Busy Being Black with Joshua Rivers

Professor Therí Alyce Pickens is Full Professor of English at Bates College, and her newest book, Black Madness :: Mad Blackness, has done nothing short of set me alight. In it, she explores the relationship between Blackness and disability, showing how Black speculative and science fiction authors craft new worlds that reimagine the intersection of Blackness and madness.  We spoke just before Chr...

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology/Appendix. Anthology/Appendix is a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction and includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances. Today’s story is “Me and My Old Man”. The love...

In this final episode in this series supported by the European Cultural Foundation, I'm in conversation with Dr S Chelvan, a globally recognised legal expert on refugee and human rights claims based on sexual or gender identity and expression. His Difference, Stigma, Shame and Harm (‘DSSH’) model is a positive tool to determine an LGBTQ asylum claim, which is now used globally and is endorsed by t...

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology/Appendix. Anthology/Appendix is a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction and includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances. Today’s story is “The Return of the Prodigal F...

Professor Fatima El-Tayeb is professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her work deconstructs structural racism in “colorblind” Europe and centers strategies of resistance among racialized communities. She’s the author of three books, was active in Black feminist, migrant and queer of colour organisations in Germany and the Netherlands and was one of the...

Today’s conversation is with iki azaid funes, a Venezuelan migrant and anti-racist activist currently seeking international protection in Spain. She’s a survivor of Covid-19, and her experience fighting Covid-19 and the regime of white supremacy in Europe offers important insights to help us all understand how people like iki, and many in our communities, so often fall outside the bounds of what i...

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology/Appendix. Anthology/Appendix is a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction and includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances. Today’s story is “On Not Dying in Germany”. Wh...

My conversation today is with artist, author, legal scholar and activist Olave Nduwanje. Working across anti-racism, LGBTQ rights, anti-capitalism and disability movements, Olave brings to this conversation a wonderfully expansive understanding of Blackness, queerness and trans identities. Olave calls us to an understanding of Blackness that is capacious, that contains within it the possibilities...

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology Appendix – a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction which includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances. Today's story is "In the Eyes of Our Mothers". On opposite ends o...

Adeola Aderemi is a multilingual Afro-Greek and multi format artist, scholar, activist and healer, who spends a great deal of time amplifying the voices of and fighting for marginalised women. She is the editor in chief of Distinguished Diva – a community of Black women storytellers – and is currently working on raising awareness among the general public on issues such as human trafficking, gender...

As part of this special series funded by the European Cultural Foundation, I’m delighted to be working with artist and activist Isaiah Lopaz to share exclusive first-listens to his new project, Anthology Appendix – a multimedia project centred around queer Black fiction which includes readings, rituals, discussions and performances. Today's story is "A Wednesday Affair". In a foreign land two wome...

Liz Fekete is the Director of the Institute of Race Relations and head of its European research program. She has worked with the Institute since 1982 and specializes in contemporary racism, refugee rights, far-right extremism and Islamophobia across Europe. She is advisory editor of the Institute’s journal Race & Class and is the author of A Suitable Enemy: Racism, Migration and Islamophobia in Eu...

Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones is a legal academic and anthropologist, based in London. He is the Deputy Dean at Birkbeck School of Law, the author of Race in the Shadow of Law: State Violence in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, 2016) and serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Race Relations and the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group. He’s on the advisory board of the Centre for Intersectiona...

BL Shirelle is a hip-hop artist and activist who uses her music to share her experiences with police violence, addiction and the realities of prison for Black women. Her debut album, Assata Troi – which translates to “she who struggles is a warrior” – is described as a timeless hip hop classic that speaks of hope in our era of mass incarceration and systemic racism. In addition to her own music, B...

A self-titled bad Buddhist, Lama Rod Owens is an author, activist and authorised Lama (Buddhist Teacher) in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. He's a comforting, honest and straight-talking queer Black man, who’s considered one of the leaders of his generation of Buddhist teachers. His new book is Love and Rage: The Path to Liberation through Anger – and he opens the first chapter like this: “S...

For the sixth and final episode of Theory in the Flesh, I’m in conversation with Dr Oni Blackstock, the Assistant Commissioner for the Bureau of HIV at the New York City Department of Health. In 2018, doctors diagnosed 1,917 people with HIV – a 67% decline from the number of diagnoses in 2001. --- I reached out to Dr Blackstock to understand what precipitated such a historic drop in new HIV diagno...

Bakita Kasadha is a writer, researcher and poet. She is a Black woman living with HIV and as a health activist holds different national and international advisory roles. Her recently completed dissertation critiques and challenges knowledge production at the research level, and asks important questions about who is and is not involved in research that aims to uplift and support at-risk and margina...

In a powerhouse TedTalk, The Problem with Race-based Medicine, social justice advocate and law scholar Dorothy E Roberts says: “Race is not a biological category that naturally produces health disparities because of genetic difference. Race is a social category that has staggering biological consequences, but because of the impact of social inequality on people's health.” The novel coronavirus, CO...

In countries like England, where young Black boys - irregardless of sexuality - are disproportionately impacted by school exclusions, where the prison population is full of Black men and where mental health services for Black people are increasingly rare, how are we as queer Black people and queer people of colour acknowledging and showing solidarity with our presumably heterosexual Black brothers...

On the 26th of March, Frances Webber, the Vice-chair of the Institute of Race Relations’ Council of Management and a former barrister specialising in immigration, and refugee and human rights law, wrote of the self-isolation required to prevent the spread of COVID-19: “Those without homes or privacy cannot distance or self-isolate; nor can they observe strict hygiene, without access to hot water a...

When Lady Phyll and a busload of Black lesbians travelled down to Southend-on-Sea in 2005, they couldn't have imagined what UK Black Pride would become. I called Lady Phyll, the executive director and co-founder of UK Black Pride, to understand how she's feeling after the recent announcement that UK Black Pride 2020 is postponed. -- @_busybeingblack is the podcast exploring how we live in the full...

Much is researched, written and said about sexual racism in our communities. "No Blacks, no fats, no femmes, no Asians" are all terms any of us who’ve used dating apps have seen and those of us caught in the racist, fat- and femme-phobic crosshairs, we feel the pain acutely. My guest today, Professor Rusi Jaspal, is finding that what has become an ostensibly casual digital discrimination has real...

After our conversation on stage at OUTing the Past exploring queer Black histories, Sea Sharp and I took a walk through the countryside to continue our conversation. I had a particular question about themes in their work that speak to a desire for invisibility, but as we approached a group of fenced-in and curious cows, our conversation took quite a turn. -- @_busybeingblack is the podcast explori...

In their poem Misogynoir, Sea Sharp writes, Maybe mama knows I’d rather burn my leather / than wear it another day for her, would rather / slice this skin in slivers, rip off my flesh like a grapefruit peel. In this poem, which explores a contentious relationship between mother and child, between Black skin and freedom, Sea touches upon one of the profound conflicts queer Black people can contend...

In my conversation with Chantelle Lewis, she shares with us some of the initial findings in her doctoral research into Black mixed race families in the midlands. I thought it a great opportunity to sit down with my mum, Josephine, to find out more about her experience married to a Black man and raising mixed race children. She discusses her first encounters with racism, the moment she realised wha...