When one man realized there weren’t enough people out there telling stories about LGBTQ people of color, he decided to be the change he wanted to see.
31-year-old Reggie Condra, who works at the Pierson Library in Shelburne, recently celebrated a year of recording interviews with queer people of color. He created “Brown ‘n Out” to hold a “podcast about LGBTQ People of Color in Vermont.”
Condra’s goal was to create a platform for Queer POC’s voices and specifically from everyday folk. And after a year of doing so, he’s found a stride and purpose in spotlighting the everyday struggles and triumphs of life.
With guests ranging from actors to university employees and topics ranging from astrology, the rationality of Satanism, and parental relationships, Condra has stayed commented to shining a light on all walks of life.
“Hopefully my listeners feel like they know them a little bit by the end of the episode. I think it’s great for queer people of color to see themselves represented,” Condra told Vermont news source WCAX3.
To Condra, it’s all about highlighting the human experience and not just a specific racial experience.
“I think it’s been successful so far,” Condra told Vermont source Seven Days. “If people don’t want to talk about [race, gender or sexuality], I’m not really interested in talking about it. I want to change the narrative. I think we are surprising, and I want people to be surprised by the range and nuance of things we have to talk about and share.”
“A main goal of the podcast,” Condra adds, “is to illustrate to everyone how much we are more than our identities.”
And Condra does so by ensuing that the podcasts, which range from 40-some-odd minutes to almost an hour and a half, pivot and swerve to many different topics.
In doing so, he hopes to capture the fact that each LGBTQ person of color from Vermont is more than just that description.
But as he said in an interview with The Telegraph, Condra wasn’t always thinking that. He and his program have evolved over the year of recording.
“I would like to say over time I’m just tightening it up a bit more and kind of learning how to be a professional podcaster,” he said.
And with several podcasts under his belt and coverage by many publications, it looks like he’s doing that very well.
If you want to listen to an interview or two, you can head over to this link.
h/t: WCAX3, Seven Days, The Telegraph
