Hey, class, before we get into this week's episode, very exciting news, let me fix it, is nominated for the Webby Award.

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And now, on to the episode. Fran, tell me something that you had to relearn as an adult or a young

adult that like you, and what you replaced it with

right because there's so many things that like we're indoctrinated to i know indoctrinated it's a heavy term

but we're indoctrinated into ways of life morals beliefs notions um that we have to unlearn and go

wait that's not actually how the world works it's not what i believe. What is something that you can attest to in your experience?

Yeah, you know, I wouldn't say it was, maybe it was an adulthood. I really had to unpack, like,

the respectability politics. I had grown up being indoctrinated by, to use your word. You know, I went to Catholic school. I was often the

only black person in my classes in those spaces, and I grew up being told that if you speak a

certain way, that you will be more respected, that you'll be, you'll get ahead. And I internalized a lot of

that stuff because as a kid, when I would be in black spaces, I often got teased because of the

way that I spoke. And so instead of, you know, and look, it's not something of burden that I carry to this day. But at the time, a lot of times my response was to be like, well, I'm better than them. And like, they are just stellar. You know, and I shout out to my parents, because when I would tell them like, hey, the kids are making fun of me, they're like, don't listen to it. You know, kids are going to tease you, whatever.

But what it did is it reinforced this idea that the way that I spoke was better,

you know, that like I was smarter than then and like, y'all are the little loser or ghetto kids,

whatever.

And so I really had to unlearn this idea that like there's no right way to talk. There's no right way to be black. You're not going to you're not going to speak or respectability politic your way out of racism or sexism or say that for the kids in the back. That's so real though. That's such real talk. Yeah. What about you?

I think the same, along the same lines of like the identity portion of things, I'm still unpacking, I'll say, the idea that like being queer and being gay, especially in the patriarchy as a man is, um, is something that you have to hide.

It's something that is bad, something, and, you know, that's why we have pride because we talk

about like, come out and be prideful.

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