Strange Fruit #210: Tea AND Shade To Those Who Co-Opt Black Gay Culture

Yasss, kween! Werq. Slay. What do these phrases have in common? They come from the gay black community — specifically drag and the house ball scene — and have since been co-opted by mainstream culture, with little credit to their originators. Jefferey Spivey writes the blog "Uptown Bourgeois," and recently wrote a piece about this phenomenon for the LGBTQ website SOULE, In it, he calls out Elle magazine for publishing a photo gallery from this year's Latex Ball without including any of the performers' names (just captions like "Sickening," and "You betta work.") Spivey joins us this week to talk about appropriation and erasure.