Ep. 190: Black Genius and Childish Gambino's "This is America"

The Chauncey DeVega Show

Stephen Casmier is the guest on this week's Childish Gambino "This is America" themed episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a professor of English at Saint Louis University and the author of the great essay Donald Glover and Richard Pryor, or the Chokehold of the Minstrel Show which can be read at Medium. During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Stephen and Chauncey have a wide ranging conversation about black art and black genius, the problems with how concepts such as "intersectionality", "representation" and "identity politics" have been commonly used and understood, the uprising in Ferguson, and America's almost pornographic relationship to black suffering. Dr. Casmier and Chauncey also deconstruct the politics and aesthetics of Childish Gambino's amazingly popular new song and video "This is America". In this week's episode Chauncey DeVega intervenes against the horrible cruelty and evil that is the Trump administration's war on the children and families of undocumented residents, immigrants, and refugees. Chauncey also reflects on the right-wing "patriotic" anthem "I'm Proud to be an American" and how it tells some unintentional truths about the culture of cruelty and the horrible wrongs in the country. At the end of this week's podcast, Chauncey has a good laugh about the lawsuit by the people behind the iconic children's TV series "Sesame Street" against the new adult comedy "The Happytime Murders".