that they've been given since kindergarten about who they are and what they are by someone that is not connected to who they are or what they are by blood, and do research and decide and find who you really are. And when you do, stop doing everything that you're doing and become that, you have to be willing to let go of your default mind that tells you that European ideals are inherently right, he says. In order for you to break that, in order for you to see things differently, you have to be willing to say, hey, I don't know anything. I really don't know anything but what someone else is told, and that should be scary. Then you should go and find what works for you, what works from your spirit when you read it, what speaks to you when you search, and what binds you as you search and when you find those truths about your identity, you also find strength and inspiration. We are stronger than you guys think we are. We're way larger than these things. We are ways smaller than these things. I act as people. Make the connection that knowing yourself, knowing who we are as as people where I want to use is exulting yourself in your culture is going to be a saving grace in these perilous times we acted. Everybody find culture. Find your culture, investing your culture mentally, ed occasionally spiritually. More apropunk solution sessions after this quick break. Nicole Kelly, the Artsy writer. I think it's accurate to say that I'm experienced at camouflage. White people love me. Evidently I'm non threatening. I'm not like other black people, and I'm supposed to take that as a compliment. When white people say disparaging things about black people around me, I'm supposed to understand they don't mean me, they mean them. But in graduate school, I am the only black writer, and the white girls are afraid of me and repeatedly asked the minute my ear to asked me why I hate them. At parties, they forget that I'm in the room. They tell stories about the ghetto black girls at home and shake their asses around and call it working. And if they do, remember that I'm in the room. But have something to say about a black person, anything, even something neutral like this. One time, a third year fiction writer from Wisconsin asked this first year poet from Alabama if she knew the work of this famous poet who happened to be black, and she whispered the word black, like my existence as a slur. You just heard an excerpt from Nicole Kelly's performance White Drag. Nicole is the co host of a podcast called bitch Face with Phoebe Hunter. She says it's a podcast about their obsessions, which means they often talk about art, identity and critiques of power, and making fun of his white dudes is a large part of it too, she says, But what White Dag really brings up is the idea of identity as performance. How black and white are constructs, but once with real consequences. I mean, with White Drags, like I wanted to write about, like the way that kind of like modulate my behavior to like appease and accommodate whiteness, and how that and like I guess I wanted to write about the performance of that led me to remembering that I like used to you know, kind of like where is this costume which I had kind of forgotten about, even the fat fact like about that I used like wear that wig and I go to parties, and I was like, I was like doing a kind of performance way before I ever thought of myself as a performer or even like thought about performance art at all as being like something I could do. I'm still kind of intrigued by, like what my motivation were for doing that, because I don't I feel like it was really a very subconscious thing that I was doing. Aside from how she felt about her intention but that sort of real world performance, She also questioned how she chose to tell her stories and who she chose to tell them too. She felt this way after she got on stage to perform White Drags. They had the first time where I was like, oh, like, I actually want to be a lot more um judicious about like what I say and who I say it for. I wrote it to perform in a venue that I knew would be most mostly white audience, and then I a friend of mine who saw me do it there, asked me to perform it at her at her space, which is intentionally for POC. And so I did, and I did it without really thinking about the fact that I had written it for a mostly white audience and white an'tays just wanted to kind of in a way that like, I guess not that I expected, but I was sort of like it was interesting to see how they responded, like like I kind of wrote it to be like a critique of white insiness in life, and then when I performed for people of color, like I think they thought it was really like sad and trashed because I was like, oh, like I just really think but it made me feel like I was like, that's interesting. I just made me feel like I want to be really careful about like performing for white people. I really don't want to write about like my pain for the benefit of a white audience. Again, Like I think that I'm used to doing that for like various reasons, and I I really don't want to do that anymore. And often Nicole used her art to understand her identity. I mean, I think a lot of my right, my lot of my fiction was a lot about identity. A lot of my characters were black women who were kind of like me because I guess had a certain level of privilege and also had a certain because of those privileges, maybe had ex curience a certain level of like comfort and white spaces. I guess there I was. I wanted to write story like it is about like black women doing things, traveling or just like daty, like doing like very everyday things and then then and having these tools to ostensibly be like comfortable like in a white world, but then like those experiences are constantly like subverted by like racialized microaggressions. And so a lot of my stories are about sex because like women just trying to get laid, but like it thought, it's always sucked up by like some white dude, you know, saying something out of out of pocket to you, like back to the thing. I don't know. I was trying to communicate something about those experiences. I was trying to like maybe validate them for writers of color and also kind of like trying to explain them to white readers. I really like to write about like so called them unlikable women, like women who like were not interested in like the male gaze. Like that was just really fun for me. I guess also is my fiction. Like if there were sort of like a motivation for what I was writing, it was probably to kind of maybe figure out certain things, you know, to process certain things about myself and my own identity, but also just to write characters I felt like were that I like did not encounter in fiction. Like I was like, I don't ever get to read stories about like my particular kind of experience, my particular experience of blackness, or my experience of being a person of color, or even like the way that I want to live my life as as a woman, Like I don't. I didn't really see a lot of examples of that, and so I also wanted to write the stories I wanted to see in the world, I guess. But even though she thought about identity a lot, she feels like she's been the same person all along, a shy, weird out with a kind of punk sensibility, been the least like I don't know, like five or six years or so, like I really have like also come into like my queer identity in a really big way. So I felt like the biggest change, I guess. But everything else I feel like, I'm like, oh yeah, like I'm I'm like I've been me like I'm still me, so more of me than I was before. Michaela Angela Davis and E Lennie Davis Knight the Dope mother and daughter. I think our mon or Christopher identity are super different. My mom and I we definitely we've clashed in some ways, um privately called each other out. I think in some ways how she identifies as black and how I do are very different. Michaela Angela Davis is an image activist and writer who's worked in black spaces like Essence and the Alvin Ali American Dance Theater. She's been steeped in black art all her life, and so as a Lennie thanks to her upbringing, but she's clear that she's not the same person as her mom. I asked Lenny how their identities are different. I think hers is a little bit, for lack of a better word, more of a classic approach to blackness. Like it's very activism based. She grew up in d C. Chocolate City, black black black like that is her thing. UM and black women and and anything that's like like she'll watch a movie that's awful because it was made by a black woman to support the cause and I'm like, it's a whacky movie. I'm not watching it, like sorry, you know. Um. And for me, I don't feel the need to overly state anything. I'm just who I am. I'm not. I'm also not leading a black charge. I'm not in a space where that is my job and my my passion. My passion is in beauty industry, and I certainly find spaces within that too, have little moments of revolution and make sure that one image gets to one country that it might be it wouldn't have, or make sure that the model featured on the on the gondola is black drinking a coconut. True story. Um, But that's kind of where I'm in in and I know that it can seem a lot more frivolous. But I'm sure there's spaces within my work to show black women in different in different ways, but it's not the same. My blackness is just who I who. Part of who I am. Blackness is also Mom's life. It's also her job, it's her platform, it's her it's her career. But Lenny does think deeply about her heritage. Mom identify so strongly with black culture, and that is her job and her work that's not my story, um. And my interest also lies in, like I sat down with my grandmother maybe a year or two ago, and she kind of told us, like this craziest story about our lineage, which I think is one of the coolest parts about our family, Um, is how mixed we actually are and what people sacrifice to to love each other in Deep South and all of that. So I'm also proud that we're Irish and German and Syrian and black and all those other things, um, crazy native blood too, And of course yes I'm black. That's how identify I don't check like Irish on the block. That would be funny. I might do that just to fun with somebody like Irish actually, um, but I think for me it's more understanding those complexities don't necessarily make me feel like I'm not black, but that we're multifaceted. And there's a reason why my mom is light skinned, blonde hair and green eyes like that comes from somewhere and that story is just as interesting to me. And though that's Michaela's lineage too, she says she's hyper focused on blackness, that whiteness is so quote brutal and nasty and stupid. And destructive that she's just not into said in it. One of the things I miss about d C was because it was so black, like your doctor was black. Like the idea of identity. It was so reinforced that you didn't think outside of it until you got outside of it, except for you know, I was so light and blonde, and so that was my thing, Like I felt so black inside, but I I presented so light and really blond. And I remember when I first moved to UM d C, and I think I was in the second grade, were younger, and all these kids were asking me whether I was albino, and I didn't even know what an albino was. Oh my no. And so that the idea of being black and light and black and blonde, that was my sort of identity piece. But it wasn't the same as like your blackness being interrogated because it was the city and so you felt this a comfort UM. And then I went to do Galanty School the year, so I was I was comfortable with black genius and our identities are complicated. There is no blueprint for blackness. In high school, UM, I grappled because I was very popular, but I wasn't popular with like one group. I had like my weird artsy friends. I had my super rich, crazy like gossip girlfriends, and then I had like two hood girls, which you always need. So I had all these different experiences, but I certainly encountered more often than not passive. They didn't know they were being racist racist ship from white people who were like who loved me, but they would just say ship, like oh my god, there's like so much agree on and I'm like, But then, unfortunately, the most aggressive stuff that I got was from women of color who were darker and angry and didn't consider me, you know, black enough, which is a story I'm sure we've all heard and some way or another. But I didn't speak black enough, I wasn't dark enough. I liked too much white girl ship, whatever that means, um. And so unfortunately I ended up gravitating towards kind of a hodgepodge of people and ultimately never really felt comfortable in any any one space. All white people, all black people, all anything for me is a little bit uncomfortable. And I think most of that is cousin from New York. So even just visually all of one thing, as I where are we? Um? But also just you know, it's it's a weird place to be in when you are complex both biologically and intellectually to fit in. And that's why spaces like Afril Punk and another kind of cool girl, spaces that are are based in the black community but aren't specific to the black community can be really dope. MICHAELA says, even though she's centered in her blackness, she's still considered alternative in her generation. I also was working with those alternative artists like CEO and Bloody trab It and Michelle and Dago Tello, and so even though those are all black artists, they're still like on the edge black artists, and so um, these thousand streams of blackness, like identifying myself for my work and my life centered in blackness feels very expansive to me because I feel like there's just so much to explore because my education. Um, even though I went to a historically black high school, I then came to a very white um University of ny U, and then it sells them very very white, like I was the only person of color in my acting conservatory and they didn't even know I was because I was punk looking and I had short blunt finger waves and more rice powder and realistic like, why didn't they know? I was black? Like? I literally, I literally but literally, and I wore a mouse like I felt so black and side I'm light as fun like I'm light, and I put on rice powder and shade my eyebrows and wore redless. I was cool and I'm wore a mouse lay tune suit every day for two weeks, my first two weeks of school, and I didn't know what they didn't know I was black? Like, But even so, we're never allowed to forget our blackness. We can't divorce ourselves from it. Even when people attempt to dilute, spin on and rip away our identities, they're always part of us. Also, just I remember Keith Harry and Michael Stewart. We're both dope artists that were considered street artists at the time. Right they were tagging them. The cops handcuffs and beat Michael Stewarts to death. Keith Herring and that it was almost like the party where all of us are having fun and we're like Freedom or Downtown, and it's like East the data. It was all certain ship he's black. That's what happened. And so there was part of it. There was a moment in time when I was young it really wasn't about black it was about freedom. And we were all in the same space and Boss gas at this party and did it. And then Michael Stewart got murdered. It's almost like a Trey Lion thing in the art scene, and we knew he was murdered because he was black, and he was he literally had handcuffs on his wrists and his ankles and Lemon cops beat him to death. And Keith Herring kept tagging, you know what I mean, like that some my innocence broke in that moment too. So there's a lot of you become who you are as a result of your experiences. And so when you have certain kinds of experiences, um, they get in your DNA, they make you a certain way. And that's why certain things that when things like racists and things like Jim Crow can deform. Like, I don't know who my grandmother would have been if she didn't see people hanging from true you said fourteen and fifteen years like who do you get to be? You know, like who do these kids get to be? Who being ripped away from their children, and I mean from their parents at the border and scattered all over the country, like who do you get to be? So a lot of who we are, that's how we were raised, and her father and I made very clear decisions about trying to create spaces that felt safe and um supported and creative. And so that's the legacy to right again full circle. When you say, oh, I want I want black girls to be free, you better be ready for what freedom looks like in different ways, you know, And sometimes you're like, freedom looks like that. Okay, that's your freedom, you know, and it's challenging. So what is your freedom look like to both of you? Glitter? So the woman talking glitter, that's it, that's really it. Freedom looks like litter. This this is what my freedom looks like like. Four different black girls sitting in a room talking about what your freedom looks like. God, so bridget, it's obvious these folks couldn't be confined to some tidy explanation of their identities. But I am wondering how you would finished this sentence. So I am, I am me and you, um let's see, I am amazing. I love it. It's true. What's the solution bridget find your authentic voice. What's another solution? Bridget look for joy and your identity? Any other solutions? Bridget take pride in all your identities? Is there another solution? Bridget find the beauty in our differences? Afro Punk Solution Sessions is a co production between afro Punk and How Stuff Works. Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve's Jeff Cope Executive Co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan latif Hill. Dylan Fagin is supervising producer and Kathleen Quillian is audio engineer. Many many thanks to Casey Pegram and Anty Reese for their production and editorial oversight, and many thanks to our on the ground Atlanta Crewe, Ben Bowland, Corey Oliver and Noel Brown. The Underside of Power is performed by Al Jeers. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at afro Punk