YouSaid · the spoken record

Olivette Otele

lines on the record: 57
first: 2021-10-22
most recent: 2021-10-22
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

“I am very hopeful you know what I've always been always been I'm hopeful, but I also acknowledged it kind of racial justice, equality and the coming together might not happen in my lifetime, and that's okay. My job is to build something from which some people can step and move on, but I'm convinced that at some point somehow it will happen”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just like African American there's a story of migration journey Struggle in Countess Resilience or not? They have a lot in common, but it's menly people moving across Europe and travelling that this is something that unite them at some point.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is in Europe, actually, because what's happening is that at the European level, European countries have decided that they would not be reparations. And they decided that the debate started really picked up after slavery was declared a crime against humanity after the conference of the Durban conference in 2001. So there's a consensus between Europeans that it would not pay for reparations. It's an ongoing fight. But the debate is very much there, very much there, debated at the European level, European Commission, and through grassroots organization. And of course in academia.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh no, don't ask me. Every time I was writing about every single one of them, I was completely focused and passionate about them, and in fact so much so that some of the characters I had to cut down the word count. Because I was going too much deeper into these characters. So I really can't choose”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, people see me as being biased, you know, a black woman actually started long before when I was doing my PhD people saying, oh, you're going to talk about black people. It can't be balanced and it continues during my vibet because in France the Viver are very public. They last long and you have all sorts of questions. So it became a battleground of ideology during my viver, which was not pleasant. So I'm supposedly I won't be I won't be balanced and I will be biased, which is interesting because that is never told about Europeans, white Europeans doing the history of Europe.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, there's no evidence, but it's not unusual. I mean, Elizabeth I, we remember, we know that she wrote to the Mayor of London asking him to get the city rid of the city of those moors, as he called them. So there were black presents already there. And so he probably did encounter black person.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Its African presence in European settings, because I was funny enough I was talking to an Italian woman who says that Othello is taken from Italian settings because some of the first slave traders were Venetians and those Venetians had all sort of people. So the character of Othello has been taken from Venice, from not just Venice, but from Italian plays and transformed by Shakespeare. This is the story as the story goes. So yes”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would recommend, and this is a fascinating place to start with, is the Library of Timbuksu, the oldest one of the oldest library in the world Start there”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course it is. My problem with that is that it's the only story that has been taught. So we don't talk about slavery and we don't talk about the compensation money. And we just talk about that short period. And that is a problem because it doesn't give us a fuller picture of what it was about.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just not even a balance. There's nothing to be balanced about. I think it's just telling the story as it goes along. This happens and then that resulted in this and that resulted in this. The idea, the constant desire to put the spotlight on one or the other is why we have that debate at the moment. It's a good desire to try and justify one over the other. It's just telling it as it was. And as I said, I'm in favor of full disclosure. This is the only way to move forward”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because for me, the statue is a debate, but the stark inequality created by somebody like Colson when he paid for the transportation of mainly children in the Caribbean on the other side of the ocean created stark inequality in the city. And I would like those inequalities and those legacies of the past to be addressed, really.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people tend to look at Colson's statue as an example of what's happening elsewhere. Colson statue came after a debate that had been lasting for two decades about the place of Colston in the city. He was a child of the city through monuments, but he was not a child of the city. In fact, he left the city long for a long time, and his statue was erected long nearly a century after he was born. So it's a history of prioritizing certain narrative. Was I happy? I was surprised, definitely surprised. I wasn't like, yeah, he's fallen down. I kept thinking, what do we do with the artifact? How do we use it to teach? And how are we going to do? Are we going to live and let him on the ocean, on the river, and then become a monument underwater monument that could be interesting? I was thinking about that rather than.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I have a very good idea of kingdoms because I work on a long history, but I don't necessarily have all the details if you tell me if you ask me to tell you the whole story of the kingdom of Oyo, I can't do that. I can tell you about certain kings who interacted with Europeans, so that this is where my knowledge is lacking current or contemporary history, I read a lot about it because I'm fascinated by it, so I know fair amount, but it's the ancient history that I'm missing the most.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very hard to answer that because it's a balance sheet. I don't see it as good or bad. I just see it as it was. We could say they were a force for good if we look at the results now, but actually you look at the long history of all religion, you will see that there were moments where there were collaborations between different groups. You know, I told you about Frederick II, who was a Christian, but who welcomed the Turks and the Arabs and the Jews. So it really, and same for the Mamluks in Egypt who welcome various people, not always, but sometimes so I can't say if it's a force for good or bad. I just see not religion but people as being capable of both really.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's particularly hard when it comes to Spain and Portugal because the conversation is not taking place and the conversation might be taking place now by that history where in the nineteenth century for example Lisbon roughly eighty percent of the population was of African descent That's a lot but this is something that Spain Portugal rather is not very keen to share and yet scholars have found that so some countries wear harder than others That's why I didn't particularly focus on those and I focus on communities now and one Latino in the fifteenth century It's another story to tell maybe in another book.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always see I don't see history as just being learnt into books through books. History can be learned in so many things I was talking recently to somebody and I was saying that you know you can teach history through food, through cloth, through cultural material culture, through sports, through of course migration, but also through geography through maps. So there are many ways to reach people. It's just a case of finding which ones they were more interested in. But a multi-dimensional approach is I think it's advisable.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we have a tendency to see, to think that history is linear, you fight, you win, things go well or don't. But actually history is back and forth, it's going backwards, it's resistance from the side of the racist as well. It's the backlash that you see now as well as much as the Black Lives Matter. So this is also the way a collective memory is built. It's built on fight and struggle and disagreement. But ultimately what I hope is that we will find compromises in the way we teach history and the way and not just tolerance because I think this is our earth all of us. So it's just learning to live without differences. I know it sounds quite common to say that, but it's the hardest thing it seems and it has been for centuries.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now decolonizing has always been there it's called decolonizing now but decolonizing is basically introducing these stories into what is seen as those stories that are seen as canon, those books that are seen as canon. It's about dismantling a narrative by showing how it's based on erasure and oppression but it's also about introducing new stories so decolonizing is called that now but in between the wars we're already doing that.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“women in twenty first century am allowed I have the opportunity to share this story that somebody in the eighteenth century in my position would never have had that opportunity so there's a desire it's ideological to select and that's how history works a selection of what is deemed relevant to the people at the time which means that the story of victimhood the story of fame are discarded it's a story of victory isn't it so there is indeed a question of shame but that shame is often translated into other delusion of grandeur nostalgia of a past that never existed or the idea that well it happened a long time ago so why are we talking about it now because everything's fine now isn't it so various ways to actually remove the past from our settings”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, there's this saying by I think it's well a Shorinka, but I don't want to misquote him, who says it's the victor who gets to write the history of the event. In other words, it's the one who won the economic war who gets to write the history, so it's not just enough to win the war, you have to write a narrative that presents you as the leader on all fronts, and it means selecting what you deem valuable for national unity, what you deem valuable for a sense of identity and nationhood, and therefore these stories are discarded constantly. It's only because of the migration movements, the power of these communities and all that, that there's a push, there has been a push for these stories to come out, of course through collaborations to come out and therefore to be shared as we know them now.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so there's this guy that is very well known Septimus Severus. Septimus Severus is Roman Emperor, and he wasn't ice. I mean, he was a conqueror, he was ruthless, he's the one who led the campaign to Britannia, he's the one who took over and died in York, and like most Roman emperors, he was horrible, and he was a particularly bad father because he allowed his son to kind of live a life of debauchery, but more importantly allowed his sons to come between his best friend and himself, in other words, his skills as a leader were not translated into the family realm. There's another one, the Duke of Medici, Lorenzo. He said to have been somebody who is pursuing women to the extreme, so in today's term he might have been seen, he may be seen as a sexual predator. So no, there are bad. People in there as well.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm an optimist, so I hope so. That's very much the project and the idea behind this book is to show that there's a long history of resistance and there is a very long history of collaboration. There's a long history of tolerance and there's a very long history of love. As much as there is a history of oppression, of course. So people have done it before, and if there are still communities that are still fighting alongside minority ethnic groups, it is because, you know, somewhere, somehow, some principles about the humanities are common humanities is have remained prevalent. And yes, the debate is polarized, but I also think that there's a political will to polarize the debate. I believe, I always believe that the history is political, so this is what's happening. Seeing that history allows perhaps”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I want people as well to understand that trauma shape identities but trauma that trauma is a vehicle for good. That trauma is the reason why you saw so many people under streets after George Floyd was killed. So, you know”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I want to talk, I wanted to talk about this because it's a reality. Mental health within the black community is something that is not necessarily talked a lot, but mental health, you know, the number of black men in particular that you found in mental institutions is huge, almost comparable as the number of people black men find in the prison for different reasons completely, but you know it is linked as the idea of trauma. But I also wanted to talk about it because it's not just dire. Let's remember that African Americans pain is what that prompted them into action. It is that pain of sense of urgency, the legacies of enslavement have prompted them into shaping their identity and in turning this into a tool to fight against oppression.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before I answer, I just wanted to clarify something Marianne Hersch talks about memory and trauma as intergenerational as what she called post memory. It's me then who transform this idea of post memory into generational, into racism being into generational because it is”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Barely present to the Narda's sister in the twentieth century who shaped the intellectual life in Paris between the walls to the younger generations of women powerful, incredibly inspiring women Afro feminists in France and women in Britain, black British women in Britain. So there are there they're not flamboyant, they do the work in the background, they support this edifice of black internationalism and black activism. They are the core of what this book is about.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I started to I wanted to write a book about women so I feel I felt incredibly frustrated I felt it was difficult for me to find for example black African Romans for example female African Romans I didn't find any but I did talk about for example the Queen of Sheba who lived in nowadays Yemen. I talked about women as symbolic as they were. I talked about women in medicine how they were perceived you know in the twelfth century how black women were examined as beast of burden and all sorts of things so it was very hard but I decided also to shift the narrative around because what I see as women contribution has been throughout and it's underlined it's behind this from Joseph Boulogne's mother”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he stuck in Germany he continues to work and found fell in love have lots of children suffer from bad health but towards the end even goes back to Cameroon where he realizes this is really not my country either so he comes back to Germany and he's determined to to foster what he sees as a community of people like him or people of African descent. He really is very much into collaborations and making the lives better for everyone. It's an extraordinary story, extraordinary man really.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This he is incredibly, incredibly resilient. The kindness of the man is immense, the ability to forgive as well is immense, and one of the episode that stuck with me was the fact that he is at some point welcoming the home of somebody who was an executioner in a camp and who's probably suffering from PTSD, and he just observed saying that, you know, Germany and Nazi Germany has done a number on all people, not just the Jews, but on those who were executioners. It doesn't mean that he excuses them, he's just saying as it is what he sees. After the war, life is not better simply because the Americans come, the Russian comes, and he's not seen as they consider him to be German, even though he's stateless, so they can't he can't immigrate in the States.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting about this is the fact that he nonetheless is convinced that there's more to life in this, so he's going to fight all his life to try and prove that he had no education, barely could barely read and write, but he's going to learn all this throughout his life, become start to work for. Okay, so after I'm forgetting stuff, so after the war During the war, he's in contact with other Africans because they all put to work in factories for the war effort in Germany. He doesn't connect with them because he doesn't speak any language and as a dual heritage they see him as a potentially a spy. The white population see him as an aberration. So eventually he'll find his way and educate through education through a strong belief that as I said there's more to life.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's nineteen forty. The war's coming, and Hitler has taken power controlling everything. So they decided that in order to work, you have to have membership, a labor membership, a specific labor membership. And Theodore can't apply. Well, he tried. He applies, but actually he's told that he's not successful in it. It's very clear. He's not successful because if I remember the quote correctly, your negroid features are too alien for our kind. So this is completely, it's not a shock, but it's terrifying for this child because he is German, he feels German, Germany is all he's known. So he lives with foster parents who are not particular who are horrible, basically, who make him work.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is very memorable it's a long history and we have a detailed account of his story because he put it in writing. So he was born in nineteen twenty five and died in twenty nineteen. And you have many Cameroonians staying in Germany stuck basically in Germany, not allowed to go back because if they go back we'll never set foot in Germany and Fiodu is born there and by the time he is born, while he becomes stateless, he becomes stateless because the German government decided that when he's about, I think ten or ten or twelve, the German state decided that the Jews will become nationals, German nationals, not German citizens, and those the children of those who are from the protectorate will become stateless. So he becomes stateless in his own country, and his father died his mother had died before, and he will spend his life in his siblings working for circus, working for television, playing savages in movies, in German movies. When he's fourteen.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is very well documented. It's one of the most interesting, well-documented periods because you have colleagues from the Caribbean, Caribbean scholars. I'm thinking about Professor Rennie Shepherd. She talks about not just her, but many others. She talks about the forms of resistance. No, there's open rebellion, the ones that we know, but resistance took many forms. From poisoning the master to dragging feet to do stuff, to taking refuge in the mountains as maroon communities, to simply using the current situation, for example, dual heritage women having children with a master but trying to negotiate the freedom of their children and their families on the side at the same time so many forms.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“started long before so it wasn't about oppression as such but it was about intellectual connections they acknowledged that there was something to do with the color of the skin and the place of birth that shaped identity and if necessary support was there it goes on then to the confraternities in Lisbon in the fifteenth century and it goes on slavery plantation and it goes on abolition it goes on so it's not at all a new phenomenon”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me definitely starts earlier, you know, one of the things that I find interesting is that we talk about black activism during the civil rights movement and then we talk about it now. But that story of black resistance has started so long before, resistant to enslavement, but even before that, you know, in 145 I believe, there was several African Europeans, Romans, Cornelius Fronto for one, was an educator and a rater. Who is the tutor to two emperors a Roman emperor's highly educated born in North Africa and who made a huge impression on European elite and education? And that man was at the center of a whole network of African Europeans based in Seville, Lisbon, and so on and so forth. So black internationalism”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“for those missionaries and so on and so forth. But what is interesting always for me is to bear in mind that slavery might have stopped but that subjugation continued even after colonization. We do know that independence did not necessarily lead to freedom, but that's a long history. It's a century later, but it hasn't stopped in many ways.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In slavery eighteen thirty three, you also have those who abolish the slave trade or those who campaigned for that going to Africa for what they called on a mission to try and convert those populations to Catholicism. But this is also the time when Britain, France and others were chasing rubber. So colonization was always about economic consideration, so chasing rubber meant acquiring territories. It meant fighting against each other to get hold of those territories. So in that context, people of African descent were not enslaved, but it was the time of forced labor. The difference is that populations were coerced into working for Europeans. Coercion took many forms. You know, it could be armed coercion, it could be, you know, your family is in danger, so you have to work.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, that interests me. It completely changes as well. So you see, you start with people of Africa who understand being transported across the ocean from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, reaching, of course, regions such as, well, what would be nowadays Pakistan and Sri Lanka or up north in the Middle East, Iran and places like that, as well as the Atlantic all this was happening at the same time. So you have this idea of chattel slavery people being transported to work in plantations and to have their descendants being slaves, meaning that chattel slavery basically means that their descendants would be slave forever. And then you have the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, but it didn't stop there. So as you have the abolition of the slave trade in 1807,”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For him to be reinstated in 2014, I believe, President Francois Hollande at the time reinstated him and there was a moving celebration of his music on the day of the commemoration of the abolition of slavehold and slavery in France, which is the tenth of May every year. So it was a very solemn ceremony, very moving, and it was very hard not to cry, because it's beautiful music.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out of prison he resumed his post as the director of the opera. The problem was that by that time the mentalities had changed France had reestablished slavery because it abolished it in seventeen ninety four, so reestablishing slavery and eventually Joseph died, but it didn't stop there the tragic part was that his story was forgotten and Napoleon made sure that his work was erased from all repertoire so his music was never played, never taught, but he was not forgotten people of Africa.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be. So you have the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans, his wife, who opened the door to him, and even the brother, the king's brother himself introduced Joseph to Freemasonry, so he is supposed to have been one of the first, if not the first Freemason, black Freemason in France. A lot of things happened to him he came to London, he enjoyed high society, but then the revolution arrived, and strangely enough, he decided that he needed to go to be on the side of the revolutionary. He was a nobleman, so he could have just enjoyed and move away. No, he wanted to be part of change because he saw that this was the way for people of African descent and dual heritage to have more rights. But it didn't go according to plan because he was in prison, and after when he came”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He is. Joseph Foulin was an exceptional character. He wasn't representative of most black people in that environment in the sense that he was of dual heritage. So he was born in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, and his father was a nobleman, and his mother was a Senegalese, so he was enslaved the mother was enslaved, and the father quite unusually took not just the child but also the mother and brought them to Paris, and he wanted his son to have the best education the realm could offer, so he had the means for that, so he became a master fencer, he became a musician, a very talented and recognized musician. He was educated and all doors were open to him, not just because he was wealthy, but he was incredibly talented, and of course as well a charmer, it appears.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he didn't start even during the civil right, he started long, long before centuries before. He just turned into different he had different faces and different laws were passed, but it is a long tradition.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is there to reassure the population. But the problem was that planters who would visit the country would bring with them their enslaved people and their enslaved people were servants. So they arrived at a ridiculous position where they had to leave them at ports and these black people were parked into warehouses which looked like camps or prisons. But planters were not happy because some of them, let's say, women, some of them were wet nurses, so there was a situation where they couldn't use their enslaved as they saw fit just to reassure the population in mainland France. Ultimately, I wanted to talk about this really because for me it was really important at the time we're talking about policing and black bodies and the death of George Floyd. I wanted to show that in Europe this is a long tradition of policing black bodies”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so in 1776 France decided that they needed to contain the flow of black bodies arriving in Europe, but France was one example it was really across Europe, the Netherlands, Denmark, and so on. So they needed to restrain because there were too many of them. Actually there weren't too many of them, but there was the perception than too many of them black bodies needed to stay in environments where they were made to work, not just polluted, that was the term used, pollutes European air and streets. So what happened is France set up the Police denoir. Which meant that black people had to register and ultimately it was about sending them when they could, sending them to the Caribbean. But these people, some of them were free men and women, so they were allowed to stay, but they had to register. So it's creating a category of humans.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But ultimately it was about the dehumanizing of people of African descent to make sure that people wouldn't see them too much as victims, but rather as tools, necessary tools for European hegemony. Even some planters had problems with that in terms of they knew that these people were people. But many of them argue that this is the price to pay for our well-being and our wealth and to be able to reach certain wealth, to have access to discoveries, to traveling and all sort of things. So there was a reason why this should be done.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were quite easily justified philosophers from Montesquieu, Voltaire, and many others simply stated that, you know, Africans African captives, Caribbean people were property, and as such there was a sanctity about property. Property was everything. So respect for property meant that you keep them where they are, which was they were goods and commodities that have been bought. In terms of their humanities, well, it wasn't really in question. For some people, they were not humane, they were part, you know, all justifications about scientific racism. They were not really human. They were not part of monogenic, monotaste. They didn't come from Adam and Eve for religious. For others they were just, you know, they came from a different branch of humanity.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As it used to be called, who were Europeans were called Creole, meaning native of the place just to make sure that they're not quite like us, meaning those born in mainland Europe and Britain. So identity played”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, this is really a crucial. That is why I'm studying that period as my main. Because it's a period of shift. It's a great period of enlightenment, reasoning and European kind of idea of self was really shaped by discovery and wealth. But in contrast, the subjugation of people of African descent participated in sedimenting the notion of identity, European identity, and what they saw as Africans, which is interesting because sometimes they would call these people Africans when actually they were Caribbean. They were born in Caribbean, some of them have never set foot in Africa, but they were called Africans. So a separation, a strong separation between who is European and who is not. Even people born in the Caribbean or in West India.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“an ugly outside hence the black hands in all sort of interpretation, but it was about the power of redemption for the sinner, the power to be both evil and good. So yes, things changed after that.”
2021-10-22 · Intelligence Squared · The Untold Story of African Europeans, with Olivette Otele · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source