David Olusoga OBE: Change and history in the era of Black Lives Matter

David Olusoga MBE  0:35  
One of the ways of thinking about the past few months has to do very simple thought experiment.

 

Imagine yourself back in January 2020. And imagine your best case scenario. If you had thought about what was possible, what might be achieved in the coming 12 months when it comes to these issues of race, diversity, inclusion and fairness. Think about the best possible outcome you might imagine of what could happen in the following 12 months, then think about what happened. We've made incredible strides forward.

 

And we mustn't allow the manipulation and the pushback that's come largely from government and largely from journalists, in the past few months to distract us from how remarkable the past 14 months have been. If somebody had told me back in January 2020, that in the coming months, there would be weeks in which the majority of the books and the Sunday Times bestseller list would be booked on race, black history, and understanding the dynamics of race, I wouldn't have believed if somebody had told me back in the summer of 2020, that there will be 1000s of marches that involve millions of people, many of them young people, but not all of them, young people, all of them in the name of anti racism in country after country right across the world, I wouldn't have believed that.

 

I live in the city of Bristol. Somebody told me at the beginning of 2020 that the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston that it stood for 125 years in the centre of my hometown, that that statue will be toppled in the summer of 2020, I would not have believed all of these things have happened. And more is happening still. As I said, We must not allow what's happening in government, what's happening in the world of Whitehall to distract us from the fact that enormous changes, enormous strides are being made, because they're not taking place in government and government is not offering leadership. And people have stopped asking government for leadership on these issues. These changes are taking place within organisations, companies, corporations, charities, universities, what they are doing is they're having conversations that should have been had decades ago, conversations that have long been delayed.

 

They understand that this is a moment pregnant with possibilities, and they are seeking to create cultural change. Some of this is organic. Some of this is happening because workers because of groups of employees, often black employees, often young employees but not always are demanding these changes are confronting, management are demanding.

 

Cultural audits are demanding that corporations and companies and institutions and universities look at their own histories, look at their relationships with the histories of slavery and Empire, but also examine their cultures, examine their practices, examine their recruitment practice practices, examine their internal cultures. This is happening across the world. Young people, the millennial generation in particular, have a different relationship to history than their parents and radically different relationship to their grandparents.

 

They are no longer looking to history for comfort. They don't see history as a place to go to feel good about themselves to imagine themselves members of a exceptional nation and a magical community of people. They look to history for what it can do, which is tell us truths, often hard truths about where we've been, what we've done, and how we became the nation's and the peoples that we are today.

 

This is a profoundly different relationship with the past. We have edited out of our history, the parts that don't fit the function, we have imagined history performing. And there were multiple problems with that for a start. That's an incomplete and inaccurate version of the past. If we learn only about great men and their heroic actions, and not about other aspects of their careers, then we have a distorted view of who they are.

 

If we learn about Edward Colston, the slave trader in in Bristol but only learned him as a philanthropist and not as a slave trader, then our relationship with Him a debate about statues and icons and who should be celebrated and who should be memorialised is not one we are equipped to engage it. But one of the other complications It comes around in countries that select their history to make them feel good about themselves and exceptional in their place in the world, the world is that many of the histories that need to be removed that need to be excised and edited out of the histories that explain how our society took on the shapes and the forms that it did in terms of demographics.

 

14% of the UK population is currently defined as ethnic minority, be me, people of colour, whichever term you choose to use. The history is that we have not taught in this country for so many decades are the family histories of 14% of the population sheduled an estimated by some calculations to be getting on for 30% of the population by the middle decades of this century. We have a history that can't work for the nation that we are and that can't possibly work for the nation that we are going to become.

 

When historians are challenged on the phrase, structural racism, what we tend to say is that of course, race is structural, racist structural, because it was constructed, race was made. Race performed a function race. Without race, you could not have the Atlantic slave trade, and you could not have plantation slavery. Race was propagandised wasn't just invented. It wasn't just developed, it was propaganda.

 

The slave owning lobby of the 18th and early 19th century was the wealthiest lobby British political history had ever seen. They were able to buy the best writers and the cartoonists people like George cookshack, they were able to spread their ideas through our society for decades after decades. They were able, because they had huge political power to make these ideas the economic justifications for slavery, but also the racial black inferiority, justifications for slavery, part of normal, everyday political discussion and cultural discussion.

 

Even after the end of slavery in Britain, ideas about black inferiority were perpetuated as the empire expanded and also as our relationship with the United States expanded the most popular form of public entertainment. The ultimate mechanism for the spreading of ideas, popular culture in the 19th century was not musical that was minstrelsy, minstrelsy was the mute was the music of the theatres and the music of the streets. And it was an remained an incredibly sophisticated form of racial prejudice, it is racism literally made into an art form.

 

These ideas are deep within our society, because they were placed there. They were placed there by men who had been in their graves for centuries. But they remain. And it has fallen to our generations in the 21st century, to try to confront those ideas. And this, again, is why this is a generational shift. Because the young people who are leading this moment, they take almost as axiomatic something that never occurred to me when I was their age.

 

Their generational mission, in the ideas in the eyes of many of them is to weed racism out of our society, not to lessen racism, which I presume, thinking back I think was the highest ambition I might have held for myself and my generation when I was their age. They see it as their generational mission, to weed racism out of our society.

 

And they are committed to this. And these understandings, these tools, these ideas that the millions of people who have engaged with these debates on race and diversity inclusion, the hundreds of 1000s of people who bought books last summer, in under lockdown on race, diversity, black history, these ideas have burst into the popular consciousness, the idea that race is structural, that race is not racism is not just about individual action, individual prejudice, but it's a system that is structural in our society, in our culture, in the culture of our organisations and subconsciously in our mindset.

 

As society does not reflect the attitudes of the majority, the life chances of people of colour are not dictated by the opposition to prejudice. So the majority of people in our society being on racist has not worked. being actively anti racist. Is the only the only option that we have, because that is the entry price. That is the ticket price for the society that three quarters of us claim that we want to live.

David Olusoga MBE  9:49  
The other idea that is been landed in the minds of millions in the past 14 months is the idea of ally ship. And behind the idea of ally ship is the other concept that concept that it is not The role of people of colour alone to confront the idea of race to weed out the idea of race on our society, but this is a collective endeavour. It is not up to black people to challenge race, it is not up to women to put to, to challenge misogyny, these are collective endeavours, these ideas, the structural nature of racism, the concept of ally ship, the belief that we need to be actively anti racist.

 

These are the intellectual tools that were in the ether, but it become part of popular parlance, popular discussion in the past 14 months. But to apply them, we need to confront the realities of how history has shaped our societies and who we are. One of the most remarkable things about the past 14 months is that we have seen the normal methods by which black attempts for black justice are rebutted not work.

 

Normally, when these when these moments arise, we are told that Britain cannot compare itself to the United States that was attempted in the in the spring of 2020. It hasn't worked. We have told the black organisations and Marxist that's being attempted daily at the moment. It's not working. It's not convincing young people, that these organisations that these moves, that these desires for justice are illegitimate.

 

The normal strategies that dampen down the fire of these demands for justice are proving ineffective in this moment, whether they will continue to prove ineffective, time will tell. But this is a moment pregnant with possibilities. This is a moment when of intergenerational change, unlike anything I've ever experienced. But the change is coming. Not from government, but from corporations, organisations, universities, charities, which means it's in our hands.

Tim Campbell MBE  11:54  
David, thank you so very much for that incredibly poignant and powerful, profound conversation around the conversation around race and history. I suppose the multitude of questions that are coming through the chat, but I'm going to ask you personally, are you hopeful that we will learn from history at this time at this moment, but also wider and longer backfield that we will do things differently because of what you're seeing in Bristol and other places?

David Olusoga MBE  12:27  
I'm very hopeful. And as I said in the talk, I mean, we have to be hopeful if you shut off the the the background in of politics or the culture wars, of what comes out of Westminster and the right wing press, and actually listened to what the conversations happening within organisations, I think you have a very, very different image of what's happening.

 

It's a bit like that there was a very difficult thing we had to do under the years of Trump was Trump was in some ways a manifestation of how liberal America is getting. He was a backlash. And it was very hard to believe that it was two years too easy to be frightened by what was happening.

 

And we shouldn't be frightened. But in some ways, it was a backlash against positive change as is what's happening at the moment. The culture within organisations I think, is gives us enormous reasons to be hopeful. And as I said, the attitudes of this generation, in some ways, the demands of this generation for change the expectation, their ambition, as I said, it never occurred to me when I was their age, that race is something that could be ended. Now, I might be right and they might be wrong. But the fact that they axiomatically see it as almost a historical inevitability, I think is profound.

Tim Campbell MBE  13:36  
From that, then, are you also hopeful within your lifetime, given that the statues are falling and conversations are continuing that we will reach the Obama post racial conversation that many people are talked about? Or will it still be persuasive, pervasive, given that Dr. Samuel Morton created the science of it, and it's still going on today?

David Olusoga MBE  14:02  
I think you have to think in those terms of decades, you know, we've recently passed 6019, the, the 400 year since the planting of slavery in the United States, those ideas were being generated in the 17th. And second 17th century, they really, they really took hold in the, in the 18th century, this idea, these concepts, these stereotypes, took centuries to build, I fear they're going to take, I'd like to say decades, not centuries, to deconstruct, but believing that they can be deconstructed and also understanding that they are when idea I mean, that's one of the things I think that we've not been great at expressing in our society is that race didn't it wasn't born when the when the Earth cooled, it was invented.

 

The idea that something had a beginning and therefore might have an end is in itself quite a powerful idea. And many people I think in previous generations have never question the idea of where this stuff came from. And young people are. They're equipped with knowledge and books and resources that weren't there when I was growing up. But they're very aware of this is an idea in a way that I think is makes the monks and others unique.

 

But this is going to take this is going to take a long time, but it's going to take a lot less time. If we now accept as many millions of people do, that it is not just the work of people of colour to do this, but this is a shared endeavour.

Tim Campbell MBE  15:31  
As we're in the middle in the UK, we're in Pride Month, and celebrating within our community, the LGBTQ conversation, many have taken the negative words that were used to attack them and turn them into positives.

 

Do you feel that that is a strategy given that we are looking towards ending the conversation of race? That is a negative one?

David Olusoga MBE  15:55  
Well, I think the words are that they're very old, and each of them has their own history.

 

I think some of those words are absolutely redeemable but the history of black struggles has very often been about taking words and turning them and making them badges of pride. I mean, the word Negro was a word that in the 1920s in America was was taken as a as a badge of pride then the word Africa.

 

Malcolm X wrote about if somebody had called him in Africa, in the America, the 1940s, they will be looking for fight. And now, African American is a badge of pride. So this reclaiming of pejoratives and repurposing and recycling them as well, that I think is an absolute, a feature of the struggle of black people in the diaspora outside of Africa. However, I think some of these words are irredeemable.

 

But even more importantly, we need to get past labels, and we need to get past words, I think we need to think about the scale of this idea, and also the reality of the fact that it exists not just within our societies, but within ourselves. Only the most radical of libertarians, who who utterly ignore everything we know about neuroscience, genuinely believe that we are the conscious authors of every thought that passes through our minds, and that every interaction that we have with others, is shaped and controlled and captained by our conscious selves.

 

That is not how our minds work. Our minds are shaped and influenced by ideas and thoughts and stereotypes that we pick up without noticing it. Accepting this accepting that we all have biases, accepting that we all are shaped and influenced by ideas that we are not cognizant of. That's a very difficult IDX it's an uncomfortable idea.

 

I'd much rather believe every interaction I've ever had, is shaped by the better angels of my nature, and not by dark ideas that have seeped into my mind because of my upbringing. But it will be untrue, for me to convince myself that the better ideals of my conscious self have shaped every interaction in my life, they haven't.

 

And that's not true of anyone. And I think that that difficult, and it is uncomfortable, I think uncomfortable realisation that we have unconscious biases, I think is an enormous step that we need to need to take.

Tim Campbell MBE  18:14  
Thank you and noted from our chat, Simon, who's been a long friend of the conference, and we've done work with several times, notes to start to meditate that negative words use around sexuality or race will never be a positive for them. And that is a noted point with regards to any triggering from this conversation.

 

And I suppose Read on to the question from there from the audience, Natalie Sutherland, who's been with us all day. Thank you very much. She says, If it won't come from government, which organisations from the list that you mentioned, universities and others, do you admire in terms of their approach for change and what they are trying to do to make tomorrow different from what it was yesterday?

David Olusoga MBE  18:56  
Well, I think we're going to see more of this in the coming months because what's happening let's take the issue about reparations one of the most controversial and complicated issues that we have that's been understood for the most part for the past 3040 50 years as a governmental issue.

 

Is Britain going to apologise for slavery, is Germany? you're going to compensate the people of Namibia for the genocide committed against the hero and normal people. Those issues remain live those questions, those obligations, in my view, remain unfulfilled. However, there's another way of looking at reparations, which is organisations at the organisational level, can look at their and examined their connections to these histories.

 

And most importantly, understand that their financial DNA is interwoven into these histories and the extra extractive forms of capitalism that these histories were features of, and they are can and do, and are carrying out historical studies and then engaging in forms of restorative justice.

 

So there are a number of organisations at the moment, including Lloyd's of London, including several universities who were engaged In this process of carrying out an historical audit and in some sort of financial form of historical financial forensics, to look at where the money came from, with the aim of not just acknowledging it, but to move towards forms of restorative justice, if government cannot lead, then organisations at the corporate level at the institutional level, can and are taking the lead.

 

And I think that's one of the great energising aspects of this moment is that we don't need people in the in presidential palaces, to direct this. It's happening organically. It's happening of its own volition. And it's often taking place alongside those those important cultural changes and difficult conversations about inclusion and diversity.

 

What worries me is when it's seen as a case of either or what happened at Oriel College was the suggestion that the statue of Cecil vote should remain in place, because they were going to address their historic failures on diversity and inclusion. This is not a binary, this is not a choice. You don't do one or the other. You don't get off doing one by doing the other.

Tim Campbell MBE  21:17  
But that seems to be a typical strategy to make it a binary conversation where you're good or evil. And then you actually don't ever get to the heart of the conversations. I think we've got a room, metaphorically speaking full of some of the most influential leaders from some of the biggest organisations across the globe.

 

So we're recovering over 50 countries here today, David, and I'm sure many of them will be sitting as I am saying, What can we do within our organisations to further this conversation? Because we've had conversations about leadership, psychological safety, making sure that we champion talent, but what from a historical perspective and a moral perspective, I suppose what should they be doing or thinking about considering do with that power that they have?

David Olusoga MBE  22:06  
I think we need to make a shift change in what we mean by active anti racism. And this is a huge issue. This is a huge ask that is being it's being presented to us. We are talking about one of the most powerful and potent ideas ever invented an idea that is shaped the lives of billions of people an idea that still disfigures our society that is impoverished parts of the world and enriched other parts of the world, made individuals and corporations and companies and institutions, vastly wealthy of the huge human cost over centuries.

 

To confront it, we need a programme that comes within, within distance of the scale of the process of empire, slavery and the building of the race idea. So passivity, the idea of being unraced the idea of opening doors and change, just changing cultures. That's not active anti racism. I mean, you can be an active, an anti racist organisation in terms of your you've carried out cultural audits, you've looked at your practices, but you actually need to do much more to be active, you need to go out, you need to recognise that people's lives and people's life chances, people's expectations, people's own view of what is possible, are shaped by this idea that has been planted in our society for centuries.

 

And this involves proactivity this involves leaving your organisations this involves building partnerships, not just with universities, but in some cases. And you can see this in organisations, particularly in the United States, with schools. This involves locating the young people of colour at an early age from those disadvantaged parts of our cities, and building bridges with their schools and with their families and with themselves. When we talk about outreach, and the corporate world, I think we need to vastly and dramatically reimagine what it means.

Tim Campbell MBE  24:09  
We've got a question here from an audience member, Sarah, while she says, What is the practical difference between being unraced and being and supporting anti racism? What do individuals need to do to make sure they are on the clear side of being anti racist?

David Olusoga MBE  24:28  
Well, this is this is this can be a million scenarios. So just to speak, in the broadest terms. There has been a view that, that racism is about action. Racism is about in prejudice only about prejudice, prejudiced individuals acting in ways that are socially unacceptable. And of course, that is forms of racism.

 

Those forms of racism have had an influence upon my life, but in some ways, they're not the most damaging the most damaging are forms of racism that the perpetrator It is not fully aware of what is not fully cognisant of. And that demands a level of introspection that is deeply uncomfortable. Every now and then most of us if we're really honest, have caught ourselves, thinking about somebody else along a pathway, a synaptic pathway that has been worn smooth, not by us, but by the society we live in.

 

If all, if any of us are honest with ourselves, we have looked at somebody based on gender or sexuality, or race or social class, and thought things about them that are not about that individual, but about the groups that they that they represent. Now, normally, when we catch yourself doing that, we brushed the thought away, we bury it away, and we don't admit it publicly.

 

Being anti racist, is, is about doing anti racist work, which is fundamentally an interior monologue, it is about acknowledging those moments. And then it is about realising that those moments, the cumulative effect of those moments, millions of those moments, is what has led to the enormous disparities in wealth and opportunity and income and possibility between ethnic groups in our societies.

 

Now, it is much easier just to go to a place of defensiveness, it is much easier to go, but I've never done something I've never done some activity that rather than my subconscious, my my biases, have, without me realising it impacted on other people. It's not about us. That's the that's the big thing. If I, as I run a company, if I, as an employee, allow my subconscious misogyny that I picked up for my society, despite my conscious belief in feminism, to impact upon the career chances of somebody looking for a job or working in my company.

 

It's not about how uncomfortable I feel about it. It's about the damage, it's done to that woman's life. That's the sort of difficult mental leap that we need to go through. It's not about us. It's not about our comfort. It's about being true to ourselves. When we say as most of us do, we don't want to live in a society in which our fellow citizens have their life chances dictated by something as meaningless as skin colour.

Tim Campbell MBE  27:17  
And I suppose it's that connection between what we say and what we do is the hard bit and where the hard work is. You mentioned a number of different books that are obviously on the bestseller list in different categories. And one of the question here touches on one of those around white fragility.

 

And in now, in today's conversation, particularly in the education field, there is a interesting conversation about white privilege. Do you think these terms are useful? And do they encourage debate? Or do they shut it down and call people to go into corners, and scurry and hide.

David Olusoga MBE  27:53  
But I often annoyed people by my views on this, so forgive me, those who will disagree with me, I've never liked the phrase white privilege. I've got multiple problems with it. One is, it's actually quite an old phrase, it comes from the 1920s was first used in America. The other problem is, I think privilege has a different meaning in the United States than it has in Britain.

 

But I think most fundamentally, it's a phrase that is an elephant trap. If you were gonna design a phrase that can be easily manipulated and used by bad faith actors to apply it means something that it doesn't mean, you'd come up with something like white privilege.

 

Now, the reality of what it speaks to is entirely true. And I think most people if they're honest and rational, honest with themselves, or you could take them into a proper debate, but understand the most simple thing, which is if racism means it's a disadvantage, to be black, then being white is an advantage.

 

Now, this, this is axiomatic This is obvious. I don't think that term helps. And I also think the term using there is a phenomenon about of whiteness, but I'm not sure these ideas that come from critical studies are very helpful when they're put into the world of newspapers and, and television debates, many academic phrases are not very useful. But then you know, we have to your frustration has to be not with the people who have who have invented those phrases.

 

But with those bad faith actors were deliberately distorting them. But that is the world we live in. And I think we need narrative, not buzz phrases to discuss this.

Tim Campbell MBE  29:25  
Everything tries to be simplified into one word or a series of words, when actually is much more of a complex conversation.

 

And I think you mentioned in your opening address, which I really, really resonated with me, given the conversation around the me to movement, I had to acknowledge I had male privileges, which I'd never considered before. And that was uncomfortable, but it was a reality of what that may have done somebody else.

 

So that was a very, very good way of positioning you, I suppose, as we wind down towards the end of the conversation, and I wish we had infinitely longer, but our colleagues in Singapore and In the UK, I get towards the end of the day. So waking up in the morning, what gives you hope from history? What gives you hope from history that we will actually be better at our particular moments is situations and other things that you can see through some of the negativity and see a Ha, if we don't forget this, like many economists forget things in the past, if we really remember this, actually, that can be the springboard to create some interesting change for tomorrow.

David Olusoga MBE  30:27  
I think one of the useful things to remember is the counter to the argument we often hear, which is that these ideas are modern. And in the past, everyone felt differently. Everybody was comfortable with racism, everyone was comfortable with slavery, I think you can look at almost every face in history. And what you find is that there are people who think that these forms of dividing humanity up into into groups into hierarchies into chains of being that there are always people who rejected this, this history is full of tragedy, black British history, the history of black people in the new world.

 

It's full of tragedy, but it's also for the absolutely remarkable people that yesterday, I was in Newcastle and I was at the house in Newcastle at Frederick Douglass used to live in it briefly spent time in Newcastle his freedom from slavery with purchased by three Quaker family who lived in that house.

 

Douglas stayed in that house. And you know, I had five hours on the train rereading the narrative of Frederick Douglass and that humanity of Frederick Douglass, the anti racism of the of him and the people around him, that would is entirely in keeping with attitudes that we are repeatedly told our 21st century affectations that their weakness, or whatever cliches, this. This demand for justice is ancient.

Tim Campbell MBE  31:50  
David, thank you so very much. I really appreciate you joining us in the evening. I'm very jealous of your mood lighting behind but I'll get adjusted on that. Where can because you're always up to so many different things. What should people be expecting from you next? Where can we find out more information? What's in the pipeline for you?

David Olusoga MBE  32:10  
Well, we've just finished a film about the history of the National Health Service and immigration, everyone from Ireland, Irish nurses, to Caribbean nurses and Indian doctors and how the NHS has always been reliant on immigration, and how we've only really learned that and learn to appreciate that because of this terrible pandemic. And I have a new children's book coming out in the autumn.

Tim Campbell MBE  32:30  
Fantastic. Where are we getting that hit list and getting my children a copy of it. Thank you, David, for all of your time today and your amazing contribution, massive amounts of applause and good luck with all your future endeavours.