Thank you for these episodes of Town Hall: A Black Queer Podcast. Greetings from Athens, Greece, all the love.

As a gay, white male in a LTR with a gay, black man, I feel like the LGBTQIA+ community in general has sooooo much work to do internally. The community as a whole tries to put so many labels on people and it just leads to ridiculous divisions and unnecessary hatred. We, as a community, need to work together, especially now, more than ever, as the Far Right in this country attack members of our community, especially our trans brothers and sisters, as well as drag queens, or their bizarre accusations of "grooming" or gross intentions. Our community is based on love for ourselves and others. We need to unite with ALL the spectrums of our community because we have so much more power than we realize! We are LOVE. We are HOPE. We are NOT GOING AWAY! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

I felt for a long time that I was ALWAYS fighting to get a black card. I felt like I never had it and its something that had to be earned and I never did well on the tests, I still feel that way today. It always feels like im being tested and being mixed race makes me feel like I have to try even harder in some ways because I feel the exact same way about by Mexican side and having to prove that to them. I was a blissfully unaware kid so people would expect these things from me based on my blackness and I never understood why I was being put into a box I just didn't fit. Luckily ive always listened to myself even if it takes time and I realized I am black because I am black and nobody can take that away from me, its impossible, and because of that I "act black" just by being me. When I was younger I had white people telling me I speak proper and act different and from black people I was being told I wasn't black enough and didnt act black but all of it is BS and this is so important for people to hear and know because we're not alone. I myself have found a nice lil Black Kpop fan group because im such a huge fan but something that people still look at me weird for liking lol.I wouldn't consider myself alt black, it seems a little insulting now. I am just black, and Mexican, and queer, and so many other things. Knowing that there’s no one singular Black experience is so important. That’s what we were taught so we would fall in line. No more.

I've learned a lot from this series and I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn. This episode I enjoyed hearing from Jason a lot because I identify so much with what he said. I grew up loving comics and sci-fi but fell into gaming at age 51 and Pokemon games were my intro so now I play adventure games a LOT (too much). I encounter misogyny and ageism occasionally because gaming seems to be geared towards white, straight, younger men. Jason shared such important points about the lack of diversity! I can't wait to follow him and his gaming if he's on Twitch!

THIS is the episode! this is the podcast babyyyy ❤ so glad this exists. so glad you made that point about "proper English" toward the end! aave has grammatical rules and syntactical guidelines that has raised it to a dialect of the English language - perfectly proper. it's why so many people who try to co-opt it sound goofy af when they try to emulate what they perceive as random arrangements of words 😆

Love you Bob and Pep! Excited to hear from those who are in the alternatively black community.

Im of the hippie alternative category. Late bloomer due to the extreme conservative christian environment i grew up in. My Mother would go through my closet on a regular basis, I had to keep my hair in pigtails until age 16, wasnt allowed friends or sleepovers, and just not allowed to experiment/explore/try anything. So I was VERY closed off and robotic in my teens. It was difficult for me to branch out socially, due to that internal conflict and the disconnect at home. I honestly didnt begin to blossom until I got out of the military in my mid 20s. I wasnt able to experiment and rebrand myself until that time (just due to the uniform/image restrictions). But from a young age, my relatives would always clock me as this alternative spiritual person. My Mom had this perpetual fear that I would become a Hoodoo queen or something drastic. But she just has 0 understanding of who I am and my core interests/values. I just wanted to be me, without it offending her or her becoming paranoid. But ive since released the validation of my Mother and other relatives. Forgot to add that I purposefully relocated to an area that has a large alternative population, and that helped to further pull me out of my shell. Bright hair, tattoo shops on every corner, a more liberal environment, lot of nonreligious and alternative spiritualities. It made me feel at peace because here, people live a lot more authentic and less judgemental.

I am so happy for this episode because I’m a queer black non-binary and it’s hard for me to express myself sometimes in my community in Inglewood. I understand that in order to be happy I just gotta love myself and not care what others think but sadly I’m not there yet hopefully before when I reach my 30s my insecurities will disappear.

I've constantly dealt with this! Not only being queer, but I'm Muslim. I dealt with so many people in life discrediting my blackness despite me being nothing but African. My interests in nerdy shit (im in undergrad for engineering) and funk, punk and arab music piled on the hate lmao. It's rooted in white supremacy and it's a made up way to break our communities apart. Who you love what you believe etc don't change the experience of our skin color especially in north america. They give us false and shitty idols to measure each other up against. We need better people to look up to in media so that people growing up understand that the black experience isnt monolithic. Older black television in the US i feel like did this better in showing the different parts of the black community (immigrants etc - think Moesha. they had their flaws but in this factor they were better than most of the shit rn). Town hall is doing that! I loved the story about the person moving to australia through making friends on video games. sometimes you gotta seek community in alternative places.

Love this episode. The "proper language" thing, is kind of touchy because there's no such thing as "proper language" in Linguistics due to migration, time, and global immigration. In literature theres always a massive shift every so often and only extreme preservationists hold a standard of proper this/that. What is normal, is to speak within the dialect of who you grew up with and the groups of people youre surrounded by every 5 years. To adopt a dialect and accent outside of your current home realm is where it leans toward insecurity somewhat, and understandably a coping mechanism for trauma/bullying.

It's refreshing to see and hear from Black people who are not the norm and are often considered to be too White. I've experienced this myself since from a young age I was rarely around other Black people in school (move from projects to outskirts of southern town, made to take college prep classes, not allowed a social life or extracurriculars after school.) Church was the only place where there were lots of people of the same race but the strict Pentecostal Holiness beliefs caused me to leave the church for a much more progressive denomination. I ultimately became a humanist though I still have the tiniest bit of faith. Unfortunately humanism (which often equates to atheism/ agnosticism) is considered to be only slightly above devil worship in my Black Southern community. Thankfully I have learned to embrace those who love and accept me for who I am and I no longer care if I'm Black enough for others.

❤ Bob & Peppermint please please please get Chiyo an alternatively black and controversial King on this podcast. They are SOOO inspirational and progressively black queer❤🎉❤

I love this episode

cant wait to watch this at work

M. Lamar and Laverne are Definitely Brother and Sister...they have thoughts.honey...its like an ADHD paradise, where they can catch and vocalize all of them

Episode is old news but I only just heard it today! So I've always been "other" as far as black people go but Luckily I'm from ATL so that softened the blow a bit. Acceptance from plenty of other AltBlack folks but the punches from the ultra conservative folks. Whew. Enough to make my head spin. That black card thing was always very funny for me. Same with "sounding white" as a person that's from the hood. The proper term for the speech, as I'm sure a lot of people are aware, Is AAVE. and it's more of a dialect than it is "improper." It's Proper in it's context for African diaspora cultures. It varies from city to city. I slip into AAVE as easily as I code switch to a Telemarkerter Neutral as easily as my deep southern drawl comes out. (Shoutout to BOB. My Dad's side of the family is from Columbus too and I spent enough time down there to get the accent, lol). I've come into a lot as a person and finding my authenticity through "alternative" culture was good. The label was necessary for me to contextualize there's a lot of variation between people. There's detail and nuance. And eventually I came to drop the label altogether, as I accepted that it's not necessary for me. It was training wheels for the larger whole that I represent.

The 7da is wild my partner grew up in the 7da church and I e heard some stories

better say hi to be BOB 🐯🐯🐯🐯

Sadly there are rules to 'blackness' depending on what community one hails from; and unluckily some are treated as if they dont 'fit in' which can be very sad

lemme sit a spell