Transcripts For ALJAZ Priyamvada Gopal George The Poet 20240713

Attacker detained shot and killed by police. Oh my god. I see Police Officers with guns running running towards where i was heading. And so i just i see bang on the bus and try to get off the bus because i could and i started running and then i heard gunshots about 5 or 6 pop up pops and i see more Police Officers running towards the bridge and im running. It felt all use in a bit of a war zone. Got the bodies will place a rail. And we need new havens called to noise as you hear these you say that you hear the helicopters seen place a lot of men with guns police determined that the explosive device was fake. But they evacuated some nearby buildings as a precaution and such a massive security cordon around the area it has been declared a terrorist incident we are working jointly with the city of london place as we can see due to respond. Officers from the mets counterterrorism commander now leading this investigation but i must stress we retain an open mind as to any motive it would be inappropriate to speculate further at this time the british Prime Minister said that britain remains united against such attacks this country will never be carload were divided or intimidated by this sort of attack and all values of British Values will provoke. The scenes were reminiscent of an attack in 2017 a white van deliberately drove into pedestrians on London Bridge when it crashed 3 men jumped out and began stabbing people 8 were killed 48 others injured before police shot and killed the attackers the attack has led to increased security presence in the area which accounts for the Quick Response by police to this latest incident catherine stansell of desire. Weeks of deadly antigovernment protests in iraq might be about to force Major Political change in the country Prime Minister Abdullah Abdullah has announced he intends to resign more than 400 people have died in 2 months of antigovernment protests many iraqis accuse the government of corruption maltas Prime Minister is reportedly set to resign as the scandal over the murder of a journalist threatens to engulf him 3 of joseph muskrats closest colleagues including his chief of staff of already resigned in the past few days of the murder Investigative Reporter Daphne Carlisle 2 years ago. A limb renegotiations between the u. S. And the Afghan Taliban have resumed the taliban confirm the informal talks as the u. S. President made an unannounced surprise visit to afghanistan where he met president musharraf gani talks were canceled by trump in september following an attack by the taliban. All 28 People Killed in protests in the eastern democratic republic of congo this week are finally been buried the funerals were initially postponed with crowds demanding the military leave the area because they hadnt done enough to protect civilians from attacks. Algerians have protested for the 41st friday in a row president ial campaigns began on sunday but demonstrators in the herakles movement are rejecting the election thats to you in just under 2 weeks all 5 candidates have links to former president abdul aziz beautifully. And theyve been coordinated global protests calling for urgent action on Climate Change in germany protesters stormed the main shopping precinct studio b. Unscripted is next. Oh. You cant really make a record racial this was something as monumentally horrific as slavery a thing under natural and we connect on our collective anger a lot of the time what it what did you do for you is just rock the good. Name still isnt punk you can call me george something happens over the mediterranean you go from being someones child to an immigrant im a london based spoken word artist roots in uganda. Im free im but the problem i 1st started at cambridge i want all black faces of my classroom im a bitch or a historian and cultural commentator i was born in india i live and work in the united kingdom. And i was intrigued because how often do you get to share ideas solve problems and have a conversation with someone who knows so much about resistance and colonial power. I was curious he comes from a different background he has different experiences but i think all roads will cross lacoste stories and all identities i want this game to. Land. Can. Thank you. Thank so priya recently weve seen a lot of western universities reflecting on their possible involvement or heritage linked to Transatlantic Slave Trade your institution Cambridge University obviously the same university that i attended yeah i read some interesting tweets from you regarding the universities and. Investigating its own links to yeah every can you. Yeah i raised a few questions on one more stat it was presented as exploring if cambridge and whether and in what ways cambridge has benefited from the slave trade the point is that there is no Major Institution in britain whether its banks or financial houses or the or markets. That have not benefited from the immense Wealth Creation that slavery lets too so its not a question of if but in what ways the point is that slavery lets to benefits across societies and there were networked benefits right so if you had railways that were built in part on slave wealth generated from slavery and those railways came to your town you benefited from slavery if your students and cambridge catered for instance or any young men came from landed wealth people who had plantations an empty gold jamaica and they were paying fees to you you benefited from slavery is so i think we have to understand that its a very complex picture of benefits and also one of the thing you cant really make of reparations for something as monumentally horrific as slavery and you cant actually bring back the generations who died and were maimed and lived as chattel what you can do is stalk knowledge that it has led to the impoverishment of subsequent generations and that you can make up some uk knowledge in a financial form of the damage that was done you can actually pay back what was taken this is one of the biggest frustrations around this we have to see work relations being lost of the discussion whether on the political front yard economic otherwise how do you build up the. Energy or the momentum. Tie all these conversations together i think there are complex conversations to be had certainly about who gets read. Peroration zone in what form those reparations are paid out leads taken by some caribbean countries to say actually you know you need to acknowledge that the poverty in the immiseration that we have inherited can be traced back through the the the centuries of empire and slavery we need to make the connections repeatedly between the present and the past in ways in which the past lives on in the present to generate that energy thing can agree more so slavery has had consequences obviously for the caribbean countries and for parts of africa but it also has an afterlife in black british communities what do you think the kind of more consequences for immigrant communities in britain for 2nd generation 3rd generation black british young people is today i think the legacy is twofold so on the one hand you have the deep sense of displacement statelessness especially being. 2nd generation in a country that your parents may not have been received well and theres that displacement theres a sense of. Not quite belonging and not really having a measure of way your story starts and what direction you should be aspiring. To progress in yeah thats thats one half of the tragedy the other half is the miseducation of the masses on this a lot of people are literate in history and it creates the tensions this conversation is nonexistent in some of the places that anything happened yeah why do you think that is i mean on the one hand theres miseducation as in the educational system is not acknowledging the force of things like slavery any muriel is i mean i mean i was not very much teaching my students dont come with much knowledge of it do you think that the memory off off off these historical process is dying out in communities as well so this is hard to gauge you know but what i sense the older i get and the ugly the conversation around xenophobia in this country turns what i sense is that there is a a lot of pride around empire around imperial exploits around the colonial project theres a sense of. The white mans burden still having some legitimacy and winning gains in terms of spreading knowledge and technology and so on and so forth that has gone unaddressed and unpacked for a long time so it becomes further entrenched when its passed down from generation to the young black british young people asian young people did they have any understanding of the ways in which their lives theyre shaped by their heritage of slavery and empire yeah i think the Caribbean Community that the when russia generation of 50006. He did a very good job in in cork in some sort of cultural understanding the saturday schools at the west Indian Community was very successful and set up throughout the eightys but as we know economic pressures and social. Attacks on the different fronts really made it hard for the Caribbean Community to maintain that sense of education so i i see that thats dissing disintegrated a little when it comes to my generation and it makes it hard but there is some awareness what ive found tragic is especially when you look at young people that are now for 3rd and 4th generation becoming further and further distant from the information that will give them some sort of sense of where theyre coming from what youre left with this is is a shame which i grappled with for a long time and i still do yeah this feeling of having to explain why we are in the situation that we are. In on a personal level feeling that your double your own more responsible and representing you know that the potential of your people will correct in the mistakes that are attributed to your people are yeah so in a sense we have to become cost audience of these other history communities have to grab them back and remember. For the immigrant there is no government that you are priority to you know youre not in the homeland and over here you have a government that is you know for the majority here that is reacting to your presence but is not versed in who you are right has no record of your achievement of your family so you really need to take some initiative in protecting and honoring your story yeah he said immigrant communities are not particularly anybodys priority but there is the language of diversity and inclusive it in a way by were allowed to place. At the tables a handful of us are allowed to teach at elite universities or be part of elite institutions i know that youve done some work with members off the British Royal family and theres been a lot of discussion about the fact that there is a nonwhite member now off the British Royal family so i just wondered whether you have thoughts about be a guest the controversial question of race and the royal family and the whole question of diversity can you diversify an institution like the royal family were not seeing. A diversifying project was seeing. Generational changes so prince harry is the 1st person in his. Position of his time. You know represents the monarchy in the 21st century and what his marriage to make and marco represents is is. His love his free free choice yes its a bit weird for me trying to. Square my lets say working class black british sensibilities with my ugandan heritage because the monarchy is very important to my parents to my kingdom so we understand the idea of a shared heritage or a shared identity in what that you know that family as a symbol i may not necessarily. Have grown up you know in in the folds of that passion being out here but i respect it i do i know it means to people and i love people. Is a multifaceted question i dont know what your thoughts certainly to somebody of indian descent the the empire was tied up with the fact of victoria being empress of india and the British Royal family is another British Institution which will have benefited from both slavery and empire so there is a question of for instance when we know that famous black poets have refused the on our off the o. B. E. The order of the British Empire we know that other. Black achievers have accepted it but its not uncontroversial what does it mean for people who descend from formally colonized peoples to carry the empire as an initial after their name so there is that whole question of what should all relationship to the institution be. Should we accept you know the order of the British Empire this is so complicated for me you know me specifically. Coming from a family that is very close with the ugandan money so my grandfather was the 1st attorney general of our kingdom and went into exile with the king over here we know that the brand of colonialism that the british practiced in africa was one of befriending the chieftains and the leaders of the region and reaping the benefits of the land within the context of that relationship but at the same time it means a lot to a lot of people you know to have these affiliations and connections and i suppose that there is a question for individuals that are from. Minority ethnic backgrounds especially those that were on the colonial rule a question of strategy long term what do you what do you want a degree of assimilation do you want to forward in this country do you want to continue to build on the trauma of the past or are we just saying were ripping up the status quo and were currently figuring out because most of us dont actually have that game plan me oh yeah in your book insurgent empire you talk about resistance to colonialism how that played out in different contexts. What do you believe is the legacy of that resistance the book sets out to do 2 things in relation to the story the 1st is to park the mainstream british mythology is that when freedom from slavery and from empire came along it was because it was gifted by britain to go and play and. So it sets out to. Question that and it points out that slaves rebelled all the time so its really important to put that back in the narrative but the 2nd aspect of the book is just as important that the resistance of slaves was heard back in britain and it helped create a tradition of criticising slavery and empire back in britain we often think of abolition as just some very nice white guys who decided that it was a very bad thing and were going to have you know free the slaves but actually if you if you look at the written works left behind by abolitionists many of them are really aware that the plantations are in from then on that slaves are rebelling that the colonized are rebelling the indentured are rebelling and so what im saying is that that we need to recover the stories of resistance not just the stories of empire and enslavement both in other parts of the world but also from within britain theres a theres a minority dissidents tradition and britain which says not in our name you cant enslave and colonized people in our name and that story has been completely marginalized by mainstream history and our part of the conversation about bringing back all those stories i mean these histories have to be recovered and young white britons have to be reminded that their ancestors wont only just colonists and enslave us but that they also resisted and questions their government and those who claim to represent them. But it strikes me that there might be questions our audience wishes to ask of us or perhaps we should turn to them now please my questions about the kaunas in the university and whether or not you think that itll be effective not just making voices heard that do not conform to the norms of academics p. But also in considering the valid forms of the production of knowledge its not just about diversifying bringing in a range of voices that is important in its own right but i always explain to my students that d. Colonisation is about understanding what we know why we know and also what we dont know and also recognizing that the knowledge traditions which are being claimed as european are not only european they have often drawn on the traditions of africa asia and beyond so we need to understand that the knowledge is which are now presented as being kind of great european thought have multiple lines drawing on other parts of the world and that these histories also need to be restored to their place of honor i mean decolonization is often presented as oh this is against you know why people its not its about saying that the world is diverse and knowledge has been produced across different parts of the globe we need to honor the fact that europe often drew on other traditions in order to produce its knowledge my question is do you think that there is an ascendant orthodoxy on the political left that is weaponize ng identity politics to breed competitive victimhood. And tribalism in a way that undermines Martin Luther kings dream that we would be judged by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin whatever. Strand of identity one gives primacy to thank you great question i think is happening on both. The left and the road to characterize it as either playing into it. We see that these kind of identity politics. Play up in times of economic downturn or you know in tandem with cycles of big changes as we see in. Western europe and other parts of the world when the political rhetoric becomes increasingly polarized and divisive i see it as a dialectic and something that dialogue respectful dialogue Contact People being in close proximity with one another can begin to address and break down its like its something awful i think a false narrative everybody has an identity everybody is political in one sense or the other so identity politics is with us the difference is whether it is recognized as identity politics or whether it is not so the white majority has an identity and it has a politics so it is often wimmin or black people who are accused of having an identity politics but in fact in an institution like cambridge is full of either white identity politics its all over the place i cant thank you. Without. Coming up bad against an assertion of aggressive whiteness the interesting thing about victimhood today who is claiming victimhood its launch really white elite men there claiming persecution for their family their. Strong a trump a multimillionaire claims he represents victims. You know and theres a range of commentators in britain who constantly claiming theyre being persecuted by people of color and aggressive woke up black and brown women this is a nonsensical narrative and i think that we should say this narrative as flawed it does not represent reality and we need to have an honest conversation that isnt determined by the sort of myth or military of oppressed white men suffering at the hands of identity politics. Weve talked about how their eminence of slavery and colonialism have evidently left us with this is you know stacked against us but i would like to know whether you think that change is better effected by so working within the system working our way up that way or being kind of more of an outside Disruptive Force whats really the way forward for young people essential to find the good fire is accepting that the changes you want to see might not happen in your lifetime thats a hard pill to swallow but its something that i am definitely grappling with not just on the western front being out here in the diaspora but also when i return to the homeland the 1st thing i have to accept is that its not just about me feeling happy with my sphere of existence you were really apply yourself to a Long Term Strategy a long term understanding of the challenges secondly on an individual level i think its really important for us all to take responsibility of ourselves of our personal sense of awareness what who you are who i am this is what i this is the journey that ive been on in through to poetry at one point i was a cambridge student before that i was a one of the few black boys and in a Grammar School after i went straight into the Music Industry all of this stuff really disoriented me and its only through taken time and articulate in myself and given just given myself my whole twentys to come to terms with who i am that i was able to pinpoint my contribution and land on exactly what i can stomach and exactly what i am able to do i can stomach working with the royal family some people couldnt and it shouldnt be expected of me to you know want to bring everyone. To the same for the fighting one thing i want to add to that its true that change happens on many fronts and we each position ourselves differently in relation to change and i think that change does happen if all of us work to enact change but equally we also have to be aware that sometimes it is presented to us as something that only people from above can do i think part of reclaiming our personal agencies to be able center everybody can can effect change and you do not have to be a member of the royal family or a cambridge dawn has and in my case to be able to make effective interventions but i think wherever we are we can choose to keep a critical perspective i think that is absolutely essential we could be part of any institution but to say im not going to inhabit it fully im not going to buy it story is as selfevident truths im going to sit on the margins and examine things in all their reality and in all their honesty. You know what i actually know what its like to be white because in my country im a white woman on board what i want to talk about a visitor was. Also who are. Can you recite a poem for us. A poet. Since its inception in 1961 the kuwait fund has been supporting peoples livelihoods in over 100 countries by funding projects in an array of sectors. Ranging from infrastructure to health and education. These initiatives ultimately help to eradicate poverty. And promote sustainable development. Close your eyes. Listen. To the muslim i never thought id be singing in parliament with the poor i never dreamt of it where the words fail music speaks to short films about how music enough down the rules and inspire hope for a better life a. J. Selects on aljazeera. An investigation of how Foreign Companies plunder africas Natural Resources but trust is show important in a big question for revealing how no maybe as officials demand cash in exchange for favors. But. With confidential documents provided to aljazeera by wiki leaks visit us a big new committee for interest i will fight to the crunch and im not dealing with aljazeera investigations the anatomy of a bribe. Past. Hello im done with a quick look at headlines now 2 people have died after a knife attack here in Central London the suspect was shot dead during the incident which police are treating as terror related the citys mayor says members of the public show breathtaking heroism in restraining the alleged attacker and bringing the incident to a close it happened on London Bridge where a van and a knife attack 2 years ago killed 8 people in the past few minutes the head of the citys police force has spoken about it. I am deeply saddened and angered that our city of london has again been targeted by terrorism. It is with the heaviest of hearts that i have to inform you about as well as the suspect who was shot dead by police. 2 of those injured in this attack. In the London Bridge area have tragically lost lives. My heart goes out to their loved ones. Weeks of deadly antigovernment protests in iraq may be about to force Major Political change Prime Minister Abdullah Abdullah matty has announced he intends to resign all in 400 people have died in 2 months of antigovernment protests many iraqis accuse abdullah government of corruption. In malta the Prime Minister there is reportedly considering resignation as a scandal over the murder of a journalist threatens to engulf him 3 of joseph muskrats closest colleagues including his chief of staff of already resigned in the past few days of the murder of Investigative Reporter daphne carr want to see it 2 years ago. All 28 People Killed in protests in the eastern part of the democratic republic of congo this week are finally been buried the funerals were initially perspire own with crowds demanding that the military leave their area. Glimmering to go shake hands between the u. S. And the Afghan Taliban have resume the taliban confirmed the informal talks as the u. S. President made an unannounced surprise visit to afghanistan where he met president ashraf ghani talks were canceled by trump in september following an attack by the taliban. Studio be unscripted now continues but i will be back in then with the news hour for you in just under 30 minutes from now do join me then. The British Royal familys another British Institution which will have benefited from both slavery and empire for immigrant there is no government but you are a priority to be assuming my victimhood today who is claiming victimhood its a largely white elite men. Can you tell us a little bit about your own journey from where you grew up to cambridge which is a very distinctive kind of place and often involves a degree of Culture Shock can you say a little bit more about what that is until you so it only occurred to me. Only grew up around black people. To this day is a 46 percent black african and. At the time was put predominantly caribbean so what that afforded me was a very strong sense of self i was. You know within the Caribbean Community but part of an african family that had a very strong sense of. Cultural identity so so so many points in my life i had to affirm and reaffirm who i was. Take pride in my point of difference and celebrate that so by the time i got to a Grammar School it was shaken a little bit it was shaken a little bit when i learned what what what black and est meant to other people i never knew that we had all these middle class white and indian and. Chinese kids asking me about you know whats it like on the estate is it is it dangerous is this thing you know you spoke a little bit elsewhere about your going to you are the Grammar School appreciating the discipline that it gave you but also being troubled by what you saw as the enforcement of white norms. Can you say a little bit more about that yeah so im very grateful for the school that i went to but i definitely got the message that a sensible gentleman a credible person. Is x. And x. Doesnt do that doesnt sound like that doesnt talk about it doesnt walk or dress like that. That really really disturbed me for a long time because i really observe that narrative you know and its not until i really came into my own as a poet in cambridge having to articulate my experience with my own words are dialect are colloquialisms to audiences that are not part of our world that i really started to accept to be even after graduating and presenting myself to the world and started to do t. V. And news appearances i still have these rules in my mind dont embarrass your parents dont talk how you talk with your friends because how you talk to your friends is clearly criminal you know and it takes a while before you realise all the ways in which this feeds into the harassment and misunderstanding criminal criminalization hypermasculine a zation of young black men in particular what it what it poetry do for you again and this is an explanation there are often not often but in my early years i kind of swerve this explanation but its rap. Its just right. Here because i was like all these poets techniques and devices that were studying in the curriculum are done to a much higher standard and. So that emboldened me you know. Definitely so when weve spoken youve referenced your own upbringing and how that gave you a. Privileged outlook in many respects how do you make sense of that now ive had oh an upbringing that was partly subcontinental and partly in the west and. In india although im a woman i belong to an upper caste i belong to. A community that. In a way like like you know white britains does not see its own privileges does not see its own advantages and very frequently likes to think of itself as the victim because other people are making them on so. The lower costs. A non traditional dominance communities are making demands when im in the west as a woman of color against a white Majority Society i can see i can see it the other way around that i can see how White Privilege works i have a certain double consciousness around this which is i know what its like to be part of a vulnerable minority i also know what its like to be part of a privileged majority that a doesnt understand its privileges being feels like a victim when challenged on those privileges so in a funny way i actually see how whiteness operates i sometimes sterile. White men who are a bit threatened. That you know what i actually know what its like to be weighed because in my country im a white woman. In my country im a white woman and ive been to that process where ive only thought about gender and not thought about my cost privilege in the way that we are familiar with you know women here talking about gender but not talking about their racial privilege so i think the overall consequences to understand that not enough us are necessarily only victims or only oppressed i think that part of our exploration of colonialism and decolonization has to also involves understanding all role in it you know what what is the what is the heritage we come from what did our ancestors do in relation to the imperial project who was a decolonisation isnt about saying oh well all white people are terrible and all people of color are great. Its never been about that meticulous narrative that is often propagated as the victim narrative its about saying we were all influenced by this huge historical process that unfolded over you know several centuries and i always begin my lectures to students in the beginning of term saying i am here because of colonialism colonialism picked a group of elite indians to be taught english and to be made in english in every way but blood and color and i am the descendant of the people who were treated as privileged intermediaries between the Colonial Government and the millions whom we govern and so for me to say that im here because im great and i just did the hard work and i got here without some nonsensical narrative im i am i teach today at cambridge partly because of inherited privilege so to what extent do you think youve been able to change narratives or to what extent is your work aimed at changing narratives that we dont often question so i think this goes back to earlier point that we discussed about cost or your ship of astoria being our responsibility i think through poetry even just the move from rap to poetry ive been able to say to guys you know that the rumors that we just took for granted that you as a young black man. If youre not the hardest and youre not the most chauvinist stick then youre you know its harder to know its you youre less valid in those rules are. Completely redundant if you say theyre. You know it gives people license to decide exactly who they want to be and that im able to impute that simply by cherry picking the aspects of my own vironment that i want i want to absorb but if theres a self destructive Oppositional Force that comes along with it that is kind of like taken for granted because 17 years old my biggest fear was another 17 year old black boy i dont like that one someone else can say that its not for me that kind of thinking. It needs to be scaled and its very hard when we dont have custody and ship of our own story to ensure that all of our young people are getting that message and what that what sort of stories do you think would actually help make for change at manifest level like what kinds of things that you think people dont think about the bill should be about so few years ago i went to ted conference in vancouver yeah and these guys were talking this is that was the big argument the ethics of basically a visa system for mars this was 2015 or so but interplanetary exploration lays a new laser treatment faith hiv thats whats missing thats whats missing in communities like mine an awareness of more than racism for a lot of young black people the what is wrong with our situation is kind of delegated to us as our business you must spend the rest the next 20 years fighting the ills of this society however if you really were invited to these conversations about mars if you thought a stake in cutting edge laser treatment revolutionize hiv the battle against hiv if you really thought some ownership in that you would be run in that in that. Direction and i see i see that with a lot of much poorer young people on the african continent so i mean are you suggesting that what you describe as kind of self destructive ness is connected to not thinking about where else you could go but kind of focusing on the ills that you suffer statelessness we dont belong to anything. Thats why a lot of our young people can take the lives of another person. Who am i was a. Fall in from world war i was the big and car that i need to break out of in order to you know become. More great you regard anger as a young as a young man yourself youre still young but as a teenager do you think is a an unproductive that is self Destructive Force or do you think it can have consequences that are beneficial i think under the natural and not nature doesnt do productive unproductive nature is is nature enough in my life and has been helpful ive been able to and in what way is ive been able to channel it to my starts to just figure out exactly what i want to be in the world why i want to be these things a lot of the Unanswered Questions about who i am and why my environment is the way it is drove me to become a socialist. And empowered me to be able to feed back into my community and we commit on our collective under a lot of the little your experience of those but i would say all the thinkers who have theorized resistance and change and rebellion at some level have been driven by indignation by a sense that injustices have been committed and the world has to be set to write it so i completely concur that anger can have it can manifestly have sort of destructive consequences if its not thought about and not channelized towards thinking through facts so you know currently we have certain forms of majority rage in many contexts not just in britain and contexts across the world but that rage i think is different from righteous indignation you can be angry and you can blame any number of people you want for your situation that doesnt mean its factually correct but legitimately harnessed indignation which studies the situation and understands what injustice is are and thinks about it carefully that can be a very productive kind of emotion but random rage at having your privileges snatched away i think thats thats one of the dangers that were looking at in the present there is interest in zeus and the ability to articulate exactly where your anger comes from is well legitimate well i think to understand what it is youre upset about and who is who and what is rationally responsible for and so in a situation where youre upset about austerity it doesnt make sense to blame immigrants it is your government and it is the rich of this country who have inflicted austerity and. So this is to say that anger makes sense if you can wield it with precision and with wield it with care simply lashing out at the nearest vulnerable object in rage. Thats not a good thing. Is it does not become a double edged sword when we get really you know the age of the demagogue and people are able to put together a narrative that holds true in the minds of a lot of the audience it is extremely wanting in my own country we now have the rise of majority hindu nationalism which absolutely feeds off the rage of people and invites them to think about muslims as their main enemy and in fact it has been immensely successful and it is immensely dangerous and i want to tremendously about a nation that is still fairly young its about 7 you know 70 odd years old which began as a kind of dream of inclusiveness inclusive ety and secularism and multiple religions flourishing now turned into singular rage against minority groups and i think thats deeply dangerous. I think we might have some more ideas questions that many of us in this room have benefited open of fisheries of the legacy of the British Empire. But a lot to ask you is should we take responsibility for its wrongdoings of the past and what do you think are the best ways that we can atone for sins in the modern. The 1st thing i want to say is that im personally dont use the language of atonement and repentance i mean i think if people want to atone thats a private act between them and their god or their church the language of responsibility is slightly different colonialism didnt end all that long ago for many african countries they ended in the 1980 s. So you know its within a lot of peoples living memories and the continent of africa and much of asia struggles with those legacies so what we have to do is to say what are the manifest ways in which populations peoples communities within this country have been damaged by the legacies of slavery and colonialism and one of the ways in which we can start to enact structural changes which address the disenfranchisement and the injustice we cannot have an attitude to the past where we say were really proud about you know the 2nd world war and the british victory in the 2nd world war but colonialism that was in the past i think that that particular fault opposition has to be. My question is more how in generalities in a way please leads us to kind of be unable to find our own identity how do you think be able to overcome that in regards to not being able to be are genuine selves at work and if anything will ever be done about it. I think. Back to the idea of statelessness and us not necessarily feeling like we have a space different communities different ethnic minority communities have different coping strategies for that kind of. Dynamic often my asian friends were quite happy to talk to their names or their appearances in order to just you know move on. In our world as a you know a black person is a to boo dont dont Start Playing with your name as a disrespect to the ancestors however i also became aware that not everyone takes that personally and i think oftentimes that community in the family so Something Like doctor in your name for the school is just business is just a transaction dont take it that personally however i feel that when it comes to us or me me in particular with that stay with that sense of statelessness i take a final a lot harder to make those kinds of decisions and the solution that i have created over time is just to make my own space where i only account for myself and that happens through enterprise but before the enterprise aspect it had to happen person and you had to be in cambridge and be able to just be exactly what i am so until you reach that sense of absolution. There will always be that tension on the front of the workplace or wherever else you have to do it this. I always come across this term i dont see color i think it is color blindness expression when i have conversations about identity politics with 2nd or 1st generation immigrants and they say oh if i recognize raise this Structural Racism im perpetuating this thinking obviously we see color and from my observations most of the people who bring up this term are relatively well off or they win the game already so in my understanding for these game winner they are supposed to have more issues showing Cultural Capital to be the game changer but why would they have to scream of thinking and what were your advice to talk to these kind of people you know there are penalties for talking about race my 1st 15 years at cambridge i never use the word race or whiteness or anything. It was very clear that the norms enforced the fact that anybody who discussed race was a troublemaker so 2nd and 3rd generation people who want to be successful and you say they are you know fairly well off. Lets face it they are understand the price to be paid for being incorporated into the main stream off the society and 1. 00 of the things that you are required to do in your drawer to do several things with one is play the game that theres no color nobody sees color and therefore there is no racism but you have to collude in that mythology secondly you are invited to perpetuate the mythologies of the Mainstream Society so you not only agree to play along you also act as its mouthpiece you know that you know theres theres a problem with identity politics is a problem with the right people claiming victimhood theres a problem with snowflakes theres a problem with you know no platform so i think we need to. Think about that tony is a finger agent that people of color are required to use in order to be successful and i think that you in a sense you answered your own question. There is also the very real experience of a lot of people of color who feel a point feel burdened by this constant conversation of race like i said were taught a young age that our business thats where you get to do it thats where you get to be an expert any time you see a young black person on the news but theyre going to be talking about race but. I personally can identify with a frustration with that that cycle for example last year i had an incident with the police i was sitting in my car the engine was off of us are my parents house they search me for weapons now that is classic Racial Discrimination but one phrase that i kept repeating because the thing was recorded and a lot of people saw it and some people took issue with this particular phrase i kept an eye i dont have time for this and thats the frustration of a black man thats been dealing with this all his life im bored. Like i want to talk about a visa to mars. So were into them. So i grew free of there is a degree of game playing among a lot of us but there is also a degree of exasperate and frustration because were not given the tools to have these conversations in a constructive way to extend that story i was on b. B. C. Question time later on that year and i was thrown a question about immigration a mention the word than a 4 we are. Really upset a lot of people so we often find that theres a circular element of conversations about race that puts us off talking about it or seeing it in general and sometimes that you have to read the situation and give people that that respectful distance. This is a question for george actually you and priya have discussed. On leashes on racism and prejudice but it would be nice to hear your views as a poet huge so you can you recite a poem for us. One poet. Ok. The defining characteristic of hate crime is not actually hate its prejudice we use the word hate to define it because the prejudice is born of a hateful climate but a crime is a collective mood its not an individual selective move now in the face of political ineptitude we only have one option lets improve has such a strong word for such a weak emotion a wound quiet hero if hatred keeps it open. No wounds can be physically revealed but they do deserve the ability to heal. Thank you. Thank you. I. Would have thought then and now a rich country we use hunger as a weapon its perch more difficult to be left wing than to be right wing you know because you know history of the left is full of lies and betrayal when people family write things that are really right with you and how it has to be subversive if you dont have a level of anger about you then stand. Hello again welcome back to International Weather forecasts were here across southeast australia over the next few days it is going to remain chilly now we do have 2 funnel boundaries coming through and that is going to rear really reinforce that cooler air coming in from the south here on saturday a lot of teens across the area were talking melbourne hobart as well as adelaide with winds coming out of the south there we are going to be picking up some rain over here towards melbourne as well as hobart by the time we get towards sunday though the front starts to make its way towards the north still quite chilly across much of the bite but were going to see a shower pushing through parts of sydney but still quite warm over here towards a person with a temperature of 34. 00 degrees well for the north and south island we are going to be seeing a big change for the south island really not looking too bad here on saturday were going to be seeing some partly cloudy conditions with more clouds starting to roll in by the evening attempts are there of 16 but watch this by the time we get towards sunday its going from 16 to 25 degrees but we do expect to see probably some thunderstorms making their way by sunday evening as well as into parts of monday morning a nice day few at 21. 00 degrees there and as we go towards japan things are a lot looking too bad as we go towards saturday tokyo a temperature few of 11 and for sapporo 8 degrees and mostly cloudy conditions for you. The Worlds Largest oil producer has failed to trade on the Foreign Stock Exchange was a transparency valuation over ambition whats happened there the Worlds Largest oil producer and you dont list in the Worlds Largest Stock Exchange that definitely says something aljazeera investigates the politics of the middle easts most potent economic when the Saudi Aramco Company and the state. On aljazeera. Aljazeera. Every. This is. Hello im Maryam Namazie a watching the news hour live from london coming up protests to celebrate in iraq as the Prime Minister of bows to pressure and offers his resignation. A knife attack in the heart of london 2 people were killed and the suspect is shot dead by Police Tensions in the d. L. C. Where the military and the United Nations are accused of not doing enough to protect civilians. And the Murder Investigation that sent shock waves through multiple governments Prime Minister could be next to resigns