YouSaid · the spoken record

Layla Saad

lines on the record: 64
first: 2020-06-23
most recent: 2020-06-23
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

“Right. And what ways do we affirm Black Lives Don't matter? We affirm it when we don't take care of our mental health. We affirm it when we believe we have to keep fighting even at the detriment of our relationships and our peace and our joy, right? Like rest, laugh, dance, be free, right? That's our work to do. We can't wait for them to give it to us. We have to give it to ourselves”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We define who we are. So we live free now. We live joyful now, right? We live with peace now despite the fact that the outer society hasn't caught up to the fact that black lives matter. All black lives matter? Right? They haven't yet caught up. They will catch up, but we have to live it as a video. Our truth”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I lost a few friendships, right? Because I stated my views. I did that and we had this big moment now and now everyone knows Black Lives Matter. And can I just go back to the comfort? And so that's what I definitely don't want to see. So yes, this work has always been urgent, but be mindful of the way that you use your energy because we need you for the long haul and not just for the next few months. And then my hope and my Affirmation for black people, Indigenous people, people of color, brown people is for us to do our work, which is healing from internalized oppression and internalized anti-Blackness, and really living our life now with the understanding that we still live in a racist society, but that we affirm that they don't define who we are, we define who we are.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going from apathy to urgency and then back to apathy again. Because the apathy that comes after burning yourself out is actually so much more dangerous to me than the apathy that was before. Because now you feel like, but I bought the books, I marched, I protested, right?”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my hopes are for white people and people who have white privilege to really commit to this work for life and in fact not just for life but for multi generations going forward that it's not just about you it's also about who are the young people in your life that you need to educate as well and get them started on this journey I know that there's a you know we started talking at the beginning of this interview about like the book selling out and all of these things that are happening right now and the sense of urgency and I understand there is and there always has been urgency in this work right and we have always done this work from a sense of urgency as black people but at the same time you know it's not it's not a it's not a sprint right it's a marathon and what I don't want is people”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Question or reasonable comment and thinking that again that this is for them or that I need that, that I need that validation or I need to be seen and affirmed by the white gaze and the black gaze for me is what this is about. My own self-gaze even, not even a collective sort of black gaze, my own gaze of myself. Is my liberation work and saying, I know that you understand to believe that your gaze is the one that is life-giving, but actually it's taking my life away. And my gaze is what gives me life. And it's not necessary.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's so in these posts where I'm posting about my hair, that objectification where I'm like, oh, like you only see me as a way for you to learn about yourself. I'm posting about my hair as my self witnessing self-love journey. But for you this is how can I learn about myself as a white person or how can I kind of like there's kind of like the other side of the spectrum which is like the exotifying and the like overly like overly complimenting where it feels very intrusive and”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stereotypes, which are also white supremacy in action as well. So the gaslighting is really real. And so I'm really, this is a happy side effect for me. It wasn't the intention when I was writing the book that it would give language to black and brown people to be able to say this. This is like, oh, because I was like, you don't need to read this book. This book isn't for you. This book is for them, right? But it's actually been very helpful from what I have heard for black indigenous people of color to say, no, I need these words so that I can remember those things that happened to me and say, oh no, I wasn't over exaggerating. Or it's not just all in my head. It's not just me.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instances recall those memories and go, oh, that was actually white supremacy in XYZ ways. And now that I understand that, I cannot do that now in the future, or I can catch myself when I'm doing it and stop myself when I'm doing it. But when you see it as the norm, like isn't this how we're supposed to behave?”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For us so that we can say when we're on the receiving end of it, the reason why what you're doing right now feels crappy is because it's tone policing and tone policing is this idea that you get to dictate how I speak because you believe because you're white, you know what is the best way for me to express myself. Right? So when we name it, we get to chip away at it and shine a light on it and say no. This is a form of supremacy and I don't buy it, right? I'm not buying into it. But also empowering, I think, for white people and people who have white privilege to see it as well so that when they do it, now they are aware of it and when they do it and they've identified, oh I did this to Emma back in school, right? Journal it out, right? Like write it down. Remember these institutes.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The tone policing, the superiority. So they're not accustomed to seeing that. And I know many white people read it and they're like, oh, this isn't, first of all, this isn't this book isn't what I thought it was going to be, right? They don't realize it's actually, it's called me and white supremacy because it's going to get real personal. It's about you and your behaviors. And they don't realize that we know exactly how they're going to act or how they act because we're on the receiving end of it all the time. You know, I have used terms in those books, you know, none of which I invented. These are words that you can Google and you can find them everywhere. But the ability to name it, I think, is very important.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you see it, and one of the questions I have in the book is, what is your paraphrasing, but how do you feel when somebody says white people or when you have to say white people? And I often observe when I'm in conversations with white people and they have to say white people, but they are just like, there's a hesitation, or they'll say Caucasian, or they'll say anything else than to just say white people. And it's because they know how to say black person, you know, Asian person. They know how to say all of those things, but they don't see themselves as a race. And I think that's very intentional and baked into white supremacy. Because if you have to see yourself as white, then you also have to see what comes with whiteness, white history, not the one that you've been taught, but the real one. And you also have to see these tactics, so the white fragility.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know, I often say, I think any black person honestly could have written this book. They may not have been able to write it in the way that I have written it because I'm me. And so I wrote it in the way that I wrote it. But what I mean is nothing that I've said in there. The reason that you are like underlining everything is because you know exactly what I'm talking about because you have experienced all of those things. And I have yet to meet a black person who's read my book and said, no, I don't relate. I never experienced any of this. I don't know what any of this feels like. So these things exist. These dynamics exist. There is a playbook, right, of behaviors. And I think white people have been very equipped to talk about race, their own race, right? Not about us. I think they're very equipped in talking about us, but they're not equipped in talking about”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, because where many of us are, we have very white audiences. So you can kind of feel like I'm one black woman. This audience has just come because they want to learn all about blackness and black lives matter and anti-racism. And it's important to remember like, no, if you feel that way, then you will get devoured very, very quickly because whiteness is all consuming and just wants to take, take, take and doesn't know how to give. But it's like, no, I'm connected to other people who are walking this path too in their own way.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yourself who are doing this work exactly, like I said, where you stand with the calling that's coming through you to say what it is that you're here to say and I get such pleasure and joy and strength from seeing that because it's important to know that we're not alone and it's important to know that we are yes separated by distance physically but so connected in so many other ways and we need to see each other.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deleted the But I think what I'm going to do now is every time I post about my hair is post about your book right alongside it. You need to understand this.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“comment and i was like oh yeah okay she closed the comment completely understandably because i get very backhanded compliments i get demands for people to explain like what all of these things are and i get things like you know the”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Defying this idea that we have to be palatable or comfortable for other people to be around, willing to speak the truth, but also being vulnerable, you know, being courageous, opening our hearts up, being joyful, centering ourselves, really saying, my healing matters, that I'm not going to help you all heal while I'm struggling. That like collective for me is just so powerful and I'm so inspired by so many of the women. And I remember I got your book, which you so kindly send me. And I so I'm basically, because I'm, you know, starting locks, right? And I had decided I had to decide that any comments that I write about my lock journey, I have to close the comments because I saw that.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so important to have that kind of connection so that you don't feel like you're weird, right? So that you don't, so that you're not like, where is this coming from? Does this make sense to anybody else? There's such strength and healing in that because we need our voice, like the world needs our voices. It needs the very specific medicine that we have. It needs the very direct truth-telling that we have. And I'm seeing now, and I'm proud to belong to this global collective of black voices, often black women and black femes. Just like”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you think, well, they have everything, right? They have everything. Why are they acting in these self-destructive ways? Or why is that happening? And it's like because they're not happy.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Figure that I don't lose myself that when somebody tries to take me away from me, I'm like, you can't do that because I know who I am, you know, and so because I build myself and what I build on is not reputation, it's character. Right, reputation is what other people think about you, but character is what do I, when I go to sleep at night, like am I okay with me, you know?”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thank you. I think it's, you know, when I began, you know, being seen more as a public figure, one of the fears that I had was I know what happens when people build someone up and put them on a pedestal, there comes a point when they were like, why is she up there on that pedestal? Let's cut her down, right? That's what we do as human beings. We do that to one another. And so I resisted being in this work and being, you know, especially as an introvert, like being up seen and highlighted in that way because I'm like, oh, with the climb comes the fall and it's often a very nasty one. And especially in this time of like cancel culture and all of that, we forget that we're dealing with human beings and not that you can't cancel someone's humanity. So I had to decide and make some really important decisions on if I'm going to do this work and be as public.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, and I and for me, like it's really about as long as my family are proud of me. That's really all that matters. And that pride for them isn't about what I did, but it's about am I like an accurate representation of the people that they want to be in the world? That when they see me in the world, when my mom sees me, my dad, my husband, my children, that they say, yes, that's the woman that we know behind the scenes, that she's not a separate different person than she is with us, you know?”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Task is to walk it out, and I will support you and make sure that you're protected and make sure that you have everything you need to walk out this work, but it's this relationship and it keeps me humbled in it because as you know, right, we live in this Instagram influencer world, right, where people often get a lot of their feelings of self-worth from how many followers they have or who follows them or who they're connected to, etc. And that really is, I think, my religion really protects me from buying into that because this isn't this, that's not why I'm doing the work that I do. There's a very Great spiritual grounding that informs why I do the work that I do and how I do the work that I do.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a huge part of my identity. And I think that the thing about Islam is because it's not this thing that you do on the side. It's something that's part of your everyday lived life. So I can't, I don't see myself as separate from it or that it's something that I do on the side. And when it comes to doing the kind of work that I do, it's actually the reason why I do the work that I do, because Islam is very much about justice. It's very much about every all of humanity is the same. Nobody is superior or inferior to anybody else. It's very much about this saying, like, if you save one person, it's as if you saved the whole of humanity. And it keeps me centered in understanding this, like you didn't originate this work, right? This isn't just you being this genius, right? Who's originated this work? This is something that you're given.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's changing now, but we don't have those conversations around mental health. It's pull yourself together. What do you mean there's something wrong with you? You don't know what's wrong with you. And so I couldn't talk to my parents about it. I couldn't talk to really many people about it. And so I moved, I finished my degree and moved back here. And at the end of my degree, I did share that with my parents and they said, come back, rest, and figure out what you want to do next. And so my plan had been stay for a year, you know, heal and then come back to the UK and figure out my next steps and I just never went back. It just wasn't a place where I felt like I knew who I was. I just felt like, and I often describe the UK as my home that's not really my home, but is my home back.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So being a third culture kid and for definition for people, a third culture kid is a kid who's born and has grown up in a culture that is not the culture of their parents. So I was already that before I moved to this side of the world, and then I moved here and everyone here was a third culture kid. So now I was the norm. And then I moved to the UK and now I'm not the norm anymore. And it was very jarring and it was a time in my life as it is for many people where you're kind of trying to understand who you are, what you want. And so all of this is to say I struggled with anxiety and depression for two and a half years out of my three years at university. And we didn't have words for it back then. Like we didn't know mental health, depression, anxiety. I just thought I was fundamentally broken, that there was something just wrong with me. And one of the ways in which, and I think this is a function of white supremacy as well, is that in black culture,”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my gosh. Anyway, so we lived in Swindon for five years and then my dad got a job out here in the Middle East, was offered a job out here and my parents had been thinking for a time about moving to this side of the world. My only remaining grandparent at that time was my maternal grandmother, who's actually, she's the ancestor who comes to me in dreams a lot. She's the one I'm most like closely linked to. She was still alive at the time, but she'd moved from Tanzania to Oman to live with her daughters who were there, and for her they had better health care. She's getting older. She needed support. So my mom wanted to be on this side of the world to be closer to her, and they also were like, we want to live in a Muslim country. We want to live in a country where our faith is not the minority faith. But the plan was only kind of, let's just test it out.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, next door, and it was a semi detached, so there are only neighbors. So this thing that you remember, you're just like, oh, okay.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We only just talked about this the other day. They hated us. They never smiled at us. We would say hello, they would never say hello back. They wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't smile at us. And I really just thought it was a them thing, right? But my mom said, no, I'm pretty much sure that they thought your dad was in jail because he wasn't home a lot. They couldn't understand why we had, you know, this big home next to their big home, this nice car next to their big car, so they must have figured he was a drug dealer or a criminal, and that's how we got all this money. And so that's why they never interacted with us. We never found out their names.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Swindon and we lived in Swindon of all places. Sunny Swindon for five years and it was really funny. I was recalling because, you know, because I do this work, it's really taking my whole family on this journey of like remembering stuff that happened that we just wrote off and didn't realize it was racist. And so now my mom's like, Oh my god, like, I remember this, and I remember that. And so in Swindon, we lived in a very suburban area. And my parents had worked really hard to build a life for us. They'd come over from Africa, you know, my dad started as a cadet, worked his way up to captain, right? And is very well respected in his industry, but sacrifices were made so that he could build that life for us. So we had this beautiful home in this very suburban area, and our next door neighbors were white”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time that I got a sense of that I am connected to something because I don't see it in Wales. I'm going to predominantly white schools, Catholic schools, and I'm Muslim. So I'm going to mass every day. You know, I'm going to every week. We're doing grace every day at meals. I'm trying to explain to my parents that I'm a Christian and they were like, no, you're Muslim, right? They're trying to raise me, but it was interesting. It was an interesting upbringing. But I didn't, I was so used to being sort of in a Eurocentric culture that that was, I found that very jarring as well. It was very, very different. Now as a grown-up, I'm like, I really appreciate that community kind of, you know, way of being. But when I was young, I was like, this is too different to what I'm used to. Of course. Yeah, this is so tropical. It's so sunny.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A part of there I was pretty miserable there as well, even though, you know, for the first time actually, it was the first time that I got a sense of what it meant to be black and Muslim where you weren't the minority anymore. So, you know, I'd grown up in Wales with my mom. My dad worked at sea a lot, so we didn't, he would be away for like four months at a time, six months at a time, and then home. Yeah, so she pretty much, yeah, yeah, she pretty much, my mom pretty much was both parents most of the time. I had, I think, two or three uncles who lived in Wales, but that was it. That was our family. When we moved to Tanzania, we lived first with my grandmother and then in our own house, but suddenly I had like grandparents, aunts, cousins, you know, everybody. And it was the first”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so they met there, they married, they had me on their firstborn and my two younger brothers. And so I had a Welsh accent for the first, I think, at least, I think 10, maybe 11, 12 years of my life had a Welsh accent. And it's really funny when I hear like, you know, videos of myself or tapes of myself when I was younger because I was so Welsh, such a Welsh accent. But they met there, like I said, I was born there, went to school there, and then when I was around nine, my parents were like, should we move back to Africa? My mom, I think, wanted to be close to her parents and sort of be back on that side of the world. And so we moved to Tanzania, which is where my grandparents were. And we lived there for about a year and a half, but, you know, it just didn't, I think my parents had lived away from there for so long that they now no longer felt.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Culturally the same as me, but he grew up in Ireland and he's an Irish citizen. So my My parents are from East Africa, my dad is from Kenya, and my mom is from Zanzibar, and they have because of Arab colonization of the Middle East, they have Arabic roots as well. So they also have Omani roots. But my parents met in Wales where they had both traveled to study, which is really funny because in Africa their countries are right next to each other, but they actually met in Wales, in Cardiff of all places. And there were students together there.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, right. It's the same with my husband because I think when I say he's Irish, I think their first thought is he's white. And I'm like, no, he's not white. He's actually.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when times are like really hard in this work, that's something that really keeps me reminds me like, no, I know it's hard, but you come from black people You know, there's something that you have inherited in that that makes you write for this work, that makes your peers write for this work, that even though it's hard, even though you essentially put a target on your back in many, many ways, there are so many who have come before us who also had that target on their back as well, but they stood for truth and they spoke truth to power and they demanded better and that's what you come from.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“a better world and saying we can't have this world, that it doesn't work for all of us, and we keep, we hold that line and we say, no, this isn't enough. This doesn't include everybody. It has to include everybody. That is something that I have seen the world over as well.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And at the same time, I think the link of I was saying about culturally African cultures, even if you are the descendant of enslaved Africans, so much of that resiliency of enslaved Africans culture was kept underground and it's been passed down right through generation to generation. I think that's part of so much of our resiliency and our beauty and our strength. And I don't mean strength as in the stereotype of the strong, right? But that real depth of strength is something that you can't break. And I think that's why we still have, it's always black-led movements that are pushing people towards.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it's both those things. It's both those things. It's the bond of globally around the world being connected by the painful experience of anti-Blackness, that you can be in China or in Latin America or in America, in North America, or here. We all know, or in Africa, right? We all know what anti-Blackness is and how it manifests and what it feels like and it's painful and there's nowhere as a black person that you can really travel, especially if you are dark-skinned black person, right? So that added layer of colorism where you can really say, I'm not going to experience it here.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And because of the tie between black people all over the world throughout time, that this bond of our melanin and our Africanness, that you can talk to people from Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, you know, America, all black people living in very different cultures, and yet we get it. Like there's things that we don't even need to say to each other to know that's just how we are because we are black people. And so that bond for me is key because how do we create a world in which we want everyone to be free, but we're separate from each other. And that separateness, and this comes from that white supremacy and this capitalism, that it's all about the individual is what is killing us.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bring the kids over to us. We will support you. I couldn't do what I do without their support, right? And so I'm not just me carrying this work on my own, right? I'm not some sort of black savior, black mommy, magical negris, any of those things. I do not stand alone in this work. I stand with the blood ties of my family. I am who I am because of them, because of my parents, because of my ancestors, and because of”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a huge potter of who we are, and I have this conversation often with my friends who are black women as well, that we, for us as African people and people of the African diaspora, family and community is a key part of our culture. We're not, you know, like whiteness and sort of European culture is and Western culture is you're the individual, the lone ranger, you know, it's about like self-actualization and you're not connected kind of to anyone else, right? You grow up and you go out into the world and you're your own person and it's like no as I was saying to you before we hit record my kids are at my parents house now They're there every day. I mean when it's not when we're not in the pandemic they're there every weekend instead of every day But to help me because my parents want to support me in the work that I do and help make space for me they're like”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Board with this for me to live my humanity, being a good ancestry is I'm going to be it now and I'll wait for you all to catch up. But this is how it is now.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that dynamic of I have to sacrifice myself for white people so that white people will get it. I don't do that. And that's part of for me of spiritually honoring myself and honoring that I'm a whole human being, that I actually do have my humanity, you can't give it to me or take it away from me, and that good ancestorship means I have to be an example to other black women, black femes, and black people of you get to be in the world whole full within yourself, whether you choose to do anti-racism work or not, whether you choose to have these conversations or not. Be joyful. Have pleasure, have peace, have ease. And so that is what really drives me is let me be live my life and be how I want to be in the world that I'm working towards. I'm not going to wait for white people to get on.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will inherit the world that comes after you're gone, and what part did you play in building a world that really honors their humanity, right? And then this idea that We can actually change the world without buying into that dynamic.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right, right. And what did they do? And maybe they had it coming and etc, et cetera, right? Yes. And so that realization for me really early on was this is not sustainable because for all white people to then get on board with this, many black and brown people would have to either die or at least would have to martyr themselves in some way where they get to the end of their lives and they're just drained, right? In all those ways that we talked about. And so I had to, I was like, is this even worth it basically? You know, is this even, this doesn't seem worth it? But this idea of becoming a good ancestor was the bigger thing that said, no, this is worth it because you're living in this life now and the people who will come after you first of all my children and my grandchildren and descendants, you know, God willing.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so this idea of becoming a good ancestor and just the spiritual aspect of this work for me became this infinite well where I refill myself because I quickly realized, and this was very heartbreaking in the beginning, and it felt like I was in a nightmare. I realized very quickly the only way for, and it's just like we were saying about our books being selling out right now. The only way that mass numbers of white people will learn is if black and brown people are hurting or dying, right? It doesn't just come from I tell you this is, you know, I tell white people, you know, this is something that you should care about. Often they don't care about it unless black and brown people have been harmed or have been killed.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I was thinking about it, and we're not even talking about, I'm not even talking about having conversations with people who are like, yeah, I hate black people, right? I'm not even talking about those conversations. I'm talking about the conversations with people who are like, but I don't even see color. Right. My friends are black or whatever, right? Those conversations are destructive to us on multiple levels. And within the first few months of me starting this work, I almost burned out very, very quickly because I didn't, first of all, I didn't know how to take care of myself. I didn't know how to have really good boundaries and center myself. But I also was emptying”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very it's very it became very central to my work early on in my work because this work is very hard. As you know, having conversations with white people about racism is one of the most, it can be one of the most, first of all, physically, like just for your body, bodily destroying experiences, right, psychologically destructive, and then spiritually destructive, right? Mind, right? Like mentally destructive. Yeah. So overwhelmed.”
2020-06-23 · Intelligence Squared · We Need To Talk: Me and White Supremacy, with Layla Saad and Emma Dabiri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source