Episode brought to you by me hating on haters of my fav podcast and a 100-year-old Black nationalist newspaper.

This week, we’re thinking about what it means to change your mind. And why doing so in public is one of the most important Black intellectual traditions we have IMO. I start by reflecting on my own relationship to honesty, embodied knowledge, and what I've been learning through living with a changing body with insulin-resistant PMOS. From there, I ask a bigger question: Why are people suspicious of folks changing their minds?

Drawing on haters in the comments of one of my fav pods (Pour Minds), the history of The Crusader newspaper, Malcolm X, and Audre Lorde, I show how changing your mind isn't intellectual inconsistency, it's intellectual honesty and a part of the U.S. Black intellectual tradition.

Chapters

00:00 — Teaser: Why Changing Your Mind Is Your Intellectual Inheritance

00:22 — Grounding in PMOS

05:01 — Why Changing Your Mind Is Your Intellectual Inheritance

15:33 — Malcolm X: An Example of Changing in Public

References:

Alston, Ashanti. “Be Careful of Your Man-Tones! Gender Politics in Revolutionary Struggle.” Interview by Hilary Darcy. Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements 2, no. 1 (May 2010): 22–35.

Lorde, Audre. “Learning from the 60s.” In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984.

The Crusader. 1918–1922

Pour Minds (hosts Lex P and Drea Nicole)