YouSaid · the spoken record

David Harewood

lines on the record: 33
first: 2022-03-09
most recent: 2022-03-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's still true Black Britain depends on African American slogans, African American blah blah this. Yeah, but it's got to stop because that's part of the problem. We don't have powers, so we don't make the curriculum. But that's part of the problem. All right. Thank you. So we have to do our own work. Thank you so much for the question. All right, we have, I'll give you 30 seconds, John, and then we'll have last question. I'm doing a terrible job because we're almost over time anyway.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can I say too that there's one thing I'm going to talk about up in Liverpool in August, is you all are too dependent on African American tropes, African-American history, African-American point of view, American everything. I mean, when I first came here, people were talking about the book that they read to learn about black people was to kill a mockingbird. I thought, excuse me? I mean, this book was the book. And when I started talking about, I hate it, I hate to kill a mockingbird, frankly. I hate it. And so, because it's BS. So to talk about, you know, that book being the book you have to read as a kid to learn about black people, that's why the trouble is. There are a lot of stories that exist about being black and British and about this particular country, but it's still true, and I'm going to say it.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beautiful space, and I'm so Yeah, it's totally been destroyed. And Woke was the word that you used on the Underground Railroad when people were being passed from house to house, how you knew that somebody was the person was used the word woke. And it got stolen, mainly because people took it out of that bat and used it publicly. And then people who didn't approve it. I'm going to be making the keynote at the Liverpool, at the Slavery Museum in August, and you are 100% right. This country is a colonial project. The pavement, the buildings, the water, everything. So when folks start screaming and howling about statues, I'm going to say, what are you going to do about with the ground under your feet? Because that's what it is.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Minority because that's the way, as David has said, that's the way the world's changing. If you're not on board with this, you're going to be run over. So education to me, and if the fund can help and really giving, I'm very much a tools person. So how do you make tools so that a state teacher can actually deliver Black history history period. History of human beings that is absolutely Unbiased straight and authoritative. Otherwise, was the”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've said to these teachers, your white guilt is of no assistance to my students or to any black kids or anything minority kids. Keep it out of the classroom. Not interested, okay? You're there to teach. You have a vocation. I'm going to help you stand up in front of those kids so that you can deliver this history to them. They're going to challenge you. They're going to do all kinds of things because they're bright. They're going to say what they have to say. But you have to feel that you can stand there and you can do this because otherwise you are useless in the classroom right now. So that's one of the things that kind of like my mission there is to give these teachers in the state sector enough education, enough background, enough confidence so that they can be of use to this generation who is going to pass through their hands. Not only ethnic minority kids, but kids who are not.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for me, part of the project that I'm doing called Air of Reclamation of the British Museum is to work with teachers in the state sector because most of our kids, that's going to be their experience. It's going to be in the state sector. I want to particularly work with non-ethnic minority teachers so that they feel confident to deliver black history to their students. I've told many of them your white guilt is of no assistance to me.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the project, I'm doing a big project back at the British Museum where I've gone back, and part of the project is working in the state sector. I got my permission to be a citizen because I taught school in the state sector in Lambeth and in Brent bringing over a Shakespeare program I develop on the Lori's side. And I remember I started in the beginning of the 90s and I was told by teachers of color and white teachers, why do you want to teach these kids Shakespeare? I didn't understand the question. I literally didn't understand it.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Forth to kind of find that place because our ancestors were on a boat. We're on boats and around water. I really want to stress that about people in the so-called diaspora. I think that is so important.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, and I think it's an insult to Africans, especially ancient Africans, to say they were victims. They weren't victims. I mean, these are, we're talking about very sophisticated societies that played a part in my being here and roll the dice, basically. And we need to tell stories in that way, don't do that to African culture. Don't make African people look like they just suddenly were their hands up, I can't deal with this. That didn't happen. We're talking about extremely sophisticated people. So let's open up the whole thing. Let's look at the whole story and see it. Because in that way, I guess maybe David and I, I keep thinking about you because we're both doing, we're both kind of troubadours. We're just going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I'm serious. It's rubbish First of all, I don't believe in getting rid of anything. I think that that's not what you should do. Everything is connected to human destiny and human story. And we shouldn't be afraid to tell the stories. We shouldn't be afraid to do that. And maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. So I'm thinking of David because we're both sort of voyagers in a way. Maybe the job is to keep telling the story. Just keep telling the story.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love hearing you talk. It's a beautiful voice. No, really when you say hear, that was great. I suddenly heard. I hate nostalgia. I don't want people to be nostalgic about anything. I detest nostalgia. I detest weeping and crying at places, that's rubbish.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In which why African American soldiers and white British soldiers fought white GIs because the black men were allowed to drink in there Now, if you're an African American and you come to Bristol looking for that as a place of pilgrimage, you aren't going to find it because they're not using the word cold stuff. That's the dangerous part of doing this”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“are still intact. See, that's the other thing I want to say too, because if we take statues down and destroy them, and remember, human beings have been doing that forever. There will come a time, and I promise you, where let's say darkest Howell statues in that place where it should be anyway in Bristol. And you can tell a kid, oh, well, this slaver was there, and that kid will say, I don't believe you. I don't believe you. You had no evidence you showed me. You mean dark as a statue is never here? I don't believe it. We have to let people see everything. They have to see it. And that's what curating is called. Colston, the name, I did a program in Bristol about a pub called the Colston Arms that had a battle”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the churches around the burning. So that's why we brought him here. Every man in the neighborhood got to grab that gun. And they surrounded this house. And Martin was in their sleep. He was so tired. He didn't even know what was going on outside. The glass was still riding and looking. We woke him up around four o'clock and said, hey, we got to get out of here. They took him into Salmon, on into Montgomery. It's just left them out of here. Have so many pictures as they need to be seen by even the unborn generation that's coming along. We have nothing to show. I with participation in this movement. We needed something positive that you could see, walk in there and see. And you can almost feel it as you walk in the door”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From that day, I couldn't listen to his voice. So that motel is iconic for me, but I don't want it to be fetishized. Do you know what I mean? I don't want people to go there and make pilgrimages there because that's the opposite of what he was about. And in fact, actually, the civil rights movement was exactly the opposite of people trying to put things in stone. I mean, I'm really interested in curating as opposed to obfuscating and worshipping stuff. You know, you have to be constantly active about what these places are about. They can't be about I'm going to make a pilgrimage to Loren Motel. So what? You know, what are you going to do in your life? Because that's what the Lorraine Motel is about. Not about you being there, what you going to do after you leave the Lorraine Monument. And I think the civil rights monument should be active like that to ask.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it isn't at the time. In my generation, I suppose of the ruins of Detroit still existed, that would be iconic for me, where young people tried to burn it down. That would be iconic. And probably the Lorraine Motel balcony where Dr. King was assassinated. That's iconic for me. The bridge where the late John Lewis walked across for Civil Rise, for voting rights to Pettis Bridge, that's iconic for me. And those things are iconic for me. The Lorraine Hotel, particularly because I can remember exactly where I was when Dr. King was murdered. And it was the same time zone as Chicago. So I know exactly where I was. I could only listen to his voice. Two years ago.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, because Know things change quite rapidly. If you grew up in the 60s, there were huge arcs of change. I was thinking someone would talk about the lunch counters in the early 60s. But, you know, my generation rejected the lunch counters. That was actually what we were against. So these weren't places, we weren't, you know, our parents were to turn the other cheek generation. We weren't turning in the other cheek. So the lunch counters didn't have don't have, I mean, now if you're 50 years away from it, it does have an iconic thing. But at the time, that was the last thing we were interested in was a lunch counter. And so... I wouldn't say that there's anything that I think of Is a historic side of remembrance. But people, the further you away from things, the more iconic it becomes. It isn't at the time.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And I think unless we get into what I call deep archaeology, and I mean on a psychological basis too, where you find a story and you don't settle for that story, you go to the story that's underneath that story and the story that's underneath that story and the story that's underneath that story because the transatlantic slave trade was massively complicated endeavor, massively complicated endeavor, which used all kinds of hooks from tradition, not only in Europe, but in Africa, and used it to not only make money for people, but to fuel addiction, because this is about addiction as well, sugar and tobacco. Otherwise it wouldn't happen. It wouldn't have happened.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But less than you think. You know, I mean, that's my point. I mean, I think we make a big drama about the erasure. But literally You know, a peasant or a person who I mean using the word peasant as a person is opposed to nobility, they didn't even have a last name and they were white. So those of us who were enslaved were even more so. I mean, it wasn't, you know, people think there was an active erasure that erasure was a big active activity. She just didn't write it down. You know, I mean, My last name is the name of some guy from Ulster, and I have no idea what my last name really was. I don't even know where I'm from. I don't know any of those things. So it was, I think we shouldn't make a drama about erasure. We should make a drama about archaeology. I think we need to dig more. Just dig more.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do because it is very complex. I mean, it's a very deeply complicated story and it's a story of human beings at the end of the day.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you don't actually. Get into the kings and the queens thing, I'm more interested in the people, you know who were the people who built these things, who were the people who were in the cane fields, who were the people in the cotton fields, who were the people on the boat, who were the people. And that's where I am now, is trying to tell those stories”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Build ang or what? We don't know who built anything because they didn't write the history. And so, you know, my big thing is about younger people getting, you know, oh, I call Wakandasized, where it becomes this whole thing about kings and queens, well royalty is an oppressive system.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the question becomes what do you do with it? I mean, I I think there's a kind of fetishization, and we have to be very careful about legacy and about heritage, because people can fetishize it, and it then becomes useless. It becomes literally useless. History is a construct. It isn't a thing that exists outside of anything else. And as I say on my podcast, it's written by the winners. The losers do not write history. So there's one reason why we know so much about kings and queens, this and that, because they were the king and the queen. I mean, we don't know who built the Ashantaheni's compound. We don't know.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I want to know how I get there. And that's been something that I pursued for a good deal of my life, which is one reason I'm in museums. I want to know how I got there to the coast.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Caribbean for me, and I've never been there, but the Caribbean for me is like a sort of cauldron of genius, and I'm really, really interested in knowing more about all the languages of the Caribbean. So I want to say that to say that my investigation is how I got to the coast. Okay, it isn't so much. Enslavement”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I remember standing on the ramparts of Amina and looking down on the Atlantic shore, and there were black men there, and they were fishing. And I thought, well, who are they? Were they there when I was taken? And who brought me to Almina? How did it happen? And for one thing I felt The Ghanaians were saying, Oh, sister, you're going to cry and everything. Well, people were crying. Americans cry a lot. The other thing I felt when I looked over that rampart and grateful that Amina was there was that I felt very proud because somebody on that slave ship decided to stay alive. That's how we're here. Somebody on the plantations decided to stay alive. And that's who I'm dedicated to, the people who decided to stay alive and the people on the boat. Because to be on that boat, had to make that decision.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where is Almina? Sorry. Let me just do that. About three decades ago, I was teaching in Ghana and I went to Almina on the coast, the Atlantic coast, where Almina is a slave fortress that the Spanish owned, then the Dutch, the British. And I did a day trip down to the coast. First I went to Kumasi. And I want to say I was with a European. And the reason I wanted to say what he was is because I went to Kumasi with him to look at the Ashantiheni's palace, the ruins of it. And it was a very hot day. And he was absolutely uncomfortable. It was very red, and I wasn't uncomfortable. And then I suddenly realized Could white people have been up here anyway? So how did I get down to the coast? That's when I began my investigation of what the story is. And I went to Almina, and this was before it was very touristy.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do because this is Dave and I, we all had a chat before we came on. And as Dave is talking, I've been trying to talk to him in public for a long time because I want him to come to the British Museum where I do these conversations. And I want to pick it up here. David and I have both chosen the theater and the theater is chosen us. You thrive in a country not of your birth, and so do I. I went to Elmina. I have no idea where my ancestors come from, by the way. I have no clue. Might not know”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always, you know, I thought my father was too until I came home one day with my hair like this, and my father said, What happened to your head? Than that, it's always been my”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being a black person. And then the African American person, as Reverend Jackson, told us we should call ourselves. Been part of my life”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A couple of the guys he knew the priest who baptized us and ordinary white people, but not the white establishment. So I grew up very much aware on the south side of Chicago and I grew up at a time when the civil rights era was front and center was part of my life I desegregated a school. I was busy school when I was a kid. When I was a teenager, I worked with Fred Hampton, the Chicago Black Panther Party. And this has been my life. Know there's a lot of things I've seen, a lot of things that I've experienced. So I would say”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was a term used in those days for what we would call now people who were Very much embedded in blackness. My father had no time for white people except his son-in-law.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad was born in Mississippi, rural Mississippi, and grew up during the Depression. Was born in a town called Money, and that was where Emma Till was murdered in the 50s. My dad came from what was pretty much what you were called grandma racial segregation. The way that the poll test to be able to vote in Mississippi when my dad was grown, growing up was if you could read Mandarin Chinese, if you couldn't, you couldn't vote. My dad also served in the Army of the United States during World War II. He was here for D-Day, and the Army of the United States when World War II was racially segregated. So if you can imagine the United States fighting World War II and also fighting black men and black women, Americans at the same time. So my background is pretty much my dad called himself a race man.”
2022-03-09 · Intelligence Squared · Africa to the Americas: Sites of Slavery, Resistance and Civil Rights, with David Harewood and Bonnie Greer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source