Podcast review: Code Switching "Why Now, White People?"

I started listening to NPR's "Code Switch" because code-switching has always fascinated me through my experiences living as a non-native speaker in an immersion environment or navigating multilingual environments here, at work or home.  Sometimes a code switch fills in a gap in one language where another has a succinct word or phrase for a universal experience.  Sometimes we switch codes to to avoid, or inflict, microaggressions.*

I was disappointed to learn that the podcast didn't focus on linguistics and actual  code switching, but I appreciated the focus on race.  The BLM protests may have caused a shift, or intensification, and I'd like to examine the June 16, 2020 episode "Why Now, White People?"

First, some context. Some famous people looked for content on race and culture, saw a reputable publication like NPR, subscribed and recommended the Code Switch podcast to their followers on social media.  Overnight the podcast shot to #1 on iTunes, and this episode is their first post fame publication.  In this episode discusses this, and notes that books that week on race topped the Amazon best seller list including a book How to Be an Antiracist. 

The pod likes the word "Antiracist," a word I first encountered in 2002 at KU.  I did not like the word at the time because defining something by what it is not is at best reductive and affronts my sense of logic.  I heard and read the word then in circles so extreme as to have little currency in deeply conservative Kansas; however,  being married to a woman of color, being the son and father of biracial people, and being committed to justice, diversity and equality, I care about the things Antiracists say they care about.  I agree with Tolerence.org that all students need anti-racism in their education, and  "white teachers with primarily white students can feel hesitant to discuss these issues since they may not feel it affect them" but labels concern me.  I also have a low threshold for condescension and contempt, and Antiracist has seemed at the time from the people who embraced it like an "eye for an eye" approach to social justice: meeting hate with hate.  It also treated race with an exclusivity (black and white fallacy).  The Professor who introduced "anti-racist" to me also insisted I see David Horowitz when he spoke and KU, and I will never get that hour back.  No one should have to listen to that man.  The word "anti-racist" inspires a negative bias as well in that is varies by only one letter from anti-fascist (ok maybe 2 letters), a term the right has used sucessfully to derail, distract and demean efforts at justice and equality.  But as a linguist I get hung up on words too much.


At  2:58 host Gene Demby latches onto something co-host Shareen Marisol Meraji says about the number of white people. On first listening I thought this to be actual code-switching.  After repeated listening I'm not sure and I would like to hear discussion.  Demby  reacts to Meraji's account of white people at protests where she notes she saw a  “smattering of white people.”  This word surprises Demby and he professes he is unfamiliar with the word and he asks if, or  suggests, white people use "smattering" as a collective noun.  Is "smattering" a "white" word, and/or a word not used in Black English Vernacular? (a dialect I studied in college as a student and working in inner-city Toledo, OH and Kansas City, KS).  I need someone else to interpret him for me.  I don't want to bias their interpretation through my own speculation.  I also wonder, were there no Asians, native Americans or Latinx at any of the protests these veteran antiracists attended?  If so they weren't mentioned in the podcast.

He goes on to mention "A murder of bros" which to my ears sounded like "a murder of crows" a collective noun (label).   It rhymes, and he was positing it as a collective noun. Though in his context it calls to mind the racist scene from Dumbo. Urban Dictionary notes no racial connotation, but Demby's use, in opposition to "smattering," implies it to be a term for Black people, and (from my research into the BLM protests) uses it to apply to women of color as well. Or if not applied to women of color, he risks minimizing  of Black women's role in the movement.  Is that his intent?  This matters.

Later at 5:50 the hosts  address miscegenation and derides the women of color who married  white men for the lack of "pro-antiracist**" behavior.   Is it fair to lay blame on a woman for an absence of Anti-racist behavior in their men? This bothers me.

I would appreciate interpretations of these two passages - neither over a minute long - from a variety of races and genders.  I also wonder how appropriate this Code Switch podcast episode would be for college students, and how I approach it honestly  and with sensitivity.  I also almost used an image of the black crows from Dumbo, but eliminated it because I don't know how Millenials would react to something they didn't grow up with.  I'm being safer and sensitive, but I from what I have seen, self-censorship can be worse than overt censorship. 

I also wonder how gatekeeping plays into the episode and the role of white allies in BLM protests.

Notes:

* discussed in the Brain Burrito, "What's it like to be a Black Student at JCCC."
**maybe making a word do to much is what I don't like  - in addition to use as a label.