Color Between the Headlines
Season 3
Color Between the Headlines
Season 3, Introduction
Your favorite podcast is finally back! Spring is in the air, and our hosts have been hard at work creating new material for you all to resonate with and reflect on. Speaking of which... media overload is tooo real right now. News articles, social media posts, echo chambers, “For You” pages, content, content, content, REPEAT. But what happens to all of those headlines, the stories impacting diverse communities of color, that fall to the bottom of the digital news pile? On this third season of KSB, titled “Color Between the Headlines”, we’ll strive to elevate those stories once again, in conversation with incredible humans on the frontlines of the issues at hand. On this particular episode, join your hosts Lena, Hope, Jon, Dinah, Chase, and Daisy (supported by our new team members, Narvella, Fernanda, and Nicole) as they jump into a convo about 2020’s surge of (performative) activism, echo chambers, social media fatigue, and our own podcast’s position in the world of the media.
This episode's hosts: Lena Diasti, Hope Houston, Jon Brooks, Dinah Clottey, Chase Leito, and Daisy Okoye
Now Playing: Disability, Media, Revolution!
Season 3, Episode 2
The disabled population is the LARGEST minority group in the world. But have you even heard about the Disability Civil Rights Movement or the diverse culture and identities created by people with disabilities? Probably not. We live in a world that still gives Hollywood the O.K. on “cripface” (most notably with Sia’s 2020 movie “Music”). A world where police brutality afflicts people with “underlying conditions” all too often. TikTok mods are told to penalize disabled people for looking “unappealing”. Major items, like work-from-home jobs, on the agenda of disability advocates are only realized when able-bodied people demand it. We're all ableists to some degree, and it’s high time to get educated. Join Hope and Daisy as they take an eye-opening trip through disability advocacy history, art, accessibility, identity, and activism in Chicago and the United States, with special guests Cassidy Medina (Co-President of UChicago’s Students for Disability Justice) and Candace Coleman (Community Development Organizer on Racial Justice for Access Living).
This episode's hosts: Hope Houston and Daisy Okoye
It’s the Co-Opting for Me
Season 3, Mini Episode
There are numerous variations of American English, yet none suffer the amount of stigma that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) does. “Unprofessional” and “uneducated” are only some of the words that often brand those who speak it. Yet, not everyone bears the burden of this linguistic prejudice equally. While non-Black people capitalize off of AAVE under the guise of “internet slang,” Black people often find themselves policing their use of the dialect -- a common phenomenon known as “code-switching” -- in favor of what is considered to be “Standard American English”, which, unlike other variations of English, is spoken nowhere. Join host Jon in his first mini episode with special guest (and *new KSB team member*) Narvella, as they dive into the co-opting of AAVE online and why you should think harder the next time you use “internet slang” in your vocabulary. This episode will have you questioning the validity of any “standard” language and Credit Karma's problematic use of AAVE.
This episode's host: Jon Brooks
Coding Hate and Reclaiming our Data
Season 3, Episode 3
In our haste to digitize, computerize, and distill our world into comma-separated values and JSON files, necessities of diversity, diversity in data collection, and diversity in programmers gets lost in the mix and is deemed unimportant. So, when a Black man and his friends are tagged as “gorillas” by Google Photos’ facial recognition software, when a TikTok story book semblance filter turns white people into royalty and POC into animals or monsters, when the implicit and explicit biases of the people behind the lines of code appear in the user interface of these public programs, we are left to ask, is social media racist?! Just as children can be taught to be racist through socialization, artificial intelligence and machine learning models learn to be racist as they reflect the biases of their “parent” programmers. It is critical that we ask ourselves to examine and interrogate the data beyond the typical performance tests. Who is building these models, and what kinds of data collection shortcomings could give such skewed results as the mis-categorization of humans as primates? How can we retrace and reconnect the end product outputs and programs to the prejudice that leads to discriminatory tendencies? In other words, how do we work to fix this data-driven world? Our hosts Lena and Dinah are joined by special guest Dr. Michael C. Dawson, a Professor of Political Science here at the University of Chicago. In this episode, we are getting down into the true essence of coding hate and the ways in which technology and social media input data from the real world and reproduce these biases online. But technology does not have to rule our world. One way or another, we are reclaiming our data and taking a stance against online prejudice.
This episode’s hosts: Dinah Clottey and Lina Diasti
Fire, Fox (News), and the Facebook Court on Free Speech
Season 3, Episode 4
In a country founded on principles of free speech, one where Fox News finished 2020 claiming the title of “most-watched cable news channel in history”, the outcry of “silenced conservatism” may sound ironic. But is there truth to this sentiment? What do Twitter and the Facebook Supreme Court have to do with it? What could it mean for minority groups, people of color, those with historically ignored voices when we vest silencing power in private organizations? Let’s take a ride through the Constitution, a cause mutual to civil rights activists and white supremacists, fires of free speech under private companies, and the marketplace of ideas to find out. Daisy will discuss these topics and more in conversation with Professor and Law Alumni Scholar Robert L. Tsai of the Boston University School of Law, a prolific author who is well-versed in everything from civil rights and social movements to the First Amendment itself.
This episode’s host: Daisy Okoye
Coming to America(n Detention): The Shifting Narratives of Immigration
Season 3, Episode 5
After years of Trump’s blatantly bigoted, anti-immigrant rhetoric, a new tide has turned - or has it? In the midst of Trump-era immigration policy reversals by the Biden administration, VP Kamala Harris recently told Guatamalens “do not come,” in her first trip overseas, sending mixed signals in a situation that serves as a microcosmic example of America’s long history of hypocrisy on the subject. Within one breath, America touts itself as a country that has long-welcomed immigrants, and then openly discourages them from coming in the next. Which immigrants have America historically “welcomed,” and how does America’s immigration past connect to harmful narratives that are perpetuated presently? How have narratives surrounding immigration changed, and how have policies affected those narratives? What happens when immigration leaves the front page, and what happens to immigrants when cameras stop rolling? Join our hosts Chase and Jon as they tackle these questions and discuss how you can support immigrant communities of color with our special guest, Mireya Gutierrez of Instituto Del Progreso Latino.
This episode’s hosts: Jon Brooks and Chase Leito
What Lives In Your Mind Rent Free?
Season 3, Episode 6
KSB has spent the season talking about some of the recent headlines that captivated us and significantly impacted Black and Brown communities. But why stop there? In this finale of Season 3 of Kinda Sorta Brown, we have one question: what headlines are living in our guests’ minds rent-free? Take a trip with host Lena Diasti through an imagined day of very real news stories (about everything from Critical Race Theory to UK regulations on chronic pain) as encountered and described by past guest speakers and our own KSB team members, from London to Washington, D.C. and back to Chicago. Now, we turn the question over to you. What headlines are living in your mind rent-free? Our guest speakers for this episode, in the order they appear, are as follows:
Jameisha Prescod, London based filmmaker and chronic illness advocate
Narvella Sefah, rising sophomore at UChicago and KSB Front-End Team contributor
Professor Robert L. Tsai, author and Professor of Law at the Boston University School of Law
Nicole Maria Mateo, rising sophomore at UChicago and KSB Audio Engineer Team contributor
Fernanda Ponce, rising junior at UChicago and KSB Content Creation Team contributor
Mireya Gutierrez, Intake Specialist at Instituto del Progreso Latino
This episode’s host: Lena Diasti