Strange Fruit #166: Inside the Minds Of Angry White Men

It's music festival season in Louisville, and this year, there's a new event on the calendar. This week we talk with Tay G, one of the organizers of Louievolve, a two-day festival celebrating Louisville hip-hop scene and culture. Tay G says the festival will be more than just music—much like hip-hop itself. "The music is just one part of it," he explains. Live graffiti and break dancing have their place in hip-hop culture too, and will be part of the festival. "Just as an MC is trying to make himself look like the best MC out, writing your name on the wall does that same thing, it's just not through the audio," he says. "It's all tied into that culture and the foundations of hip-hop, and the people that came from different places to create it." The Louievolve Festival will be at the Tim Faulkner Gallery on April 16-17. For the past 30 years, Dr. Michael Kimmel has been studying what it means to be a man, and trying to engage men in the work of gender equality (the Atlantic has called him "The Bro Whisperer"). When he was in Louisville to deliver the Minx Auerbach lecture at the University of Louisville, Kimmel told us the story of his appearance on a television segment with four white men who believed that affirmative action was victimizing white men. One of his fellow panelists talked about being qualified for a job that was eventually given to another candidate — a situation he summarized as, "a black woman stole my job." "I want to know about the word 'my,'" Kimmel says. "Where did you get the idea it was your job? Why isn't it, 'A black woman got the job,' or 'A black woman got a job?'" Examining that sense of ownership became the kernel of his book, Angry White Men. "Because without confronting men's sense of entitlement, we can never understand why so many men resist gender equality." And in our closing thoughts, we invite you to follow the hashtag #StoryJacksonWeddingOnTheRun this weekend. The big day is finally here! WFPL and #TeamStrangeFruit congratulate our very own Kaila Story and her fiancée Missy Jackson, who are getting married this weekend!