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

“And I was conscious of the fact when I was writing that that's not the case and that there are experiences that are separate to and different and kind of in between that. But I very much felt that the conversations that we were having this year were very much about anti-Black racism and that is also my experience as a black person. So I felt kind of okay to just focus on this dynamic and those two races. You know, something that I'm trying not to lose sight of is that Whilst black people experience racism in a very specific way”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I've had a few discussions with Asian friends and writers I know. I mean, they've definitely, I would say, received it well. I think I was very careful when I was writing the essay that if you were to read the essay, you would perhaps think that there are two races, you know, there's black people and white people.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't think people would admit to watching these videos entertainment, but the way the flippancy with which they're shared, especially across social media, feels like the magnitude of what you're watching, which is a man being killed has been completely lost. And I think that's why I kept returning to that moment and remind people that George Floyd been killed was what sparked this whole new cycle because I really felt like that got lost a lot of the time, the conversations that followed the initiatives that followed and people were kind of like fluffing things up and making all these quite cute initiatives and I just wanted to remind people quite viscerally of what it was that had led to this situation and what, you know, not just George Floyd but the hundreds and thousands of black people that are being oppressed or killed or whatever all over the world.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Experiencing racism more generally and also experiencing things like the news cycle after Drift Foot was killed and seeing these images and videos, the effect that that has on a person. And I haven't even, as I write in the essay, I haven't watched the video of George Floyd being killed and I hope I never will have to. But I've seen screenshots of it and I've seen similar sorts of videos I think before I learn and taught myself that watching those videos is just never good for the psyche. I mean it's literally a snuff video. You're watching someone die. Like that's such a horrendous thing I don't really understand. They've kind of become this sort of like I think the word is like edutainment. Like it's it's become a weird”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wanted to keep something for myself, and I wanted to, you know, I didn't want to have to expose every kind of slight and aggression that I've experienced in my life. And I mean, in terms of, but yeah, I think this summer was hugely traumatizing for most black people that I know that I spoke to. I definitely know the conversations that I was having behind the scenes. A lot of people were really struggling to deal with it. I did definitely want to make clear more than anything the kind of psychological toll”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, again, I'm glad that you said that because that was so conscious on my mind when I was writing it. You know, there are a vast number of things that I could have talked about more graphic, more violent, more, I guess traumatic in terms of relaying experiences, but I was really adamant that I kind of wanted to practice a bit of restraint, just in the sense that I think it can kind of turn into like trauma porn. I think sometimes in the way we talk about the effects of racism In attempts to try and help or make white people fully understand what it's like to be on the receiving end of it, you're kind of expected to bleed on the page and to read just kind of spill your guts out. And I really felt like”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which wasn't too hard, was to really avoid doing that with this essay and to just be read, really blunt and plain speaking like a friend of mine who read it was like, gosh, this is really just like the WhatsApp chats that we have out in public and I really wanted to go for that effect. I really wanted to go for that kind of absolute I guess you might say brutal honesty I think just like full transparency and language I think in the type of language you use is just such an important part of that”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they're sensitive, because they, you know, as I said, I think there are a lot of things that white people aren't used to that happened this summer and have been happening over the past few years. But I think there is a huge kind of sensitivity and fragility on the part of white people when it comes to talking about racism and ways that they might have been complicit. Nobody wants to be called a racist. There is a very kind of obvious negative connotation of that foot, you know, the vast majority of the population. Nobody wants to admit to the fact that they lie anywhere on that spectrum. And I think racism is definitely a spectrum. So I think for so long, Black people have had to kind of dance around the subject and had to kind of couch their language in very sort of neutral terms or just had to really delicate in the way they speak about racism and about white people. And I think for me, the challenge for myself.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's quite attention grabbing, and it signals, I think, in a stranger, I think it does signal to black people and to people of colour that this essay is also for them and to them.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way that I think you know within black spaces and within the black community people do refer to white people as you know white so I think it was a little bit of a nod to that but also it was kind of deliberately anthropological and sort of collectivizing because I don't think white people are used to being spoken about in that way and I really kind of wanted to turn the tables and flip the tables in terms of how you know black people often experience being written about or spoken about as this kind of unhomogenous mass and just kind of yeah I just kind of wanted to flip that and kind of turn what I felt like was quite a common sort of trope on its head so I knew that it would be provocative and that I don't know I thought maybe some people might be offended by it I haven't really had apart from the kind of like usual trolling I haven't really had anyone who's openly offended by it but it's yeah I'm happy with it like in like you said I”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, definitely. So I, you know, when I was, I'd been working, like I said, I've been working on this essay for a while, like working on ideas. And so it had a working title, which I discarded wasn't as good. And it was essentially as I was about to send the pitch and the proposal for this essay to my publisher back in June, I guess it was back in June. I just kind of looked at the title I had and just decided I didn't really like it. I'd been kind of feeling a bit uncomfortable with it. And so I just, I needed like a new title to send it off to the publisher with and I basically just sat down at the notes that I'd made and a couple of pages that I'd written. I was thinking, you know, what is this essay about? What is it about? What's about? And it was like, oh, white people, white people. And then whites just kind of popped out at me and it felt really fitting, partly because, you know, it was a little nod, like you said, to, you know, I think especially black people, I would say that, you know, whites is a slightly tongue-in-cheek.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously realizing that it would be read by people of all races. You know, I had a bit of internal battle when I was sitting down to write it because I definitely didn't want to write a book about racism and whiteness and the black experience that was aimed solely at white people. I do think there are a lot of books out there that do that and there's a lot of writing that does that and it's just not something that I wanted to do. Like I really wanted to make sure that other black people would read this essay and that they would find they would take something away from it. I didn't want it to just be for white people. But also at the same time I knew that you know thanks to the title and thanks to various other factors and thanks to a certain kind of platform I have I knew that white people would be reading this essay. So I definitely had to write it with those kind of two audiences in mind.”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something about race and racism and whiteness for a while but it just suddenly felt like now was the time to do it. In terms of who it's for because I think that's a question that I've been asked a lot and it's one that you just asked is I mean I really”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, so White's is a short essay that I wrote this summer, kind of in sort of like July, August of this year, partially in response to George Floyd's murder and subsequent protests that came in the wake of that and also a kind of scrutiny of institutional racism that happened all over the world and in all sorts of different industries. So it was partially a response to that, but it was also the kind of the topics that I cover in whites and the topics I address are things that I'd been thinking about and had been working on these ideas for a number of years now, but it just so happened that George Floyd had been killed and the conversations that that sparked and the responses that that incident sparked, particularly from white people, suddenly made me sort of feel like I wanted to put those ideas out now and I suddenly felt like a greater sense of urgency. So I'd been planning on writing”
2020-12-29 · Intelligence Squared · Otegha Uwagba and Mariel Richards on Navigating Whiteness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source