Buffering's Anti-RacisT COMMITMENTS

Our team is committed to prioritizing the BIPOC community in all the ways we know how, and all the ways we continue to learn about together.

The below is a working list of our commitments, created in collaboration with members of our BIPOC listenership and staff members Mackenzie MacDade & Alba Daza.

I. Patreon Access for Black + Indigenous Listenership

As of July 2020, as a means of reparations, our Patreon-only community is open to our Black and Indigenous listeners at no cost to increase the perspectives in those spaces and help bring in more listeners who are living with economic disparities in their day to day lives.

If you are a Black or Indigenous listener and would like access to our Patreon community spaces, ad-free episodes, advance mp3s, and other digital items offered to patrons, please share your email with us here and we will send you the link and password needed:

Some of you are already intimately familiar with the concept and application of reparations, and others may hear that word here, in the context of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, and wonder how it applies to a space like ours. We are creators in a shared community space, and view our work as a microcosm of the larger world — what we do here, no matter how large or small the scale, is impacted by structures of white supremacy and influenced by our own lived experience as white creators and also makes an impact in the world around us. If you want to understand more about reparations, you can start here and here.

II. Reducing Harm in Shared Community Spaces

Together with a team of hired BIPOC consultants, we will be working with the current moderators in our shared Patreon community Facebook group and other digital community spaces to restructure the way our mods are selected and oriented. The focus of this restructuring will be to lessen harm and to be more prepared for ways to address harms when they happen. One of our commitments is ensuring that our senior mods in that space have pre-existing experience with anti-racist work.

III. Adding more BIPOC voices to the work

We will be increasing the number of BIPOC voices in Buffering universe on an ongoing and regular basis — BIPOC voices and perspectives are immeasurably valuable to our collective experience of Buffy, Angel, The X-Files, and all that we cover here in the space and, by extension, to the way in which we apply those conversations and texts to the world around us. It is important that we honor the value of those voices and give space to them as we move forward.

We will also be working with BIPOC creators directly in the curation and production of episodes that dig into race, specifically, as it is in conversation with the media we are watching!

Curated Conversations to date:

INVISI-BIPOC • Spotify Link
Alba Daza and Mackenzie McDade do an unapologetic deep dive into the BIPOC experience of invisibility. Join them as they discuss the metaphorical and literal ways that Buffy the Vampire Slayer illustrates the ways that BIPOC experience invisibility. They laugh, they (almost) cry, they tell it like it is, and they are ready. to. scrap. Be it through Buffy’s White Savior Complex, the revolution that is "Graduation Day Part 2," or the pure rage of Marcie in "Out of Mind Out of Sight," they are here to share in the solidarity of two BIPOC women talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, no holds barred.

A Conversation with Mackenzie MacDade & Alba Daza • Spotify Link
New Buffering the Vampire Slayer family members — producer Alba Daza and consultant Mack MacDade — join us today in conversation with each other! They introduce who they are, the work they are doing within the Buffering universe, and why they choose to do it. Also buckle up for lots of fun personal anecdotes about Buffy, race, and how they both grew up *obsessed* with the show!!

LaToya Ferguson, Alanna Bennett, & Ira Madison III on Race in the Buffy & Angelverse • Spotify Link
The absolutely brilliant LaToya Ferguson, Alanna Bennett, and Ira Madison III host today's conversation on race within the Buffy and Angelverse! This is the first in a larger series that will be produced and hosted by BIPOC Buffy fans here on the Buffering the Vampire Slayer and WOW — what a way to begin. These three TV geniuses bring their encyclopedic knowledge of both series to the table with questions like: What would have happened if Leonard Roberts played Riley? Why in the hell was Drusilla able to kill Kendra — an immensely powerful Slayer — with one filed f*cking fingernail? How would it have impacted the arc of the show if Bianca Lawson had been cast as Cordelia?

IV. Accountability

We have built out a feedback form which will exist primarily for our BIPOC listenership to voice concerns as this work continues which can be found at bit.ly/bipocfeedback

This form will be monitored by us both as well as Mack MacDade who is working with us to help in the receiving and implementation of this feedback. This is not intended to defer our responsibility or accountability, but rather to create a safer space for our BIPOC listenership to access with their concerns. You can identify yourself in the form or choose to remain anonymous in your feedback.

V. Community Engagement

At the end of 2020, Mack MacDade led the Buffering listenership in two anti-racism reading and discussion groups; the first navigating Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race, and the second navigating Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism.

We also spotlight community events that center and uplift BIPOC voices and/or exist to educate the larger community on important issues. Our Just Keep Fighting Calendar of events is below, and you can also suggest community events by emailing us at hello (at) bufferingcast (dot) com!

You can also, visit our digital library of anti-racist websites, reading lists, and social media accounts to follow to supplement our community work and for general perusal.