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The Beauty of the Black Rhetorical Tradition
Like any other person existing on the internet, I am a fan of podcasts. I listen to The Read, The Friend Zone, 90 Day Fiancé Cray Cray, and You’re Wrong About pretty much every week. But podcasting is a very White-male-dominated industry. Our ideas about narration, story arcs, rhythm, and cadence are influenced by those who are always seen as the standard for excellence and credibility.
Thankfully, however, there are Black and Brown people who are breaking the mold in this arena, particularly Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Hear to Slay. In her Medium piece about their joint podcast, McMillan Cottom writes about the Black rhetorical tradition — its call-and-response technique and the significance of how one can not exist without the other in dialogue.
