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Hey, it's Brittany Luce.Real quick before the show, it's been a wild, exciting, exhausting election season.
If you wanna follow what's going on and make sure you don't miss a development, we want you to know that there are three things you can listen to every day. NPR's morning news podcast, Up First, is recorded before dawn and out by 7 a.m.
Eastern time each weekday.It's the morning podcast that captures the news overnight, Up First, 7 a.m.Later in the day, you can find a new episode of the NPR Politics Podcast with context and analysis on the big stories, whenever they happen.
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They will be all over this election and its aftermath too.So, up first in the morning, Consider This in the evening, an NPR Politics podcast anytime big stuff happens, an around-the-clock election news survival kit from NPR Podcasts.
All right, thanks for listening.Here's the show. Hello, hello.I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
This week, we're connecting the dots between mass incarceration, the NFL, and bad jokes.I know, I know.How are all these things connected?
Well, we're going to find out with NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran and Trend Slash Media host and journalist, Imara Jones.Sergio, Imara, welcome to It's Been a Minute.
So happy to be here with you.Thank you so much.
Oh, so happy to have you both. I know this will be hard to narrow down, but if you could describe this election cycle in one word or phrase, what would it be?
I would say intense.The rhetoric related to immigration and so many other issues has been more serious, has been more intense.What about you, Amara?Chaotic.
I think from what's happening at the national level to local level to ballots being burned.Chaotic is my word.
Well, I mean, I will say I have, I think, a much more colloquial term that does get at what each of you have mentioned, which is yikes.That is my word.I have felt a lot of yikes at various points throughout this election cycle.
Well, I brought you both in because last week I was at home in Michigan, where I'm from, and while I was back home, I saw something on TV that I haven't seen in New York City.Admittedly, I don't have cable.My parents do.
So I don't get a lot of commercials that aren't like targeted ads.But I saw attack ads linking trans people together with immigrants and crime.
It's hard to believe, but it's true.Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.
Every transgender inmate would have access.
Kamala's for they, them.President Trump is for you.
I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message.
I was blown away.It turns out the Trump campaign has been pumping tons of money into these ads in a final hour push.His campaign has spent at least $17 million on these ads, and they've aired more than 30,000 times.
including in key swing states like Michigan.And so my question is, why?What is it about trans people and immigrants that makes them a valuable boogeyman in this election?And to find out, I'm talking to both of you today.
I want to focus on the attacks on the trans community first.Amara, you recently interviewed political reporter Eugene Daniels to talk about the Trump campaign's investment in anti-trans ads.
This all felt very sudden to me, viewing all of this for the first time, but this isn't the first time anti-trans attacks have been used to appeal to the electorate.
What does the history of anti-trans rhetoric tell us about why it's still a point of focus today?
Well, it tells us that the Republican Party big bet on being anti-trans as a core part of their political identity is now showing itself full force nationwide.
We have to realize that half the states in the country have passed some form of anti-trans legislation.This year, there've been over 600 anti-trans bills introduced by legislators.This has been a driving and burgeoning
and serious force inside of that party for a really long time, for years now.And they've been teeing it up to be a national issue where they could deploy it in close races because they're not going to shift tens of millions of votes on this issue.
That's not really what it's designed to do.It's designed to shave off small numbers of people in close races so that you can eke out a win.
Yeah, I also read that some of these ads were aired during NFL and college sports games in order to aim at suburban voters.Why do you think this demographic was the target audience for ads like this?
That's the group where the contest is really happening in some really important ways.And so the Republican Party is trying to call those people who are wavering back home.
They know that those people are already primed around this issue to be kind of trans-skeptical or trans-reticent or even trans-hostile.And so these ads are trying to get those voters to not waver and to come back home to the Republican Party.
Let's take a step back to look at how immigration fits into the larger picture, because these issues are often braided together, as we've seen in the ad that we just heard.
We've talked on this show before about how immigrants have been a scapegoat for everything from our struggling economy to national security.The Trump campaign has had some really ugly rhetoric around immigration.
Most recently at Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden here in New York City, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made several really awful jokes about Latino immigrants having too many kids.
And these Latinos, they love making babies too, just know that.They do.
It was racist, offensive, and it didn't even seem to go over well with the crowd.Sergio, you're an immigration correspondent for NPR based in Texas.I want to zoom out and look at this election cycle at large.
Can you walk us through how immigration has become such a cultural touchpoint for Americans in this election?
Republicans, Brittany, have been very, very effective at making the issue of immigration an issue for everybody, not only the people who lived in border communities, right?
In the past, when we talked about immigration, you always thought about Texas, you always thought about California, Arizona, New Mexico, but you didn't think about South Dakota or Iowa or Oklahoma, right?
But Republicans started using this message that every state is a border state.
I remember in 2018 covering the senatorial campaign of now-Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and she kept saying that over and over, that every state was a border state, including Tennessee.
We know, right, that Tennessee doesn't share a border with Mexico or Canada or any other country.And what that created is this idea that now you can be in Tennessee or Kentucky or South Dakota and you start thinking about the issue.
The other thing that we've seen, too, is that Democrats have started to be confronted with this issue more and more. Governor Abbott in Texas started busing migrants from Texas to other states.He sent them to Chicago.He sent them to Denver.
He sent them to New York. What that created was an issue for some of these democratic governors or mayors because now they were having an influx of migrants and they didn't have the infrastructure to help out.
So it became this thing where everybody, Republicans and Democrats, were recognizing that this was an issue and they started busing migrants all over the country.
And again, in a way, Democrats were then validating the concerns that Republicans were presenting.They've talked about how there's an invasion at the border.That is not true.
But I do have to say, Brittany, that not everything here has been misinformation, right?I mean, Republicans have been really good at highlighting what happened during the Biden administration.
So under Biden, the number of unauthorized crossings at the southern border increased, right?In December, for instance, there were about 300,000 arrests at the southern border, which is a record high.So that is true, right?
Under the Biden administration, the number of unauthorized crossings really increased and reached that record high.
And Republicans have exploited that, have exploited that number and have repeated ad nauseam the fact that under the Biden administration, this big number of folks try to come into the country, but they've been using that over and over.And
And that's how they've been able to successfully bring the issue of the southern border to states like Oklahoma, Iowa, North Dakota, right?
It's this idea that what has happened at the southern border, which again, those numbers are real, have an impact in these states.And they've been effective, as you can see with polling that shows that their rhetoric was so
strong that it pushed Democrats to move further to the right and here where we are, where suddenly immigration is one of the top items of importance for voters.
You know, this makes me think about the function of fear in our political landscape.I think it can be agreed that many people want change, but how that change is started can be motivated by different things.
You know, hope and even nostalgia are two instigators of change, but It feels like fear has really taken a front seat a lot in this election cycle.
I wonder what underlying fears are these attack ads hoping to play on and what kinds of fears are stoked by braiding these two issues together?
Well, I think that the thing that we have to realize is that both of these attacks are grounded in otherization.Right.And at times of fear, at times of uncertainty,
The idea that if you are included in a group of people that says that all of our problems are these other people, that is a very simplistic and sadly reassuring thing that people will gravitate to and towards.
The economic anxiety of the country is now thrust upon immigrants and immigration.And the idea of cultural change that frightens people has been pinned on trans people.So we need to see these through the uncomfortable lens.
Also, I should say the issue of crime, which they also throw in these ads, to say that these are the problems.And if we deal with these problems, then our society will be better.
And both of these attacks are grounded not only in the otherization, but a more complex and updated version of white supremacy called the Great Replacement Theory.
And the Great Replacement Theory holds that the United States is increasingly a less powerful, less wealthy, less self-assuring nation because of the decline in white people, specifically white Christians.
Right, and this is a theory that's been embraced by many prominent Republicans, like Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Brian Babin of Texas.And it seems like a lot of the policies within Trump's platform are driven by this ideology.
And that means stopping people from entering the country who are black and brown.Secondly, control over people's bodies.It's the way in which they see a link between trans issues and abortion in some really powerful ways.
Right.They see trans people as a reproductive threat, even though many trans people can and do have kids.
Yes.And so we have to realize that we have in America now, a fringe ideology that's extremist that's now moves to the core of our politics.And we have to accept that.
And I think that part of the confusion about where these attacks are coming from is a reticence to acknowledge that.
You know, regardless of who wins, what long lasting impact do you think this rhetoric will have?
You know, in terms of immigration, Brittany, This is something that I think often, and it's the fact that under the Trump administration, the asylum system was pretty much dismantled.He went after it big time.The Biden administration hasn't fixed it.
So if Harris wins, she will inherit a system that is not working, that doesn't work.If Trump wins, he's likely to continue to further dismantle it. So with the asylum system of this country, I think it would be really hard to recover from that.
But also, there has been this impact on how people perceive migrants, right?And that changes the psyche of the migrants, but also the psyche of a country.
I think about the shooting at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, El Paso, Texas, where a shooter killed 23 people and injured 22 more, mostly Latinos.And in his manifesto, he talked about a Hispanic invasion.
So this rhetoric, no matter who wins, has serious consequences.
Regardless of who wins, this is here to stay until we confront it, as I kind of alluded to before.And I think that it's really set us back with regards to the idea of equality for everyone.At its highest expression, everyone counts.
That's the only way that a democracy is sustainable. And I just wanted to say that I think that this goes to the heart of what Sergio was talking about in asylum.
You know, one of the reasons why we have asylum in this country is based upon rules and regulations that the United States both wrote and shaped in the wake of World War II, because we saw that one of the reasons why so many people died was because the United States refused to accept people in the 1930s whose lives were at risk because of who they were and where they were.
And so the idea was to develop a system where that couldn't happen again. And I think that that's one of the fundamental things that I don't think people get about trans rights.Trans people are human beings.
And as long as you are denying, holding back, pushing to the side a group of people solely because of who they are, you're placing the entire democracy at risk.
Hmm.Oh, my gosh.Well, sometimes it just feels like we have more at stake than ever.But as always, we will continue to watch and see what happens next week.But until then, Sergio and Mara, I have learned so much here.Thank you both so much.
You're welcome. And as a thank you, I'd like to teach you both something.
Can you sit down for a tiny bit longer?
We'll be right back with a little game I like to call, But Did You Know?
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All right, all right, switching gears here with NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran and Translash Media's Amara Jones, and we're gonna play a little game I like to call, What Did You Know?Here's how it works.
I'm going to share a story that's been making headlines this week, and as I give you some background on this story, I'll also ask you trivia related to it.But don't worry, it's all multiple choice, so the right answer's in there somewhere.
And the first one to blurt out the right answer gets a point.Person with the most points wins, and their prize is bragging rights.Are y'all ready?
Alright, well to start, last weekend in New York City, a Timothee Chalamet lookalike contest took over Washington Square Park.
Many excited fans attended the contest, so many that the NYPD had to shut it down, which resulted in the arrest of four people and a $500 fine for the organizer.
So, my first question is, by the morning of the competition, at least how many people had RSVP'd to the event?Was it A.900 people, B.2,500 people, or C.3,500 people?B.The answer was indeed B.
2,500.Listen, am I a fan of Timothée?Who knows?Was I following this on Twitter?Who knows?Were you there dressed as B?
I was going to say, did you compete?Who knows?
Who knows?I will say the answer is B, 2,500.
There hasn't been a conclusive number of how many people actually attended, but the number of attendees did reach the thousands, according to Slate, and that was enough to have to move the competition to the nearby Mercer Playground.
But this may be wonder. Who's a celebrity you want to be mistaken for?Oh, Michelle Obama.Michelle Obama.I like that one.Statuesque.Poised.
Listen, I can see that.Listen, I am a little delusional in my personal life.So I would love to be compared with Bad Bunny.A fashion icon.He loves Puerto Rico.He started as a bagger at the grocery store.That's right.
Bagging groceries at a grocery store.And now he is a superstar.So listen, that is the American dream.
Very good point, very good point.All right, question number two.After finding the space to hold their event, the contestants strut their stuff as different variants of the Timothee Chalamet cinematic universe.
So for my next question, the winner of the lookalike contest appeared as which Timothee Chalamet character?Was it A, Willy Wonka, B, Paul Atreides from the Dune series, or C, Bob Dylan?
Amara says C. What say you, Sergio?
I am going to say B. Paul Atreides.
Well, I gotta tell y'all, y'all are both wrong.The answer is A. Really, Juanca?
Okay, that should have not been the winner.I'm sorry.That is a character, a lookalike character of a human.We're not gonna do that.Sorry.
Well, 21-year-old Miles Mitchell won the competition dressed as Timothy's rendition of Willy Wonka.But I actually have a follow-up here.
If you were the chosen celebrity for a lookalike contest, what would contestants need to wear in order for people to know it's you? If there were a lookalike contest for me, it would be like glasses and like leopard print.It's a problem.
It's an addiction.People call me like an aging millennial, which I am and I don't care.But you know what?Leopard print is a neutral baby.That's how I feel about it.
I would say glasses for sure.I think I smile quite a bit, so the person should be smiling.And then, I don't know how you wear this or where you buy it, but wear an aura full of anxiety and stress.That would be a lookalike.
So glasses, smile, and a little aura of worry.Yes, that's it.Yep.I like it.I like it.OK, what about you, Amara?What are the Amara personaires wearing?
They would have to have colored braids. and probably bright colors on somewhere as well.That would be a good mark.
Okay.I love that you both know your signature look, like, yes, know thyself.I love it.All right.To recap the score, Sergio, you are at one point, and Amara, you are at zero points.
So without further ado, the final question, which is, since I'm feeling spicy today, winner takes all.OK.
So for the win, what did the winner of the Timothee Chalamet competition win?Was it A, a video from Timothee Chalamet congratulating the winner, B, an Amazon gift card, or C, a $50 cash prize?
I said cash prize.C, cash prize.
Well, you're both right, but Amara, you were right first.The answer is C, $50 cash prize.Listen.For the win.Listen.There you go.There you go.Well, I'll say the actual Timothee Chalamet did show up at the event to say hello to his adoring fans.
We love to see that because listen, you know, for journalistic purposes, I was following this.I want to make sure.
Friend, this isn't even your beat.Let's just call it out.This is a long way from what your beat.So false pretenses.
I'm a multi-layered human being, Amara.Okay.I do many things.
All right.Well, that's it for But Did You Know for this week.Congratulations again to Amara on your win.
Listen, I'm like the Liberty.
I pulled it out in the last minute.Well, oh my gosh.Thank you both so much for joining me today.This was so great.Thank you so much.Thanks for having us. That was NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran and Translash Media's Amara Jones.
I'm gonna take a quick break, but when I get back, I want us to talk about another thing that's happening in this election.Have you noticed all this panic over how Black men will vote?Are they really drifting to Donald Trump?
I have a lot of thoughts on this.And when I get back, we're entering the Black Manosphere.After a quick break.
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And now NPR's Gene Demby and I are about to get into something I've been wanting to talk about for a long time.The Black Manosphere.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
All right, well, let me get started. Okay Gene, what was your first brush with the Black Manisphere?Quickly, what was your first brush?
I think like a lot of people, my experience with it was kind of like little pieces of it would sort of float into my field of vision, you know what I'm saying?
Like if you're on Twitter, on social media, you would see these terms like high-value man, you know what I mean?
High value man?Oh, I knew exactly what Gene was talking about.Because just like him, I had seen the term popping up on my social media feed.
And I'm like, what is this high value man stuff?I just thought it was like discourse that was happening in some corner that I wasn't in.But I didn't realize it was like actually part of this larger ecosystem of like masculinist spaces.
These spaces have been dubbed the Black Manosphere.We've talked on this show before about the Manosphere, the online spaces where men gather and that often traffic in misogyny and toxic masculinity.
The Black Manosphere is an offshoot of that movement, one specifically aimed at Black American men that has been slowly building since 2016.
It's Instagram influencers, it's people on TikTok, it's a lot of very, very popular podcasts.
What's going on, what's happening, fellas?The point of my channel is to help you become a top tier man.Men of value look at a woman's pedigree.
A high quality woman wants you to be in control, but a low quality woman, she thinks that it's best that a woman leads the relationship.
Are you a thoroughbred?Are you a purebreed?We're talking about people with millions of followers.People like Dr. Umar and Kevin Samuels.And the list goes on.I would argue women benefit from sexism all the way.Men don't.
In a world where women have made economic and educational advancements, these guys are stepping in to tell young Black men that they should reclaim their place at the top.
make sure you have a woman who responds in a deescalatory manner with respect, accountability, affection, and submission.
And this kind of language and thinking has been bleeding into very real life.
My female friends would go on these dates and they would just come back and tell me these stories, like of this wild stuff that dudes would say to them, right?
Like my friend went on this date with this guy and it was like the third time they hung out and things were going really well.And she made a joke and then he cut her off and was like, Don't talk to me like that.I'm a high-value man.
You don't speak over me."And she was like, I'm sorry, what?Right, exactly.And she was like, excuse me?
I was like, what is going on here?And it's something that's really easy to slip into.Think of it like this.You're watching workout how-to videos.
Your goal is to be in healthy shape and build some functional muscle, then you've came to the right place.
and the algorithm picks up that you're interested in lifestyle content about how to have the best body.And then suddenly this.
Aesthetic physique is something that every man respects and aspires to have.
Only thing I was doing on lockdown was working out.So I was going to the gym all the time.I started following a bunch of fitness influences.
And I remember, like, falling asleep watching YouTube, and, like, I fell asleep and woke up, and I was, like, in this completely different part of YouTube.I was like, what is going on?Like, you know what I mean?
Yeah, like, because YouTube does autoplay.
It does autoplay, which is rolling.
It seems like fitness and lifestyle content is, like, an easy on-ramp for that kind of thing.
And it's because those faces are so deeply gendered, right?So true.There is this fitness brand, which I won't name here, that I started wearing.
And it was this one brand that I did not realize was, like, Black Manisphere adjacent until we started working on this episode.And then, of course, I was like, oh, my God.
A smooth 75% of the stuff that I have in my closet when I go to the gym is from this brand.Whoa. One of the things that's interesting about the Black Manisphere is they have all this merch, right, that is meant to signal to other members.
Does it have words on it or symbols or something like that?It has words on it, it'll have a logo.So there's one, it said BMT.BMT stands for Baby Mama Terrorist. Whoa.Whoa.Exactly.Right.Exactly.Exactly.
It's based on the idea that like, you know, these these women out here asking for all this child support, you know what I'm saying?And like taking all our money.
I'm sorry.You have blown my mind right now.Isn't it wild?Oh, my gosh.This is the Black Manosphere, but why did it come into existence and what history is it pulling from?
Yeah, so the way that Saida Grundy, who's a sociologist at Boston University, who studies the way that black men make masculinity, she called it a confederacy of spaces for men online.
Masculinist content that is broadly invested in a kind of grievance around women and gender and feminism, right?It's sort of like this idea that feminism has brought all these really bad things for men.
The stuff happening with dude that a lot of this stuff is sort of speaking to, right?Like, you know, young men today report they have few or no close friends, you know, compared to men a generation ago.
Really, there's a lot of emphasis, a lot of talk in these spaces around male loneliness and isolation.You know, these people having a hard time getting a foothold in their adult lives. as the economy has changed, right?
You know, you're from Detroit, right?Those old jobs at the plant, right?That allow men who are boomers.
Yeah, they're not there anymore.
Yeah, you can't support a family on a high school diploma anymore, right?That's true for men and women.
But these guys, if you think of like sort of this masculine idea of like, I'm a provider, that like then cuts off this whole sort of way to define yourself, right?It's like, you know, and so these dudes are really struggling like what it means to be
a grown man or sort of wrestling with what that means.People who are entering their young adult lives used to have these benchmarks, right?You get married, you buy a house.
Get married, buy a house, have a kid.
Exactly.You can't buy a house now if you're a Gen Z or even like a millennial, right?If you didn't go to college, it's impossible.If you did go to college, you have student loans.Like it's just very hard to hit all those benchmarks.
So people are really struggling with what it means to be like a actualized man or woman.And obviously there's like a bunch of very reductive ideas about what that means to a lot of people.
Sure, sure, sure, sure. And those are old tropes, old ones.
Absolutely.Yes, it plays so nicely with the kind of stuff you hear in churches, right?
Like the kind of stuff you hear about dudes needing to like step up, right, and take care of their families and return to the headship of their families in their communities.
It's all mixed up in there in this way that it might even make your antenna twitch, you know what I'm saying?
Sure, because you hear so many similar messages in so many other
And you see this, like, in a lot of the good Black man spaces, right?Like, I went to Morehouse, you know what I mean?Like, I have these degrees.
I am inherently desirable because I'm one of the rare... Trust me, I had a boyfriend in my early to mid-20s who spent a considerable amount of time telling me how he was such a catch for the very same characteristics that I also shared.
being, like, employed, having an education.These are traits that we both shared, but to him, that made him a person of very high value.
Exactly.There's not a big jump from, I'm one of the good ones, to I'm a high-value man.That's, like, a giant conceptual leap.And you think about just, like, in 2020, there was this stat that was going around.
It's like, there are more Black men in prison than there are on college campuses.And that's not true.That's absolutely not true.But it's the kind of thing that is sticky because it speaks to this thing that people feel is true and also
People repeat it because it makes their sort of like, I'm a black man who is in the middle class, right?I'm a professional or whatever it is, right?Financially stable.I'm not down with a mobile at the very least, right?I'm a catch.
It presents those men as their high value because they are supposedly rare, right? And that should give them, and so if you're thinking about dating in purely sort of like capitalist scarcity terms, right?It's like, well, I'm valuable.
I could be a POS, right?But like, I'm valuable because I'm bringing this to the table when other dudes didn't even bring this.
Yeah, it's like, you know, like, yes, am I nice?No.Am I gonna be nice to you?Absolutely not.
Am I curious?No, exactly.Am I fun?
Am I gonna take part in any of the things that you enjoy?Under no circumstances.However, I do have a degree on this wall.
Right, exactly.I'm one of the good ones.
He's a good man, Savannah.Okay, so now that we've established what the Black Manisphere is and how it impacts everyday interactions, I want to turn to how it's playing out right now in this election.
There's been a lot of headlines over the past month about how Black men might be drifting from the Democratic Party.
Vice President Harris is struggling to win over a key demographic.We're talking about black male voters.Every vote matters and Vice President Harris is trying to pull in more black male voters.
One group Harris has been focusing on, as you've noticed, probably black men.
Earlier today, the Vice President spoke with radio host Charlamagne Tha God about Trump making inroads with young black men.
There's some polling that suggests Black men aren't turning out for Kamala Harris like they did for Joe Biden.
We'll see what happens on election day, but we've seen politicians like Barack Obama boiling this down to Black men not wanting a Black woman to lead.
When you have a choice that is this clear, part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president.And you're coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.
But my question is, how has the rise of the Black Manisphere over the past decade slowly but surely made its way into mainstream politics?
And y'all, in these final days of the election, I have some thoughts about how this niche online community is impacting the final vote.First of all, Jean, we need to address this Obama comment.My question is, who exactly is
Barack Obama appealing to when he makes these remarks?And does it work?
Oh, man.I mean, that's the million-dollar question is like, who is he talking to, right?
You're speaking to the aunties and the wives and girlfriends and sisters or whatever of those dudes who need to feel like they're making the upstanding choice and making the electoral choices they're making.You know what I'm saying?
It's not for these men that he's speaking to.The dudes who he was talking to in that room, They're on a campaign trail.These are not dudes who are like... Right, they're invested.They're invested.They're invested.
So Kamala Harris is polling poorly among Black men historically, right?By all accounts, she's still going to win between 75% and 80% of Black men, right?That's what the poll numbers say.
But when you consider that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Democrats usually are in the high 80s, low 90s, right?Barack Obama was like 93% or 94%, right? 75% is a vast underperformance, right?Like among black male voters, right?
And so there's a real thing happening here.
But if we think that like scolding these dudes is going to get them to vote, I mean, you could sort of think about the shame thing as one thing, but also like, you kind of got to be in community with people to shame them.
And I think that's one of the things that's really fascinating about the black manosphere is that like, these dudes are not part of the community.Like, if you don't go to church, right, and you don't have friends, and you are not part of the kinds of
black spaces where people create this expectation that you vote and that you vote a certain way, then how much is this scolding going to work?The scolding and shaming and nudging works when you're in community with people.
Yeah.Barack Obama might not be somebody that you would look to.Yeah.He wouldn't be somebody who could shame you because you're not looking to him.You're looking to maybe the guy who's making these baby mama terrorist t-shirts.Exactly.
And you're wondering what he thinks. Lord have mercy.It's been interesting to see how the Harris campaign has rolled out this like policy meant to capture black men and you know, the stuff I'm seeing on there is mentoring programs.
I saw business loans for entrepreneurs and also some crypto friendly policy on that platform.It was very interesting to see how the entrepreneurship be your own boss.You can game the system through cryptocurrency.You can be the next, you know,
Black Bill Gates, you can get this money.That attitude is also very much a part of the Black Manisphere's attitudes.
Absolutely.When I saw that, I was like, oh, this is specifically for those dudes, for the Black Manisphere.It almost felt like it was a Black Manisphere rollout plan.
That is exactly how I felt about it as well.I was like, oh my gosh, this seems like this is trying to speak to this kind of composite idea of this a black man somewhere between the ages of 25 and 50 who's feeling severely disenfranchised.
It felt like these were policies that were put on a platform to try to appeal to these guys who, as you mentioned, perhaps are attracted to some of the things that they're seeing in the Trump platform.
I also wonder, I mean, I just finished having a conversation before this one about how on the other side, the Republican Party strategy is also playing to Black Manosphere ideas.We've seen a lot of transphobia.
The Trump campaign is spending gobs of money on anti-trans attack ads in these final weeks of the campaign.I wonder how things like transphobia, how that kind of hate speech might be appealing to men of the Black Manosphere.
I mean, you have traditionalist notions of gender and the way that gender should be performed, right?And the way that people should experience it.The transphobia thing gets right at that, right?
It's like, you know, it's like, if you are in this Black manifest, or in these manifest spaces more broadly, when the Black manifest in particular, when, you know, so much of the concern is like, Black men are being emasculated, homophobia, transphobia, those things, just queerphobia broadly, it's the kind of thing that's like really easy to activate, right?
I guess it's not surprising that they're leaning on those kinds of issues because, again, we know that women are way more liberal than men on a lot of these issues, right?It's interesting because I was talking to my wife about this.
I was trying to figure out, like, is that a function of the fact that women are going to college more often?Like, you think about a lot of us are introduced to sort of queer theory, gender theory as undergraduates.Like, could that be part of it?
But the Gallup study that sort of found that women were becoming more liberal and men were not. It said that actually like educational attainment was not the thing.Gender was the biggest predictor of this move.
So I think that the trans stuff, it all plays into this basket of anxieties that men feel about masculinity.So it's a really effective and easy card to pull.
That makes a lot of sense.If like the bedrock of this content is about speaking directly to all this anxiety about what a man is and what a man does.
And also too, placing a lot of value on being a man, placing a lot of value on masculinity and manliness in a society that some of these people absolutely believe manliness and masculinity has lost its power.
Now I'll say, I think the traditional ideas of masculinity have lost their power, but that also seems to coincide with huge gains in civil rights in many areas for
So perhaps the aspects of manliness that need codified misogyny to survive are actually what's falling away.And so I could see how that causes a lot of really gender panic and gender anxiety.
in some of these men who are looking to the manosphere for direction on how to be, and also for possibly a roadmap to get back to the kind of misogyny and sexism that allowed for previous generations of men to thrive much more easily than women had been able to thrive traditionally.
If the power you're looking to access or regain lies with your gender, being confronted with the flexibility of gender, like the true flexibility of gender, or the expansiveness of gender, I imagine that probably feels very threatening.
And that would make something like that so effective.
Absolutely.Because before, just being a man was enough.
Gene, thank you so much for joining me today.I really appreciate it.
It's always so much fun to rock with you.I appreciate you bringing it.
That was Gene Demby, co-host of NPR's Code Switch.You can hear more of his deep dive into the Black Manisphere on Code Switch. That's all for this episode, but be sure to come back to this feed next Tuesday.I repeat, next Tuesday.
I'm digging into the hot mom rom-com movie trend.Yes, all those movies about hot moms and what it says about who's hot right now.Next Tuesday in this podcast feed.
This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Barton Girdwood, Alexis Williams, Liam McBain, Corey Antonio Rose.This episode was edited by Jessica Placek.Our executive producer is Jasmine Romero.Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini.
All right.That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR.I'm Brittany Luce.Talk soon.
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