Upstream - [UNLOCKED] Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness w/ Da'Shaun Harrison

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Being Black and fat in our capitalist, white-supremacist, ableist, heteronormative society is to live in a body that is subjected to a form of unique violence marked by policing, misdiagnosis, discrimination, abuse, trauma—the list goes on.  And anti-fatness and anti-Blackness are not simply two separate things—disparate nodes on a circuit of oppression—anti-fatness and anti-Blackness form a crucial intersection, and are ultimately one and the same, according to our guest, in terms of their history, structural, weaponization, and deployment by the ideological apparatuses of the capitalist state and the violence which it upholds.  In this episode, we’ll be discussing anti-fatness as anti-Blackness with Da'Shaun Harrison—a writer, editor, speaker, community organizer, co-executive director of Scalawag Magazine, and author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, published by North Atlantic Books. In this conversation, we explore the field of fat studies, the history of anti-fatness and anti-Blackness, why we should view anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, the eugenicist history of BMI—or the Body Mass Index—the need to stretch and grow abolition politics, the importance of unlearning supremacist ideology, and much more.  Further resources: Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, published by North Atlantic Books Da'Shaun's LinkTree Roxanne Gay Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, Sabrina Strings Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies, Andrea Shaw Related episodes: Abolish the Police Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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or feature us in various categories. It's one of the most impactful single things that you can do. And so thank you so much everyone here for supporting the show. You are really making this all possible. We genuinely could not do this without you. So thank you so much again and we hope that you enjoy this conversation. I really wanted to write something that didn't require people like me, fat, Black, trans folks, to compartmentalize our identities. So that's how I would introduce Belly of the Beast.

It is a way to disrupt the continued compartmentalization of identities in academic disciplines, to get to the heart of what folks are experiencing, and more specifically get to the heart of why people are experiencing it, which is because of anti-fatness as anti-blackness. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness Being black and fat in our capitalist, white supremacist, ableist, heteronormative society is to live in a body that is subjected to a form of unique violence marked by policing, misdiagnosis, discrimination, abuse, trauma. The list goes on. And anti-fatness and anti-blackness are not simply two separate things, disparate nodes on a circuit of oppression.

Anti-fatness and anti-blackness form a crucial intersection and are ultimately one in the same, according to our guest, in terms of their history, structural weaponization, and deployment by the ideological apparatuses of the capitalist state and the violence which it upholds. In this episode, we'll be discussing Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness with De'Shawn Harrison, a writer, editor, speaker, community organizer, co-executive director of Scalawag magazine, and author of Belly of the Beast, the politics of anti-fatness as anti-blackness, published by North Atlantic Books. In this conversation we explore the field of fat

studies, the history of anti-fatness and anti-blackness, why we should view anti-fatness as anti-blackness, the eugenicist history or BMI or the body mass index, the need to stretch and grow abolition politics, the importance of unlearning supremacist ideology, and much more. And now, here's Della in conversation with Daeshawn Harrison. So welcome, welcome to Upstream. So happy to have you. And we love to start by asking our guests to introduce themselves. So would you mind starting with an introduction? by asking our guests to introduce themselves. So would you mind starting with an introduction? Hello, I am Daeshawn Harrison.

I am a lot of things. I'm a writer and editor. I am a speaker. I am also what I like to call a Netflix aficionado and a music enthusiast. I am a partner to a wonderful person. I am the child to a great mom. I am a sibling to many incredible people.

I like to share those things because I think that a lot of times, you know, we're invited into spaces to talk about our work and we forget that people are people and that they are so much more than just the labor that they produce. So I like to start off with those in my introduction. But I'm also the author of Belly of the Beast, The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness.

I have written for a long time on the connection between anti-fatness and anti-blackness. I have been a community organizer and part of movement building for the past ten years here in Atlanta, Georgia. And I am the former editor at large and now co-executive director of Scalawag Magazine, which is a magazine based in the South with a focus on Black Southern politics and Black Southern movements, both in the US South and the global South.

And so, yeah, that's who I am and what I do. Thank you. And yes, that's exactly why we love to have you introduce yourself because, you know, the only what we do for our paid labor, right, is so limiting and also very capitalist performative and we are so much more and we bring all of that to this conversation. So thank you for that introduction. And yeah, Netflix aficionado. I wonder if you could share what you're what you're benching right now. Do you have a favorite show right now? So funny enough, I'm actually on Hulu currently and not Netflix. But there's a show called Reasonable Doubt that I'm watching on Hulu.

It's about it's about a lot of things. But basically it's about this lawyer. Her name is Jack. She's a black woman in California who is a public defender turned corporate defense attorney who has a very real investment in defending people in her community and trying to find the balance between doing the work that she does and maintaining a family and friendships and her home. family and friendships and her home and so it is a very I would say it's one of the more unique lawyer shows but definitely one that I have enjoyed so far so that's what I'm currently watching that's on Hulu and on Netflix I

haven't been on Netflix in a couple of days I cannot remember what I've been watching on there, but my list on there is so long. It's kind of embarrassing. So there are a number of things on there to catch up with. Thank you. And yeah, I'm sure we could have a great conversation on our favorite shows, but we are joining today to talk about the book that you mentioned, Belly of the Beast, the politics of anti-fatness as anti-blackness. And maybe to start with, how might you introduce that book and why did you come to write it? What inspired or informed that work? Yeah, I would say that Belly of the Beast is an intervention. It's an intervention that seeks to really get

to the heart of what I felt was missing in fat studies discourse, right? So fat studies is this two decade odd academic discipline academic study. And for the most part, it has been very centered around cis white women who are trying to find or build or connect their analysis around what they've experienced in their bodies as fat white women to a larger sort of structural violence

that we call anti-fatness or that some we call fatphobia. And I wanted to disrupt that, right? There have been a number of books written by black fat folks, especially in the last couple of years. Before Belly the Beast there were only a few really there was like you know some from Roxane Gay there was one from Kiese Layman which I think is brilliant there was one written in 2006 by Andrea Shaw and then of course there was Fear in the Black Body by Sabrina Strings who was not fat but wrote what I think is one of the most necessary texts to read in fat studies, really.

And so I really wanted to write something that didn't require people like me, fat, Black, trans folks, to compartmentalize our identities. our identities. I think for a long time, you know, if you wanted to find something that spoke to you or to your experience, you have to sort of ignore the fact that you are black and trans in fat study spaces, or you have to ignore the fact that you are fat and trans and black study spaces. More generally, of course, there are niche disciplines like trans studies and black studies and things of that nature, but more generally, it's something that just oftentimes has to be compartmentalized. Same if you're reading in like women, gender, sexuality studies, your transness is sometimes part of those conversations, but your fatness and your blackness oftentimes aren't. And I wanted to write something that was not part of an academic discipline per se and therefore didn't require me or readers like me to compartmentalize who we are

and what our identities are and therefore what our experiences in the world are. So that's how I would introduce Belly the Beast. It is an intervention. It is a way to disrupt the continued compartmentalization of identities in academic disciplines to get to the heart of what folks are experiencing and more specifically get to the heart of why people are experiencing it, which is because of anti-fatness as anti-blackness.

Yeah, thank you for that. And intervention, a great way to describe the book and truly an intersectional piece. It just, it really felt like layer upon layer, you have the anti-fatness, anti-blackness, bringing in gender and also bringing in capitalism and economics, also policing, abolition movements. So a lot of layers here. So maybe we'll kind of layer them together to make this holistic piece that you worked on. So maybe to start with

fat studies, it may not be familiar to a lot of people. Maybe people have taken classes in fat studies, others might not even be aware that that discipline exists. So, if we were to start there, what are some common myths or harmful views that are common around fatness that we need to address and unlearn and that fat studies is really working to dismantle? and unlearn and that fat studies is really working to dismantle? Yes. So I think this is a great question for folks who are perhaps unaware. I think what I would say is that fat studies largely is attempting to disrupt this idea that fatness is something to be dominated or exercised or destroyed, right? That fatness is something that is violent and harmful and wrong,

that is unrighteous and that it's bad, right? That there's a reason to form entire medical, social, political systems and structures, financial structures around the destruction of, or really the genocide of fatness and fat people. And what that means is getting to the heart of the violence of the BMI system, getting to the heart of the violence of what many would call the old word or obesity and the ways that it has been pathologized and framed through medical institutions

as a way to criminalize, objectify and violate fat people. It means getting to the heart of the experiences that we have as fat folks that has been largely constructed by the world around us. And so, yeah, I would say that fat studies is very invested in just undoing that violence or at least clarifying that that violence is happening and that it's happening on a much larger basis

than just one that is interpersonal. And I think what is more true is that Black slash Black fat folks who are writing in this work who are producing in, I guess, sort of fat study spaces are really trying to get clear that so much about the ways that fatness is framed is because of the way that blackness is framed and therefore the conversation has to be so much larger than just a lot of the very sort of surface conversations that happen

because it does also include policing. It does also include food deserts and food apartheid. It does also include food deserts and food apartheid. It does also include gentrification processes. It does also include just all the myriad ways that Black folks are also directly harmed by the world in which we live. And so, yeah, I think that that's how I would explain fat studies. Thank you for that intro. Yeah, I'm reminded of an article that a comrade sent me yesterday. The article from The Telegraph is titled, Unemployed to be given weight loss jabs to

get them back to work. Health secretary to hand obese patients drugs to prevent them from holding back our economy. Just a very clear example of what you're talking about with the, you know, the criminalization, stigmatization, the medicalization, that there's something inherently wrong, and the, like you said, the erasure of fatness or of fat people. I mean, there's so much to unpick from that article, but just a very clear demonstration. But yeah, of course, there's many ways that fat people are discriminated against. And yeah, a lot of the ways you articulate in the book in terms of, you know, different prices for different surgeries or different procedures. And of course, just yeah, the medical system really discriminating and

And of course, just, yeah, the medical system really discriminating and being cruel, both in terms of shaming, but in other terms of structural to fat people. I don't know if there's anything you want to say by way of that comment. I'm like still reflecting on just the excerpt you read from the article, right? And yeah, I just don't even... I laugh because it is really transparent the things that fat phobes and anti-fat I would say agents attempt to do. It's just very transparent. So it makes me kind of laugh because I'm like, you know, there's no originality there. And so, yeah, but that's really all that I have to add there. I just think that, you know, it's a shame that we live in the world that we do. And that is the importance, I think, of doing the work that myself and many others do.

Because you can't know or you can't even begin to discuss what it means to destroy that sort of thing if you can't clarify first what is even happening. And so that's why this work feels so important to me. Absolutely. And so to go from fat studies to the layers, the intersectionality piece, you write in your book, black liberation is the end goal and for it to happen, fat liberation must also be a part of that goal. And also you write that anti-fatness stems from anti-blackness.

And it really stood out to me that the subtitle of your book was the politics of anti-fatness as anti-blackness. So let's start to layer this. Can you describe the relationship between anti-fatness and anti-blackness, particularly for folks where it might not be obvious?

So what is that connection there? And yeah, if you can describe it for us. You know, one, this is not necessarily about the question, but I just have to say that I really appreciate the fact that you saw and emphasized the subtitle of the book being as anti-Blackness because a lot of people read that and they automatically change that word from as to and, and I was very intentional about picking as because I think and conjoins the two and says that they are separate but not the

same and what I'm saying is that those two words are interchangeable because those experiences are born of one another and so yeah very happy to explain that in more depth I want to first say that when I say that anti fat niz as anti blackness what I really mean is that anti-fattness, it is anti-blackness. That is to say that it's the condition through which the black fat subject, which I understand to be coterminous with the slave, is held captive by the world. How I understand the world to function is that anti-blackness creates it and gives meaning

to everything in it. So everything about how the world is structured, is created by, and is defined by, or defined through the lens of anti-blackness. And so that means that anti-blackness functions as the sort of outline of an illogical production of black flesh or black pain, which is rendered to be Black as pain or Black trauma or Black as trauma or Black suffering or Black as suffering, meaning that like these things don't exist separately, but that the way that anti-Blackness works is that it creates Blackness to be suffering, to be pain, to be trauma. And so, in other words, anti-fattness is a framework, and it's a framework by which the Black fat subject is forced to be inhuman or an object or the beast, like the title of the book says. It's this global structure that over determines who lives and who dies. It determines the same ways that blackness does. Fatness is always criminalized, always penalized, always objectified, always marginalized.

And so to get what that means in real time in the book, I think I do this in the third chapter, I think I do this in the third chapter. I invite in what Dr. Sabrina Strings offers in her book, Fear and the Black Body, in the introduction, wherein she clarifies the ways that anti-fatness even becomes, or she calls it fatphobia, but anti-fatness even becomes a coherent ideology. And how that happens is, through the transatlantic slave trade,

white Europeans, white Americans, witnessed our bodies, our flesh as black people, and rendered it grotesque and unrighteous, unjust, dirty. And as such, it transformed from pockets of beliefs around the world into an actual structure through the spread of Protestant Christianity through the transatlantic slave trade. And so what that means is that you don't get anti-fatness, you don't get fat phobia as a structural violence without slavery. They knew that they had to make the slave,

which is a Black subject, right, in order to be able to make anti-fatness a structural violence. And it was done so through the spread of Protestant Christianity by way of the transatlantic slave trade. And so that's what that means. Anti-fattness as anti-blackness means that they function coterminously. They function in a way that cannot be divorced or separated from one another, which is why it is so violent to talk about anti-fattness as an experience that is unique to fat white women, fat cis white women, because non-black fat folks are always experiencing the residue of the violence that their bodies create and maintain, right? Which is to say that you are only experiencing the overflow of the very things that your whiteness affords you. Because your fat body in some ways fails the standards that whiteness put in place as a way to create the black fat subject as slave.

So that was a long and wordy answer, but I hope that that made sense and is clear and answers your question. Absolutely. Yeah. And just to share one of the quotes that I wrote down from your book, really related, you wrote, I see the black fat body not as a cage, but rather as a thing that has been caged, a thing, a beast bound by the structures of the world. And so, yeah, this part of the title, so we looked at the subtitle, the first part of the title, the belly of the beast. That phrase didn't really come clear to me until I was kind of maybe in the middle of the book, particularly where you were describing Black Lives Matter movement and the descriptions

of people, of the black people who were killed by the police, right? That's, and then of course, going into prison and incarceration, that's where it really came clear to me the use of that metaphor. So maybe let's layer that on. That was very surprising to me. I hadn't tracked the description of, you know,

who was being killed by the police, how they were described in this lens. So can you give us some examples and maybe talk about how that illustrates this point? Yeah, this part of the book is obviously one of the toughest, but it is also one of my favorite parts of the book because it is something that I think many people were not actually tracking, we're actually following, were not actually clear about. That chapter was initially the premise of my entire book until I decided that I had more to say in other areas. And so the chapter just became shortened by a lot.

But so as I said, I've been part of movement now for 11 years. And so when I trace back, honestly, my start in organizing and in movement spaces comes around the same time that these murders begin to happen, right? I start off by talking about Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice.

And that year, 2014, they were all murdered months apart. Eric Garner, I believe, was in January. Mike Brown was in August. Tamir Rice was in November, I believe. And I started organizing that year because of what I was witnessing. Then the following year, we get Walter Scott

and Samuel DeVos. And then the following year we get Alton Sterling. And then the numbers, the names just kept piling up. And what I realized was that the people we were seeing on our screens who had become, I think some would say the face of these movements, but I'm going to say the corpses of this movement were fat and black. And almost every single case, the lawyer, the prosecutor, the medical examiner, the media, the officer who murdered them or officers who murdered them, all talking about these people the same way. Everyone was

being described from Eric to Mike to Tamir to Walter to Samuel to Alton to George Floyd and everyone in between. it made me realize that there was a deep-rooted or a deep-seated connection between fatness, Blackness, and policing that I had not ever seen being discussed, at least in this way. And so it felt very important to me, Paramount, in fact, to be able to discuss this connection because I think that was, at least for me, was the clarifying point around anti-fattness as anti-blackness, right? That policing as a structure is in so many ways, because it is designed as a way to capture the slave and we know based off of what I named earlier that the slave and the black fat subject are called terminus.

The African folks who were enslaved by white Europeans and white Americans were rendered black fat subjects through the making of the slave, there is no way to divorce policing from anti-fat violence. And so for me, that is what that connection just felt so evident in the ways that every single case functioned almost the same, where the officers not only, you know, named that they feared for them lives, which are feared for their lives, which is something that I think everyone knows and has seen being used by an officer at least at one point in time in one of these cases, but also that so many of them were relying on this beast,

super and subhuman sort of categorizing to justify the murder of these people. And so when you start to dig into a bit more history and you read about the ways that Chicago, for example, had in the 90s, this very real and horrifying game that relied on using Black people's weight as a way to trump up charges and therefore aid in the mass incarceration of Black men and Black folks around the U.S. and other examples like that, you realize that there is something particularly inherent about the

ways that fatness coupled with Blackness is targeted, criminalized, penalized, objectified, and made part of what Frank Wolderson and Terrence Sexton would call the libidino economy. And so yeah, I just like the policing point for ways that medical, sociopolitical, economic, and racial structures all play a significant role in how fat Black folks are engaged in the world. Yeah, that story of what you called the Two ton contest was really shocking about the use of fat black people's weight to like, it was like wanting to get that much weight of black people incarcerated as kind of a contest in the legal system was shocking. And what was even more

shocking was that it was in the late 1900s and early 2000s. Like this is literally recent. That was shocking. And also, as you said, you're going through each case and describing the portrayal, whether it was news media or in the legal description of the people who had been killed. And for people to just get a taste of this, they just invite you to look up, you know, Tamir Rice, who was 12 years old, to just look at how he was described. A 12 year old really described as you articulate in the book as an adult, as a huge adult, right? And that this description was justification for his murder, which is just insane, but totally a clear demonstration of your point. And I also appreciated how you reframed the war on drugs as a legal way

to criminalize and abuse black people. Not surprising to our audience, but very clear that connection between policing, anti-blackness and and anti-fatness. And you know, you mentioned medical, we've mentioned medical, you also mentioned BMI and a little bit of history in terms of slavery. But I think BMI is another key historical point to bring up. So I'm wondering if you can tell us about the history of BMI and how this relates to anti-fatness as anti-blackness? Yes. So I always love talking about the BMI, particularly because I am the BMI's biggest hater.

And so any chance I get to talk about it and really clarify exactly how violent it is, I take that chance. So for folks who don't know what BMI is, it stands for the Body Mass Index, and it was created by a mathematician, a Belgian mathematician, by the name of Adolf Kettelet. He was not a physician.

He never studied medicine in any capacity. He was someone who studied math, statistics, and he had a vision for what is in the French word called the l'homme mollet, which is just an image of what he understood to be the average man. He developed that through the measurement of human features with the deviation plotted around the mean. Basically meaning that he was very interested in building a system that described what was the average or perfect man and he began that development with the use of physical features of what he called the human and he suggested that the human to him was cisgender white men,

particularly French and Scottish white men. And so he built this BMI structure based around French and Scottish white men's bodies as part one of a several part system that would make up the long mouinier. What he created was the standard for male beauty and health and he built that only with white Europeans in mind. He was a staunch eugenicist and a staunch white supremacist to be clear and was very big on race science. I mean at the time in which this was being created race science was perhaps one of the biggest forms of science at least in the Western world so everyone was interested in race science and trying to figure out a way to clarify the ways that white people were superior to black folks and

the reason why I think this is so important to talk about is because the BMI has gone on to be used as one of the leading factors in determining how fat people will be engaged, especially in a medical system. By the 20th century, the BMI was being used as the basis for and the justification for eugenics. And it is still being used that way today. So much about how people think about quote unquote obesity is determined by what we understand the BMI to do and to be. what we understand the BMI to do and to be, right? In 1985, the National Institutes of Health had completely changed the definition of obesity to be tied to people's BMI.

And I think in 1998, that same institution changed the definition again of overweight and obese, and it completely, it made a complete difference in determining who was considered fat and who was not. I think that same year or around that same time, CNN published an article that said that millions of Americans became fat Wednesday, because the National Institute of Health

had changed their definition of what fat was and was not. And so now categorically, an entire body of people who just on Tuesday were not considered to be obese, were now considered to be obese, right? And I think that to me clarifies exactly the type of violence that the BMI does and it clarifies exactly how Constructed this violence actually is Because people whose bodies did not change overnight were completely categorically different based on this definition Overnight and were therefore engaged differently overnight.

And it was all based off of the BMI. And so Aubrey Gordon writes about this as well. And she names it by the turn of the millennium, the BMI's simple arithmetic, I think she calls it had become just a regular part, a normal part of everyday doctor visits. It overdetermined how people were engaged in the medical field. And to this day, it still overdetermines how people are engaged in the medical field. And all of it is built on the exclusion of Black folks and with the intent to violate and harm Black folks. And that's exactly what it has done. So as we move towards solutions, I'm wondering if you can start by maybe describing that engagement,

that engagement with a healthcare professional from a more liberatory lens. What would it look and feel like to receive care that is not anti-fat or anti-black? So yeah, how would that situation, that engagement be different for a patient or someone receiving care? Yeah, you know, I think that this is the question that where people typically jump from my bandwagon because I think that the reality is there is no way, there is no real way to engage people differently in a system that functions exactly the way it was designed to function. And what I mean is that we can and we should show up in a way that is nicer, kinder, more thoughtful around fat people's bodies.

We can have nurses and doctors who have particular language that is softer than obese or softer than overweight. We can have a health at every size framework that seeks to basically inform people that you can be quote unquote healthy at any size, right? We can have all of these things and yet and still the doctors who use these frameworks, who use this language, the nurses, the medical staff, and the everyday people who use this language and use these frameworks are all people who are still basing their knowledge on what they learned in school, which is based entirely off of the anti-black eugenicists projects like BMI. And so the shift in language, the shift in how you engage

someone doesn't necessarily change anything if you're still using the same knowledge to determine how they are supposed to be cared for, right? If the conclusion for you is still that people have to lose weight in order to be cared for. It doesn't matter if you call them obese or overweight or something else. You're still coming to the same conclusion. And so yeah for me it is where I start to get with with this and I think that you know like a lot of folks aren't with that but the only way to change any of that is by watching it burn and unless and until we are committed to burning, destroying these structures, the small changes that we make might make life a little bit easier for some, but it won't

ever undo the violence or disrupt the violence that we so often experience. You know, I think a lot about, I have a really big critique of a lot of frameworks that that are often used as a way to care for fat folks because they rely on this idea of health. And as I argue in the third chapter of my book, health is something that outright excludes Black people. Black people were never intended to be a part of this health framework, especially fat Black people and as such any framework that relies on health as a response to anti fat as anti-black violence

Will automatically exclude black fat people no matter how kind or thoughtful or caring it's intended to be and kind or thoughtful or caring is intended to be. And so, yeah, I guess the simple answer to your question is that the only real way to see the change is to watch it burn. Yeah, I can definitely hear a question on, how would a doctor's visit look different? How would that engagement look different?

Can feel similarly to just focusing on something like we need more diversity, equity, inclusion in policing. It really doesn't address the root problems or the fact that the systems are inherently and at their very depth and creation anti-fat and anti-black. And of course, you talk about this with policing, how policing is inherently anti-fat and anti-black. And of course, you talk about this with policing, how policing is inherently anti-fat and anti-black and going into the history of slavery and its connection with policing as well as capitalism and its connection with policing, both in terms of upholding properties and protecting property, but also keeping people working through, you know, vagrancy laws and also wage slavery. So, you know, one thing you write in the book is we need to go beyond abolition even. So I'm

wondering if you might introduce that idea. What does it mean to go beyond abolition to really create truly liberatory change at this systemic level? For me, well, one, I think that abolition, especially now, has so many different definitions. But for me, what I mean when I say that is that there is this idea that abolishing structures or abolishing something starts and stops at destroying the building, destroying the thing that holds the structure. But the reality is that structures can only be built after the idea has been developed. Right? You don't get a McDonald's without the idea for a McDonald's and therefore abolition cannot start

and stop at the structure or at the edifice, it must extend also to the idea. And that's where things get a little bit complicated because you can watch a building burn You cannot necessarily determine whether or not destroying that building will also destroy the idea behind it and the ways that people have been indoctrinated into believing in that idea and so I think that

believing in that idea. And so I think that the destruction of the building is important and necessary. And I also think it's just a start, right? Political education is also a really big aspect of this, informing people, inviting people into other ways of knowing. And at the same time, also acknowledging that anti-Blackness is cosmic,

it's in the air, it's a global structure. And as that is the case, I don't think we yet know what it really looks like or what it really takes to undo or to disrupt or to destroy the idea that leads to the edifice. And I think that is what many don't want to sit with. I think, you know, we have all of our revolutionary ideas and we have all of our revolutionary blueprints and all the things, all of those things I think are very necessary. And I think we underestimate the ways that anti-blackness completely disrupts our ability to imagine outside of it because it constructs everything about what we know. And so I don't think any of us actually really know what it looks like or what it takes to

get to a point that exists, as I call it in the book, in the beyond, after abolition, right? And yet I think what we do know is that what is happening right now does not work. It is not working. It is violent. And so first we get to the ashes and then we can find the Phoenix. That's how I imagine it, right? It's like, you know, first, we got to get to the ashes first and from the ashes ofenix will rise and we'll figure out what that phoenix looks like, but the ashes got to come first because until they do, we will never get to that phoenix. And that's how I think about that. I think a very real revolutionary burning has to happen.

And then we can dream together what the beyond looks like. So this show is called Upstream because it invites us to go upstream from the challenges and problems of our time to the root causes. And I really feel like you guided us on a journey upstream in your last answer, especially with what you said about the building and the going upstream from the structure of the building being the worldviews and the beliefs and the ideologies that we hold and particularly going upstream and finding these

patterns of supremacy, right? Supremacy, human supremacy over nature, capitalist supremacy, white supremacy, thin supremacy as you introduced, and patriarchal supremacy. And really the connection of all of those is, power over thinking or dominant thinking or supremacy mindset. So I really feel like you brought us upstream as to the root causes

of the problems that we're seeing. And as we close, I want to turn towards the invitations as we go forth. And I heard several and then I want to ask if you have any to add. So I really heard for us to all get connected or to know about fat studies just as a discipline and to really work to identify where anti-fatness shows up and also to dismantle anti-fatness systemically, structurally, culturally, but also within ourselves. And another is to be intersectional about this work. So to see anti-fatness as anti-blackness and to make that connection, whether that's supported through the historical

or through the modern day examples, but to really see them as interconnected. And then, I also heard, burn down the institutions that are really upholding and encouraging anti-fatness and anti-blackness. You know, we talked about health systems, but also policing. So these systems that are really, these institutions that are really kind of rotten at the core, that need to be really re-imagined and that we need to meet in that beyond. And so that last invitation to go beyond abolition and to meet in that beyond to And so that last invitation to go beyond abolition

and to meet in that beyond to co-create and co-imagine this more liberatory world that we all hope for. So those are some invitations that I really heard and I'm really taking with me. I wonder what others you might add or any other closing invitations you might have for our listeners. Yeah, one, I really love and appreciate those reflections. Thank you for that. And yeah,

I will say that I think the best way forward is when you hear this to not stop the conversation here. I think so often a lot of people like they'll tune into a podcast or they'll watch a YouTube video or they'll read a book and they stop there. I urge everyone to not stop, to keep listening, to keep reading, to keep thinking, to keep conversing and to build together, to create together so that when we're able to get to that collective burning we know what we're doing and why we're doing it. We know where we're going, right? And until we

get to that collective burning we know how to engage or re-engage or disengage from one another in our day-to-day lives. So yeah, I would just urge people to keep to keep learning, to keep growing. I am what some would consider it to be an expert on this subject and I am still always learning and growing and reading and listening and conversing because it matters, because none of us can ever know it all. Anti-blackness, the violence of this world has completely removed any possibility for us to ever know it all.

So we have to keep learning and I hope that after hearing this people will commit to doing exactly that. You've been listening to an Upstream Patreon episode with Deshawn Harrison, writer, editor, speaker, community organizer, co-executive director of Scalawag Magazine, and author of Belly of the Beast, the politics of anti-fatness as anti-blackness, published by North Atlantic Books. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. The cover image of today's episode is a photograph of Deshaun Harrison, taken by Brikari. Upstream theme music was composed by me, Robbie.

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