Race & identity

Who Gets to Stare? Race, Objectification & Power

October 13, 2026

This episode is for you if you’ve ever been asked “What are you?” by a total stranger. Or if you’ve ever caught yourself staring and wondered what, exactly, you were looking for.

On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day episode, Becky and Taina start with the “where are you really from?” question and follow it into who gets to look and who gets looked at. Taina, who is Afro-Latina with Taíno roots, shares a lifetime of being mistaken for Egyptian, Indian, Dominican, and Middle Eastern, and explains why treating someone as a puzzle to solve strips their dignity, no matter the intent.

From there, they get into Becky’s confession about staring at a trans woman in an airport 30 years ago, Shane Gillis’s SNL “spandex” joke, the history of slave auctions, and bell hooks’s oppositional gaze (plus why white women should stare at cops, not at the people they’re harassing). Taina breaks down race vs. ethnicity and Latin vs. Hispanic, and they wrap with Becky’s “file folder” metaphor for identity, gender, pronouns, and letting people name themselves.

“Clarity is kindness. Even if the intention is not kind, the clarity in that moment is kind, because then I can decide for myself: do I want to engage with this person or not?”

— Taina Brown

In This Episode, We Get Into:

• Why “What are you?” is never okay, and how to tell real curiosity from nosiness
• Taina’s PT appointment, and a lifetime of being mistaken for Egyptian, Indian, Dominican, and Middle Eastern
• “Clarity is kindness”: why a blunt question can be better than a covert one
• Intent vs. impact: how treating someone as a puzzle to solve strips their dignity
• Becky’s confession about staring at a trans woman in an airport 30 years ago, and what she’d do differently now
• Who gets the privilege to look and who becomes the spectacle, from Shane Gillis’s SNL “spandex” joke to the history of slave auctions
• Oppositional looking: refusing to look away, and why white women should stare at cops, not at the people they’re harassing
• Jordan Peele, Get Out, and horror that doesn’t center whiteness
• Latin vs. Hispanic, explained through Brazil, Guyana, Mexico, and Puerto Rico
• Race as a social construct that still shapes real lives, plus the “file folder” metaphor for identity, gender, pronouns, and reclaimed language

Timestamps

• 00:00 – Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Hispanic Heritage Month & Filipino American History Month
• 02:42 – Being mistaken for everything: growing up racially ambiguous
• 07:00 – “It’s really none of your business”: lessons from college
• 11:40 – Objectification, intent vs. impact, and human dignity
• 17:47 – Shane Gillis, SNL, and who gets to be the object
• 21:00 – Ways of Seeing, Stuart Hall & oppositional looking
• 25:01 – Stare at power, not at the oppressed
• 26:40 – Jordan Peele, Get Out, and horror that doesn’t center whiteness
• 29:41 – Why travel (or a new neighborhood) can radicalize white folks
• 36:10 – Race as a social construct, from slavery to ICE sweeps
• 40:41 – Latin vs. Hispanic: what’s the difference?
• 47:48 – How perception changes race: New York vs. Florida
• 49:17 – The Hyphenated Life, file folders & gender as a construct
• 53:02 – Capitalism and the myth of limited categories
• 56:50 – Refusing the file folder: queer identity & she/they pronouns
• 1:00:05 – Messy Liberation Circle open house

Resources Mentioned

• Ways of Seeing by John Berger
• “The Whites of Their Eyes” by Stuart Hall (PDF)
• “The Oppositional Gaze” by bell hooks (PDF)
• The Hyphenated Life by Han Ren
• Messy Liberation Circle (the Oct. 15 open house mentioned in the episode has passed, but you can still join)