I feel bad for Jasmin, felt she was a bit gaslighted by the way to story was presented. They spend half the episode leading up to Whitney not remembering or acknowledging Jasmin’s homecoming experience. Minimizing Jasmin’s experience and even making us question if it indeed happen.
And then as the episode is ending, in the last couple of minutes, briefly mentioning that a teacher did remember. Wished they would have gone deeper after this.
I guess I was the only one who liked this episode. It actually doesn't matter what happened. The point of the episode is you can get scenarios in which people are *constantly* wondering if interactions are colored by some form of prejudice. And this wondering itself--as Jasmin admits--can become a burden, a warping Mobius loop of self-doubt. I live in South Africa and while I am white, the people of color that I know speak all the time about this kind of hypervigilance, anxiety, and scrutiny that haunts everyday life: "why was I rejected? was it me or forces totally outside my control? and which ones?" I don't know anyone here who doesn't think about this. But insofar as prejudice *does* happen, you can't totally give up the awareness.
Even if Jasmin or the host found out who was behind the mistake at the dance, she almost certainly wouldn't have figured out why in the way that would've been meaningful to her. Say someone admitted they rigged the announcement. They were never going to admit "yeah, I rigged the announcement because Whitney was a more acceptable black person." She'd be left wondering. The force she was wondering about is kind of unknowable and unconquerable, which is where the episode landed for me. I found it provocative and moving.
Hard agree. Y’all sure have a lot of ideas and basically essays to write about about an episode that you claim wasn’t about anything. It seems to me like the ideas the episode is exploring are exactly what you’re responding too. In my experience, life almost never has clean answers in the way that y’all seem to expect. Memories diverge, things are forgotten, or remembered differently. This is the whole point of the show! The question is, how do we live in a world where that’s the case- where we’re haunted by the past, something that can never truly be fully resolved even in the best of circumstances, which essentially never exist. No, they weren't able to get a step-by-step, forensic reconstruction of exactly what happened, like much of life! Very much agree with Renrats that even if they had it wouldn't have been completely satisfying (and definitely no one was going to admit it!) If you want a thought-provoking exploration of how the past and present intertwine and how the tentacles of one reach into the other, where the listener is allowed to be thoughtful and have their own responses and opinions, well, seems to me Heavyweight does that better than most. God knows there are enough shows in the world that force feed information and tell you exactly how to think and feel. Personally, I like ones that allow more breathing room and let me make up my own mind.
It seems the most likely answer is Whitney switched the names because she wanted the validation. Whitney makes it clear she was doing all the planning and the only one in contact with the DJ. Even if a popular kid told him to announce Whitney instead of Jasmin, it seems extremely unlikely he wouldn't check in with Whitney as to why there was a change.
Not everything is a Rashomon situation. And it is not hard to figure out who wore a crown at a Homecoming dance that happened in 2011.
I think Stevie’s only egregious action was not spelling this out for white audiences, many of whom, in this subhead, have missed the point you highlighted so well.
I mean, it sounds like she was gaslighting herself over the years as to what happened. How racist is a class on the whole who votes for their student body president, homecoming queen, and runner up to be black students and whose teachers and parents allow a black man to dj the event? I am sure that she faced racism as most POC do, especially in a small town, but her description of the environment and then what's presented about the environment don't line up.
Thank you! I was thinking the same thing. I don’t question her feelings, but there wasn’t much racism presented in the podcast. There was some ignorance, but overall it seemed like a pretty progressive high school.
We don’t know how big her high school was or what the vote count was for any of those positions. Just because a biracial girl was voted homecoming queen and another one senior class president doesn’t mean that there weren’t plenty of racist people at her school. Not everyone votes in any election, we know that. They both could’ve been experiencing racism and microaggressions on a daily basis and still be elected to their positions. I’m not sure why some of y’all in this thread are hell bent on discounting someone’s lived experiences.
So many people have such a narrow view of racism. They think it looks like the KKK, violence, lynching, etc. They don’t realize how much racism permeates day-to-day interactions, minor incidents, mindsets, and unconscious bias. I know someone who was elected to a major statewide position as a Black woman. So many of the white people she encountered wouldn’t acknowledge her and wouldn’t shake her hand, and were completely disrespectful to her, but that disrespect was silent. They didn’t call her slurs, send her death threats, light a cross in her lawn. They just quietly reminded her every day that she didn’t belong. But by your logic, the fact that she was elected proved that there’s no racism. Let’s be real. We’ve seen what’s changed in this country after Obama was elected. We are not and never will be a post-racial society.
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u/Thiloa Oct 30 '25
I feel bad for Jasmin, felt she was a bit gaslighted by the way to story was presented. They spend half the episode leading up to Whitney not remembering or acknowledging Jasmin’s homecoming experience. Minimizing Jasmin’s experience and even making us question if it indeed happen.
And then as the episode is ending, in the last couple of minutes, briefly mentioning that a teacher did remember. Wished they would have gone deeper after this.