COMING OUT BLACK & QUEER WITH KID FURY & CRISSLE WEST OF THE READ
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2014
1:00PM TO 2:30PM @ HUB 355
Join media personalities from the The Read Kid Fury and Crissle West in conversation with professors Alisha Gaines, Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University and Dennis Tyler, Assistant Professor of English at Fordham University, for a discussion about what it means to “come out” black and queer.
Often, black communities have been considered to be the most homophobic and most in the way of the rights of the LGBTQ community. For example, with the passing of Prop 8 in California, 2008, The Advocate claimed unabashedly that “gay is the new black,” and that it wasblack people that upheld the proposition. Black people were blamed for the obstruction of justice for queer folks, in other words. In this roundtable discussion, participants will trouble such an easy distinction between black on the one hand and queer on the other. How does one exist as both black and queer, and how do we negotiate such varied identities?
Since first debuting in January 2013, The Read skyrocketed in popularity with a listenership boasting nearly 115,000 weekly subscribers. Now both a podcast and a touring live show, The Read is most often described as “brash” and “unapologetic,” a tone effortlessly cultivated through the unscripted chemistry between Crissle and Kid Fury. We invite them to the conversation with scholar-activists Alisha Gaines and Dennis Tyler to discuss the multiple negotiations black and queer require.
The panel will be moderated by Ashon Crawley, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies, UCR. Presented by Ethnic Studies, Queer Lab, & the LGBT Resource Center.
(The HUB is the UCR student center at the center of campus, next to the bell tower.)










