We have a really, really excellent panel hoping that all of them show our setting, so that Professor's Centre is logging on now. So yeah we have a really really good line up, and just to let you all know, as I'm sure you saw in the sort of advertisement that this event is jointly hosted by the SOAS Festival of Ideas, the Decolonizing So Us Working Group and the Centre for African Studies. My name is Maya Goodfellow and I am the research assistant for the Decolonizing flynedd, I think so as working group, and I'm just going to sort of be the chair slash facilitator of the discussion today, so I'm going to take up too much time. But as you'll have read from the description, we decided to put on this event in light of the recent anti-black violence and the hands of the American state and the protest that have taken place about this but also about systemic anti black racism and racism globally. I wnaeth yn gweithio'r african sydd yn ysgolwyr o George Floyd, Brianna Taylor a ynddo i gael gwyllwyr gwirioneddau. Wnaeth yna'n gweithio'r cyhoedd, fel yngyrch i gael ei gael gweithio. Byddwn ni'n gweithio i'r brifau a'r bwysig o'r ysgolwyr i'r UK fel y mae'r ysgolwyr sy'n ddiolch â'r cyflosol sydd o gyflosolau sydd yn cyd-gweithio'r cyflosolau i'r cyflosolau. a'r policy o gweithio i'r ddweud. Felly, mae'n gweithio i ddim yn gweithio, dwi'n gweithio i'r ddweud, Mark Duggan, Steven Lawrence, Ezell Rodney, Anthony Granger, Joy Gardner, Jimmy Mubenga, a gweithio i'r ddweud, mae'n gweithio i'r ddweud. Yn ei wneud, mae'n dweud yw'r ddweud o'r ddweud ychydig o'r ddysguysion, yna'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Mae'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r Ddweud o'r ddweud.  Fe'n ddevlasio do, to maybe sort of hopefully keep it clear. I'm going to introduce them in turn before they speak so I'm not going to read all the instructions now but before they speak I will introduce them so you know exactly who everyone is and each speaker is going to speak for around 10 minutes though some speakers have slightly longer and that to give us their thoughts on the subject and the sort of broad subject at hand and then we're going to open it up for Q and A and so I'll moderate that and let you guys know how we're going to do that when we get to it. But first to give some initial reflections is Stephanie Gironde who is I have to say I just wanted to say has done the lion's share of the work in organising this event so this wouldn't really be happening without all of the work that Stephanie has done put into organising this so I wanted to recognise that but Stephanie is also a doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths University of London in sociology and her research examines gender and racial exclusion from access to rental housing in the United States. Stephanie is also the co-founder of BLM Cambridge so I'm going to hand it over to Stephanie now to just give some initial thoughts and reflections. All right thank you very much I don't like the spotlight so I have some slides if that's okay. Can you all see my screen? Yeah okay very good thank you. All right so my name is Stephanie as Maya has introduced I am a doctoral researcher but I'm also a former Black Lives Matter activist. On February 26th 2012 George Zimmerman shot and killed Strayvon Martin. The following year when he was acquitted Patrice Cullers in addition to Alicia Garza and Opal Zometti founded Black Lives Matter they in a post that went viral Patrice Cullers granted about systemic violence anti-Black violence at the hands of the state and in the end she proclaimed that Black Lives Matter and part of what she meant by that wasn't specific wasn't just that Black Lives should matter or Black Lives Matter too but rather that Black Lives are people or souls inside of a body and that bodies matter and I think that's crucial to the framing of how we we talk about anti-Blackness going forward. In July 2014 Eric Gardner was murdered in New York City by a policeman by now Ben Chocol and this is a problem that's going to keep coming up the different methods that the state uses to murder Black bodies. In response to the murder of Eric Gardner protests broke out and people were chanting I can't breathe because he was choked to death and his last words were I can't breathe. Later that summer August 2014 on RMT Junior Michael Brown was killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri and he was not charged due to a lack of evidence. So a lack of evidence in addition to the vilification of of Michael Brown himself there was a smear campaign that he was not a perfect victim and so the fact that he had a history of of being not a great student of not being you know the outstanding perfect person in in society meant that this the state could use that to to justify the his murder. As a result of that in response to the disgusting murder at the hand of the state patrice colors organized freedom rights. So freedom rights was the concept that was taken up by Omo Moses which is actually Dr Omo Moses who was a city civil rights activist in the 1950s and 60s who also lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts where it grew up and they had organized freedom rights down to taking buses down to the south to integrate the bus systems um and patrice colors revived that process and called for activists around the country to come to Ferguson and to work with organized organizers and for for collective teachings and that became a strategy going forward that everyone was on the same page that we would all be working towards dismantling the police system in the United States. As a result of the teachings over 600 activists from around the country came answered the call and went to the teachings in Ferguson and when they returned to the the cities that they came from they formed local Black Lives Matter chapters so their chapters all around the country at at the founding of the chapters they were about 26 and Boston was one led by a good friend of mine Terry Marshall. Right so in November 2014 Tamir Rice a 12-year-old Black boy was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer and as a result of that there was nationwide protests that went viral because there were now 30 chapters throughout the country that were organizing collecting that were organizing collectively to bring attention to this problem uh specifically emphasizing his age and the fact that he was unarmed um and then in December 2014 a grand jury did not indict the officers that murdered Eric Garner in that spark outrage and protests um and that was the beginning of a local chapter so Cambridge is a smaller city outside of Boston and we decided that we needed a different strategy to smaller cities and suburbs um until we began to organize a Black Lives Matter Cambridge of which I was the founder um in 2015 Baltimore police officers arrested 25-year-old Freddie Gray and during his arrest magically he sustained several life of fatal injuries and he died a week later um six officers were involved in that homicide and all were charged at first but over time all of the charges were either dropped or the ones who were charged were acquitted that trial and in June 2015 white supremacist Dylan Roof murdered nine African Americans during a Bible study at Mother Emanuel African Methodist's Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina it's actually uh the oldest Black church in the United States and had been a crucial uh location in the civil rights movement and it's part of the reason why it was targeted um disgustingly Dylan Roof actually prayed with them before he murdered them in cold blood um as a direct result of of this brutal massacre of Black Lives um BLM chapters across the country organized protests and vigils in honor of the lives lost in the humanity they showed also in 2015 um say the say her name movement sprung up um Black Feminist Legal Scholar Kim Lee Crenshaw who also is a critical race theorist and also coined the term intersectionality began leading the church for a say her name movement and she contested that although that Black Lives Matter movement was led by Black women yeah Oh God Robbie come here and read it if you don't believe me sorry I just need to unmute myself thank you uh thank you can I interrupt you sorry to just interrupt you very um quickly to say people can't see your screen properly can you put it on full screen mode so that everyone can see it yes thank you all right there's a couple of um things on the side that I need to see but I have um I have notes okay can you all see better now yeah I'll just take that as a yes um so Black Feminist Legal Scholar Kim Lee Crenshaw began leading the charge for the say of her name movement and then in July 2015 Sandra Bland of Black Women was murdered in Texas and she became the face of the say her name movement at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement and then in October 2015 BLM chapters began protesting to highlight Black women the murders and the police violence that Black women face and there was an emphasis on Black trans women in particular so by the end of 2015 21 transgender women had been killed in the US which is a number that's disproportionate to their percentage of the population um so in 2016 Black Lives Matter demonstrated against a number of police involved murders in the US including Alton Starling, Corin Gaines, Deborah Daner, I'm sure we can name any more um but at the same time there was a growing movement among among Black leaders and Black athletes and celebrities to join the movement to call for a change in the police system so basketball players including LeBron James and Carmella Anthony publicly stated that enough is enough and began wearing t-shirts at basketball games and hosting their own events to discuss police brutality notably Colin Kaepernick formally of the San Francisco 49ers kneeled before again during the national anthem and um wasn't offered another position there but he became an icon for the involvement of Black athletes in this movement which is something that continues to this day. In 2017 Black Lives Matter protests of police brutality continued but they also took up other issues including housing discrimination in addition to the policing and healthcare inequities notably the discussions around Black women's maternal deaths in the US the rate is disproportionate to all women during pregnancies in the US um yes and later that year in June Melando Castile was killed by the police and his murderer was not found guilty again and more protests ensued. Later that year in August a white supremacist rally called Unite the Right which took place in Charlottesville Virginia led to a white supremacist murdering with his vehicle a white ally called Heather Hire and this begins a really important conversation about about whiteness in the US and the role of terrorism in white supremacist groups in the US. I'm sure Alana will speak to this later um in 2018 and 2019 obviously there are more deaths but interestingly a study found in 2018 that Black Lives Matter the hashtag was used more than 30 million times since 2013 so but in addition to um to the police brutality and the housing inequities um there were there were solidarity movements taking place because the Trump administration was um actively engaging the use of police violence at the border of the Mexican US border um and ICE detained a Black a Black rapper and then Black Lives Matter merged with other movements in the US to in support of Dismantling ICE which is another policing body in the US and then we get to here 2020 um just before the lockdowns the COVID-19 lockdowns began Amade Arbery was murdered by three white men one of which was a former police officer um also in March 2020 Breonna Taylor was murdered during a no knock search warrant for for drug suspicion although she was not the the principal person named in the warrant she was not suspected of any crime um in May 2020 and this is also very crucial um Christian Cooper a Black Bird Watcher um in Central Park filmed a white woman Amy Cooper who called the police and lied on camera saying that she was threatening his life when he obviously wasn't and this is very important to what's happening in the movement because this this goes to the heart of believing Black people when they say that violence is taking place so this begins a movement um of recording you know this had this highlighted a movement that had begun over the past couple of years recording people who were lying when they called the police because they know that Black people fear for their lives when people call the police um and then in May George Floyd was murdered on camera um using a a technique that is now being discussed all around the country to be banned but the banning of one technique doesn't doesn't lead to the dismantling of systems that murder people and so there's also a simultaneous movement to um to dismantle and to defund the police and to put instead um to put instead systems that are community safety focus that they're people focused rather than policing focus um I'm actually currently in the US right now although I live in the UK um and currently in the US right now working on campaign to dismantle the police department in Cambridge Massachusetts um so discussions about defunding the police it's it's taking place all around the country um there have been movements all around the world to to highlight the police violence that's taking place in the United States um notably there is a town in rural Oregon that actually they didn't dismantle their police but they didn't make they removed them as the first responders and they signed mental health professionals and social workers in unarmed people vehicles to to um to police calls to 911 calls and this is the system that's been working for decades for them um yeah I mean I'll stop there I welcome any questions specifically around the work that I'm doing um to dismantle the police um discussions about the Karen movement which is really fascinating to me because my research does center gender and race um and thank you very much thank you so much for that Stephanie yeah that was a really great um I think sort of timeline um of exactly everything that has happened um and like a really good way to start this um and I just just to know that your slides sort of stopped moving um is a particular point so I want something that has been raised in the chat is maybe we can share those slides with the with the list of people who signed up when we shared the recording too so for anyone who didn't see or I mean when we when the slides stopped moving um those if Stephanie's okay with it we'll talk about sharing those um after the event um and if anyone has I should have said it at the start if anyone has any specific questions for a speaker that's all come to mind as they're speaking and you don't want to forget it you can also put it in the chat or put it in a private message to me um or you can wait till we get to the Q&A and sort of say it yourself but don't feel like you have to speak or have to be on camera if you don't want to be you can also send them as a as a message in a note and we'll try and get through as much as there is possible and if you want to send it directly to me that's also fine too I'll make a note of those as we go um okay so our next speaker um is Professor Osmond Sen who is currently an associate professor of American Literature in the Department of English of English at the University of Shake and to Diop Dakar and who is also the director of the West African Research Center in Dakar Senegal um and yeah so over to you Professor Sen thank you so much for joining us um you've got around 10 to 15 minutes um for your contributions and that's Professor Sen isn't with us Stephanie do you know uh we if if not we can um oh Stephanie I'm muted so I can't hear you um but uh if perhaps Professor Sen isn't with us at this particular moment um sorry yes Professor Sen is here ah okay I changed his name to Professor Sen so he could be easier to find hello yes can you hear me yes we should hear you this is Lajo actually Stephanie we thought it was at 3 p.m I put the time zone yes can you hear me yeah yeah it's 3 p.m GMT so the time zone is he not ready to present we can we can wait it's fine we can we can change the order if it's better so we can make it uh it's half an hour that's better we have other speakers we can just shift the order if that works yeah okay so it's half an hour right thank you um okay great so sorry to um I think Debbie isn't here Debbie Irving isn't here as far as I can see so sorry to put you on the spot now Alana but our next speaker is going to be Dr Alana Lentyn who is the Associate Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University she is a European and West Asian Jewish woman who is a settler on the Gadigal land he works on the critical theorisation of race racism and anti-racism so over to you Alana well thank you so much Maya and Stephanie and hello to everybody from Gadigal country and see the sovereign territory of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation um otherwise known as Sydney Australia it is past midnight here and so I decided to write my text so I hope you'll forgive me for that because I wanted to get it all down but also the other thing I wanted to say is that you know um I'm somebody who's worked as Maya said on on sort of race um sociology of race uh and and a lot on anti-racism so I have a particular interest in anti-racism movements and obviously I'm extremely interested in um and have been following uh since its inception the Black Lives Matter movement I'm particularly interested in its global dimension uh we know that here in Australia there's been also Black Lives Matter protests that were sort of instigated by um the murder of George Floyd but have very quickly been associated with um the the leadership of um Aboriginal people particularly to point out the disproportionate level of deaths in custody of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people which is just um above and beyond out of all proportion just a few days ago another man died in custody um and this is an ongoing um an ongoing tragedy and an ongoing state crime however um what I thought it would be better to do uh was to speak to very briefly what I think is the context for all of this which is um what race is and I've just published a book called I'll hold it up why race still matters and I thought I'd briefly say in 10 minutes if I can um why I think race still matters so I'm not speaking directly about Black Lives Matter and anti-blackness because I think there are other people on the panel who are much more equipped to do so but I am speaking about why I think we still need to speak about race and I checked in with Stephanie and she told me that was fine so it was not fine I'm going to blame it on you all right so okay so the dominant approach to race after the Holocaust particularly in Europe has been to treat it as a taboo topic now personally I don't think that is a useful approach and I think the failure to systemically study the ways in which race has been such a key ordering principle of the modern era is largely to blame for the fact that racism and anti-blackness are still so prevalent the Black Lives Matter movement the indigenous sovereignty movement the migrant and refugee rights movements and the movements against Islamophobia and all forms of state racism as well as all of their predecessors have pushed endlessly not only for a recognition of the insidious violent and often murderous effects of race but also for education about race and racism however this has been met with pushback every step of the way and despite the recent uptick in interest from liberals and progressives in anti-racism reading lists and the like in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Ahmed Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade to name but a few in the US there is an assault from governments in the west on the kind of education necessary for giving us the tools to start understanding how to overturn a system that has been fundamental to the world for over 500 years so we have a crisis of racial literacy but I want to be clear about what this means when we think about literacy we often think of it as a kind of passive ignorance how can we know what we haven't been taught but this is in fact a constructed illiteracy similar to what the philosopher of race Charles Mills calls white ignorance a structured and willful ignorance that is necessary to allow for the persistence of racialized injustices on a mass scale one of the key things that is not known generally about race fundamental to this racial illiteracy is that it is a whole lot more than the idea of biological racial difference race is a key technique of governance that while it began within Europe as Cedric Robinson shows in black marxism came into full force as fundamental to the spread of European power across the globe and within colonial regimes racial rule constructs the divide between European-ness and non-European-ness as Barna Hesse says which is also expressed in the idea of an irreconcilable divide between white and non-white people ultimately I define race as a technology for the management of human difference the main goal of which is the production reproduction and maintenance of white supremacy on both a local and a planetary scale so race above all is a project of rule while race may create identities or the idea that there is an equivalence between the ways in which we are racialized and our identities it is not identity races do not pre-exist in nature but neither as many think does the ideology of racism create the idea of races rather race is constructed over time and theorizes scientific in order to legitimize the domination of Europeans over non-Europeans and to give the illegitimacy of white supremacy the veneer of rationality for Stuart Hall race inscribes power on the body but it has no real biological or physical purchase there are no such thing as races in the way we think about them genetically neither is race an invention of racial scientists it pre-existed in fact the 19th century fascination with the idea of inherent racialized differences that were imagined to exist within what Hall called the genetic code so it is crucial to understand that race has always relied on a variety of discourses of legitimation in order to rule these include the religious the biological the cultural the legal as well as the purely genetic so thinking analytically with race does not mean accepting their idea that there are fundamental differences between human bodies that map onto groups that we call races races produce in the aim of inclusion and exclusion but the boundaries around it shift and slide as Hall said the crucial thing about race as Patrick Wolf wrote is that it is inherently an unstable concept but it is its instability that lends itself to success as much as it does to failure because race is on such shaky ground as an idea and a mode of governance it constantly has to be remade and reproduced this makes it difficult to pin down but it also provides the key to its undoing so as I hope I am showing although very schematically obviously in the time race has a complex and varied history it is constantly being remade it shape shifts and adapts to new contexts this is what makes it incumbent upon us to submit race to rigorous analysis we need to build racial literacy to have any chances of defeating the injustices done in the name of race while I understand why we might wish to think without race I don't think that it is possible to undo something without talking about that thing that we wish to undo while it may have been progressive in the past in a more celebratory mood of multicultural optimism to talk about getting beyond race and achieving a post-racial nirvana today the refusal to talk about race is a right-wing demand of course the paradox is that the same right that wishes to shut down talk of race talks about race non-stop when figures on the right and the center talk about things such as the left behind and the white working class for example they're talking about race without ostensibly talking about it they constantly elevate the concerns of a supposedly more deserving indigenous population over black brown muslim jewish and roma people but that doesn't stop them from pointing the finger at us for making it about race what those of us committed to a race critical scholarship and activism need to do is to point out the precise ways in which it is the forces of racial rule western states their institutions and their allies in the media and academia who in fact make it about race and have been making it about race since its invention talking about the ways in which race continues to structure and inform social life for us all whether we are on the side of benefiting from current racial arrangements or on the side of losing out from them it is necessary to force the contradictions of liberal democracy to its limits it is that our peril i think that we give in to the forces of racial rule and white supremacy by accepting race on its own terms as identity and fighting among ourselves about who's struggle is pure or more representative i want to believe that we are at a juncture when more and more of those who benefit from racial arrangements as they stand are willing to see that their freedom is predicated to paraphrase the comboheat river collective on the freedom of everyone but we have also been at what seemed like crucial moments before so it is up to us not to relinquish the struggle not to be naive about the challenges that we face and not to reproduce the logics of white supremacy in our ranks racial literacy cannot be told at a $30,000 of pop training course or from a bestselling book of bullet points it is a process of lifelong unlearning it requires the relinquishing of power and the remaking of the world in utopic ways this process a steward hall wrote is without guarantees but it is worth it if one day most probably unfortunately not in our lifetimes people will be able to say that race no longer matters thanks thank you so much for that alana i think that was a really really really helpful um sort of way of conceiving of what races and what it is that we're talking about and i really also like tell you situated it sort of in contemporary political discourse in terms of this sort of not talking about race but actually talking about race particularly when we're thinking about the right in the center which unfortunately is incredibly relevant right now given the sort of the culture wars that are being enacted or trying to be enacted here in the uk at least um that's great um i think we now have uh professor sen are you okay to go next is that yeah absolutely there was a mix up in the time yeah well that's all right but i'm ready i'm ready that's great um i'll just do your intro again just very very quickly so for those of you who may be missed it or didn't you yeah sorry professor sen is um cony an associate professor of american literature in the department of english the university of shake and to diop de car and also the director of the west african research center in de car senegal and it is a pleasure to have you with us here today so over to you professor sen thank you very much and again i'm sorry for the mix up in the time being uh but uh look i i i have a very short uh introduction to the topic which was given me uh uh i have given 10 to 15 minutes presentation on the history of black movements in the united states and as i was thinking about it i came today i came up with three words which are absolutely meaningful and seminal in the history of the african american people those words are mutinies riots boycotts and protests and as you try to think about those words mutinies is pregnant with certainly violent action or reactions riots already shows you the uncontrolled dimension of the movement of the act and boycott and protest are possibly being considered as movements which which have a peaceful dimension and this is what i think is characteristic of the evolution of african american uh community relation uh you know movement or the fact of resisting whatever is plaguing your life actually started right at the beginning when the africans were forcefully being shipped to the united states and they would resist their deportation if you remember there are two key words here the word middle passage you have in this instance from 1699 to 1845 55 cases of mutiny that is being in worships and revolting resisting this force transportation to the united states and if you say mutiny it cannot be the action of one individual it's got to be collective action but second one in relation to mutinies is the amistad episodes whereby in 1839 53 slaves mutinied and ordered their owners to sell them back to Africa because slavery was over then and they resisted they allied with american abolitionists and won their freedom after a long legal battle which is organized movement by people who were taken into slavery at the time when slavery was abolished they were landed on american u s soil and they engage a legal battle and ultimately won the whole thing you see the development of solidarity the development of collective action among the enslaved people that evolves and you know took us to a time when the organized movement would be less tainted or would be tainted with less violence and you have the emergence of a civil rights movement dating back to the 1861 and particularly developing in the 50s and the 60s because by then you had emancipation in 1862 reconstruction in 1865 and 1877 but unfortunately in spite of all those essential episodes in american history the fate of the black american people were not improved and not only in the emancipation movement and in reconstruction even in the declaration of independence of the United States you know all those movement was enshrined with a need to give people their rights in order to live this day the american revolution was against the tyranny of a british king emancipation and reconstruction relate to the internal uh you know political affairs in the united states people were not and even if the emancipation of slavery the only reason it was one of the essential reason and in spite of well i mean whatever you know whatever amendment was introduced in the constitution was defeated by the white supremacists so with that black americans were still marginalized and confined to a second-class citizenship condition and as i told you in spite of a various amendment there is a famous film relating to the amendment and it's called 13s and i would like you would invite you to see it if you haven't but those amendments you know the 13th amendment the 14th amendment of the constitution you know were legal decisions which were not followed by you know the the determination of the uh general american people to recognize the the the right of the black americans to enjoy all the opportunities life liberty and the pursuit of happiness all the opportunities which should be opened up to them in the in the in the new in the new edit this developed now of course with all the civil rights movements you know a lot from the nineties and nineteen number forties to the sixties with you know signal actions signal movements signal protest act related to the emet till incident you remember that young man from the north going south and then being accused of etc and the rosar park bath boycott in montgomery alabama and this is exactly when in 1955 emerged the key leader of a civil rights movement the key leader of mass organisation in african-american history that is to say martin luther king uh martin luther king initiative with other people in the sixties uh uh you know certainly gave the black people opportunity to gain a lot of ground in terms of rights to votes rights to be representative of people right to express themselves in their total freedom uh but you know even in in the nineties we realized that whatever step or whatever ground was covered it was not enough the all the grounds for full emancipation for full human rights were not covered and that's how you had another movement which is extremely important that is the one million man march in this in dc on october 16 1995 with louis farahan you know the national african-american leadership summit the nation of islam and northern of other civil rights movement uh and the n a c p getting together you know to stage that million march man march which was a repeat of course of the march of martin luther king in in in dc uh all these culminating in what we have now which is the black lives matter nonviolent civil disobedience movement protesting particularly police brutality and which culminated in the jord floyd uh episode because what you can know is the uh black lives matter started in 2013 but it was not very much in the limelight limelight and it was not accepted by uh you know everybody now it is accepted after the jord floyd incident because what you saw in the past week were all the uh you know if you want all the section of the american population getting together and staging all those protests and marches that's why president obama said that uh black lives matter was a protest a major national protest like the protest staged by martin luther king but what he said there was a difference and the signal difference is that for this time it was not a vast majority of black people supported by a few whites that were demonstrating it was a vast majority of all sections of the american population who were demonstrating in order for rights opportunities to be given people who so far have been trampled down in the united states to social uh uh fabric and of course uh the black lives matter was sparked after the murder of a young trevon martin uh and uh you know the person who murdered him was acquitted uh unfairly uh and we remember the name of all those young african-american uh opal tometi alicia gartha and uh the third one who staged the the black life matter movement uh uh so it is really uh the jord floyd episode which made of it a movement which is now nationwide and which is being replicated all over the world including of course senegal maybe in the discussion if you want to hear about certain developing senegal i would certainly be happy to tell you about those movements we have talked about political movements but we should not forget that there was other social movements which also contributed to you know uh making the black voice heard in the united states and elsewhere in the world it may be in the musical area it may be in film industry it may be in other sections we tend to focus on the political movement but we should we should remember that you know the afroadoo is a movement of protest kneeling down and having your uh you know is a movement of defiance and it did not simply start last year with the uh footballer in the united states you remember a number of many episodes in the olympic games where you have those celebrities in african-american sport uh having their fist up and having their black balance after the black pants a movement all those are moving we should be put together then uh you know all those initiative made by people staged by the american african-american people supported by other section of the african-american population to say enough we can't breathe and it is high time that we get our rights back so maybe i could stop here and uh give a floor to the next speaker thank you very much that's that's great thank you so much for that professor sen and and as as professor sen said that if you have any questions that are specifically directed towards speakers you can save that for the q&a or as i said earlier send me the question put it in the chat if you want and but thank you so much for that sort of um thinking about this more broadly in terms of the historical um resistance i think that's really really important to remember and to think about and understand when we're thinking about that class matter in the contemporary moment as well and i for one would quite encourage people to ask about black lives matter in senegal and what that what's going on in the q&a but thank you for that that was really really great um next up is debi Irving um who i believe is is is is here um so yeah debi yes i can see you waving and so debi brings to racial justice perspective of working as a non-profit manager and classroom teacher for 25 years without understanding racism and systemic or her own whiteness as an obstacle to grappling with it she is the author of the book Waking up White and in it she has a story called Finding Myself in a Story of Race which tells the story of how she went from being well-meaning to well-doing so over to you and debi for your first initial contributions thank you and i think i also got the time next up i'm so sorry i'm late and that i missed a minute of this incredible conversation uh i enter the conversation a little bit differently i'm not in academia myself and so i use a lot of story to both understand racism for myself and to convey what how i understand racism with other white people i very much identify as a white woman who is here to work with other white people to understand how racism has eluded us how we have been shaped by alana i loved your language the technology of of whiteness and my personal story goes like this i was born in 1960 i grew up in a wealthy suburb outside of boston and i call it my white bubble and then i went on to kenyon college in ohio another white bubble and what happened to me in these white spaces is when i will spend the rest of my life unpacking because i really feel i was nothing short of brainwashed because i had no access to anybody but other than white people in my white household in my white schools in my white church in my white town and in the white circles outside of my white town that we moved and that we moved in um even the media in the 1960s and 70s that i was exposed to and this is still to a large extent true was completely white dominated and it was shoving at me this narrative again and again of um the white the all-american ideal which was very much middle class it was anglo anglo passing uh we didn't use the language this gender then but it was certainly cisgender passing it was heterosexual passing it was christian passing um there were strong elements of class ableism and it was certainly white and so all of those things became not just normalized for me but the right way of being because i was told again and again that the united states was the greatest country on earth and if this is what the united states was valuing well then my family better fit right into that little tiny mole that we were being told was the right way to be the all-american way to be so um you know i'm the kind of person who would have said until i started uh really understanding and unpacking race and racism and my own whiteness i would have been the kind of person who would have said to you i just love everybody i don't even see color we all just need to get along and i also would have said well we don't have any racism in my town because we're all white so this is the level of deception that um that i was exposed to and that i bought into i think one of the um i'm writing a second book now about whiteness and and breaking it down into bits and pieces and one of the bits and pieces is denial and the role of denial that is cultivated within white spaces to look on the bright side to ignore harsh truths the harsh truths outside of myself and the harsh truths inside of myself in this conversation the harshest truth is that i was absolutely raised to be a white supremacist in a in a um a wolf in sheep's clothing kind of a way you know not a hood wearing white supremacist but a smiling one that tells you that racism doesn't really exist and i'm certainly not racist um in the white bubble i was exposed again and again really every day i think to ideas about the playing field being level so this is the big myth of meritocracy and and i i do all of my work i frame it um i don't pretend them anything other than someone who understands how racism operates in united states so i really don't know how some of what i'm speaking translates outside of us borders this myth of meritocracy in united states is so potent it it's baked into language like life liberty justice for all you know people come from all over the world to the united states to pursue the american dream the myth will tell you that it's accessible to everybody all you have to do is work hard this is the land of the free this is the land of opportunity from sea to shining sea it's one nation indivisible and all of that happy language which goes very nicely with denial really allowed me encouraged me to buy into the fact that i was living in a free and fair country and so one of the effects that had on me is when i got out of my white bubble and i started noticing in in boston and other cities this really clear pattern of neighborhoods that were different by by race so black and brown neighborhoods that were marked by school buildings with broken windows school classrooms i was a teacher so i was moving in that world classrooms that had books that were held together literally with duct tape um no not a lot of greenery meaning lawns and trees and then i would look at white neighborhoods and there were lawns there were trees there were single family houses there were always new roads being built new schools being built and how was i to explain that if i believe the playing field is level and so at a really deep level i bought into the idea of biological difference that somehow white people were superior and this is what explained white people succeeding according to the american dreams very profit centered in humane you know non-human centered version of success so i did buy into ideas of gender superiority that put me on the one down in that category of racial superiority and um these ideas are so deep that it takes a lot of work for me to undo them it takes a lot of vigilance because my whiteness will again and again want to tell me that i'm superior in one way or another and so alana when you talk about race um you know resh shape shifting i notice it does that at the institutional on the ideological level it also does within me i notice so i'm constantly trying to find ways to uh self validate in ways that are not healthy that are ways that are trying to put me above another person as opposed to recognizing uh that the second one of us goes one up or one down we're no longer connecting as healthy individuals so i um no i developed very wrong-headed ideas about what's normal and and this whole better what worse syndrome and so i spoke uh waking up white because i felt like okay i got to the age of 22 i get set free in boston first to be an arts administrator and raise money uh for after school programs for inner city kids and i think i'm equipped to do that i know nothing about the history of redlining in the united states for anyone who doesn't know that it's a it's a it's a highly racialized lending and housing engineered program that came out of the new deal in the 1930s it put down a housing footprint in cities all over the united states that is still very much intact and so there are a lot of white people who come out of white bubbles who then get set to go help and fix the poor black and brown children in these neighborhoods is if the people are flawed um and when when we don't understand the system um i'm an example of that i didn't know about the system so i tried to help and fix people and of course that uh did little other than make me feel good about myself and didn't really help anybody at all i didn't know i was the one who need who need help and fixing so that's what this story is about um i think about you know so now because i spent so many years in in that in that locked off space of whiteness it's still very visceral to me so i feel like i i have my own version of double consciousness and so i always think in terms of before and after so if we think about covid right now in the united states and i know this is a global phenomenon as well um covid is impacting indigenous black and brown bodies very differently at you know in higher rates of infection higher rates of death than it is white people so if i hadn't started to wake up and understand systems and structures and and a 400 plus year old movement of of you know protests and and mutinies and riots that i had never learned about if i didn't start to wake up and understand all of that i would still be explaining covid um disproportional impact on on people of color as a biological difference i would never have said that because i was taught that taught that speaking about race was rude um and so i would have silently affirmed these really archaic ideas about biological difference of course i can now say well you know if if if by social design in the united states we've got black and brown bodies and indigenous people um you know sequestered and cramped and crowded some standard living conditions and disproportionately in front line jobs because that's a social role expected of black and brown indigenous people in the united states so now we've got cramped and crowded housing frontline roles maybe not um and relying on public transportation to get to these jobs where you're in buses and subways and lack of access your whole life to healthcare of course black indigenous and peoples of color are experiencing higher rates and yet i still hear the discourse the common discourse is not to mention the systems and structures that lead to that differential impact the narrative is still playing field is level and the other thing you know the breathe act the defund the police that's happening here if not for having started to wake up and by the way i don't think i'm woke i think i will be waking up for the rest of my life um i with the defund the police or reimagine the police is language some other people are some people are starting to use here and the breathe act i see people just freaking out white people freaking out with the idea of defunding the police without even stopping to ask the question well boy i'd like to learn more about how defund the police works so this is another aspect of the culture of whiteness is to go for an immediate judgment as opposed to still our bodies wonder what am i afraid of what do i need to learn how can i engage in this conversation so instead there's a lot of reaction about defund the police and yet the discourse around defund the police is incredibly exciting and if i again if i hadn't started waking up i think that i would have been silently in that reactionary place it would have felt scary to me because after all if i've been taught in my formative years that black brown and indigenous people are somehow scary a threat to society a threat to white female me burdening our society by living off the government if that's what i truly believe then defunding the police is a scary idea if i if i understand differently uh the humanity and the and the dehumanization that has happened through policing and other structures then i understand as i do now that in order for any one of us to reclaim our humanity everyone's humanity has to be centered and i believe that starts with centering the humanity of the people who are the most marginalized and the most impacted by white supremacist uh technology i really like that word alana so i think that's where i'll stop that's great thank you so much uh debi for that and just another quick reminder i know i keep saying this but if you have any questions you can save them for the q&a but you can also put them in the chat or send them directly to me and i'll collect them if you want it to be addressed to a particular speaker then let me know um uh but yeah thank you very much for that um and to move on to our last speakers who i am really really glad are here today with us and i'm really looking forward to hear what they um have to say um the who are the triple cripples um the triple cripples were created by kim oliver and jmocke abdelahee um is a groundbreaking platform created to increase the visibility and highlight the narratives of black and non-black women, femmes and non-binary people of colour living with disabilities whose stories would otherwise remain hidden from view. The intersections of race, gender and disability are key factors in determining how people experience the world around them yet so often these axes of oppression are often overlooked in disability activism, feminist agendas and black liberation movements and so i'm going to hand over to the triple cripples now. Hello um thank you for the introduction um Dr Goodfellow um i'm jmocke abdelahee of the triple cripples. Hi i'm kim oliver of the triple cripples um jimi do you want to um just do a brief introduction of who we are and what we do and then yes of course yeah then we'll leap right in um so as um maya had touched upon uh we are the triple cripples so what we do is essentially um try to utilise the the medium and try and increase and highlight um the narratives and increase the visibility of those that experience lives in the way that we do so those that have been placed quite meticulously and on purpose in the margins of the margins of the margins of the margins through our history and it's something that's continued to be done so and we're very aware of the impact that um representation or a lack thereof has on the lived experiences of people like us it affects education, it affects health, it affects personal relationships, it affects absolutely everything that you could possibly think of and it always affects it in the negative so we understand and are aware of the tool that the media is the tool that you get through tv shows um movies uh through books through radio through absolutely everything in the quite subtle and very coercive ways in which it tells a certain tale over and over again and it need not be true but if it's said enough it becomes the truth and what happens is people like us are always on the suffering end of these um of these actions and these acts and of those that um on the privileged side of life be they white, be they cisgendered, be they uh non-disabled etc etc used this tool uses white people and white people also use this tool in order to aid themselves and um corroborate and back and construct themselves in a certain way that you are both the victim and the victim and that's what we are essentially trying to battle against. Yeah and I think what's a key thing that Jamal Kerr mentioned is that we are in a position now where we are becoming more aware of the fact that there's erasure of certain groups right but even with if we just talk about Black Lives Matter even within this particular movement there is an erasure of certain black people certain types of black people who gets to be black and who gets to be important if we just talk about what's going on in the US we will talk about what's going on in the UK shortly but what's going on in the US we're very focused around um police brutality directed towards male victims. We don't talk about the trans women who get killed, we don't talk about the trans man, Tony McDowd, who got killed. We very rarely talk about the women um in fact Breonna Taylor's kind of faded into the just the periphery as if somehow her life was not necessarily as important and it wasn't taken as brutally but what was more important was the one that we saw was George Floyd. Now every when we're saying Black Lives Matter we mean every single life matters that we don't talk about the disabled people that are killed by police every single day if we just talk about the US disabled black people are high in number in terms of those who are killed by police so we have to be able to see all of those lives as having value and I remember reading somewhere um a few weeks ago that it's not just if you're compliant it's not just if you're pleasant it's not just if you're wearing the right things it's not just if you're educated like the gentleman who the white lady tried to um call on camera and say that uh he was attacking her when we all saw that he wasn't and that they were like oh he's from he's studied this and he's you know he's not a threat because he's educated and it's like no that is irrelevant what we're saying is that Black Black Lives Matter in all of their iterations and one of the things that triple cripples tries to do is say Black disabled women and fems matter because as Jamal Kerr rightly said we are erasure is our demise us being a race literally affects all of our outcomes and leads to higher fatality rates and sometimes it means we don't even get the gift of life because the way in which we are viewed or not viewed rather means that someone something being like us is not supposed to exist so in order to combat that and kind of directly fly in the face of that kind of discrimination we need to be seen we need to be spoken about we need our stories to be told um and so yes we utilise the media we do lectures and we talk about the intersections of race of gender of ability that's kind of what triple cripples means right the triple pronged marginalisation that we experience and each of those intersections can be crippling in their own way whether it's your facing misogyny whether you're experiencing racism whether you're experiencing ableism having all three operate at the same time all the time is horrific and horrendous someone said earlier that you know we shouldn't be talking about who experiences um things worse and who has worse experiences of discrimination but the fact is if we're really going to confront things and be honest in society and make a better world we have to look at the fact that people within the margins of the margins of the margins have a worse experience of life than others we cannot pretend that somehow as long as ideologically we're in a place where we are open to creating a better world that that somehow means that people don't have worse experiences than others that is just what it is that is the world we've created as one where an equity pervades and so we have to be able to name those inequities and admit and see them and call them for what they are right Jim O'Care um I will let you um before I go on to the other part of what we're going to say right okay um something that uh Kim had touched upon is the fact that um living life the way that we do we cannot separate our blackness from our womanhood and we cannot separate our womanhood from you know the fact that we are disabled and with white supremacy racism anti black racism and ableism and sexism and queerphobia and all of these things they actually work hand in hand there is no one way to try and pull extract um one from the other because depending it might be more weighted to one thing than the other but you are being affected and you are being punished by all of these identities of which you hold which white supremacy feels is something that is going against its very existence and what white supremacy essentially is at the very root of it is violence and in order to be able to enact that violence anything that gets in the way of that will be pushed out of the way now as um mentioned earlier by um a couple of the speakers the ways in which white supremacy and whiteness itself molds itself and changes itself and it makes itself suitable to any sorts of situation is also the ways in which those that are not white are punished because the goalpost is so often moved for us is it not i mean for myself and for Kim and for so many others like us might we have been able to get a book deal to be able to talk about our experiences of life like hey i am being punished because of the way that i am we wouldn't even be let into the room yes and it's we wouldn't we wouldn't and it's no it's and it in on that subject we're here talking about black lives matter right and we on the panel we have two white women who are promoting their books right and to speak to what Jamal Ke is saying we have to look at what that means and what that looks like we have to see that that on the surface of it though the books may be um wonderful and have um great value we have to look at that and we also have to look at that during this time Robin D'Angelo's book was the number one bestseller in June after a black person was killed like somehow there are not black scholars there are not black writers there are not black people who have expertise in the area of telling their own stories from an academic point of view or from a non-academic point of view like somehow the gatekeepers of knowledge are still even in this moment are white people and they're being centered even in this moment and so we have to think about what these these mean who gets to know you know who who gets access is is knowledge being is there a gatekeeper of knowledge and who is that gatekeeper and why we have to challenge these things we have to question these things because saying that oh well you know they're writing um in in favour of creating a better world is one thing but the world that we've created is one that says that you know in terms of um white supremacist ideas of pedagogy is one that says that whiteness is the epitome right or knowledge they are the gatekeeper of knowledge about yes and so we have to look at those things we have to look at the fact that we are in a society that only cosigns right now the black lives matter movement because there are non-black people with us we have to look at that um it's that's one of the reasons why triple cripples is so important because we are defying those ideas by saying well we aren't even supposed to exist but we will choose to tell our own stories we will choose to be in control of our own narrative right regardless of whether you want it or not um and in doing that in so doing that in taking up space as black women do that's what black women do right they always take up space other people's liberation is tied to us we always talk about the idea that it's important that we start from the margins of the margins so where you are starting from the most marginalized people and centering their needs centering them making them the cornerstone for the society you want to build no one else is going to fall through the gaps because you've made sure that all of those tiny little holes are plugged right and so I think it's important that we um talk about that just a quick point before I hand back over to Jamal Kerr I've heard the phrase black bodies being thrown around a lot we are black people we're not cargo we're not hollow we're not disposable and we're not dead and I think language is a key component or of how we view and have viewed race there was a point in time where black people were viewed as cargo they were viewed as objects they were viewed as disposable and it's very important that we do not rewrite those narratives with our language that we do not reinvent or reintroduce them into society and which allows them to it allows people to justify our dehumanisation right it allows people well if you are just a body what is it we only call dead people bodies people that have no longer are no longer here people that no longer have what we would call capitalist value we call those bodies right and so if we're talking about living beings in that way we are still carrying on the narrative of white supremacy in in many ways and so that is important um just before I I keep saying I'm going to hand over to Jamal Kerr I know and it doesn't get handed over just one minute let me put on my glasses um so we're here to come up black lives matter and I think it's very important that we acknowledge the great impact that black lives matter has had on the entire world right it's important that we acknowledge it and it's important that we honour the fact that it was started by disabled queer women right not disabled queer women but by queer women um or queer queer black women queer black femmes right who in a lot of ways are not necessarily being fought for in their own in their own movement and so that is an important point but it's also important to note that we're talking about England not being exempt from the crimes committed against black people against the crimes of injustice and police brutality they are not in 1998 um Sean Rigg sorry in 2008 Sean Rigg um died in a similar way actually to George Floyd for officers held him down face down and he died of cardiac arrest they held him face down for eight and a half minutes I think it was eight yeah eight and a half minutes it was recorded as well because in 2008 we did have mobile phones it was recorded and none of the footage was used none of the um police officers got prosecuted nothing happened it it was just what it was and it's England has a very long history of colonialism enslavement police brutality racism this is the this is the hub right this is the um the mother and father of white supremacy and so the ways in which it will display will not necessarily be the same as the US right um if we're talking about disabled black people being disproportionately affected by police brutality that's still true here when we talk about Sarah Reed um we talk about Rocky Bennett who was in 1998 died in Norwich um mental hospital to seven I think seven people held him face down for 25 minutes no one was prosecuted like that is that and those I'm talking about old things I'm not even talking about new things or current things more people die of police in police custody here they don't carry around guns they don't you know um openly commit acts of injustice but yet disproportionately we're in prison disproportionately we're institutionalised which is something that the UN even in 2017 that when they did their inquiry they found that the UK like was they were particularly concerned with the number of black people being held against their will being held and they didn't believe that it was lawful they didn't believe that it was in line with human rights right and so we're looking at somewhere that knowingly and on a global scale is acknowledged for ignoring the rights of black people of black women especially because they were concerned about women and girls as well everyone knows that this is the status quo that the status quo is to dehumanise to murder to kill to destroy the opportunities of to block to ruin the attainment of but yet nothing is done nothing is said and so we're coming with black lives matter has highlighted even things systemic issues that have been going on in the UK for time in memoriam um we have people who've been working in social justice here for years years and years and years um but because of the way the system is set up because of the nature of the laws because of the nature and how old the system is and how small the population of black and brown people is it is very difficult for us to have the voice or the the effect that perhaps people across the seas in the US would have so that's why it's so important that when we have these movements we connect with others around the world because your voice adds to my voice and my voice gives gives context to your experience and so TC is important triple cripples is very important as an example of what is possible when you look at the world from outside and I love what was said earlier about looking at the world from outside of your bubble Jim O'Claire right it's my turn um as Kim had rightly mentioned and what is um so often true um in the history of anything ever um black women are we are at the forefront of everything um be it uh creativity be it services that are actually required and one name that certainly pops up is the name of uh Julie J. Charles who's actually the um chief executive and founder of Equalities National Council um an organisation that was set up here in excuse me in England now in places such as the UK which is um which was and continues to be a leading exporter in colonialism in racism in everything terrible under the sun that you could imagine including homophobia by the way um it is so often black women because we are so often at the receiving end of punishment by the white supremacist states that we make it our business to take care of our own because we know that nobody is actually around here for us and in the creation of the Equalities National Council which is the only one in the UK that actually focuses on incentives the um needs of black and minority ethnic um disabled users and disabled people there was a black woman that started it triple creples was started by two black women all of these things all of these movements that take us to the right side of life to the right side of history is so often created by us um I'm sure um most of you here would have heard about um a city in um England uh Bristol where the statue of a former slave merchant slave owner by the name of Edward Colston had uh finally been taken down because people no longer won they could no longer wait they had petitioned they had gone through the right way of trying to get this thing through for years 20 years 20 years they like were not we we've had enough we're going to take it down that plinth in which he stood was then replaced by the statue of a black woman and then read 24 hours later it was removed yeah 24 hours later it was removed it took less time because actually acknowledging the plight the fight and the righteousness of people of black women is not something that this country actually wants to acknowledge they'll acknowledge it in the through through ways i'll give you an award i'll do this i'll do that i'll give you a sticker uh some sort of marker some sort of signify but actually changing laws and making sure that they are actually beneficial to everybody is not something that they're actually committed to yeah committed to it and I want to write about window dressing and one thing that's important about that statue as well is that it wasn't a black sculptor and yet again we see who is the gatekeeper of certain arenas right it wasn't a black sculptor that made it it was a white sculptor so we've got a white sculptor making a sculpture of a black experience replacing the sculpture of a white person talking about a white experience and so once again who who are we saying is worthy of telling our story but also who are we saying has the expertise even within the arts right and so it's important that we look at all of these things and try and change them in line with what Jamal Kerr was saying there's a woman called Carolee Nelson who was the chief executive of choice in Hackney for over 10 years and it it's an organisation that provides advocacy services for disabled people and she remained one of the only black disabled women to head a disabled people's organisation in London. We are in 2020 and that hasn't necessarily shifted right and so when we talk about wanting structural change are we talking about having events like this one or are we talking about people mobilising within their fields are we talking about people petitioning to change laws are we talking about people like us entering into the political arena to do the kind of disruption from the inside as well as people organising on the outside are we really talking about defunding the police and redistributing wealth one of the things that I find interesting is that we talk about privilege and we talk about changing the way things the experiences that black and brown and indigenous people have around the world but are we willing to redistribute our wealth in our personal lives are we willing to actually give away opportunities that perhaps we could easily have been afforded to us we could easily take we could easily accept for our own personal development but are we are we willing to do the things that actually redress the balances in our own personal lives as well as yes working structurally and systemically but let's face it the structure and the system is maintained by those within it and so once again going back to kind of medical racism and you know the idea of these intersections I can you can hire 150 black doctors today they are still going to enter into a racist medical system that has a particular culture in a particular way of dealing with black people we always talk about um this particular story we were at the um content is queen podcast festival in 2018 and we met some young doctors and one of them you know had just started practicing a young black woman and she was talking about doing the hospital rounds so she'd gone round she'd gone to every patient done their little summary and she'd she had a black male patient she'd done his summary or whatever they'd gotten into the round the round table or whatever discussion it is that doctors have where they discuss each patient and talk about what they're going to do in order to kind of take their their care further or kind of change things in order to for the betterment of the patient or whatever and she said that they got to the point where they were talking about the black patient and everyone just kind of glossed over it didn't bother to go through the chart like they'd done for every single other patient and in that moment she didn't speak up because she's a new doctor what is she to do how is she to challenge her seniors and obviously if that's what they've done maybe they know better and maybe it's the right thing if you are in a system like that where we we already have hold doctors and things like that in high regard because we're like you know they've gone to school for seven years so they know better they know better than me you know they're supposed to be healers right so you go with the idea of these people being healers but also if you're in the industry you go with knowing these people have more experience than you right so therefore the way they're treating the black patients must be the way they're supposed to treat the black patients right that lack of intervention where they they're ignoring heart murmurs because oh the black women are just exaggerating that's leading to black women having higher rates of heart disease and coronary heart failure and all of these things and cardiac arrest like that must be okay because these doctors know better and so even if I come in as a person of colour I will just repeat the things that I've seen by the time it gets to a point where I am in position and I am in power I am my predecessors so we can't just talk about putting more faces oh let me do a higher let me do a few highs we have to think about fundamentally changing the way we think about all of these systems and implementing that change in our personal lives but also in our public lives also in our work lives also in the laws that we make in the things that we agree to in the affiliations we have it is it is both a personal and public and social problem and it cannot be ignored because these are people's lives and I don't care if you feel that it doesn't affect you personally I'm sure that there are lots of people who thought that many things like COVID would not affect them personally but yet it has right and so we have to make this our responsibility and as people who are descendants of oppressors, colonizers, the oppressed, the enslaved we have a duty to make the world a better place but especially those who are on the side of history that has benefited from the oppression of others it is and continues to benefit yes and continue to benefit because that's just the way the system is set up and continues to work you can't point to a few successful black people or black leaders and say oh but you know look they've got their own presidents in Africa and the Caribbean now so therefore it's fine who's in control of the resources who and these are all basic things I'm saying but we do not take those things into consideration when we're talking about dismantling system and assessing our own privilege we have to we have to look at all of these factors and we have to make it a difference and we have to start as we've said from the margins who is benefiting the least who is the most affected are we talking about trans disabled black indigenous people of colour we have to start from the margins of the margins and make that our duty and make that our centre if you're not doing that then you're not doing any anti-racism work you're not doing any feminist in sectional feminist work you're not doing any kind of liberation work you're not doing any socialist any whatever you want to affiliate yourself with you might as well not do it because if you're not including everyone then it is you're going to recreate the world that we already have agreed is time is important though uh yeah time is important yeah yeah are you telling me are you telling me that i'm we should stop uncle no it's excellent but i maybe we should make a bit more of a conversation than a monologue though oh you do you want to ask me a question well yeah certainly and all those those people who haven't spoken that was excellent but maybe those listening to us we need to give them a floor to speak to right i'm sure that i've seen questions coming up so we're more than happy to do that absolutely thank you all right do you want to take a few more minutes to yeah yeah yeah i'll just i'll wrap everything up uh thank you so much for that um just to close the fact that um so often with the way that the world has been set up and why triple cripples is so necessary is that any time that a black life is taken is violently taken is um whiteness profits whiteness profits through being elected whiteness profits through being given grants to help to help whiteness profits every single time one of our lives is um taken either explicitly implicitly the lives that we do know about the lives that we don't know about and the only way for us to actually be able to truly say that we value these lives and that where we are trying to do the work is that we have to actually see these people and that's what we are trying to do with triple cripples and until you see people until you see the variety the beautiful varieties of people of humanity that is out there you won't actually be able to take it in and um yeah i don't know i've lost my train of thought through that um that that delightful thing but yeah um we've got we've got we've all got a lot of black women are always being interrupted black women are always being interrupted yeah imagine it would be us to be interrupted but um we all have work to do we certainly all have work to do but those of us that um are on the benefiting side there's a lot more work to be done there's a lot more work to be done for everything that you are paid for you need to make sure that you are redistributing the wealth and actually truly question if you had not been white if you had not been sys if you had not been whatever it might be would you have been given these opportunities and then act accordingly because unless you are actually actively doing that like kim said any extra monarchs that you're putting at the end of the name at the end of your name it doesn't mean anything so peace out thank you so much for that kim did you want to add anything else like i know you sort of halfway through a sentence i think so no i i think that in some ways that what what took place was important to note because that is something that always happens yeah we are silenced um and interrupted and i think that's an important it's a wonderful lesson for all of those present so i'm done thank you very much for having us actually we have questions for you because we are fascinated by your presentation and as you were speaking i was wondering i wanted to ask you a question but i did not want to interrupt you while you were speaking and yet it happened anyway okay yeah if you are cripple and white or if you are transgender and white right and if you are the same thing and black what would be the more comfortable position as we had mentioned earlier there is no way to try and separate one from the other we are all three at the exact same time there's no way to try and pull apart or try and dismantle or take apart um any of our identities or the way that we live life we are affected by ableism sexism and racism at um at different moments at different parts but there's no way to try and extract or put a number or percentage point on it no thank you i hope that answers that question yeah thank you for that sorry i was i didn't um i was just going to say that we maybe it would help to take questions in sets of threes also we have three if that works for everyone because there's a it's already hand up there's a few questions that have been sent in so if anyone who wants to ask a question um if you could put your hand up in the in the chat so there's a little hand up function if you click on the chat function um or if you don't want to ask it yourself you can send it to me or put it in the chat for everyone to see so that in that same chat function um and just to say sorry because it's now thank you very much for that um to the triple cripples for for your interventions and there's a lot of um love in the chat for you as well as you were talking as well about what you were saying so i just wanted to make a note of that you know you went you covered a lot of ground and you shared with us a lot of things i think are really important for people to reflect upon and i would encourage anyone if you have questions to to share them now in the chat as well there's a few already that have been sent through um so i think alpha someone called alpha um is your name yeah that um yeah your hand i see up here and also in the chat um so if we could come to you and then i also have some britain questions if anyone else do the hand up function in the chat don't do it on your video because i won't see you right okay well thank you very much um i am uh a seliglis person living in london for quite a while now um so uswan geogeth um yeah so so i'm also a member of of walk i mean because i visited that when i come to seligol so um i want you to tell the audience that there is in seligol there is an island called gore which is the um an island where slaves were kept and shipped to america and if you have the opportunity once obviously it is safe to do so and i understand the government of senegal has released um the um international flight now is open in the 15th of july and you are quite welcome to go there and i'm looking forward myself to going there because i've been living here for quite a while um but there's one thing that i wanted to talk culturally first and then politically culturally i know that when i was born i was black i was in pink when i grew up i was black i was in i was in green when i go out in the sun in the beach i'm black i'm not red when i'm cold i'm black i'm not blue and when i die i would be black not purple therefore i have never in my life used color i say i'm a black person and there is a white person when i was at school in high school i was told that the only thing that hasn't got color or order was water so therefore please can we stop using colored people we are black and they are white and the story now the second thing i wanted to mention is i gave a talk um to a branch labour party in london in northwest london in Brent and i was talking about black life matter and what i said was i started by quoting Martin Luther King and i'm going to if you allow me i'll quote that space because that was very important ma he said emancipation for the negro was really freedom to hunger freedom to the winds and the rains of heaven it was freedom without to eat and land to cultivate and therefore it was freedom ricans tell the negro to lift themselves by their own bootstrap they thought look over the legacy of slavery and segregation i believe he said we ought to do all we can and seek lift ourselves by our own bootstrap but your cruel justice to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstrap and many negro's by the thousand and millions have been left bootless as a result of all these years of oppression and as a result of a society that deliberately makes his color a stigma and something worthless and degrading that is a big problem now i will relate that to the covet 19 in the united kingdom i mean if we look at um the covet 19 what i find out me is that one post code is a better predictor of one's health than one's genetic code where one's leave determines where one's go to school i am a retired teacher by the way determine the quality of education one receives determine one's preparation for higher education determine one's access to good job determine the quality of neighborhood and housing conditions and determine that i say the exposure to physical and toxic substances that is a class issue which hasn't been talked about and some have argued about class issues somehow argued that slavery was not a product of racism but that racism was a product of slavery and economic exploitation that is to say racism constituted myth systems of classification and regimes of discourse that naturalize and legitimize the forced servitude and of certain different groups whose labor can be afforded for the purpose of accumulation i believe as mark says that racism well i mean that wealth all wealth come from labor and i think that racism is a tool viciously used to maintain the class structure so that is an issue that i think need to be considered so i thank you very much oh yeah could i just um so what was the question exactly alfa um well it was a class issue that need to be raised if one can read the class issue there's a racism yes indeed there is but there's also link to the class issues and that needs to be considered except except especially during the COVID-19 in the UK we've seen that when they say that the BME has got um a problem with COVID well that's because of the housing condition that's because of of um of the fact that you know living condition as austerity that has been going on for 10 years in england and that needs to be considered it's a class issue as well as uh of the issues so it was a state not a question okay thank you so much alfa thank you thank you very much thank you and i appreciate your your talk thank you okay thanks so maybe if anyone wants to speak to class i guess is it is thinking about class in relation to the discussion thus far i think that's been raised in some of the contributions but if anyone has any additional points to make about that um in the chat there are also a number of questions um so one of the questions that's been asked that was asked very early on in in the um event was um could any of you maybe talk a bit more about community-based alternatives to policing i suppose maybe what does that look like how might we conceive of that there's a lot of work that's been done on that so does can anyone speak to that specifically um um someone has also asked how do you conceive of like what is what are identity politics is this notion used to undermine progressive movements how is this rhetoric counted if so um and uh another question um that has been asked specifically to Alana but i think maybe you can also be addressed to everyone how did it come that one group white people came to assume dominant positions so they can construct the world in that image so there's all three questions that are touching upon different things that have been talked about already in this supplementary question of what was well around if anyone has anything to do with the class um but community-based alternatives to policing identity politics identity politics and then this idea about what i guess how white people come to so dominant um anyone want to yeah i'll take the policing question great definitely um right thank you great question um at the moment what we're attempting to do is review the policing budget so right now in Cambridge Massachusetts which is a very wealthy city um and it's a city of 100 000 people and yet the but the police budget is 63 million dollars which is the third highest of budget in the whole city this is above all other social services and the government administrations uh in the city so we have decided that our approach is to review the budget itself and see what money is spent on what so we are attacking first um the dismantling of first responses so um instituting a first response team that has mental health services social social workers and legal services for the victims not the police um and no armed police officers ever um and we're taking away all social programs that are like linked to the police department which includes youth work and um all kinds of social social workers that are housed in the police department removing those from the police department themselves and moving those into um other city budget of budget items um in addition to that we are also asking for the removal of police officers from the um from social housing from public housing in the in in Cambridge um that's where they they just station a number of police officers and so we're asking to remove those people because they are what they do is that they um they criminalize people they are not proactive they don't prevent any um crimes or violent crimes is particular from taking place they actually instigate it and um we believe that community workers community social workers not um speak social workers so we should have tackling the budget item item and just sort of attacking each line in that way but um something came up in the previous talk that I would also like to address if that's okay um so so I want to thank the triple cripples and I really appreciated that heartfelt breakdown of basically a summation of what each of us had talked about before and I want to bring up something that had asked to be asked about which is the concept of bodies because I'm a feminist scholar um so first I think it's really important to remember bodies because we cannot neglect the history of the severing of the black mind the African mind from the from the African body and this is an important legacy of white supremacy and I also think it's really important to remember the concept of matter the literal thing um the black people exist we are a literal matter and for me this is a direct response to the statement black lives matter too so a lot of people have asked me why don't we say a black lives matter also a black lives matter too well it's a it's a finite statement it is saying black lives or in matter and so it's factually true that black lives actually matter so it makes blackness the subject by acknowledging the object which for me is the body and then of again returning to my feminist scholarship it's um and being concerned with the feminist scale so for me the feminist scale begins with the mind and next it goes to the body the home the state the global the universal and so it is really important to remember the body in our politics body politics um and we cannot ignore the body when we're talking when we're discussing disabilities right we have to acknowledge the body but I agree with you guys very much so when you're saying it really matters when where why and how we talk about the body we can't just say black bodies black bodies without acknowledging black lives the humans inside of those bodies um so I think that's a crucial point um and I especially appreciated the point about um the black minds and black stories matter um and so I think what I want to propose to the group especially white allies who are present here um is we're asking questions where are the funding for black researchers black researchers are doing like taking on debt taking the extra jobs it's really difficult to write the books that are being purchased at the moment the black scholars who are doing that research really have to suffer to justify their work so we need funding for that work so let's do some of that work and then where the book deals for black writers I think this is when and where white allies come in it's your job to open the door and then it's your job to reshape those spaces to work to reshape those spaces to make them safe and open to black minds the black ideas and black stories that's all thank no thank you so much for that Stephanie we we have only a few minutes left and so I I so propose I don't know what the speakers think um if maybe if we just hear any concluding remarks that people have in relation to the questions or anything else then maybe you want to add and say and maybe um I don't want to put you on the spot but if we come to the triple quipples um first um given that what Stephanie said I don't know if you want to engage like speak to that but yeah just to give you a bit more space because you were cut off earlier as well so just yeah okay um just a quick closing remark for me in terms of ways of looking after each other in terms of safety outside of the police state that we know is that um I am only just beginning that work of even considering a world in which the police aren't involved like in in my daily life in the media that I'm exposed to that we are all exposed to the police have always been quite a central part of that either on the good side or on the bad side but they are always there but as with everything as we said earlier black women are always at the forefront of imagining you know these various futures in which we have a world in which the police are not present and there is no police presence there's no school to prison pipeline and any of that and um there's a book by um Angela Davis uh something along the lines of um should we abolish uh no our prisons obsolete yes that's our prisons obsolete so I definitely say um looking to reading that and um look outside of yourself especially for um those that are on the privileged side of life look outside of yourself because while it might not be for you that um it's something new to you something you've never heard of I promise you I promise you I promise you somebody has already done that work somebody has already done the reimagining and more often they more often than not that is um black women but adding on to a future in which um there are no police I do from the little that I have learned and hope to continue learning I am all for abolishing police so first of all defunding and then getting rid of them completely but as a child of um african descent when I imagine a future where the police are not involved the primary the first beneficiaries of that reimagined futures I do not see them being white I do not see you at the front of the line I don't um and that's something certainly that I um have to work through but it I don't know it feels kind of like a funny way for me for those that have benefited so long from this way of thinking are also the ones that will be the first in line to receive these new futures that weren't even imagined by them because they had been protected and looked after and coddled by um state violence essentially. Kim. Just no just to add to Jamal Kerr's point um yes Angela Davis is someone to look at when you're looking at defunding the police Ruth Wilson Gilmore also talks about the um the prison system itself as well and kind of working on stopping prisons being built and kind of reimagining what that could look like so that's another good person to look up and in terms of um if you want to if you want to learn anything about how white people came into prominence and all of this kind of stuff I think it's just good to kind of look at history um and there's a wealth of uncomfortable lessons yes there's a wealth of information around you know and it doesn't it doesn't have to be super super complex someone in the um talks wrote about Akala you can read um when we ruled by Robin um I think his name's Robin Walker there are lots of different um historical kind of resources out there and I think in order to understand the world as it is now we have to look at what has led up to this point right so pre enslavement all the way through and what has built capitalism what um what what we know now is white supremacy how it started what was commerce what was culture what was um merchant exchange you know and looking at those things and that's the only way you can really come to understand the system as we know it now but don't be afraid to do the research youtube is free most of the time like there are loads of little documentaries you can watch loads of them some of them will have contrasting information but that's important to look at a wide range of sources and also read books there are loads of you know someone's written the history of white people by now urban painter um there are lots of different books out there I would advise that you do look for books that are written by people of color about their histories about the way in which they have viewed the world and the way they've experienced the world because often those histories um are written in a way that's slightly more comprehensive because they're not as a victor writing about their victories right and they're not as a victor writing in order to sustain power and so it's important that you kind of make sure that you go out of your way to look for people of color who are experts in these fields and pay them when you're asking these questions don't ask for stuff for free you will get cussed out thank you thank you so much and um there's a link to the triple cripples website in the chat as well so I encourage you all to check that out as well um and any of our other speakers do you want to make any final concluding remarks before we wrap up can I can I yeah thank you very much uh well I would like to thank everybody uh Maya Stephanie Debbie I you know I love your your courage you know I was I was marveled by what you were capable of saying about your experience and willing to engage on some sort of guilt trip you know own it up and say this is what it is and this is what we do not have and I really appreciate the way you put those things on the table uh of course our young friends Kim and Jo Moche uh we will certainly learn something from your uh contribution which is extremely important and eye opening alpha uh Alana thank you very much but I would like to say for alpha uh that there is one phrase you used and which is extremely important and people should remember that phrase that reconstruction and emancipation was actually freedom to hunger because you know all those stage in african-american history were to contribute to liberate for black people but if you are in the situation where as a farmer or a sharecropper you don't have any farm to till where are you going to have anything to eat and if you don't have anything in your belly where are you going to defend your rights that's the whole tragedy of the african-american community being denied and deprived of what they need economically in order to survive and I hear that in north carolina there is a city which is going to engage in reparation and that reparation is something we should bear in mind because if you are denied economically there is no way you can defend any rights look at the situation of third world countries finally because I would not like to belong sorry finally I would say after alpha that gory island is going to change a little bit because we had a meeting with a municipality last saturday and there is a particular place on gory island which used to be called europe square it is going to be debatised and called the place of freedom and human dignity after george floy and I think there is a big fresco of george floy which is going to be painted there by a celebrated tenaglis artist that will be one site or one feature of gory island which will be offered to you when next you visit and thank you for making me part of this thank you very much thank you very much um for that um fresco then do you do you either of you um alana or debi want to make any final comments I would just say thank you so much and I really have a special appreciation for the triple cripples for um just being so straight on so drama very straight on clear about the truth and uh you it's challenge it's been uncomfortable and challenging for me and I really appreciate that I appreciate being here today thank you I just want to reiterate my thanks uh for the invitation which ultimately um um I did write to Stephanie and we did have a short exchange about the panel um personally when I organise events I don't speak at them uh here in Australia it's incredibly important to foreground the work of Aboriginal activists and scholars and so when I personally organise events um they're the people who are foregrounded along with um other racialized people but mainly Aboriginal people because we are living on settler settle sorry colonised um settled and uh and I think you know my advice is somebody who organizes a lot of events is to to think about make up of pounds also the order of speaking I was relatively surprised about um nonetheless I've learned a lot uh but I think we all grow and learn from these experiences and I think uh Jamilca and Kim have raised incredibly important points that we can all take away with us and grow from thank you great um thank you very much for that thank you yeah once again to all of our speakers for taking the time to um contribute to what was a really important event and the event will be shared as being recorded and the slides and the event will be shared afterwards and I think we can share also any links that have been shared in the chat as well um to all of the attendees but yeah thank you very much to all of you for taking the time and I can see lots of people doing applause um but yeah thank you and uh see you all uh see you all on the zoom chat probably thank you before we all thank you now can I just do a big thanks to Maya and to Stephanie because really this is a massive event by these two they taken it forward and it's you know I'm so proud of you guys for doing this it's such a brilliant thing that you've managed to pull together so I think all credit to them for taking it through their own steam and managing it which they've done fantastically so big thanks to both of them from me and from the team the festival team and to all our speakers and all the participants thank you very much bye