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by Awa Sow
Participants
Host: Awa Sow
Guests: Luke de Noronha, Tariq Brown, Fuad Busoir
Recording starts
Jingle 00:23
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Awa Sow 00:25
What drives you in life? What pushes you forward? Welcome, this is Diaspora Diaries, a podcast powered by Transmission Roundhouse. I'm your host Awa, and today's episode is a bit of a special one. I've decided to listen back to some unreleased conversations with three guests I've had on so far in season two. When I was about to launch season two, Tariq, who features in episode one on "Spoken Word and the Politics of Awareness," asked me...
Tariq Brown 00:55
Tell me a little bit more about what you want Diaspora Diaries... Where do you want this to go? What impact do you want it to have?
Awa Sow 01:04
To which I instinctively responded:
Awa Sow 01:06
I want Diaspora Diaries to just be a platform for any and everything that relates to the diaspora.
Awa Sow 01:13
What I actually meant by that is that diaspora diaries was meant as a way to hold space for the many sometimes paradoxical ways in which race, migration, language and place shape people's realities in the diaspora. And as in all that we do, this was largely shaped by my own, personal experience.
Awa Sow 01:32
I think there's so many things that I found out through like research and academia...
Awa Sow 01:38
But this was met with a particular frustration. This knowledge that had been so key to my shifting understandings of myself and the world I operate in, had only been available to me through my degrees in social sciences. And as I said back then...
Awa Sow 01:54
To me, everyone should know about it. So I think to me, diaspora diaries was that, like taking a step towards making a lot of the research in social sciences accessible. And most importantly, I wanted to link this research to people's experiences directly, look into how academic theories and concepts are lived, negotiated, resisted and reshaped in everyday life, and how people in the diaspora engage with this knowledge beyond university. In response, Tariq asked me...
Tariq Brown 02:24
Is there anything that stands out to you? Because you said some information you wish was maybe a little bit more accessible to people? What's what's like an example of something that you're like, "Oh, do you know what? When I read this, I was like, yeah, this. Why don't people this?"
Awa Sow 02:40
The main thing to me was how racism is often misunderstood.
Awa Sow 02:44
I think it frustrates me so much because myself, I didn't know until I actually had to go and read about it and study it to understand how far racism reaches and what racism really tries to achieve. You know, these cliches of like, oh, you're black, so you can't be racist. Or, like, so often I've said things where I was like, oh, this is not really okay. I don't think, I don't think that's appropriate, and then the person would tell me, oh, yeah, but another black person told me it's okay, so I can do it, you know, like, I think this I find so frustrating, because I'm like, what can I say?
Awa Sow 03:24
With frustration as my point of departure, with regards to both my own ignorance and later, the realization that our education systems were not about to tell us about racist structures, grew some kind of urge to talk about it more and more for people like me to learn about it.
Awa Sow 03:43
Talking about that, and making that a bit more accessible and discussed generally, I think is important. But then another thing to me is also how like racism is actually just another layer of discrimination that is necessary for capitalism. You need to justify why you can exploit someone, and so racism is basically the tool.
Awa Sow 04:08
Ultimately, what I felt like was essential for people to know about is...
Awa Sow 04:14
How racism operates and is a tool for like many other things.
Awa Sow 04:19
I love tariq's way of putting it:
Tariq Brown 04:21
It's interesting because that the final part of racism is the slur that comes out right? And people focus on the slur and think that's what it is. But there's so much layers to racism, the way that you're educated, the way that you perceive self, the way that you perceive white people, even the fact of like you don't sound like a black person. But when you're doing that, you can see the reverse engineering. And when I sat there and clocked it, I was like, Oh my gosh, I've been saying that someone who is educated, has money and works a corporate job, things that are like metrics of success, intelligence. I'm not associating that with being black. I'm saying that, are you taught you talk like me? Okay, what slang? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you want to stay in the ends, sure. And we don't see it, but that's because we've tried to create like a community and a belonging within the environments that we've been placed into. But I don't think even black people see the diversity that can exist in being black, because our perception of being black has come from Europe.
Awa Sow 05:32
And this was the catalyst for an extended conversation on what drives us in life.
Awa Sow 05:38
I feel like you have a capacity for the depth of information. Whereas some people, if they were to realize that racism has affected every point of their life, some people can feel hopeless. So it's like, how do you convert the ones that are feeling hopeless to a position of empowerment? Because I feel like that's where you're coming from, the more that you know, the more that you're aware, the more that you can change.
Awa Sow 06:05
And on a very personal level, knowing more also means having the tools to think about yourself in a different light.
Awa Sow 06:12
The more I learn, the more I can actually like know where to place myself and who to hang out with. That's why, to me, it's so important to know about it, because, because you can actually do something about it. I don't think we should be hopeless. I think there's a lot of hope, but I think you can only access that if you understand all the things that have been imposed on you.
Tariq Brown 06:35
Yeah, unlearning will give you a little bit more agency
Awa Sow 06:39
Although this process can feel a bit scary at times.
Tariq Brown 06:43
For the ones that are a bit fearful of knowing that they've been living their life like this, and then bang, you realize that a lot of the freedoms that you thought you were exercising, really it was placed upon you to exercise them this way, like you said. You thought that that was a everybody experience you realize that you've been living 10 years of your life, how heavily impacted by racism and the environment around you and the structures that have been placed upon you, that for what comes after that hopelessness is the ignorance is bliss part. It's like, okay, I know all of this, but I'm still gonna go this way, because it's too much for me to handle. How can we convert those people? Because it's usually those people that are swayed by right wing scapegoating what they see on the news. So I think it's important to focus on those people as well, and how we can understand their psychology and convert them over to a side of empowerment.
Awa Sow 07:44
Luke, who features in episode two on rethinking borders, said something quite similar when I asked him what drives him:
Luke de Noronha 07:51
I still think, even when things are really bad, that something about trying to work them out on your own and with other people makes makes them less bad.
Awa Sow 08:00
Talking from the perspective of an academic, he told me about the life of the mind...
Luke de Noronha 08:06
Starting to see how things are connected, starting to find a way to articulate things. The connection between them can prove a useful antidote to doom, because your brain is moving at least even if the world is sliding away from you in a way you don't like, and you either don't look at what's going on or try and explain it, you either just out for yourself kind of which, you know, I don't think is an unreasonable response to just think I'm going to focus on securing the means of my own life, my own security. Of course, you can engage in various kinds of political struggle, and I'm sure you're going to be speaking to people on the podcast who are thinking about what it means to struggle, but I guess it's most useful if my answer is focused on what you might get from broadly reading and writing. And for me, reading, thinking, listening, of course, as well as we live in a podcast, moment can help me try and make sense, and that's the first step to not kind of being at peace, but the first step to settling one's kind of existential being a little bit otherwise it's just, you know, there are moments when our ability to explain what's going on escape us, and it feels Like you can't get a foothold or any purchase on why things are happening. And I felt like that in the UK in recent months, when you have huge protests of people who are, you know, out on a ticket of the radical right, really scary. And you feel this, this coordination. So to try and think then about what is going on in the political culture, what might be the economic factors? What are some of the histories we need to explain? It helps me keep going, actually, and writing too. Sometimes, I think can be something that that really helps, because you don't know what you think until you've worked through a piece of writing about something or that you like playing with language in such a way that helps you take a more active position. In relation to the world around you, and that's, I think that's good for human beings in general, but an inquisitive, curious and reasoning kind of way of being in the world seems to me, the only way I know how to get through it. I think.
Awa Sow 10:18
Making sense. As my conversation with Tariq shows, this is how I and many others keep going. But if this inquisitive process is so important to our well being, why is it that academic research, especially that on racism, is barely accessible outside of university?
Luke de Noronha 10:39
I mean, I think the complaint should be about the kinds of universities we have primarily, right, about the kinds of ways in which they're gated, financialized, marketized, and closed to the public. They're not really public institutions. And that then explains a lot from that right, the kinds of learning that happen there, who's in the room, how knowledge is distributed. So I've still, you know, I write things well, I try and record and go on podcasts. I write things for a more public audience, and always have trauma in an accessible way, whatever that means for certain things. But then there are also questions, let's forget about the race and racialization bit for a second. Universities are supposed to be places where quite specific intellectual debates can happen. Now, if they're not closed and financialized and marketized, there's no reason, I don't think, why someone shouldn't discuss medieval poetry in a closed room. And it might be useful to have civil engineers, you know, work on experiments of different ways to build things. And it might be useful to have people think about quantum physics and other things. The problem is that so many of the institutions that those things feed into are ones we don't really like. Like if someone's going to use their chemical engineering degree to go and help increase profits for Shell or if someone's going to use their physics degree to help build new nuclear weapons, or if someone's going to use their sociology degree to go and work for KPMG, then that's fine. We're critical of those institutions. We're critical, therefore, of the universities that are supposed to supply them with skilled labor, and we're certainly critical of the governmental system and approach to higher education, which makes it expensive, exclusionary and closed off. But the idea that anyone who's doing intellectual work should always try and get it immediately out into the public realm. I think it's essentially short sighted. I think that we live in an environment which is quite noisy, quite a lot of people saying quite a lot of stuff, and it's not always easy to be heard. So the compulsion that someone like me who's thought about race and racism for a while should kind of ensure they have as much of a public profile output as possible. Can also lead to some kinds of academic practice which I don't really like, kind of ego, platforming oneself, being very concerned with self, branding and image and profile. Sometimes academics in the world I want to live in will be kind of a little bit slower and a little bit quieter, and maybe believe in the written word that takes a long time to get to, rather than always having a take and a think piece ready to go. It's really useful when people do that. But there's assumptions in the question sometimes which, if we let go of the real critical perspective on the kind of university, the kind of university, the kind of economy, the kind of labor market, and instead, think there's these people called academics who are in this position of relative privilege, which is true, who get to spend their time thinking and writing. What they should do is make sure all of that gets outside the university. Well, yeah, that's hard to disagree with, especially when we're teaching only a few people, and there's so many people who would love to know what we're doing. But on the other hand, there is a version of academic and intellectual life which is precisely valuable because it's slower, because it doesn't just respond to headlines, and because sometimes it's difficult actually and sometimes, while I think that education should be generalized and given to everyone who wants it as much as they want, they should be able to go to uni any time. To uni anytime, just quit your job and go back to university. Wouldn't that be great anyone and loads of people, would they just quit a boring job after 37 and just decide I'm going to go and do a degree in architecture just because I'm interested in architectural theory? Great. Good for you. But that doesn't happen. But then, if they do that degree in architectural theory, there will be things they can read by the end of that which you can't turn into a sound bite. You need to have done the work to understand them. Even people will listen to this podcast I was on. I gave a lecture, sorry, and it was live screening, so I sent it to my family, and my brother watched it, and he said, I didn't understand the word you were saying, but you look, you know, I thought you looked like you're articulating yourself. Well, fair enough. If I say neoliberal, he doesn't know what I'm talking about. That's fine, but I'm not going to stop saying neoliberal and explain it every time. Communication is selective, and so I suppose I agree with you. You know, liberate the university, bring it to the people. If that made sense in this moment, I'm all for it. Education should be free. More people should be able to go but there's a danger with the. That we should make our work always accessible to the greatest number of people that wouldn't make sense to say that to a climate scientist that they should explain their model to the people that they should be able to explain the algorithm that works out their climate model to the average person on the street, or to say that the computer scientist who's working on code for a new app which is actually going to help people I don't know communicate more easily in the context of crisis or something that he needs to be able to show the back end to everyone. There are selective ways of communication which are inherently exclusionary, and some probably even the way I'm speaking. We'll be doing that to people. But as long as I don't think I'm the only one with any authority, and I'm the only one who's interesting and my knowledge is authorized and superior, we do have to recognize that part of what universities are supposed to do, and what they should do if they're public and for everyone, is to kind of lift the level of that conversation. And in a context where we have, you know, the most powerful man in the world is spouting complete moronic nonsense, and where the internet is full of AI completely made up, rubbish, slop, then it does become important to hold on to some sense that overall, we want to increase the educational level of more people, and sometimes that will be difficult.
Awa Sow 16:11
What I found so insightful about Luke's perspective is shifting the focus of accessibility from how things are taught to who gets to learn, rather than being about how complex some of the research is, which is, as he reminds us, kind of unavoidable accessibility is about who gets the opportunity to actually learn about it. But one part of me still felt like something wasn't quite right. Out of all fields of research, I couldn't come to terms of the fact that race studies, which had had such a decisive impact on my understanding of self and the world around me as a racialized person, could not be accessible to the very people it centers. So Luke spoke about interventions, thinking about research not just as something to be understood, but as something that can and in some cases should actually be mobilized to meet more immediate needs, suggesting alternative frames of reference, or even shaping policy.
Luke de Noronha 17:11
If there's things that you are writing about, teaching about, that you think you have insight in. So if I thought that, and I did this before in my work, that people need to know stories of deportation because they don't know how the system works, and because there's all these terrible narratives on foreign offenders, and there needs to be an intervention which says, maybe I can't win over everyone, but I want to create some stories in some people's minds, or a podcast or a book or something, so that people can have different reference points rather than just reading the news. Then you should do that. And academics should make every effort to get out that information. If they have information, my suspicion is that the ones that have valuable information do do that. They do try and do that. If they, you know, think about forensic architecture, which will try and provide a project on the genocide in Gaza, right? Like, will they try? Of course, they will be trying to get that out with the resources of an academic institution and its funding, get that fed into a legal system and public domain. If someone finds out that there's been poisoning of the rivers or something in their geography project, yeah, they'll try and think about how to connect that to a campaign and to change policy.
Awa Sow 18:11
But that, he argues, does not mean that there shouldn't also be a space for research to exist beyond what is immediately accessible.
Luke de Noronha 18:20
My point, I suppose, is that I don't think that then means that there can't then be a value to advanced study or to a seminar. Now, I wish more people were able to come into that classroom, but I also am guarding against sometimes there can be an implication that the only reason to study race and racism is to help anyone who's experienced racism to articulate or understand their experience or something, because that also implies that there's a privileged position of someone like me. I've only read of, you know, some things and written some things. There are people all around having these conversations in really interesting ways. And so, you know, I would go into a sixth form and speak to kids and think that that's useful. My only quibble, I suppose, is that I think, when we're saying, what more do academics need to do? We should then think, Okay, I agree. But what might be specific about the academic pursuit or the academic classroom, and some of that, is that it won't be condensed easily, that the difficulty is the point. And, you know, sometimes an answer presents itself early on, and then you realize it's more complicated than that. You need to read more and think more and know more. And that's the thing that was also saying in the earlier answer, that I think is valuable, and we should be encouraging in people, not just in the university, but in general, with projects like this one. I think that is the point. But that's not a straightforward thing about the problem of academia, some kind of easy story that academics are imagining themselves as sort of the paragons of authorized knowledge, and closing that off from the world. To the extent that people do that, I've got no time for them, but I would say that in the worlds that we know, people studying racism and racialization, their whole hope is that those ideas and those struggles will spread and actually. Not necessarily directly from the academic going out and doing a press release or trying to become a journalist, but sometimes from the teaching the classroom, things that spread around, things you put online. That's that's the way I see it.
Awa Sow 20:11
So what does this have to say about what drives us in life? Maybe parts of it sits somewhere in that tension between trying to understand the world and trying to do something with that understanding. To me, Diaspora Diaries is, in its own way, part of that. An attempt to let certain conversations move and travel to be taken up beyond where they usually sit - so in university. And then with Fuad, who features in episode three on "All About Love," the question shifts slightly again. When I asked him what drives him, he didn't really speak in terms of goals or impact or even understanding. Instead, he spoke about wanting to build a life that actually feels good to live.
Fuad Busoir 20:59
I don't want to, you know, be a tax person, because it makes money, or finance or whatever it is. So I have to make money and find ways to survive in alternative routes that fill me with joy and passion. And those roots fill me with joy and passion is because I get to be creative and I get to, you know, interact with things and spaces and people that I love. I love being creative, I love doing poetry, I love sports, and I love making the world a better place for black men. So ultimately, hopefully, 10 years from now, I'm doing all of those things every single day.
Awa Sow 21:33
And maybe that brings us back to the question. Across these conversations, it doesn't quite land in one place. Sometimes it sounds like a question we keep returning to. Sometimes like a need to make sense of things. Sometimes it's like a pull towards creating, connecting, being in spaces that feel right. And maybe what matters isn't so much defining it as noticing how it shows up. So for example, in what we keep coming back to, in what we choose to build, and in the ways we decide to live. This was Diaspora Diaries, a podcast powered by Transmission Roundhouse. Follow us on Instagram @diasporaxdiaries, and as always, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you so much for listening.
Recording ends 22:32 minutes