While I was catching up with SHIELD last night (which I can rarely watch live because Rugby) my Twitter feed was going crazy over a live webcast of a conversation between author bell hooks and TV presenter Melissa Harris-Perry. I finally caught up with it this morning. It is an hour and a half long, which gave me cause to ponder whether to watch it, but I’m glad I did. You might enjoy it too.
While both ladies are very smart, and very much aware of their place in the world, the thing that struck me most about this show was how impossible it would have been in the UK. I mean, two respected, intellectual black women having a lengthy discussion, at a university, on TV, without a white person obviously in charge? Not going to happen.
What’s more, they managed to use the word “cis” twice, without the seemingly obligatory preface of, “How dare those disgusting, bigoted tranny perverts in their bad wigs oppress me by calling me…”. Had such a thing happened here, Respected White Feminists would be queuing up to write articles for The Guardian explaining how these poor, deluded Dupes of the Patriarchy need educating on the Important Issues Facing Feminism Today; namely saving the lobster and Bolly set from the awful, unwashed hordes online.
MHP’s weekend show on MSNBC is consistently the best talking head program on cable or broadcast tv in the USA. The weekend show is 2 hrs on Saturday and Sunday morning. I record both days, but I’ve had to change my weekend housekeeping and laundry patterns because once I start watching it I can’t stop until the show is over. The program has a multitude of people you don’t see on other shows, and covers topics from the cultural issues of black women’s hair styles and grooming to what the far-right obsession with preventing women from obtaining birth control means on the macro and personal levels to women in America and beyond. There’s always more to say, to explore, and she obviously enjoys the work that the show demands.
I don’t know if you can watch clips on the MSNBC site since you’re in the UK, but if you can, keep an eye out for announcements on her section of the MSNBC website of her guests and try to catch a few segments on some of the topics that interest you, it’s always illuminating and often just down right fun.