Tighisti Amare
So, good morning, good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you’re joining us for – from for this forum on Black Lives Matter and Local Experiences of Mobilisation, which is taking place in a virtual roundtable format and has been co-created by Chatham House’s Common Futures Conversation, which is a community of young people from across Africa and Europe, who join in an international exchange with policymakers regularly and with whom we work closely.
My name is Tighisti Amare and I am the Assistant Director of the Africa Programme at Chatham House. I’m currently also serving as Co-Chair, together with our CEO, Dr Robin Niblett, for our institute’s work on equity, diversity and inclusion, and have had, also, the opportunity of working with the Common Futures Conversation group from inception.
So, our discussion today is something that is very close to my heart, both at a personal, but also, professional, level. Before we get started, let me give you a little bit of housekeeping rules. Please note that this webinar is on the record, so, this means that anything that we say here is open to the public, can be quoted and can be attributed to the individual who say them. The discussion is also being recorded and it – there will be a recording that will be made available afterwards, on our website, and on social media it’s clips or the full video. Given that this discussion is on the record, you’re very welcome to tweet and you’re encouraged to do so, and you can use the #CHEvents.
As some of you, who regularly attend our meetings have – may have noticed, this discussion is taking place in a slightly different format. It is, as we call it, a virtual roundtable meeting, which means we want to make sure that it’s as engaging as possible, we want to hear from everyone. You’re all encouraged to switch on your videos and once we’ve had an initial discussion with our speakers, you’re very welcome to raise your hand to get my attention. At that point, you’ll be invited to share your experiences, ask questions to the speakers, or just share your reflections on the discussion. Please do also use the ‘Chat’ box to alert our colleagues working in the background to make this happen, if you’re having any technical difficulties, and they will try, as much as they can to help you resolve it.
Today we are joined by three truly inspirational speakers. Their work engagement with their community in their own countries and on issues of exclusion, is so wide that I’m only be – going to be able to present a few highlights of what they have done and why they are here with us. I will start with Princess Murray, is an African-American LGBTQIA Activist and Author. Princess leads in the field of social justice, race relations, LGBTQIA and homeless initiatives. She’s a founding board member of the Los Angeles Black LGBTQ Movement Department of Mental Health LGBTQIA community member, human rights campaign community member and is currently Board of Stars Behavioral Health Group, in which she works in the capacity of Resource and Events Manager.
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh is a South African Author, Musician and Activist. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Oxford and he’s the Author of “Democracy and Delusion: 10 Myths in South African Politics.” Sizwe was part of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign in Oxford in 2016. Last, but not least, I’m not sure if he’s joined us yet, but he’s going to be with us any minute, is DeRay Mckesson, who is an American Civil Rights Activist, focused primarily on issues of innovation, equity injustice. He’s a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and co-founder of Campaign Zero. He has received many praises, including by President Obama, for his work as a community organiser. He has advised officials at all levels of government and internationally and continues to provide capacity to activists, organisers and influencers to make an impact. He’s the host of the award-winning weekly podcast called Save the People. So, if you’re not signed up yet, I strongly recommend that you do so.
So, just as a bit of a background to this event, I mean, as you all know, it has happened many times before, as it has happened many times before, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May of this year could have been looked over as one of the many killings of Black Americans at the hands of Police Officers. Instead, it ignited a wave of protests in the US, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets and solidarity protests taking place globally. It was in the middle of the pandemic and mass protests reached every corner of the globe, from Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, the whole world was engaged in this. It became a rallying call for global citizens to loudly condemn the killing and Police brutality, not only in the US, but also in their own countries.
It also led to a decentralised form of global movement and to discussions around real police reform, stances of corporations and organisations and to the questioning of symbols of racism, be it flags, stat – or statues, and so on. Right now, at country, company and social level, it’s become very commonplace to talk about race and exclusion. But this movement has also energised different other movements that were ongoing, or were dormant, and created a space for marginalised groups in different societies to be part of a global conversation on exclusion and abuse. But what this means is also that the movement is being felt differently in different parts of the world, which is why we’re having this discussion. We want to hear – we want to provide an opportunity to reflect and share different local experiences of mobilisation, as part of these global anti-racism protests that started in the summer.
So, I will start with few remarks by our speakers, who will tell us a little bit more, first, on some of the projects, some of the activities they’re – they’ve been working on. So, I will start with you, Princess, if you can tell us a little bit more how you’ve been engaging, what are the main projects that you’re working on at the moment? I think you’re still muted.
Princess Murray
Okay, so, I’ve been working on – thank you, thank – and, first, I want to say thank you everyone for allowing me to be here and speak and I appreciate this time. I would like to say that we’ve been working on a lot of different projects in the community. Mainly the project that I work on is making sure that I have resources for impoverished communities of colour within our community. So, resources could mean helping with health disparities, equality, making sure that we have things in place that are there for our community to improve themselves and have a better way of life. So, basically, that’s what we’re doing now, since all of the protesting has, kind of, settled down a little bit. With our new President and all of that, a lot of things have settled down. A lot of people are not in the street as much as before. So, we’re, kind of, focusing on resources right now.
As far as mobilisation, we’re not doing so much of that, but we are, behind the scenes, are figuring out ways that we can make this continuous and continue to keep the momentum going and making sure that we are still available for the community and making sure that equality, freedom in the rights and, you know, oppression, is not something that’s going to be a border as if it was before. Because I think that this whole movement that we had needs to continue, in a way, into politics, in a way, into making sure that policies in place that cannot make – you know, to deter this from happening again. So, that’s where we are right now as far as, like, what I’m doing in the community.
Tighisti Amare
Great, thank you, Princess. DeRay, I’m not sure at what point – and welcome, thank you for joining us, at what point you joined, but we’re trying to understand how you’re engaging at the moment, what projects you’re working. If you can tell us a little bit on that to get us started in the convers – with the conversation?
DeRay Mckesson
Hi everybody, it’s an honour to be here. You know, I think about in 2014 the protests were incredible, they changed the country, helped people understand that people have power and that was really big. I think that one of the hard things about 2014, right, is that people thought there was a problem in Ferguson. It took us a while to convince people there was a problem across the country and there was a problem across the world. And that was something that, like, I remember, 2014 and 2015, having to tell people, like, “No, it’s not just one city, it’s not just one place. It’s not just Baltimore where Freddie Gray got killed. It’s not just Waller County, Texas, where Sandra got killed. It’s not just Cleveland with Tamir. Like, this is actually a nationwide issue.” And that took us a while to convince people about. So, so much in the beginning wave I think was, like, helping people understand what the problem was.
When I think about the work in 2020 and I think about the protests that started in June, that reignited in June in Minneapolis, it – I felt so many more people trying to figure out what are the solutions, right? And, like, people understood the problem. After 2014 it was like panels, and books, it was talks, it was like everybody was trying to, just, like, get language about what was going on and, like, where is this happening and what are the numbers, and duh, duh, duh? And now, I feel this really interesting moment where people are like, “Oh, hey, got it, problem, I get it.” Like, “I don’t need another documentary, I don’t need another TV show, I don’t need a 30-person panel to tell me it’s bad.” People are like, “What do we do?” And I think that that is where I sit right now, is in the “what do we do?” space. Is that – we spend a lot of time trying to figure out, like, what is true and what’s not true. You know, like, so, in America the police actually kill more people in suburban communities than almost all other communities combined, it’s not cities. If you look at the news, you would think it was New York and LA. It’s not, it’s places like St Louis City, it’s Albuquerque, it’s Phoenix, it’s Reno, it’s Hialeah, right? So, we help people understand that, like, whatever you put out as a solution, if it doesn’t hit in Oklahoma City, then it actually won’t change the numbers.
So, when we look at the numbers, the police have killed consistently this year, no change, no dip, no decrease, no decrease around COVID, no decrease around the protests, like it is on – it is unchanged, and part of that is, like, we try to figure out, like, where’s the problem? What is actually happening in community? The second is that we organise with a three-part framework, which is there’s a really big problem, the problem’s close to you and you can do something about it.
The thing about the police in USA, 18,000 Police Departments, almost all this is local. The Federal Government has, like, a small role to play, mostly around money, but mostly the things that people carry out are local. So, we try to help people figure out, like, how is this manifesting in your city, or your county, or your state? And then, making sure that they have whatever they need, whether it is graphics, or, like, the data, or the policy, to be able to do that. So, around Police Unions we’re organising in 30 cities. We’re about to do a campaign around no knocks that comes out next week, in honour of Breonna Taylor, to ban no knock raids. We’re in about 34 cities and states around that. And then, we did a project called 8 Can’t Wait, which is the single biggest reduction in the power of the Police in US history, around use of force policies, understanding that there’s no one strategy that gets us to zero. There’s no magic bullet. It’ll be all of the strategies in concert with each other that’ll get us there. Honour to be here.
Tighisti Amare
Great, thank you very much, DeRay. Sizwe, the same question for you, what are you working on, how are you engaging at the moment?
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
Yes, thanks so much, Tighisti. Thanks, Ludivine, for the introduction. Very honoured to be back at Chatham House and it’s wonderful to be able to speak with both DeRay and Princess. So, I’m working on a number of projects, and I just wanted to briefly reflect on two: one that I’ve come out of and one that I’m involved in at the moment. Because I think both of them shed some light on the conversation that I think joins all of us here today.
So, the first one, of which I’m now a veteran, is the Rhodes Must Fall movement at the University of Oxford. Those of you from the United Kingdom will know that in late 2015 the Rhodes Must Fall movement at the University of Oxford caused quite a stir and a great deal of panic in the British media and, you know, we were, essentially, dragged through the mud, as is typical. However, five years later, the statue of Cecil John Rhodes has been agreed to be removed from the University of Oxford, due to the excellent activism of many activists who came after our generation. And so, I just want to reflect a little bit on that project, very briefly.
I think what was fascinating about that project is the triangle across the Atlantic between South Africa, the United States and Britain and how the various movements happening at the same time, in late 2015, echoed each other, drew inspiration from each other, even though they were not in particularly close co-ordination. And so, a movement that started in South Africa, for the call for a removal of a colonial figure who had gone to Oxford, spread to the University of Oxford because South African students were in Oxford and echoed the protests that were happening in South Africa, also inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement that was happening in the United States. And all of that pressure helped ignite the movement at the University of Oxford, that, by the way, you know, the mere word change sends shivers down the spines of Administrators at Oxford. The idea of removing a feature of the public landscape was far beyond anyone’s even fertile imagination, but as I mentioned, the decision to remove the statue and all that it represents on the curriculum and in the chronic under-representation of Black people, has ultimately been relatively successful, in that the statue will be removed in Oxford has been shifted.
Having said that, the second thing that I just wanted to briefly reflect on is two areas where I think that there is greater scope for collaboration, particularly in those three places. And the first is in the development of a sophisticated media ecosystem that challenges global White supremacy. Obviously, DeRay is doing incredible work with Pod Save the People. I’m working on a channel in South Africa, called SMWX, which is also a digital channel of podcasts, YouTube, which has got over a million views in the last year. And the idea is from a youth and from an anti-racist, anti-White supremacist perspective, to understand current affairs. But the broader goal, beyond any of our particular channels, is to ensure that, and I think perhaps to deepen, the inter-relations between various media entities that are approaching what’s happening around the world from an anti-racist perspective. And I think there’s greater scope to deepen those networks, to encourage conversations across different countries and nations and to really build a better media coalition, because Lord knows that right-wing White supremacists have cottoned on to the importance of that.
And then, I think the second ground, and here I’ll end, is around the question of Black legal minds. I think organisations, like the ACLU, there are a number of progressive Black Barristers in the UK and in South Africa there’s huge upheaval in the legal profession about trying to transform it away from a White supremacist lens. I think there’s also greater scope for collaboration between progressive legal minds across these various territories. So, those are just some preliminary thoughts and I really look forward to engaging with you all, as we tackle today’s themes.
Tighisti Amare
Great, thank you, Sizwe. It’s – your talk – your contribution actually takes me straight to my next question, in a way. A lot – what made this movement different is how global it became very quickly, both in terms of how it was felt in different corners of the world and how different groups joined in a way that we haven’t seen before. So, if you could reflect a little bit on that concept of act local, think global, so, what is your approach? Do you – you work at community level, but do you also engage at state level? How do you see the more broader conversation, the more broader engagement with other groups, in different parts of the world that are experiencing either similar or a different kind of forms of exclusion? How do you bring this to a global level? And, sorry, if – I’ll start with you, DeRay.
DeRay Mckesson
You know, so, I was one of the main storytellers in 2014 and, you know, Twitter was a big way that we helped get the message out and there were a lot of people listened. And it was interesting, because people would ask me to – they would be like, “Can you come to this country, speak in” – and I’m like, it’s the bes – it’s the most American thing to do to go try and tell somebody how to do something you couldn’t do, right? We have not fixed the police over here, so, like, I don’t – I can tell people how to tell a story, I can tell people how to, like, talk about the problem, we haven’t fixed it. So, I’m always mindful about how do we – how are we honest about our wins and honest about our strategies without, like, trying to tell people anywhere else, like, how to actually fix it? Because, again, when we look at the numbers, the police have killed consistently for every year that we have data.
With that said, one of the things that I think is really powerful about the movement, and, you know, I’m interested to hear Sizwe and Princess talk about this, I’m interested in what you have to say, is that I do worry a little bit. I think that at one point we talk about the beauty of the organic nature of the protests, right? We’re like – people just, like, got up and came outside, that is incredible. It wasn’t churches, it wasn’t schools, it wasn’t, like, the government. It was, like, people were like, “This is wrong and I’m about to go do something about it.” At the same time, there’s a part of the media, for sure, that participates in a very hierarchical notion, right? That, like, three people, two people, one people, say, “Yes” to me sometimes, they’re like, “We started a moment.” And we’re like – I’m like, “I didn’t start,” I say, “the people started this, right? Like, people did it.” That’s actually the most beautiful thing about this is that, like, I didn’t call somebody in South Africa, like, “Please go outside today, Chapter” duh, duh, duh, “go.” Like, people were like, “I see across the world that people are talking about race differently and that there’s energy about combatting injustice and, like, I’m going to do my piece in my home.” And, like, that is actually really beautiful.
But I actually think that that’s intention, that people, like, say that sometimes, but also participate in a hierarchical notion, in a host of ways, that is like if you’re not an organisation and, like, duh, duh, duh, duh, or, like – and it’s like, you know, Black people are the – we’ve organised for eons without a 501(c)(3)], right? So, I’m never getting on anything telling people to, like, “Go get your card for that,” whatever, ‘cause I’m like, “My grandmother didn’t have a card or anything and she kept the neighbourhood safe, kept the block clean and, like, so did all the women on her block, right?” So, I’m always mindful about how we – how the movement space, sort of, participates in the patriarchy hier – patriarchal hierarchy that is in conflict with this idea of, like, org – an organic movement. And I think that there’s actually a lot of strength when we keep saying that, like, a lot of people have big roles to play and people just came outside. Like, that is actually, like, a beautiful, beautiful thing.
And the last thing I’ll say is that I’m always interested in the way that Ferguson gets glossed over in the con – like, Ferguson, sort of, becomes, like, a footnote to people. And I’m like, “We were in the street for 400 days, like, every – you know, that was a big deal.” But it reminds me that we actually don’t trust poor people, poor Black people specifically, to lead. So, when I think about how people, sort of, strip away this idea of an organic movement, it’s easy to do that when it’s poor Black people in the Mid-West, because how could they start something that was global? How could they – like, those people, who – you know, like, you know, I was there and it was the most incredible thing ever and we hadn’t been anybody’s training, we hadn’t read no book about organising, we didn’t have some, like, class analysis of the police that was in a schema of the, I don’t know, whatever. But, like, people were like, “This is wrong, I’m going to do something about it, and we don’t need the police like this.” And, like, that was actually enough, and I want to honour that.
Tighisti Amare
Yeah, that’s right, that’s how we started. We were having this conversation about how these completely detached movements started emerging in different parts of the world, that somehow sounded like it was all connected, but the – how organic the whole movement was, was something that definitely not – worth noting. But, of course, I will move to ask and say what next, then? But before then, I just want to hear a little bit, first, from Sizwe and Princess to actually reflect a little bit on that concept of how do you operate, how do you make your contribution, your endeavour, global? And looking, also, towards solutions, given how organically this has become a global movement, and then, of course, the exclusion and the whether it’s through police brutality or many other forms of exclusion, is felt differently, how do you work with others? And what is it that others can learn from what you’re doing, at a local level? So, Sizwe, if you can reflect a little bit on that and then Princess, we’ll move onto the next question.
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
Sure, yes, I think that it is really beautiful, in many ways, how organically this moment has sprung up in so many different places and has localised itself to particular contexts. When I think of South Africa, a country of 79% of Black people and, you know, life in Britain, obviously, being very different, but somehow those two extremely different contexts somehow finding a similar language, is, I think, a really important global moment.
And in terms of, you know, how DeRay puts the problem, on the one hand, I think all of us and all the movements that have sprouted in all places are inherently sceptical of hierarchy and have avoided a, kind of, 20th Century playbook, much to their credit. And, of course, that also leaves room for a sense in which, when these spontaneous moments inevitably die down, the question is, has something sustainable enough been left for the future work? And I think, where I am at the moment on that important question is, the moments when we are handed victories by events and circumstances are wonderful and incredible, and to watch the protests that broke out at Oxford, nearly brought a tear to my eye, because I just thought this – how did this happen? Like, why are there thousands of people on the streets of Oxford? And nobody can take any credit, as DeRay says, for that.
The question, for me, is when those moments die down, do we have the foundation in place, even if it’s not in the glare of the international media, that when the next opportunity arises to advance this cause, that we can move even further down the path to progress that we’re all looking for? So, I think it’s a question, on the one hand, of accepting that an acephalous movement has inherent limitations, but at the same time, that having a foundation, and particularly a foundation that cuts across these borders, I think that’s one area where we might have a weakness, is that I think in South Africa, and even in Britain, definitely in the United States, there are important movements now being built and important policy programmes being implemented. But I don’t think that we’ve, all of us, spent enough time thinking how do the interconnections be – how could the interconnections between our countries be harnessed? And that, I think, is an area in this phase of where we are, where we might invest further time. Because I think there’s certainly – while we don’t want to, kind of, create some global Black Lives Matter movement, that would definitely be a terrible idea, we do want to focus on those areas where it would be cool to have these conversations that cut across and show the similarities and the differences of our contexts and back each other up when we’re under attack in different places.
I think of DeRay right now, the recent Supreme Court decision, which I only found out when I was researching for this, and South Africans would have been, like, “What?” You know, they would’ve been outraged, it would’ve been, you know, a huge issue and we should’ve been there to support him. Same with Princess, with the All Black Lives Matter movement, we were watching, loving what was happening and would’ve wanted to use our voices to support that. And so, I do think there are opportunities there for us to collaborate, maybe not in a systematic organisational way, but even just in an interpersonal and an organic way.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you, Sizwe. Princess? I think you’re still muted. Yeah.
Princess Murray
If I can go back to what DeRay said – I mean most of – yeah, DeRay said. To think about something globally is very difficult, and especially when you don’t have what you need in your own community, locally and so, a lot of work is being done locally. But if I can go back and say that, you know, it’s important that we understand how systems work and the system is set up for failure. The system is set up for white supremacy to exist. So, in order to even get into a moment of where that we can even have some breath of life of anything, we need to make sure that we eliminate systems and demantle them and bring about change that way.
Now, as far as, like, the organic movement, I think that we have to really think about a lot of things and a lot of it has to do with the pandemic. A lot of us was at home during the pandemic, yeah, well, yeah, a lot of us were working, but a lot of us were at home and you have George Floyd, who’s on the ground with a knee in his neck and all of America saw this. And with the pandemic, with that and the combination of the environment and all of that, brought on unrest with people and people were just, were fed up. And I think that the environment sometimes can host something in a way that it can bring about people feeling unrest about something and wanting to make change, and everybody’s like, “Hey, let’s go do this.” Because, like DeRay said, we didn’t have a plan at that time, it just happened. It was just like boom, it happened, and everybody was there. It’s a spontaneous thing.
Now, to keep the momentum going, I think that this has to continuously happen. I think that we have to continue to have volunteers and help reproach in considering the health of our planet and the way that things are going and as social justices. So, we has to – we have to find a way to continue protesting in a way towards political change. So, we need to protest with our policyholders and people that are going in to make these changes for us, to have a better life, a freer life, freedom, equality, we need to police behind these people, policy behind these people, in a way that we did with the protesting, as well.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you, Princess. It leads me exactly to what I was about to ask you next, which is we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with the pandemic, somehow, with discussions of vaccines maybe becoming available soon. So, hopefully, going to – back to some form of normal. What does it mean for the – for this movement, how do you keep the momentum going? I mean, it’s been six months since the killing of George Floyd now and things – we haven’t seen as many protests now as we did before. How do we move from the protest to policy, to get the conversation going, to get the engagement going, especially at policy level? How do we make sure that there is change and reform and that this doesn’t die with things going back to normal?
Princess Murray
Well, you know, I think people need leaders, especially now this – like I said before, this was something that was spontaneous. But after this is over, people need leaders and people need leaders at the forefront and people that are ready to lead the social justice they have within them, a pain. Most activists have pain within them that cannot rest and I’m one of them. So, it’s not just a passion for me, it’s a purpose of life and it’s important to identify these particular people and you have to use them for social justice. So, I’ve found that many are memori – mesmerised by activism, yet they aren’t willing to go that extra step in which to make specific changes or changes that are monumental for growth. So, the concept of mobilisation, I think, is – it – I think about a quote from Rousseau, “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” So, what that means to me is that we’re – although we have strategies involving mobilisation, mobilisation itself is ongoing and forever with activism communities. There are so many types of protests and neither are – none of them are guaranteed to work, are demands are guaranteed for you to have. That’s because there are systems of control that we are told about democracy that has yet to be what democracy really is. So, to keep that momentum going, we have to continue protesting in ways in which that we mobilise people in office that are willing to make those rules, I mean, those changes in policies and procedures that govern people.
Tighisti Amare
Great, thank you, Princess. DeRay, what are your thoughts?
DeRay Mckesson
Yeah, I’d be interested to hear about the South Africa context in this. When I think about the US, I’m reminded that there’s no period in the last 100 years where you can look back and you’d be like, wow, the police got less power. There’s like – we can’t – there’s, like, not a moment where we’re like, that happened, right? So, if anything, we look at over the last 100 years, we’re like, they got more power. Like, that – we can try episodes of more power any moment we want to. So, I say that because I do – I am, like – this could be me being all up too close to the work, but it also is, like, I believe, an understanding that the police are an institution that is just unlike anything else. That when we think about everything else in the civil rights spaces, like, we got some good wins on education, poverty, drugs. We didn’t get, like, all the wins, voting, queer rights, get – but we got good wins, women’s rights. Police, I’m like, blah, you look back and you’re like, it was – it’s been rough, it’s been a rough 100-year trek. You know, you think about Rodney King and, you know, like, the host of riots, the host of uprisings in the US are almost all explicitly tied to the police. Stonewall, like, the police have been a part of all of the mixes and even still, they haven’t gotten less power.
So, when I think about, like, what’s the what, what do we do? I think it’s a couple of things. One, it’s a reminder that protest is not the answer, protest creates space for the answer, right? We stand in the street to force people to confront an issue that they otherwise wouldn’t confront. The confrontation alone is not the solution, right. So, like, you know, some people are like, “Well, where are the protests?” You’re like, “Maybe they – we are – everybody knows that the police are killing people now. I don’t need to be outside; I don’t need to be – people are like, “You’re quiet on Twitter.” Because when I was loud on Twitter, it was like rare for – like, it was, being an activist was, like, this wild thing. Now it’s like everybody’s an activist. You don’t need me to interpret that racist thing, ‘cause, like, you already said it, right? So – and I don’t need it for my ego to, like, tweet the 10,000th take on the racist thing, ‘cause, like, you already said it.
The solution space is, actually, like, much less filled than, I think, anybody thought. So, when you hear people talk about defund or divest, or reducing the power of the police, or ending mass incarceration, you know, those of us from the left generally agree with the idea, even if the phrase is hard, right, people agree with the idea. What there is not an agreement on, because often there’s not a plan, is, like, how, right? The how we get there is actually what the – where the rubber meets the road. So, like, people are like, “No knock raids are bad, okay, they killed Breonna Taylor.” How do you end them is a lot more complicated than you would think. People are, like, “Let’s cut the Police Department budget.” How do you cut the Police Department budget? Not just a simple meeting, right, and – but, you know, we have the only database of Police Union contracts in the United States and 80% of a Police Department’s budget is actually people and the only way to cut the people money is through their contract, right? It’s just, like, the how’s really hard.
So, when I think about what I would push more people into is the how work. Like, that is, like, there is – you – the things that you think have already been mapped out, have not. Like, me, I want to do something on gang databases and I thought that I was just going to go and find the people who did gang stuff and I would see a list of every city that had a gang database. I’d figure out, like, what’s the best way to attack gang databases? And then we just, like, build a – we’d – you know, I’ll make it sexy. And then we’ll – and then I realised, like, there’s no list of the cities that have gang databases, there’s no best practices on how to end them. There’s, like, solitary confinement. You’ve been talking about solitary confinement for a long time, we all have. There’s no map of which jails have solitary confinement or what the solitary confinement policy – like, the how space is very underdeveloped. The problem space is super-developed. I can find 30 articles in two minutes about how bad solitary confinement is, got it. I don’t need another one of those. I need to figure out, like, how to undo it. I’m like, I want that to be like – you know, and Sizwe, I am in love with this – with the way you said that, this idea of, like, has something sustainable not been left when the dust settles? And, like, I believe that, like, the only sustainable thing that – to be left that will actually change anything will be the how work.
Tighisti Amare
Great, thank you very much for that. Sizwe, I’ll come to you for, you know, some comments on this.
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
Hmmm, yes, I think that the pandemic has had ambiguous effects. It remains a mystery as to why, during this moment of confinement, we witnessed unprecedented outpourings of solidarity and unimaginable acts of protest and inspiring. And I just don’t know why, it’s such a fascinating question. In – because, on the one hand, of course, you know, people didn’t have to do daily, you know, chores at their workplaces, but they were also confined and it’s a really fascinating question, the answer to which I don’t have. What I do think is important is to learn some of the lessons that this pandemic has gifted us about how easy it can be to have these kinds of conversations. You know, we used to think in terms of, like, how am I going to get to the United States, or how am I going to get you all to come to Johannesburg? When it’s actually very easy to have these kinds of conversations across borders. And perhaps this new infrastructure and our new familiarity with it holds lessons for work going forward.
I think, just in terms of the how and the solution space, and I couldn’t agree more with both Princess and DeRay about how important this is and how important thinking around this space is, although I would also say that defining the problem is a really important thing. And I think the definition of the problem of the funding of police is really – is fantastic work that’s happened, which has now allowed this new policy proposal.
In South Africa, we occupy a really difficult place, because things aren’t as obvious, sometimes, as they might be. Everybody knows that Apartheid ended, but everybody thinks that that means that White supremacy has ended in South Africa. And the hardest thing at the moment is convincing people that just because we have a Black government and just because we have Black – a majority of Black Policemen, doesn’t mean that they can’t carry out the intentions of a White supremacist system. And so, in South Africa, part of the problem is convincing people in the world that we have a real White supremacy problem, still, in South Africa, that economic inequality is still extremely racially skewed, and that even our government, though it’s democratically elected, sometimes carries out the will of an economic minority, which is disproportionately in the hands of White South Africans.
So, here I think two things are really important. The first thing going on, you know, just leaving those sustainable institutions on the ground that are waiting for those moments when the world’s attention is on this question but are still there even when it’s not. I come back to the two spheres that I mentioned, media. You know, as activists, we’re really always invested in the doing, but I think the framing often comes prior to the doing and so, how we frame this work is really important. And the other benefit of media is, that, look, if you’re doing something weekly, every week, you’re always there and you’re always making an intervention. You’re not just making an intervention when there’s a protest and so, again, that ecosystem, for me, is so crucial, because the way we frame this work, both internally and internationally, to each other, I think is a realm that we haven’t even begun to address.
I’ll leave it there. There’s a – there are a number of things in South Africa that are particularly relevant to our domestic situation, which I’d be happy to get into as the conversation unfolds.
Tighisti Amare
Great, thank you very much, Sizwe. Thank you for that very fascinating, all three of you, really, for those fascinating thoughts, to get us a little bit started, in a way. But it was really fascinating, so, I’m aware that I let it run much longer than I should have, and my colleagues might tell me off later, but that’s okay. So, I think we’ll invite the participants to join in at this stage. Please do put your videos on, do put your hands on, so that we can see, and do share with us your thoughts, your reflections, any questions that you may have to our speakers, but more generally, to anyone. But I know that, first, we have three contributors that wanted to come in to share, in the first instance. So, I’m sure I have seen Agnes, yes, Agnes Kigotho, who is joining us from Kenya. Please, Agnes, do share with us your experiences and your contribution.
Agnes Kigotho
Hi, everyone, from Kenya. So, I wanted, first, to ask De how it felt with the Supreme Court win and how that changes the entire course of his work, and if people believe that, yes, there can be structural changes in the judiciary and especially in the court system? And then, I wanted to ask Sizwe how do you feel, especially as an Artist, your voice in rap, ‘cause I’ve followed some of the work you’ve done, in terms of rap, how do you think that has helped shine a light or give way, or make people join more? Because not everybody’s all about lectures and speeches, I feel, at times, we, as you learn, listen more and lean more towards art. So, how do you feel that has progressed your work, in terms of making many South Africans and other Africans and the world at large in understanding the – of this crisis of the BLM?
DeRay Mckesson
Yeah, so, I’d just say, you know, the Supreme Court is obviously our biggest court, but what’s interesting about it – or our highest court, is that I found out on Twitter. I got on Twitter and it was, like, “Supreme Court rules in favour of DeRay.” And I’m like, “What?” So, I – “Oh, yeah,” like, “is that true?” The Supreme Court just post their decisions online, so, like, whoever gets the decision first, gets it. So, that was, sort of, it was an interesting thing to be processing this big moment with the world in real time, like that was different. You know, we’ve been fighting that case since November of 2016, so, it was just, like, a lot – at a point I was like, you know, they had – I lost four times in the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court relisted my case, like, they were supposed to hear it two other times and then moved the dates. So, like, we just – you know, I stopped anticipating. And the first time I was like, I’m like, stayed up all night, I’m like, “I’m going to” – and then, they said, no, they weren’t going to hear it. And then, it was like I didn’t hear again. And so, I had actually just, sort of like, let it go to God and just surrendered, like, you know, it’ll be what it’ll be, and then we won, which was really cool. So, it feels great, it’s the first protection about the right to protest in the US since the seminal case, the Claiborne decision in – during the civil rights movement. So, proud of it and I hope that it is something that protects the right to protest for the next generation.
I will just say, as a very small thing, and responding to something Sizwe said, ‘cause it was a good push and you’re such a kind – your pushback is really kind, so, I like that. But this idea of framing the problem as important work, too, I think is fair. I think that’s, like, a fair push. My only worry, and I’m super open, like, to be pushed, is that I feel like that is what the whole space becomes. And at a point, it’s like, the budgets are bad, we got it, okay, I don’t need, like, 30 more papers on, like, we overinvest in policing. So, trying to figure out what we said in the room, like, “So, what do you do now?” And I think that people are afraid of dealing with this “So, what do we do now?” because you got to put stakes in the ground. And sometimes those stakes aren’t – like, somebody will be mad. So, if you say a 10% cut, somebody will be like, “Why wasn’t it 30?” And if you say 30, somebody will be like, “Why wasn’t it 50?” And if you say 50, it’ll be like, “Why wasn’t it 90?” right? So, like, I just, I want us to – I don’t – for me, I’ve had to be honest about, like, putting a stake in the ground is risky, but, like, I don’t know how we win without a stake in the ground.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you. Sizwe, that was – next question was for you.
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
Yeah, absolutely. Just, firstly, overjoyed at the outcome and I just can’t believe the injustice of what DeRay was put through and continues to be put through. So, on the question of rap music, yes, it goes back to something that I think we said earlier in this discussion, which is that a lot of these protests have been read – led and understood by a generation of people who are inherently sceptical of official structures. And so, yes, I wrote this book, but the book came with the rap album and the rap album had songs, which were theme songs to the chapters. And, like, no-one read the book, and everyone was like, “Oh, I really love that song.” And the thing is, that was just a way of trying to approach the question from a different angle. And I think, in panel discussions, in essays or in academic scholarship, people’s defence is always up, they’re always waiting to find something inconsistent. Nut with art you have an opportunity to reframe and capture imaginations and I think that’s obviously important, really important work.
Yes, on this question of – I think it’s absolutely right you know, we don’t want to spend all our time defining the problem and never actually solving the problem. So, yes, I think your point about the ratio of definition versus action is well taken. Where I think we need to focus, in terms of defining the problem, is now on connecting dots between places. So, when I think of the anti-Apartheid movement, which also touched on many of the countries that are represented in this conversation today, it took decades for people to realise that this Apartheid system thing was all encompassing and could be defeated, through thee various means. So, I think there is some intellectual work, still, that needs to go into in all of these policies, how do we convert this into an overarching frame? In all that’s happening in different countries in the world, how do we make sense of the similarities and the differences? That’s where I feel like the internet – the intellectual work needs to happen. And I can see it fully that defining many of the policy related problems in these different territories has – you know, could do with a little bit of retraction and relaxation for the important work of actually getting on and doing a lot of this stuff.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you, Sizwe. We have, next, I believe, Malusi Simulana. Malusi has asked a question through the ‘Chat box’, but if you’re able to actually ask live, that would be great. Malusi, are you able to unmute yourself and go live? Otherwise, I’ll read your question.
Malusi Simulana
Hi, Tighisti…
Tighisti Amare
Oh, here…
Malusi Simulana
…can you hear me?
Tighisti Amare
…you are. Yes, fantastic.
Malusi Simulana
Hi, everybody. Sorry, I’ve got bad connection here, so, I hope, if I get disconnected, you can just read my question online. It was just based on the whole conversation about how we seem to be – you know, to me, it seems like we are protesting in perpetuity. I mean, if you look at it from the perspective of the United States, for instance, from the civil rights movement, you look at it from the perspective of South Africa, from the Apartheid movement, you look at it from the perspective of my country, my context in [inaudible – 84:57], it has been happening from since before our independence in 1968. So, the question is, should we be looking at ourselves as the generation that will just create the space for solutions to come to the fore? Because, as many people are saying on the panel, we don’t seem to have the how do we find the solutions? We don’t have – we don’t seem to have the idea, in terms of what sort of policy framework, what sort of legislative framework, do we need to put in place to make sure that all of these inequalities don’t exist anymore, because we cannot continually be protesting. These injustices are happening each and every day, parallel to these protests that are happening. Should we be content that we are just going to allow for the coming generation to come up with the solutions, by creating the space for them?
Tighisti Amare
Great, thank you, Malusi and Malusi is joining us from Eswatini at the moment. Princess, can I put that question to you?
Princess Murray
Absolutely, thank you. You know, when you go back and you think about slavery in the United States and starting in the 1600s, I don’t think that slave masters thought we’re going to bring slaves over here because we want to discriminate them or be – you know, and give them inequality because of the basis of the race of their – their race or their skin colour. It was more or less about money and there was a monetary means. It was a way of taking slaves and making money and building a country, building the United States of America. So, a lot of the building is on the backbone of my ancestors.
So, with that said, after the building of the United States of America, then, what do you do with the slaves at this point? Once they are free, what do you do with the slaves when you don’t need ‘em anymore? Well, slaves and African-Americans believe that they have invested a lot in this – in the world, in the United States of America, so they feel like this is also a part of their American Dream, as well. So, “We’re not going anywhere, they don’t want us here,” you know, this is the kind of feel and pushback that you get in the communities. And so, with that said, the answer to 400 years of oppression and what do we do now, because we continuously go into civil war, we go into this war, then we go into this, and in ten years we’ll have another protest and another protest, and it just keeps going on and on and on, and it just keeps going?
And someone told me once, they said, you know, “Reparations, for example, let’s give everyone reparations.” Well, reparations can be taken away, just as fast as they are given, they can be taken away if the system that holds these reparations in place don’t change. And so, what I mean by that is, in the United States, we have a system in which property tax pays for schools. So, if I live in a poverished neighbourhood, our property taxes when that pov – in that poverished neighbourhood is paying for the schools. So, you won’t get a good, you know, a good education in schools that are not fully funded, the way they are in other areas that have great funding in those schools. That’s a part of a system, these are systems set in place and the system is also set in place in government and when – in institutions of – you know, when people are incarcerated, you know. So, all these systems have to be dismantled.
And when you’re talking about the Police Department, as well, policing started off as slave patrols. You got to also go back to the original – the originality of where these – that were created. And so, slave patrols have now advanced to Police Officers and that same information, in-between slave patrols and policing, is the same as it was 400 years ago, as it is today. So, that system has to be changed and dismantled. All these systems have to be changed and dismantled and in doing so, you have to put policyholders in place, or people that make policy, that can change that. Or my solution and my – and what I really feel is, the same way that we vote for a President is the same way that we need to vote for everything in policy and procedures in America. So, if each individual has to vote and we take out people that are in charge of policy and there’s no-one that’s voted in, in America, our people individually vote for policy and procedures, then you can have a more of a, you know, a more of a profound idea of what everybody wants in the world, or in America, or wherever you are. And so, I think that’s important too, to at least consider.
But as far as, like, things changing, they’re not going to change and thing – until something changes, because we have been going through the same circles and going through the same procedures and all these different revolutions and civil rights unrest and marching, and nothing has happened. So, something has to change. When nothing has happened over 400 years, something has to change, and we have to do things differently.
Tighisti Amare
Great, thank you very much, Princess. We’ll move to West Africa now, with Jean Desiree. Are you with us, Jean? Could you come and share your contribution with us?
Jean Desiree
Okay, so hi, everyone and I hope you hear me. So, I’m Jean Desiree from Ivory Coast and I would like to thank all the panellists that came on and then for their views, it’s really great. When I, like, I listened to everything that you have been mentioning earlier, I got to a point that, like, from the Black Life movement, like the Black Life Matters and the End SARS in South Africa, as well, two key points came out in my mind. The first one is education. You know, we noticed that all through you have been saying people know who they are and they know what they deserve, if I want to sum up about what you said. The second point is, like, people understood that their voice matters, so, they can say something, they can do something, and these things will happen. Actually, in Ivory Coast, what we have been going through this last two weeks has been, kind of, a chaos, because we registered almost 100 people who have been killed all through this election.
My suggestion that going through this movement of youth, that one makes space and create the ways, that we should change these two words, because I think that words define activities. The first thing is the concept ‘Black’. You know, when – most of the time when you talk about black blood is a kind of black sport for me, is, like, putting people in this space where they don’t have value. So, the first thing for me is to bring value to this concept that is Black life, because most of them, well, it’s too Black, Black, Black everywhere. We finally get to the point that there is no value. People, what they hate about Black is that it’s – every time you hear Black, people is problem, crisis, chaos, protest, stuff like that. For me, we should change this concept and it should start with the young people that are coming on, the youths after us. I mean, us, and including those who are coming after us. We should now change, for example, how – like, the way we write books. We should not, like, minorising Black people, we should give them values, show the world that this is what Black people with this colour can do and this is what they have been achieving so far.
The second point is the concept, minority. You know, minority means you have small value. So, people should not be called minority, they should just be called a group. Why call them minority? Because every time you call someone minority, you are just creating in his mind minor. The second – the last thing that I will come to – like, I would like to bring on is the fact that people have been protesting for many years and they are losing hope. Why? Because leaders that they were fighting with them, when they get to power, they become the most corrupted. And this is something that we should come on, because it’s good to protest, it’s good to say thing, it’s good to fight, but when you get to the power, don’t forget what you have been saying in your speeches, because people are watching you. And this is what happened in the Ivory Coast, actually, and this is what is going, you know, like, in many other countries around Africa and around the globe.
You know, as youths, we are excited, we have energy, and this is energy is – energy, but look, all these people that are ruling this world, there was – like, it happened in a time that there were the one that they were sitting on this chair and saying, “Hey, this has to change,” and people voted for them, but once they get it, what happen? They are now turning their back. So, this is what I will end my speech on it, we should not only focus ourselves on delivering speeches; we should keep on being a model from the beginning to the end. Thank you very much.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you, Jean Desiree. I am conscious that DeRay needs to leave any minute now, so, I don’t know if you want to share final words before we say thank you and, hopefully, see you soon?
DeRay Mckesson
This was, it was an honour to be here, and the only reason I have to go is that we are rolling out this big campaign next week in the US to reduce the power of the police and we’re, like, in the middle of it, but happy to be involved any way that I can be after this. The only thing I’d say is I think that the pushes are right, right? And I don’t – and I’m super-critical of us problematising to death, but I’m also super-hopeful, right? Like, I believe that we actually do have solutions, I think our lives know solutions. I think that – and I don’t think the challenge between those of us on the left and those of us on the – or those people on the right, ‘cause I’m not there, is that the right – they have a – Trump and team have an easy job. They are trying to take us back to a world that we barely survived the first time. That’s not hard, right? Racism, xenophobia, bigotry, that’s what we are trying to get out of. So, that’s not hard to paint, it’s not hard to sell, it’s not – that’s easy.
We are always trying to tell a story about a world that’s never existed, but we know it’s possible and that’s actually just hard work, right? So, I don’t, like, I don’t beat us up about the lack of how sometimes, ‘cause I get that I’m trying to tell a story about a world where everybody has a Doctor. You never been in that world, I never been in that world, but I believe in it, right? I think that we can think about a response to conflict that’s not people with guns, but, like, we haven’t lived that – I haven’t – I don’t know that world, right? We haven’t lived in that world, but I believe it. So, we are often storytellers about a future that is unseen and unheard of, but we know it’s possible, and that is actually just, like, hard work. So, my advice to all of us is, like, we should normalise putting solutions out and, sort of, iterating on them and, like, thinking about how we apply them, duh, duh, duh, and with the idea that, like, the group will make them better. As opposed to when people put something up, you know, like, “That’s the worst, they’ve been,” duh, duh, duh. And, like, that’s what we do, as in if it doesn’t reach a, sort of, mythical bar, then we’re like, you know, the world’s bad, and it’s like I don’t think that helps, yeah. So, I think those things are true, but happy to talk offline, appreciate being here and, Princess and Sizwe, an honour to be in community with you.
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
Honour.
DeRay Mckesson
Yeah.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you very much, DeRay, thank you for spending this time with us. So, we have two or three questions, including one that came through the ‘Chat’ box, but I’ll go to Sophie Ray first.
Sophie Ray
Hi, I’ve just got a question. So, I’ve been working with charities in Nottingham and London this year and I’ve witnessed the kind of BAME communities be absolutely devastated by coronavirus and the lockdown, with regards to mental health, housing, employment, physical health and just the lack of support from council or government and the horrifically disproportionate number of deaths. So, I was just wondering, do you think coronavirus and its disproportionate impact on BME communities is enough to make governments and policymakers listen, or – and justice to be finally reached, unlike with Grenfell Tower or Win – the Windrush scandal?
Tighisti Amare
Thank you, Sophie. I don’t know if, Princess, you would want to…?
Princess Murray
Sure. Okay, I’m on. Okay, yes, well, when I think about it – health disparities and opposed to the coronavirus, like, it goes back deeper, for me, and it goes back to slavery. Because I always go back to slavery to try to understand where we are now and I think that’s very important, I think we, kind of, missed that point. So, if you go back to slavery and you realise that what slaves ate back in those days were – in America, were leftovers that the slave master or the slave family didn’t eat. So, those are unhealthy food from the pig, the cow, unhealthy things and these are the things that the – that African-Americans consumed. So, and when you fast forward, that now they’re saying that this is our culture, okay? “This is our culture, this is our culture, this is what we eat, this is what we eat at Thank – this is what we eat at Christmas, this is what we make and we sit at the table and we ingest this.” And this is what we were given, as a last resort, as far as, like, just scraps and we’ve, kind of, mowed that back to, wait, this is our culture now, which it’s not, you know. So, American Blacks, the unhealthiness of the consumption of food that we eat has also caused disease in our bodies, right? So, that is a direct reflection of slavery that has brought us now into disease of diabetes, we lead in diabetes, we lead in heart disease, we lead in other – or other illnesses within the communities. And send – now you throw in COVID, you through in COVID, so, now we’re more susceptible to death of COVID or dying from COVID because we have pre-existing diseases that have caused us – our bodies to be ill and can form a place, or inhibit a place, where we can die from an illness like the – a pandemic like coronavirus. And think about where that came from and that all came back from slavery and all – it all came back from there.
So, that’s where I believe the disparities are. I believe, also, that there’s the disparities in healthcare. Babies that are born into – in America, that are born, are three times more likely to die under the care of a White Doctor. I mean, well, I can go on and on and on about – that we have in the healthcare system in America and changing that would, also, like I said before, would just be changing policy. You have to change policy in order to change. Anything in the world, you have to change the policies that govern the reasons why we – situations where we are going to be victims of a illness, or die, or disease, or anything, of poverty, of disproportionality, of anything. We have to, first, manage that, before we can even get anywhere that we need to do to be free – free ourselves of this health disparity.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you very much, Princess. There was a question for Sizwe, I will read here, because I don’t think he’s able to come in live. “So, at both UCT and Oxford, the Rhodes Must Fall protest movement led to tangible physical actions in the removal of statues. Did this institutional action lead to wider institutional reflection on cultural change? What are the lessons from this university movement for pushing for institutional action and change in other organisations?”
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
Yes, thanks for that question. I really do think so and I think not only did – and I’ll explain briefly why in a moment. Not only did these movements have important effects on the wider institutional culture, like the curriculum or the representation of Black people within these institutions, but they also held lessons for future protests and future mobilisation. So, let me speak about both briefly.
The first thing is that if you look at the University of Cape Town, where I was also a student, the university now has, for the first time in its history, a Black woman Vice Chancellor and an entirely women-led Executive. And I trace the political pressure that was brought to bear on the university, I trace the progress that it’s made right to the moment when the Rhodes statue was problematised. If you look at the number of Black students at the University of Cape Town, if you look at the contestations over the curriculum, which have led to new changes, right from the sciences, all the way to the humanities, I trace that to that important moment of rupture. At Oxford, I think our ambitions have to be tempered somewhat by just how recalcitrant Oxford, as an institution, is to change. However, just to illustrate this, the Oxford College, which hoses the Rhodes statue, only began admitting women in 1984. The college was founded in the 13th Century. That’s how change happens at Oxford. So, you’ll have to forgive Oxford for, you know, only taking five years to come to terms with the Rhodes statue.
But all across the university, even though it wasn’t in the glare of the British and the international media, many conversations started happening, many curricula started being changed, there are more Black Professors, even though the number is still miniscule now, and I don’t think the genie is ever going back into the bottle at Oxford. I think there will always be a core of Black students who are ready to draw inspiration from the Rhodes Must Fall movement.
Just finally, I think what the – these movements also did is shed light on strategy. So, we’ve talked today about the wide range of issues that confront the struggle, right, from questions of mass incarceration, all the way to political representation. I think what was interesting about the Rhodes Must Fall movement is that by centralising one icon, by making one statue the figure of attention, a complicated conversation about multiple different problems was focused around one totem. And I think that’s a useful way of protesting and raising these problems, is using a symbol to have a wider conversation, instead of complicating the conversation and losing both the media traction you can gain and, also, the focus of your conversation. So, I think instead of, perhaps, saying we need to do ten things, sometimes, in protest movements, it’s better to say this one thing is a problem and this problem represents all these other prob – the – all these other challenges.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you, Sizwe. We’re quickly running out of time. Actually, we’ve overrun quite a bit, but this was a very fascinating conversation. I’ll take one final comment, or question, for – from Oluwafunmilayo Adebayo. If you can unmute yourself and come live, then we’ll take that as a final question for now.
Oluwafunmilayo Adebayo
Hi, everybody, I hope everyone’s doing okay. It’s been a long time, actually, since I’ve spoken to you, hey. One of the things that I just think that – and it’s just a general comment, really, and I guess it comes back to what Jean was saying, you know, in regards to the semantics around being a minority and what – how blackness is defined. I think that really comes to the core of the issue, which is that blackness means different things in different places and I think, sometimes, when we try to have this global conversation, we forget that. So, you know, like, you can take any – like, for example, the Afro-Arab identity, right, you have people who see blackness, even if they’re darker skinned than me, they won’t identify as Black, for various different reasons. You have Black people in South Asia who are going through their own myriad of things, as well, and blackness operates in an entirely different way in that context, as well.
So, I think sometimes, particularly as I’m Brigerian, I’m British-Nigerian, but I understand the African perspective, where they, kind of, feel, well, what do you mean by Black? Because Black, in that context, in many context, not all of them, but in majority, sort of, Black identifying African nations, there’s the sense of what is Blackness? Blackness doesn’t mean anything in this environment and when we talk about police brutality and these things, well, the police are Black and they’re killing me, so, what is going on here, particularly as someone who is Nigerian and is passionate about the End SARS movement, as well?
So, I think that what’s happening, at least from what I can see on – in terms of my generation, although I don’t know what that means to different people here, but is that Blackness has, sort of, been redefined as more of a social experience, moving it away from that of its racist roots, right? Because it’s a very – it’s a racist construct, in of itself, in terms of origin, Black. So, that’s why when you say Black, to different people around the world, they may appear Black to you and they might identify as Black, but what that means is very different in different places and the dynamics behind it. So, I think that that’s something that needs to happen. We need to, like, revisit the very word, the very roots of it, and try and bring it up to what it means in present day. I don’t think it means dismissing the history and I don’t think that we need to, necessarily, rid ourselves of that identity, ‘cause I know there’s some schools of thoughts that just thinks demolish blackness, blackness is inherently negative, you know, all of these things.
I think there’s loads of positive stories around blackness, as well, to be quite honest. I don’t think that – I don’t think it’s inherently a negative term anymore, but I do think that in academic circles, we need to move away from constantly associating blackness with a place of inferiority, because it’s just not operating like that anymore in every place. And the text we’re using to refer to all of these ways in which we’re trying to deconstruct racism and how it works, are very old and they’re not updated to how this experience works today. So, that’s something that I’m really passionate about and I feel like until we get there, it’s going to be really hard to co-ordinate globally, because it’s like we’re using the same word, but they mean different things when we’re talking to different people. And we need to get to a place where we’re on the same page with what blackness means in different places and then address it in that way. Does that make sense?
Tighisti Amare
Yeah, absolutely, it’s that, it goes to that concept of different experiences felt differently. But also, again, tying to the question of socioeconomic backgrounds, the exclusivity of being, not just about race, but also down to economic exclusion, has been perceived on – and not perceived, but manifested through race, as well. Yeah, thank you very much for sharing that.
I will give now, to our speakers, just a few minutes each to comment any final thoughts. Princess is trying to share something with us, so, I’ll start with you, Princess, thank you. You’re muted, I think. Thank you.
Princess Murray
I really appreciate that statement/question. I think that we should – as far as, like, American, I consider American Black, and that is rooted in oppression, that is rooted in, you know, in my ancestors’ slavery, times of that nature, so, I don’t know anything else. And I think it’s important that people like you interact with us to let us know what is our history? We don’t know it. We don’t know our history in Africa. We don’t know a lot of things that have happened to us. We don’t know the proper way to eat. We don’t know the proper way to do things the way that we did before we were slaves and I think it’s important for you to teach us, our American Black, I would say, that we call ourselves, what are these right things? What are these terminologies? Because they were stripped away from us, okay? So, they are stripped away from us, so we don’t know, we don’t know, and then, you have the oppression where we are also pushed away from each other and we don’t align ourselves with one another. And it also goes into the Hispanic – it’s Hispanic community as well, we’re not partnering with each – with one another. We’re not talking to one another. We actually think of ourselves as different races, when we’re all the same, okay? So, that’s important as well and that was – I just believe that was a great question.
And if I can say, I also think it’s very important that we talk about the oppressor, ‘cause we – in this discussion I didn’t hear anything about the oppressor itself. There’s a lot of people who are of White descent who are allies. I come from the LGBT community, so, if you can just imagine, there’s already racism and discrimination amongst the LGBT community. I mean, I’m sorry, amongst the Black – the African-American Black community already. So, now we got a whole other subdivision of racism within the LGBT community, so we got a double – there’s a double thing going – double, you know, transition going on with racism and inequality for us, twice over. So, not only are we fighting the, you know, racism that’s within the com – out in the community, we’re also fighting within our own individual communities against racism that holds us aback within the LGBT community. So, that’s where my activism is and so, you got to take that in consideration as well and we also have to make sure that we are being – you know, thinking about All Black Lives Matter, not just Black Lives Matter, but All Black Lives Matter, and that includes the LGBTQIA community. And when we talk about allies, we want to also keep in mind that some of these allies that we work with are White Americans and some of them, you know, their descendants were oppressing – oppressors.
So, we got to find a way to make sure that we heal the world, as well. There’s a healing component to us, you know, manifesting what we want and what we want to see in the near future and in that is healing for both sides. It’s not just us, it’s also for other sides, as well, which we will call our allies. Because they don’t know what to do, they don’t know where to go, they don’t know what to say, they’re behind us. There was a lot of White Americans that fought behind me for equality, that stood right behind me and marched with me and those people also need to be recognised for what they do, too, as well. And so, there – it’s just a momentum of healing that needs to be done throughout the whole world and I just want to say that I really, really appreciate the time that I’ve been given to talk about this. I’m just really so thankful and so blessed to be here with all of you and I just – I know that one day we will – everything that we’ve fought for and everything that we fight for, we will get it. We just can’t stop. We have to keep going and we can’t stop.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you, Princess, that was, yeah, that was very profound. I totally agree with you, there’s – there was quite a lot in what you say that I – it really resonates with me. On the one hand, that whole point of different experiences of being Black. I’ve been to many African countries, but, to be quite frank, I don’t think, even within a country – I mean, this started with our – with the old [inaudible – 115:53], sharing the question of, you know, what does being Black mean? I have been many times to Nigeria and I – like, it’s very, extremely diverse country. And within Nigeria, different Black Nigerians will have different experiences, and this is down to different ethnicities, different religions, different groups, different states, and so on and so forth. And the same, I come from Eastern Africa, we have a similar kind of problem, a country that at the moment – yeah, and there’s a lot of complexities there that we need to navigate. So, it’s not always down to colour, it’s down to history, history that…
Princess Murray
Yeah.
Tighisti Amare
…perhaps needs to be understood better and – but at the same time, it’s also belonging. I am a first-generation immigrant living in the UK and working in a diverse institute and I need to find – like, this is also home, this is home, I have a history here. I have to find, I have to be accepted, accept others and work with others, also, towards acceptance and creating a better, inclusive society. Because at the end of the day, when, you know, half of the world population is excluded because we’re women, when – and I – like, and billions get excluded because of their skin colour, others because of their sexuality or gender identity, then, it’s a whole society that has a problem. It’s no longer a single group’s problem, it’s society as a whole, it’s the global population that has a problem. So, it is felt across in different parts and it can manifest, even, in a more difficult way for yourself when you’re Black, you’re a woman, you’re, yeah…
Princess Murray
Yeah.
Tighisti Amare
…LGBTQIA, a community. So, it does adapt, and it shouldn’t be a weight on anyone. It should be something that his celebrated, rather than something to have to fight to own. Sizwe, I don’t know if you have final thoughts to share with us, and after that, we will finish this wonderful discussion. Thank you, Sizwe.
Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
Well, thank you all so much. I suppose I’ll end on this question that was raised by Oluwafunmilayo and Jean Desiree about blackness and about the various experiences of blackness. And thank you, Princess, as well, because I think in discussions like this, it’s often easy to abstract and I think that has something to do with blackness, because, ultimately, there’s, despite the disparate and the, you know, multifaceted natures of our identities, there’s a shared experience of oppression that crosses borders and boundaries. And something in that, I think, is the basis for some kind of unity and coalition, not only for those people who feel that directly and palpably, but also, for those people who want to stand in solidarity with all those people.
But having said that, I think it is important, you know, to realise that blackness is capable of adaptation and that it has adapted in the past, that it, not only is it different across spaces, as you mentioned, but it’s also different across time. So, to be Black meant something different in the 1930s, in the United States, than it does today in South Africa, and it will in 2040. And there’s a funny story about in South Africa, you know, the definition of blackness, because it was a Black majority country, came to mean everybody who did not define themselves as White. So, people of Asian descent, people of mixed heritage, people of Black-African heritage and that was a perfectly legitimate political position, because that unified front was required to bring Apartheid down.
When I got to Britain and I started preaching this, “Black unity no matter where you are,” suddenly, people starting saying, “Hold on a sec,” like, “we’re not a majority here. To define blackness expansively means that we give up all of our potential struggle to people of Asian descent,” etc. And I quickly had to realise that the definition of Black depends on the political terrain in which you might happen to be in. I think we all need to, also, appreciate that.
But having said that, whiteness is also different. It doesn’t stop White supremacy from uniting, so, why should the diversity of our Black experiences prevent us from rallying against that oppression? And so, I think there’s something of a family resemblance. You know how members of a family don’t necessarily all share the same trait, but you can tell that they’re somehow connected? I think that’s essentially what blackness is. It’s a feeling that there’s a connection, even if each person isn’t exactly identical to the other, and that’s something that we need to build on as we – as you move forward. And thank you all so much, I really enjoyed that. Princess, DeRay, who’s not here, it was a true honour to be with you all and hope to chat offline.
Tighisti Amare
Thank you very much, both, and everyone for staying for an hour and a half for this fascinating discussion. There was quite a lot. I’m not going to attempt to summarise anything, because to be quite frank, I don’t think I can do justice to the depth of discussion that we’ve had today. We will all go back to our places, it’s evening here in London, so – to have our dinners and discussions with friends and families. And I hope that the depth of discussion that we’ve had today will have left food for thought for us to reflect on, on how do we move forward? How do we build a much healthier, much accepting society and how do we work together, whether you’re, Black, White, whatever background you come from? Because I am a great believer that this is a common fight for building a better society, a healthier society, that is accepting and one we could all – we can all try, as human beings, in this – yeah, and I once used to subscribe to the notion that the world is one country and human beings its citizens and I still stand by it.
So, thank you very much all for joining us, and I hope to have the opportunity to see you all again to have more discussions in the future. Have a nice evening, a good day, and a good night. Thank you very much.
