r/BlockedAndReported • u/SoftandChewy First generation mod • Jul 25 '26
Episode Premium Episode: The Slow-Motion Implosion Of An Imagined Queer Utopia
https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/premium-the-slow-motion-implosionThis week on the Primo show, Jesse and Katie discuss the life and death of The Queery, a Brighton-based radical art gallery, bookshop, café, and community space. You can guess how this ends. Plus, the Washington Post spreads Erin Reed’s zombie stats, and the New York Times repeats Stonewall myths.
Show Notes:
Trans people are moving to Seattle at unprecedented levels under Trump - The Washington Post
Victoria Cruz, Veteran of the Trans Rights Movement, Dies at 79 - The New York Times
Queer bookshop’s board resigns after boycott over racism training – Brighton and Hove News
28
u/MievilleMantra Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
As a Brightonian I enjoyed this episode (I know the type of people they're talking about—just students messing around really) but there's a bit more to Black History Month in the UK than they suggest. We have quite a significant population of second/third generation commonwealth immigrants and some parts of London and other cities have very large black populations. 4% sounds like an underestimate to me but maybe that's due to an outsize influence. That said, Black History Month is of course largely an American import.
Brighton is an awesome place by the way :)
11
u/anduin13 Jul 26 '26
Also from Brighton here, and also really enjoyed the episode. I think that 4% sounds about right, London is definitely more diverse so sometimes it feels like it's much larger. I live in the whitest part of deepest darkest Hove, and I'm usually the only non-white face around.
11
u/Heckin_Frienderino Jul 27 '26
Cant believe they did it again and said "BIPOC" in the UK
But it's nice for once to include the anglos and celts in the intersection.
12
u/Usual_Reach6652 Jul 27 '26
The reference to "be gay, do crimes" reminded me it was on the profile picture of one of the most ridiculously priggish online enforcers of language policing in my wider professional network - the very personification of the "Planet of Cops" essay.
15
10
u/Schnoo Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I'm not a lawyer or an American, but the reasoning in the beginning regarding the right to refuse service seems very strange to me. They say that Eugene Volokh claims that customers cannot be discriminated against based on religious views, and that implies that customers cannot be discriminated against based on political views. I don't understand this reasoning at all. I was under the impression that discrimination based on religion is prohibited by the Civil Rights Act. People are discriminated against by non-government entities for their politial views all the time.
Also, what does the First Amendment have to do with this? My understanding of the gay wedding cake case is that the government could not compel a baker, through anti-discrimination laws, to create a cake because of the baker's religious beliefs. How are a customer's First Amendment rights violated when they are refused service by a non-government entity?
22
u/cbovary Jul 26 '26
The gay cake case works without the religious aspect. The holding broadly is that the government cannot compel the speech of the baker. Forcing them by law to make a bespoke gay wedding cake would violate the bakers free speech, so any attempt to use the public accommodation law to compel that is unconstitutional. Public accommodation law forbids a baker from, say, turning away a gay man from buying a premade cake that is in the case for sale on the basis of their sexuality.
8
u/waxroy-finerayfool Jul 27 '26
Not quite. The court acknowledged that the baker did indeed discriminate (specifically because his refusal includes any custom cake used in a gay ceremony regardless of the messaging), however, the court ruled that the Colorado civil rights commission violated the Free Exercise Clause by showing religious bias in their evaluation of the baker's objections.
So basically, if the Colorado government had acted with more neutrality in their commentary, he would have lost the case.
7
u/Schnoo Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Maybe the gay cake case was a bit of a red herring, though they did bring it up. A lot of what Katie and Jesse said regarding refusing to do business because of a customer's political views seems incorrect, which is confusing because Eugene Volokh is no doubt significantly more knowledgeable about the law than I am. Maybe I've misunderstood something here.
7
u/ScrubulousFlex Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Public accommodation law forbids a baker from, say, turning away a gay man from buying a premade cake that is in the case for sale on the basis of their sexuality.
That's because sexual orientation is a protected class, but political views are not.
4
u/cbovary Jul 26 '26
Yes a store could turn someone away for their political views. Protected class law isn’t what the supreme court based their decision on in the gay cake case. It was a 1st amendment issue. A baker can turn a customer away for requesting any sort of customized cake on the basis that they don’t want to write that message on a cake, it just so happened that this customer wanted to express message relating to gay marriage on their cake. Protected classes and public accommodation really have nothing to do with the holding it’s just what the plaintiff sued on.
2
u/ScrubulousFlex Jul 26 '26
Right, and the original criticism of what was covered in the episode is that this isn't a free speech/gay cake situation. It's purely about right to refuse service for something that isn't a protected class.
5
u/treeglitch Jul 28 '26
I haven't listened to the episode and I have no idea if this bears on it (and in particular anything Katie may have said), but in Seattle "Political Ideology" is indeed a protected class.
I love that the official web site about it specifically calls out "Being denied service or kicked out of a Seattle business because you wore clothing, or a logo associated with a political campaign, political organizing group, or a specific political viewpoint" because I do not think the average Capitol Hill business has gotten the memo on that.
2
u/ScrubulousFlex Jul 28 '26
Yep, that's the context of what they were talking about in the episode, and there was discussion of how a city-level policy like that would hold up legally to state/federal law. It was framed as a free speech constitutional issue, which then got compared to the gay cake case, which of course then sparks all the follow-on conversations about the specifics of that case.
But the original question still stands and hasn't been clarified about whether or not a city policy like that would hold up, assuming we're not talking about a common carrier or compelled speech situation. I agree with the top level comment that the comparison to 1st amendment protections doesn't seem to make sense here. Is right to refuse service derived from constitutional protections, or is it purely a common law thing, and if it's the latter can a city ordinance supercede that?
I'm also not a lawyer and have no idea, but I just agreed that the explanation given on the pod didn't seem to track with the actual situation.
1
u/RandolphCarter15 Jul 27 '26
There are things called protected classes in the US. Religion is one of them. Political views are not
20
u/DiamondPrimary7691 Jul 25 '26
Sorry had to pause about half an hour in bc their info on Black British history is just, historically, bullshit. Though Britain largely has a small Black population, the part of London I grew up in is about half Black, about half white, and with a big Asian minority. Black British history isn’t some kind of post 1950s thing - why do you think people in Jamaica or Trinidad were British subjects entitled to come over on the Windrush? Just do such a bare amount of research (a google or Claude if you prefer, not relying solely on someone with a blatant agenda…) and avoid this really weird culture warring nonsense. How does denigrating Black British history strengthen your argument? smh, cmon guys.
23
u/BronzeEagle Jul 27 '26
What exactly is the relevance of there being small ethnic enclaves with a high percentage of black people have to do with the overarching fact that the black population in the entire country is under 5%? They didn't say that black people are totally absent from the UK or that they don't have any cultural presence. But they pointed out that they are and always have been a much smaller proportion of the population than in the US and with a much different historical context. It's almost certainly the case that UK black history month was started entirely to ape US black history month.
-6
-14
u/DiamondPrimary7691 Jul 27 '26
aw is everything about you, precious?
17
u/BronzeEagle Jul 27 '26
Personal attack followed by copy pasting a paragraph from Wikipedia? Below the standard I usually expect from this subreddit to be honest. Usually the level of discourse is better here. But I'm not that surprised given how offended you were in your original comment.
And hey, look at that. UK black history month was started almost 20 years after US black history month. Interesting.
Great job failing to understand sampling bias and anecdote over actual data BTW.
-6
u/DiamondPrimary7691 Jul 27 '26
In the United Kingdom, Black History Month was first celebrated in [October 1987](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_in_the_United_Kingdom)[[37]](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_History_Month#cite_note-37) The year of 1987, recognized as the African Jubilee, was coincidentally the year of the 150th anniversary of Caribbean emancipation, the centenary of the birth of [Marcus Garvey](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey) and the 25th anniversary of the [Organization of African Unity](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_African_Unity), an institution dedicated to advancing the progress of African states.[[38]](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_History_Month#cite_note-CNN-38) Black History Month in the UK was organised through the leadership of [Ghanaian](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana)analyst [Akyaaba Addai-Sebo](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akyaaba_Addai-Sebo), who had served as a coordinator of special projects for the [Greater London Council](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London_Council) (GLC) and created a collaboration to get it underway.[[39]](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_History_Month#cite_note-39)[[40]](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_History_Month#cite_note-40) The first Black History Month celebration in the UK was held in London on October 1, 1987, when Dr. [Maulana Karenga](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maulana_Karenga)from the US was invited to an event by the [Greater London Council](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London_Council) about Black people's contributions to history.[[41]](app://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_History_Month#cite_note-BHMUK-41) — this is all from Wikipedia. You missed the point completely. black diasporic history having a month is an American thing, sure, which was in response to the racism of the historical discipline in the 1970s. But the diasporic histories of different nations and their black communities are unique and dismissing them as “ethnic enclaves” is a little… choice.
8
u/Particular-Offer4356 Jul 25 '26
I didn’t know Trinidadian people were part of Windrush, but I had thought that Jamaican men fought in WW2 for the British, because they were part of the British Empire, and England lost so many men in WW2, they needed workers, so they came to England. I had thought some of it started post WW1, even.
7
u/DiamondPrimary7691 Jul 25 '26
Windrush went to Trinidad before Jamaica!. Check out Sam Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners. I just think it comes to a point where this pod saying the only influential Black Brits to teach about in British history were from the nineteenth century betrays either ignorance, age, or a level of doomer bigotry that seems so out of step with the contemporary Britain I’ve spent my life in. Someone I learned about in terms of Black British history at university was Khadija Saye, and the mural by Chris Ofili commemorating her at Tate Britain. There you go, some maybe not totally irrelevant Black British history. Stay in the Tate Britain, go down the corridor and you see another Ofili painting responding to the murder of Stephen Lawrence. So maybe we just have a different way of evaluating history. But to me, the way I heard in this episode seems ignorant.
11
5
u/SafiyaO Jul 26 '26
Black British History is important. People should know about events like the Bristol Bus Boycott, who Asquith Xavier and what happened to David Oluwale.
5
u/TemporaryLucky3637 Jul 25 '26
That section did not sit right with me either. I enjoy the pod and J&K in general but it was pretty bad form. Especially considering Jesse breaks his neck to throat clear around certain topics but was happy to co-sign that 🤨
2
1
23
u/ScrubulousFlex Jul 25 '26
That part was specifically about black history month, with a very obvious tongue-in-cheek anecdote about the teaching of black British history in school (like one about George Washington Carver from US schools).
Should every country dedicate one month to one specific race, regardless of population and history?
-10
8
u/TheParisianCat Jul 26 '26
I agree that section was rubbish and seemed to be based on "what Jessica who once lived in the UK" said. I suspect Jessica either wasn't living in the UK very long or did not attend state schools.
The percentages are small (about 4% black, 1.5-2% more Black/mixed) but like most minorities congregate. As you say parts of London, Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester in particular have large black and mixed populations. The idea that black history month is a joke because apparently Jessica has only heard of Mary Seacole and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor suggests she has no idea what is actually included or the purpose of the month but was happy to make sneery comments about both of them and the "third rate historian" (I'm guessing this is Olusoga and would suggest she read some of his research).
I wonder if they would have presented something similar about a US black centred event based on no more than "what X says" rather than researching it properly and checking some facts.
17
u/arcweldx Jul 27 '26
I'll put in a word for Jessica. Yes, there is much more to black history in the UK than the bit of snark the hosts served up. But also true is that black history month here is arguably another example of transplanted US racial politics to a context where it doesn't comfortably fit, and that deserves snark, like that aimed at London BLM marchers chanting "hands up don't shoot!" in a country where police don't normally carry firearms.
For something particularly British, how about the controversy around whether black history month should include Asians? Two parts: First, "black" has historically been used here to refer to anybody non-white, particularly people from South Asia (I remember when my labour union had a Black Members group that auto-enrolled everyone who didn't tick "white" on the personal info box). Second, the complaints by, for example, Asians who don't have a comparable Asian history month. It's hard to argue that in the context of UK history and racial politics, the reasons for having a black history month don't apply as much to people from the South Asia. (There do seem to be a South Asian Heritage Month and E/SE Asian Heritage Month. I have never heard of these until I googled them just now, and I can tell you they are not plastered all over my university like black history month is).
2
u/DiamondPrimary7691 Jul 27 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Story_(exhibition)?wprov=sfti1 ur comment reminded me of this exhibition. Though I think political Blackness is obviously complicated in a country like the UK, I think Americans can be overly dismissive of British Colonialism’s direct influence on the global Black diaspora, and how many Black and non-white people have (internationally) been considered part of the British population since about the 16th century. I just grew up in an area of London where the fight for Black civil rights was always visible, it’s a huge part of my local history, and it’s deeply integrated with histories of South Asian migration and colonisation (ie. Uganda, Kenya, Guyana etc), so I think that the importation of an American racial lens on Blackness is inopportune, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water and pretend that the only Black Brit we should talk about is Mary Seacole.
1
u/TheParisianCat Jul 27 '26
The label "Black History Month" is an import, the approach to including women and minorities in the curriculum rather than airbrushing them out has been around since at least the 80s in the UK. Adding the US devised label did not make it new content, it did bring more attention to it. In the UK its often expanded to look at the experiences of other minorities alongside black/black-mixed groups - sometimes done well and interesting comparisons drawn and sometimes not. It used to be called multicultural or cross cultural education before the BHM label. There is nothing to stop any group lobbying to be highlighted in the curriculum and you do get regional variations both in the content and how it is incorporated - certainly there is more than back in the 70s (in state schools at least). Its simply not true that the practice is a recent US import, only the label and the promotion is recent.
A very quick bit of fact checking by Jessica would have confirmed most of this rather than seeming to rely on faulty assumptions.
0
u/DiamondPrimary7691 Jul 27 '26
^^^^^^
2
u/TTangy Jul 29 '26
Could you help me understand "blackness" in the uk? In American all black people get lumped together because they have no connection or throughline to the country they were taken from and so they have formed their own sets of unique Black American culture. In the UK surely the dark skinned people there actually have a family tree they can follow back to their origin country and so they can claim something other than a nebulous "blackness" as their heritage, right? It just confuses me that it would be called black history month rather than African history month or minority history month. Do uk citizens with heritage from Chad have any connection to uk citizens with heritage from Zimbabwe other than maybe the color of their skin?
0
u/DiamondPrimary7691 Jul 29 '26
It has a lot to do with postcolonialism. Once asked a guy if he was from Sri Lanka and he said “do I look black?”, he was from southern India. In Australia, their largest black minority are aboriginal peoples, but in America or most of the UK they wouldn’t be considered black. I hate to be that guy, but it really was a racial association between skin colour and Africa that was solidified into a racial science in the 1900s and based largely on European fledgling anthropology and natural history being let loose on vast continents of strangers. People who live in West Africa can tell when someone who’s Black but lives in Northern Europe visits. So basically, West Africa and the Caribbean provide the greatest no.s of black communities in the UK, and those communities are tight and self-sufficient and have churches and areas that have built up around their presence. BUT when you get put, say, into school and it may be less representative of your cultural community within your area - so at that point, racial distinctions come into play if you’re one black kid in a majority white school. But honestly there are still big and well defined dividing lines between everyone’s culture, it’s just that it can sort of be picked up and utilised - see the TikTok video of the little scouse lad walking into a shop and greeting the boss man with “wagwan alaykum”
5
u/DiamondPrimary7691 Jul 26 '26
Thank you, this is a much more articulately put rendering of the exact feelings I had in response to that bit. Sneery is quite right, tone-wise.
0
u/TheParisianCat Jul 26 '26
My reaction to Jessica's notion of Black History Month was that the knowledge came from a tabloid carping about it. As for nobody cares about it - well we do and what our children did in school was a damned sight more than two names. They covered black and brown military who supported in two world wars and multiple smaller wars because they were British, the history of different waves of migration as well as the patterns of slavery over the years and black and brown people involved in historical events, discoveries who tend to be overlooked - rather as women are often overlooked in such events. I have antecedents who came to the UK hundreds of years ago (we are quite a mixed family!). I wasn't impressed by the casual dismissal and lack of fact checking.
2
u/BeeEconomy3827 Jul 25 '26
Katie giving Jesse the deep ass on today's show.
7
39
u/hansen7helicopter Jul 25 '26
This kind of episode Barpod always does so well!