What’s so bad about “finding out”?
For generations of Black children, the consequence of “fucking around” was an existential threat that ranks somewhere between hooping and/or hollering during a thunderstorm and—perhaps the most dangerous childhood activity in all of African America—acting “grown.”
While there are a few cases of Black people throwing caution to the wind and their ancestral warnings (Lot’s wife, Herman Cain or Stephen A. Smith), there are some cultures where a majority of people refuse to vaccinate themselves from the FAFO virus.
It took years of fucking around with anti-choice conservatives before white women found out they could actually lose their reproductive rights. White farmers found out how much they depended on migrant workers, farm subsidies and free trade after supporting mass deportations, ending welfare and higher tariffs. When I found out that 50% of Hispanic male voters cast a ballot for Trump, I thought Pew Research was fucking around.
Joy-Ann Reid doesn’t fuck around.
Long before she became the first Black woman to anchor a primetime cable news show, Reid studied not finding out at the prestigious FTSIO University School of Life (and Harvard).
On this week’s episode, Day One ContrabandCamper and host of The Joy Reid Show sits down for a conversation about:
Why you should subscribe to The Joy Reid Show.
The need for uniting the diaspora.
Why speaking out and refusing to play “the game” actually helped her career.
How being a child of immigrants shaped her understanding of Black American culture.
How Stephen A. Smith was wrong when he whitesplained her dismissal.
If she has any regrets and what’s next for her.
And, for the first time, Reid shares the behind-the-scenes details and machinations that led to her MSNBC firing.
The internet is full of hot takes, uninformed opinions or people whitesplaining the world under the guise of objectivity. But each week, Blacksplained asks a scholar, expert or someone who knows things to tackle one question from a Black perspective.
So sit back and listen as Joy-Ann Reid Blacksplains:
What can you find out when you don’t fuck around?
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