@OnBLACKNESS #1 | Melissa Harris-Perry
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This Week in Blackness is proud to present the debut episode of On Blackness — Conversations with the most brilliant minds in the country about the intersection of race, politics and pop culture. On this first episode host Elon James White talks with Melissa Harris-Perry.
Elon James White
Managing Director at This Week in Blackness
Elon James White is a writer, humorist, founder and current Managing Director of This Week in Blackness, White is a contributing editor at The Root and his work has been featured on MSNBC, Colorlines, Newsone, VH1 and more.
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Loved it. Great questions, thoughtful answers, hilarious dialogue.
Thanks so much. We hope to continue the dialogue across the nation!
Love Melissa Harris-Perry. It was nice to hear her in a more relaxed setting.
She’s great. I was always struck by how chill she was overall even as she continues to grow in stature and acclaim.
Incredible interview! Much more relaxed than when I saw MHP on her book tour (though that was also excellent). I can’t wait to hear more episodes of this promising series. I know you mentioned it on the show, but if we want to recommend Black academics should we email in? Or is there a better way to submit those names?
Thanks for all you do Team Blackness!
This was an incredible interview. MHP educated, informed, and comforted me. Her laughter is the truth.
So happy to hear this intelligent discourse.
Elon,
I thought the interview was indeed fascinating and I’ve ordered one of her books.
Now the bad news Where do I get some readable information on Jenifer Richeson all I can find are papers that can’t tell me if it’s worth spending the money to buy. Has she written any books.
On topic of the show, I wonder how your guest would define me. I see myself as a human (period) despite the ‘mixed blood’ . I argue that because of “out of Africa migrations” origins we are all of the same genotype . In reality Phenotypes are genetic, epigenetic etc responses to conditions (evolutionary Work in progress). Race , culture are subsets of the same cause and effect relationship but at the human/ societal conditioning level.
Regardless of our culture, race , religion et al we all have the same instincts ( i.e. procreation, survival , fight or flight et al) .
Recent psephological research has confirmed that culture (as a response to the specific environment) can by social rewards/ punishment can condition people to emphasise various specific ‘instinctual’ responses.
This is most clear in attitudes attitudes to death , what is food (yuk factor) fears and even greed and envy responses. The latter two were the subject to behavioral experiments on some Amazonian tribal people . Even though they dealt with money as the means of purchasing things. Testing revealed that envy and greed as in maximization and enmity over someone else getting a better deal was almost irrelevant especially when compared to those in a western or consumerist society. i.e. the notion that you had more didn’t change attitudes or status.
Hence my long held conclusion that while we ‘cling to emotional security blanket’ constructs such as ‘nationalism’, race, culture, religion’ to define our selves, we remain victims of the randomness of evolution and the idea that it has a hierarchial purpose, direction.
On the other hand if we abandon those trappings condition ourselves not to seek differentiation in arbitrary ‘phenotypical ‘ groups we at least in theory can control/influence the direction of evolution by reducing the internal (internecine) propensity towards entropy.
Just a thought or two
Regards
examinator