The Black and Queer on Campus Experience with Author Michael P, Jeffries

Today we talk about the black queer experience on college campuses with author Michael P. Jeffries.  His new book Black and Queer on Campus challenges stereotypes regarding black culture and LGBTQ+ people.

Michael chronicles how black LGBTQ+ students face particular challenges, including dealing with lack of understanding or outright rejection from their birth and home families while struggling to find mentors they can trust and spaces on campus where they can be themselves and feel safe. The book draws on in-depth interviews with 65 Black LGBTQ+ students—40 from nine different historically black colleges/universities and another 25 from seven predominately white institutions.

Michael is Dean of Academic Affairs, Class of 1949 Professor in Ethics, and Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is the author of three previous books on race and American culture: Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip Hop, Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America, and Behind the Laughs: Community and Inequality in Comedy. He has published dozens of essays and works of criticism in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Boston Globe, and has been interviewed by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and NPR.

With co-host Brody Levesque