“Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People” is a podcast hosted by actor/comedian Chris Gethard. Where each week he gets a random caller, usually from the United States, and they discuss their life, or a certain aspect of their life, anonymously, with him for one hour. In a particular episode, released October 20, 2020, Chris received a caller that discussed his difficulties between his relationship with his partner and his parents. He focused on two issues: same-sex relationships and interracial relationships. He began by telling Chris that he came out to his parents over two decades prior. And because of religious backgrounds (specifically southern baptism), conservative beliefs, and the caller’s preference for interracial relationships, his family refused to accept his sexual identity. The most predominant reason aside from the entirety of being in a same-sex relationship was the fact that the caller’s African American and his partner’s white. Stating that, “There is no man I can bring home that my parents would be excited about but the interracial factor is one-hundred percent a secondary issue”…“they have trust issues having been born from all manners of mistreatments, all manners of racism”. He expresses his parent’s difficulty accepting other cultures, specifically white culture because they grew up in the “Jim Crow South”.
Shortly after the caller talked about his parent’s troubles with trust, Chris stated that “as soon as you said they had a problem with an interracial relationship, in my mind I go, “oh these are closed-minded white people”. But then you go “oh wait, that can go in all directions, any direction”. Effectively making the connection that the caller’s family isn’t white, they’re African American. This thought went very well with Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” where there were so many aspects to the two women’s lives from relationships, class, being an outcast, and so much more; yet the factors don’t necessarily help in determining the race of those two individuals. Almost as if it didn’t matter because both cultures can intertwine. Thus making it important to acknowledge that these kinds of stereotypes and othering can go, as Chris said “in any direction”.
Looking further, the title of the podcast’s episode, “Get Out (Of The Closet)”, is a direct innuendo to the movie “Get Out”. The caller used this movie to discuss not only the problems in his life but also how many of the themes within the movie were oddly realistic, almost in a reverse way. He speaks about the differences between his family and his partner’s family’s reaction to their relationship through this movie; where he says that by being in an “all white space your guard is up [because] anything can happen, but nothing has happened”. Once again talking about how he could let his guard down, his partner’s parents could let their guards down, but his own family refused presumably due to a sort of othering.
Source:
Gethard, Chris. “Get Out (Of The Closet).” Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People from Earwolf Productions, 20 October 2020, https://www.earwolf.com/episode/get-out-of-the-closet/.