YouSaid · the spoken record

Otegha Uwagba

lines on the record: 64
first: 2020-12-29
most recent: 2020-12-29
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

“My measure of whether or not this essay is a success is what black people have to say about it. But I mean, on the whole, I don't know, not yet, but it's also only been out for a week, so I think I'm, you know, in like a month or two, I'm curious to see how I can evaluate it. But I think so far people are just being broadly positive, which is obviously nice as an author, but I haven't had a huge amount of challenge to it yet, which, you know, I completely welcome because that's kind of part of why you write something like this.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess found it quite cynical or found it. I don't know, it just didn't seem to like it. And that was, you know, I'm still kind of like working through that and it was a surprise because I was like, well, if I was expecting pushback, I was expecting it from, if there was going to be pushback, I would have thought it'd be white, you know, white people who feel affronted or kind of fragile about it. Know and I'm interpreting feedback from black and white people very differently for obvious reasons. I think for me my kind of like”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been surprised by any feedback. Haven't been surprised by feedback from white people, if I'm honest, because I think they're kind of responding in much the way that I expected them to, or certainly the white people that I Come in contact with, which is just kind of acceptance of it. If I'm honest, I wasn't expecting that much pushback from white people, not the kind of progressive liberal want to be on the right side of history, white people. So in that sense, not surprised. I've had one or two black person who I won't name who Just seem to not agree with or like the essay at all.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just feel like everyone will go through it and then we'll all come out the other side of it and it's just going to be fine.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just getting out of control in terms of how we engage with people that we disagree with. I think there's a difference between those kind of really ugly cancellations and a difference between those really ugly pylons and a lot of people disagreeing with you. Those are two different things. And I think they're being slightly conflated. So I'm not over. And also in the future, like all of us are going to be cancelled for 15 minutes. I'm convinced I'm waiting for my time to come. So mark my words. I really...”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It feels like slight, it's just like democracy, I think, happening. You have every right to put out your point of view. You have the right to free speech. And other people have the right to respond to it in the way they see fit. Yeah, I mean, in a kind of political sense, that's how I feel about it. I do think kind of social media pylons is something that...”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of cancel culture, I mean, I think it's a term that's often bandied around by more kind of right-wing or conservative commentators who aren't used to having their viewpoints challenged. So, you know, black women online have been cancelled forever. Like, you know, we have always had to deal with a certain level of pushback or in some cases abuse. But I think what is now happening is that certain kind of establishment figures are facing challenges to viewpoints that they put out there in ways that they're not used to. They're kind of used to kind of laying down the law. And when people push back and when they often face consequences for it, they're like, I'm being cancelled, I'm being censored. I'm sure it's unpleasant, but it's also there is”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gosh, that's interesting. I think it's a bit overblown in the sense that when people say cancel culture, I think what they're referring to is social media pylons, which are horrendous, and I've seen so many of them, especially this year, even before George Floyd was killed, but like after the pandemic had started when everybody was trapped at home on their phones, I saw so many just completely wild, vicious social media pylons. And it's really scary to witness. I think there were a couple where I had nothing to do with me, but I just temporarily left the internet because I was just like, oh, this is so ugly to watch. Like, I don't even want to be on the website where this is happening.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Offhand racer's comment or a microaggression in the workplace from someone who maybe doesn't realise that you are Know black or of black heritage and not feel incredibly triggered by that. So I think if white applies to you, you will know, I think, on reading it. And it's not my place to kind of police the boundaries of that at all.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Partly about how individual people self-define, but it's also about to what extent their experience is affected by their appearance, but also you know there's also the fact that you might be, you know, mixed race and like very, very, very light-skinned to the point of being white person, but that doesn't mean that you won't hear.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just basically don't want to try and speak to an experience that is not mine. But in terms of mixed-race people and biracial people being included within that essay, definitely they were. I think there is also an understanding for me. And if the essay had been longer, if it was a full book, maybe I'd have gotten into the nuances of how different black people experience racism depending on their skin tone because colourism is obviously like a very real thing. I write about colourism in some depth in the next book I'm working on, but I think it would be... I think it would be remiss to claim that mixed race people kind of somehow escape racism because they absolutely don't. And I think a lot of mixed race people, you know, that is their core identity is one of blackness. So I think it's really about”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um yeah I was definitely I think there are degrees to which you'll suffer some sorts of anti black racism depending on whether you are my skin colour or your skin colour or you know anything in between But I, you know, I can't speak to the mixed race experience and I wouldn't want to, but Mixed race people also suffer racism and in many circumstances are racialized as black and I wouldn't”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About several, like more than two, then I will use probably POC. It's not ideal, but I think also it's just kind of, it is what it is. I certainly don't have a better alternative.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fingers taking off in the US, they're not ideal, but I also don't get to head up about it from being honest. Sometimes it really is just a handy catch-suppall to talk about, you know, I don't even like saying non-white because it then kind of places white as the default and everyone else is, yeah, exactly. But sometimes it is a handy way of saying people who are not white and you can't necessarily list out all those different ethnicities and you know there is something to be said that there is like a kind of shared experience under that umbrella so I certainly don't have a better term. What I do try for is specificity. So I don't say BAME or POC when I mean black or when I mean Asian or when I mean Latina. Like I do try to be specific about the kind of ethnicity that I'm talking about if I'm talking about a single ethnicity. But if I'm talking”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think the conversation about those two terms has been had. I tend to use POC or people of colour more than I do bame. I mean, I think most of us understand by now that those terms are inadequate because they erase the differences between different experiences that people of colour might have. Bame could mean anything from black to Asian to Hispanic to and then the same thing in the US now there's like a phrase B-I-P-O-C which”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of black culture, you know, and different diasporas, and also I think we can really learn from each other. Like I think in terms of the way that I think black Americans mobilize and their activism and how they campaign. Like I think I've learned so much from following for instance black American writers and activists and I hope that there is a bit of a kind of reverse of that as well. So for me like without wanting to sound Pollyanna, I'm just a bit like can we all just get along because there is like a much bigger problem which is kind of race. That in that situation, there really doesn't need to be infighting over, I don't know, really kind of small perceived differences.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just find it really quite sad. I don't know what else to say. And I do feel without, you know, I'm sure this has like a global audience, but it does sometimes feel like it's kind of a slight animalcy that comes from black Americans, Black British people. And without wanting to sound Pollyanna-ish, I'm like, we have way more in common than whatever kind of divides or sets us apart. And I don't think there is a competition. I mean, that it doesn't define, you know, Black British and Black American relationships, relations by any means, but I guess with that I would just Remember You know, to most white people, like we're just black, like we have way more in common, you know, we have common ancestry, common culture. I think there's so much fun and enjoyment to be had in sharing.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's such a good question. I think... If I'm being honest, I And I've experienced this firsthand without being so obvious. I've definitely interviewed black Americans as part of my journalism who seem to think that black British people kind of have a poorer understanding of race and racism and racial dynamics or an inferior understanding. I guess because of the factors I described earlier on in the interview where the kind of general associations of racism and the feeling is that black Americans have really borne the brunt of it. And I think there can sometimes be a bit of like a diaspora competition. We even get that sometimes when a black British actor is cast to play iconic America. We've had this with like Daniel Caloo being cast to play Fred Hampton in the new, there's like a new movie about his life and”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beautiful gowns. I don't have. I don't have much else to say. I don't know. But also, I refuse to put pen to paper to write about her. I don't have anything against her. I actually think, you know, it seems quite cool, but I refuse to be drawn into. What it possibly means that an American woman has married. I just, I refuse. So let's not even get into it.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“beyond race and it then becomes especially I'm sure you know working within media then becomes on a kind of like a category that that you're pigeonholed in so it's like there are certain people who only reach out to me for comment when there's like a racial snafu and that I find that like quite irritating so yeah I definitely think there was a sort of Was a reaction from white people that I didn't particularly appreciate.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In many cases, uninformed white people kind of looking to me for answers, people who might not have naturally come to my social media feeds and who might not like what I have to say. But again, I talk about a lot of things, you know, this is an essay that I've written about race and racism, a lot of my social media feeds are just kind of talking about random kind of culture and TV and books and whatever. You know, my first book was not about race. The book I'm publishing next year is not about race. I think there is a refusal to accept that black people contain multitudes. Are able and want to comment on things.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I noticed that special on Twitter I got a really marked uptick and also my inbox of kind of like trolling negative comments and you know suddenly in one month I got more than I'd had like in the preceding 12 months and I don't think that that is unrelated and you know I was just very very conscious that I was suddenly getting an influx of like”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, definitely because I was one of those people whose social media following screw notably during that period on my Twitter and on my Instagram. And I remember at first thinking, I nearly sort of locked my accounts because I was like, I really objected to this increase coming as a result of that, but also I was like, well, then I'm just going to have to filter through all these requests. And I was like, you're just going to create more kind of work and aggro for yourself. So I just kind of thought, okay, I'm just going to let this be. But then in the month after...”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was an anti race educator, so you've got like James Baldwin and Tony Morrison. And I'm just like, I do not think that that is the only lens through which we should be looking at and discussing their work. It just feels a little bit reductive. And that happens so much. So for me, the anti-racist reading list weren't something that I was a fan of. I mean, there's nothing wrong with white people reading these books, but I just felt like... What I can see and from what I can gather, they're a little bit of a distraction in terms of making white people kind of feel as if they've done something really substantial and they kind of give themselves a pat on the back for maybe reading a book or two and then their efforts kind of stop there. And that's kind of what I felt was happening.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I'm not an anti-racist educator. I am a writer who on this occasion happened to write about racism and just kind of left that. But there's this kind of slightly reductive and almost quite dehumanizing thing where if you're black, you are inherently, you know, an anti-racist educator. And at that time that this happened, I hadn't really written anything, I think, about race or racism. This essay has really been my first kind of foray into that. I just found it quite lazy to be honest and even in relation to kind of other books that were on these lists that were about racism, you know, there are some books that are written by black people and people of colour that are intended as kind of like, I guess, allyship handbooks, which is not really my cup of tea, but”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was like, do I tweet? Like, stop buying my book. Like, this is like complete madness. But it was because it was being added to these kind of anti-racism reading lists. But, you know, you know having read it and anyone who's read it or even just like reads the cover copy no it doesn't it's a book about careers it doesn't address or talk about race at all it just so happens to have been written by a black person and i just found it incredibly reductive that not just my book but generally black authors were suddenly being pigeonholed as inherently being anti-racist educators and i've even had that since whites has been published you know i was tagged in something on instagram the other day where somebody was like who are your favorite anti racist educators and somebody tagged me and i just responded saying hey you know i mentioned this in the essay it was like day one of it being out so i was like i'm going to give you some grace but i was like i mentioned this in the essence”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know, little black book also went. I remember texting my agent at the time. I was like, did you know the little black book has gone up the Amazon rankings as a result of this? And I was just like,”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take the kind of language of academia and psychotherapy and they kind of want to sound really clever in me. I saw this a lot happening on Twitter and they want to sound clever and they kind of come up with these like little theories or phrases and there was no kind of robust underpinning for them. And it's also just the kind of, you know, you know, people are discovering the word allyship for the first time and they're appending fatigue onto it. It just really I think social media really lends itself to allowing things to be distorted and I found that that phrase was like a perfect example of that.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So their inadequacy and their inadequacy in tackling racism and the ways they've been complicit, but I just thought there is actually no need to admit that publicly. And also I think and to kind of validate and treat it as a thing that needs to be discussed and addressed. I just think we should just park that. And also, as I said, I was being a bit flippant, but try being black. I think I found it astounding that people some people did not see the irony of that. Yeah, it was just a very interesting time for language. But also, I was like, who invented this phrase? I think it's one of those things where people...”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People I was like, try being black You're tired. Drive be me. I mean, I just think Allieship Fatigue is one of those things. I shouldn't laugh about it, but it is one of those things that I was privately laughing about with my black friends because I was like, this is absurd. This is completely insane. And I was just fervently hoping that it was a phrase that wouldn't take off. Like I considered addressing it in the essay, but I was like, if I put this in the essay, then it kind of enters it into the record and I don't want that to happen. Like I really want this phrase to just die. But the idea that white people, I mean, they probably did feel exhausted by having to constantly confront”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Essentially trending on Twitter and the kind of viral donation thing, and it ended up raising like tens of millions of dollars in funding. That's amazing, but there was this kind of performative side to social media where people were trying to shoehorn allyship and racism into their personal brands, into their visual brands, and also just kind of wanting to post and say something for the sake of being seen to say something. So yeah, I just found social media just a really difficult place to be during this summer, but I think that's probably the case of a lot of people.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Image of like black people or protest or, you know, because that's the nature of Instagram is that like nice images perform better. So it was really weird knowing that people were evaluating how their commitment to race to allyship was also going to perform aesthetically. And I found it incredibly jarring because there was, you know, and people even discuss these moments or sentiments or images as beautiful and I found it incredibly jarring because there is and was nothing beautiful, nothing redeeming, nothing aesthetic about what was happening. And it just felt like the absolute worst parts of social media because I am not, I don't think that social media is always a bad thing for activism. If you look at the role it's played in history, look at the Arab Spring or even look at this past summer, like I had never heard of the Minnesota Bail Fund until it began.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think something that really irked me, which I wrote about in the essay, is the fact that Everyone and a lot of white people and a lot of these companies, a lot of these corporates really felt the need to kind of beautify what was happening. So even in terms, even in the choice of images that people would use, Her signal, you know, sentiment on Instagram, for instance, I found that it'd be like influencers or brands and they'd pick like a really beautiful”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's interesting as well because a lot of those companies and certainly a lot of companies that I am aware of are creative companies and so they're in a way they are very well placed to aestheticize their allyship, which is what happened a lot this summer. And, you know, they already have the in-house design teams and, you know, art directors. So it's very easy for them to just whip up a good old. The graphics look great, but it's just that what they were actually saying was just completely without substance. And as you said, you know, there were so many companies, both, you know, there were companies like, you know, I think media companies I cannot think of a media company really that managed to escape some kind of like expose in terms of racial, but then also consumer brands.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I worked in advertising, and I know that because I had to deal with a lot of racism when I was working advertising and I didn't feel able to say Things then, so I think you're definitely right in the change in my own personal circumstances and the kind of freedom that I have has also allowed me to be far more vocal than I was, you know, a couple of years ago”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally, totally. And I come from a similar background. I also worked in massively white ad agencies, whereas now I'm self-employed for starters, so I really don't feel beholden to any corporation or company or anything like that. I have community in all sorts of directions with other black women working other black people working within media, which I didn't have five years ago. You know, there is Twitter, which God bless it, like for its sins is also really vital out there for me in terms of discussing race and overhearing almost other conversations. And I'm also, I guess, lucky enough that I now partially make my living from saying what I actually think about stuff. So it doesn't come with the same risk that I would never have been able or felt the confidence to say some of the things I say now.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think, but this was a lot bigger, and I think the conversations about race and race have moved on a lot in the past five to ten years. So again, things that I might not have been able to articulate five or ten years ago, I now can, things that I felt uncomfortable about but didn't really understand why, didn't realize were racialized situations I now can. So I think it's almost even for me, it's like a better understanding of a situation, a better understanding of where I lie in it that is also kind of allowing me to have these conversations more honestly. But yeah, there is also just more of a, I guess, a willingness on my part to do that and to be a little bit more blunt in how I express myself. And yeah, possibly a bit more kind of...”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More urgent and also, I mean, you and I both older now than we, you know, that was ten years ago. I think the sorts of things that you're willing to say in the sorts of like... Lines in the sand you're willing to draw at this age are probably slightly different to when you were in your late teens and early twenties or certainly that feels like the case for me so it's”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just like it's such a core part of my identity and influences every single aspect of how I navigate the world so you can't really sustain friendships or relationships or whatever with people who don't understand that and don't factor that in. So I would say what happened this summer was definitely a kind of push to have certain conversations and to think about certain things and to evaluate certain things that I was probably being a bit lazy about evaluating beforehand.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I ended up having to have a lot of very difficult conversations with a lot of white friends and I think those conversations and also just more generally Just thinking a lot about Know intracial relations also like professional I don't just mean like in terms of personal relationships I mean professional I think I suddenly realized I was forced to decide very quickly what I am and not willing to tolerate so it's definitely tricky to navigate and it's like I said it's something that's still an ongoing process but I just suddenly Know being black is such a”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, it's still an ongoing process, and I would say that. What happened this summer Definitely, I guess, accelerated it and made me think about it more carefully. I have gone to school and then university and often worked up until, you know, the more recently as my career was often in majority white environment. So naturally I do have a lot of white friends and a lot of white friends that I care very much for and then I also work in media, which is very white. So, you know, I have a lot of white friends, this basically is what I say. I think it's something that I'd maybe on a kind of subconscious level started to think about in recent years, like what it meant for our friendships that, you know, somebody's white and somebody's black and the difference in my experience of the world and whether or not we talked about that openly, which in a lot of cases we didn't. And after George Floyd was killed and everybody was talking about race and race.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In response to George Floyd's murder there was a lot of kind of like white British pearl clutching being like oh it's so awful over there and I had to be like let us not forget that you know the London riots were because a man was killed by a black man was killed by the police like there are incidents of police brutality constantly in the UK it's just that they obviously they often don't involve guns as well because our police officers don't generally tend to carry guns on a day-to-day basis so they don't kind of tend to escalate into the same kind of viral video and you know gun deaths as they do in the US but it still absolutely exists so I really felt like I wanted to clear up that misconception for any white person that might be reading I don't know that it's a misconception that needs to be cleared up for them majority of black British people or certainly not my friends”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had one photo that I'm allowed to use to describe racism. It would probably be an American image. And I think that seeps its way into the psyche. I mean, American culture is so kind of dominant globally anyway. And so that is how racism has become defined. And anything that doesn't match up to these really visceral, violent images, like, you know, a man being lynched or black people sitting at the back of a bus anything that doesn't match up to that feels less severe. But I've always thought and always felt that racism in the UK isn't less severe, it just manifests in a different way. I think it often manifests in a less kind of visually obvious way, but it's a really kind of seductive mentality. And I think a lot of mostly white people have fallen into that trap. And I saw a lot of that.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was just like, wow, the UK has done an amazing PR job because that is not the case at all, as we know. But then as I kind of look back on when I was thinking about that incident and thinking about what it meant for this essay, I realized it's because when we, and I mean the global we, talk about racism and talk about anti-Black racism, we tend to think of the states, we tend to think of the Jim Crow era, we tend to think of slavery, even though slavery is as British as it is American, but because of the kind of geographic and the actual practicalities of it, people tend to associate slavery with the US and the Deep South, and we tend to think of a civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s and 70s, and we also tend to think of all the images that have emerged from that period. And even now, that's... If somebody was to ask me”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His life, and it also then opened my eyes to the fact that he kind of thought that the UK was this kind of like, I wouldn't say that he thought it was a utopia, but he definitely thought it was better than the US and that he'd heard that it was better than the US.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. And you know, that incident, that was the first time I'd been to, I think it was. Yeah, it was the first time I'd been to the United States. So that was when I was 25. And it was so interesting. I remember just even at the time remembering it and kind of noting it down. It was so interesting to me that the way that this black man, you know, I was literally standing outside a subway station, this black guy kind of approaches me. He kind of wants to chat and then he is my accent realizes I'm British and the conversation just switches and he wants to talk about racism. And I just thought it was quite tragic in a way that that is the kind of primary way that two black people in the diaspora communicate. That was an instant shared bond was racism. Like I found that incredibly sad, but I also saw where he was coming from that he was a black American male living in New York. I think that's going to be in an ever-present factor in his”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting because when people hear white supremacy, they think of supremacists in the KKK and neo-Nazis, and that is one, I guess, iteration of it, you know, but it's also more the general system that every white person occupies. So even if you are not a member of the KKK, even if you're just kind of like average, nice white person walking down the street and going to your job, you are still benefiting from white supremacy, you're still benefiting from that system. But I think often people, white people get, for lack of better worse, quite triggered when they hear white supremacy because they're like, well, I'm not a white supremacist. I'm not a neo-Nazi. And it's like, no, but you are benefiting from a system in which people are ranked above every other race and especially black people.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I guess to kind of give a more technical definition of white supremacy or to separate out from individuals, it's about a system and the structure and it's about the kind of social and the economic and the political factors that have conspired over the years and the centuries to make it so that white people occupy a higher space within society and so that they have more money, more capital, more wealth, more respect, more power.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You also do suffer racism, you know. We all know what happened this year in terms of Donald Trump stoking hatred against Chinese people. And then you saw a spike in hate crimes. Black people are not the only people who suffer from racism, but I felt like I wanted to write about specifically that lens because that's what I know and that's what I'd experienced.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know non black people of color, Asian people, Arab people, Latina people, they also experience racism as well. And I didn't want it to feel like I was erasing that. And I know that I've had a couple of messages from people being like, I'm not black, but you know, I'm ex, you know, person of colour and I really related to what you were saying in this essay. I think that's something that I have been conscious. I didn't feel like it was my place really to write about that, but I would love to see someone who is, you know, Asian or another minority identity talk about what it's like to kind of occupy that space where on the one hand you, because of certain kind of cultural factors, because sometimes of proximity to whiteness or just kind of historical context, you don't necessarily suffer the same type of racism that black people do.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source