41 min listen
Strange Fruit #147: I Said Bang! Upcoming Book Looks at Louisville's Dirt Bowl
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
30 minutes
Released:
Nov 20, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
In an interview with Matt Lauer, Charlie Sheen revealed earlier this week that he's HIV positive. But in the days leading up to that, media outlets were already reporting his status. And according to Sheen himself, other people in his life had been blackmailing him for years to keep his secret. While those of us who routinely pay attention to issues surrounding HIV and AIDS know Charlie Sheen is not the face of the disease, the mainstream and tabloid media seemed to have forgotten about HIV until now. And the headlines feel like they were ripped from the early days of the AIDS crisis. To make some sense out of the way we're talking about HIV in the wake of Sheen's announcement, we turned to health policy analyst and friend to the show Preston Mitchum. Mitchum says Sheen's revelation, after years of publicly seeming out of control, draws an unhelpful parallel between illness and a behavior. "There is no person who deserves HIV," he explains. "Not sex workers, not someone who's only had sex once, not someone who's had sex with 500 people, not drug users. No one deserves HIV." Sheen's statement also included a hefty dose of shame for sex workers, calling them "unsavory and insipid types." Mitchum says this is problematic too, because it operates under the stereotype that sex workers all have HIV and never practice safe sex. "We can criticize Charlie Sheen's statements blaming sex workers, and also critique people who are shaming Charlie Sheen for sleeping with sex workers," Mitchum says. Later in the show, we learn about an upcoming book that will document an important part of black history in Louisville. The Louisville Story Program has been compiling photos, stories, and oral histories for their book, "I Said Bang! A History of the Dirt Bowl." Darcy Thompson, the program's director, joins us to talk about their work. And West Louisville native Ravon Churchill, featured in the book, talks about growing up attending the Dirt Bowl - an annual amateur basketball tournament in Shawnee Park. "It's kind of like a rite of passage for people in the community," he says. "I went and saw my father play. My son went and saw me play. I took my grandson to see other people play." Books are available for pre-ordering through the project's Kickstarter campaign, which will be active until Sunday night.
Released:
Nov 20, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #44: Some of My Best Friends...: Interracial Friendship in America: How multi-racial is your circle of friends? Are any of your close friends of a different race than yours? Not the lady who works down the hall from your office or the dad you chat with while waiting for your kid to get out of school. Someone who's been to your house or invited you over for dinner. A [recent poll by Reuters](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/08/us-usa-poll-race-idUSBRE97704320130808) found that the many white people - 40% - have no friends outside their race. We on Strange Fruit figure this is probably no surprise to black folks. Among people of color, 25% of respondents said they didn't have friends outside their race. We wanted to talk more about the reasons why this might be the case, and what historical and demographic factors created the situation. So we spoke to Tanner Colby, author of [Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America](http://www.ta by Strange Fruit