Coleman Hughes on The Limits of Identity with Ayishat Akanbi (Ep.14)

[Music] ah [Music] welcome to another episode of conversations with coleman before i introduce today's guest one quick note in response to listener feedback i'm overhauling my website to give you more options for supporting the show i'll keep you posted when that happens as always thank you to those of you who support the show and if you can't liking and subscribing on youtube is still a big help today's guest is aisha akanby aisha is a nigerian british fashion stylist writer cultural commentator and photographer many of you have probably discovered her via youtube or twitter in the past few months we talk about aisha's background in the fashion world why the art world is so progressive the tension between free speech and safety the psychology of identity politics the psychology of apologies the pressure to post on social media about activist causes how to address historical wrongs and more so without further ado aisha akanbi all right ayesha thank you so much for coming on my podcast thank you for having me so i've been introduced to you recently by seeing some of your videos circulating on my twitter feed and seeing your tweets uh and i i have to imagine a lot of podcast listeners a lot of my my podcast listeners have also seen you probably just in the past two or three months i think you had a few videos that went pretty viral earlier this year but probably to most people in this audience they're just learning of you recently and seeing some of the really amazing unique and inspiring content you've put out so just let me throw some praise on you for that i think you're a great introduction into this space although i'm sure you've you feel you've been in it for a while i think you're kind of a new face and new voice to some people so um before we start talking about areas of mutual interest i just i think you know many people including myself are curious about who you are where you come from and how you came to be doing the kind of work that you're doing so if you can give people a little bit of your background um where are you from where were you born how did you come up and sort of how did you begin to enter this space yeah sure um well thank you for all the kind words i definitely feel the same about the work that you're doing it's very necessary um my journey i so i was born in london but i grew up in a place called southampton which is maybe about an hour and a half away from london uh further south and i have been working as a stylist for the last 10 years but my entry into fashion and styling was quite atypical in the sense that it wasn't necessarily fashion that i was majorly interested in i was interested in why people wear the things that they wear and if people change their outfits or change their aesthetic in general to what extent does that open and close doors um i noticed with myself i was quite eccentric as a younger person in the way that i used to present myself and it used to make very unlikely people interested in me you know they would just be eager to give me opportunities or eager to um i don't know just treat me in a way that i didn't necessarily see other people around me my peer groups being treated so when you say eccentric what do you mean like how would you dress so i was quite you know colorful quite loud you know uh there was a really cringe time called new rave in maybe like uh 2009 that was almost like i don't know a contemporary spin on 80s fashion and i was all up on it and it was hideous um i was i was doing that i had really crazy hair at the time or very or at least a lot more out there than the hair that i have now and so yeah it just attracted a lot of attention and i just wondered if i could give that to other people so that was my entry into styling um and i think now the work that i'm doing that i find very hard to categorize uh because i don't always know what i'm doing um but now i think a similar question has intrigued me which is why do we do what we do more broadly just in general why do we do what we do you know like why do we listen to what we listen to why do we vote on the ways that we do like what informs those beliefs um how do we think about race and ourselves and our identities and why um and i just started answering those kind of questions out loud um to myself on twitter um i had some things happen in my life uh the loss of my brother actually my brother was murdered in 2012 and that really sort of took me on a psychological trip if i'm honest um to the place where i am now where i'm just questioning things out loud and wondering how we can be more understanding yeah so talk a little bit about what the fashion world is like you know i'm curiou i'm always curious with artistic spaces because i come from a music background um really a jazz background and i was at juilliard for a little while and i'm also i'm always interested in how artistic spaces seem to be very uniform in their politics they seem to have a uniformly uh left-wing and sort of very sympathetic to identity politics kind of bent and i've always been curious why that is you know for example i can go why is it that i can go into virtually any museum any art museum in the city and i can find work that is anti-capitalist but i can't find any work that's pro capitalist it seems a little weird because i would think i would think there's got to be one artist out there who's pro capitalism at this museum you know but i i i never do find it um and i'm sort of curious about that i've been thinking about that for a long time i think do you observe that in the fashion world at all and if so do you have any idea why that's the case yeah it's i think we have uh maybe quite paradoxically we have a really conformist understanding of what it means to be radical you know so we see radicalism and rebellion through one lens um and that is generally you know quite sympathetic with you know so-called marginalized people um and yeah the idea that capitalism is responsible for every single ill that there is in the world and i think because fashion and the art world in general sees themselves as subversive you know or from a counter cultural kind of background it seems like it feels like it has a moral obligation to to resist if you like in in a certain way um but i find it very you know because you're right the fashion industry and i to be fair i do work in the music industry more because i tend to work with musicians more than i work with models and fashion brands um but either way in both spaces uh you're right there is a very strong left bias and but even with you know having a left bias it just seems like they're you know or it just seems as though having a more nuanced take or approach or more complicated uh way of thinking about certain issues is just really not allowed you know um i very much think artists you know are people who consider themselves to be the good people you know and and the good people think and behave in a certain way uh and that's something i'm interested like yourself in and thinking about for one and and challenging maybe yeah i think um in in my experience it's also true that there's a lot of people in in artistic spaces that don't agree with uh you know far-left orthodoxies but it's just that they often keep it to themselves they don't make artwork about it um so it's it is it may just not be true that that as a whole the music world or the fashion world or the the art world it has a different political you know um demographic than than the world at large you know it's just that people are you know if people are afraid to challenge you know the idea that a particular minority is oppressed in in a political conversation they're twice as afraid to challenge it if they're an artist who is constantly inhabiting our artistic spaces that's sort of something that i've observed so it's it's i think rare to see someone like yourself who is coming from an arts background and who is challenging the idea that you know based on what i hear you say that it's that that you can easily divide the world politically into good people and bad people and the good people are the ones that are focused on you know racism and you know uh lifting up intersectional identities and seeing the world as a competition between oppressed groups and oppressor groups these are a lot of the things that you riff on and it's just rare to see someone from an art space who believes what you believe or who's asking the questions at minimum that you're asking and who also voices them because it's just there's very little to be gained if you plan on remaining in the art world to voicing these things it seems like there's it's all downside and no upside if you plan on staying in these spaces so i i'm just sort of speaking from i think experience and from knowing people in the music world there but uh it's definitely refreshing to see that and i have to imagine you get a lot of people you know i'm curious do you get a lot of people from the fashion world or from the music world that say privately i agree with you but i i or like i'm interested in what you're saying but i don't know how to broach these conversations with my other music or artist friends or or i don't know how to make work about this subject yeah um unfortunately i'm getting it a lot these days you know um including from celebrities um and people who appear to be actually quite uh as many would call woke in some areas you know at least very outwardly uh espousing woke ideas um and they do message me and they tell me that they're interested in the things i'm saying or they even agree but the thing i what's happened especially in the uk where there are far fewer um voices let's say on race as there are in the or at least public voices anyway um and so these people predominantly let's say who fall into um certain orthodoxies they want to be good people and so they've listened that's the advice that we were told these days you have to listen listen to people of color and they're listening to people of color and they're being told uh this is what it is and under this kind of world view you're not meant to question anything and so when they have seen someone else who shares that identity of those that you're meant to listen to who is saying something else um i think it's very i think for them it's like i didn't i didn't know this was a thing i didn't know this was allowed you know i'm even myself i think when i first started having certain thoughts and i think we've had a similar journey in terms of uh we both at one stage were more sympathetic to the prevailing narratives that we now have um and then when i first started questioning them even i was like can i do this you know is this okay um so yeah i i think a lot of people don't even know that it's possible to have another view no that's exactly right that and you're you're right about i relate to that a lot as i when i had john mcwhorter on my podcast i think it's the second episode i talked about how seeing his youtube videos when i was maybe 19 years old and going i actually think i discovered him by going into the columbia university library and just picking him off the shelves and i began to read his essay collection authentically black which is an excellent yeah it's really good and actually as i was reading it i was like halfway through that book and then i took a break from class one day and and ran into him in the bathroom and i was like you know starstruck but it was you know reading someone who was intelligent a great writer who was black and who was saying things that made total sense to me but i had almost never heard anyone say you know that does have an impact on you it gives you a kind of permission to think um and sometimes that's that's really all that people need uh because you know it it's often it's not the case that the people you hear about in the media are so much smarter than you and that's why they've gotten where they are that's the part of the critique of meritocracy that i i very much agree with um you know and if you find yourself being skeptical you know a lot of the smartest people i've met are people you'll never hear about you know they're just living their lives privately and you know often people just need people just need to hear something questioned publicly by a person who is who seems sane because they are sane and that can give you all the all the permission you need to actually think through things without just sort of digesting the the you know lowest resolution version of the talking points that you're hearing sort of in the media um and it seems like that that's at least part of what you're you're providing for people um well this is this is why i'm quite in support of free speech because i think to be anti-free speeches to be anti-curious and as you're saying you know when you hear someone question something out loud um and especially right now where there's not that much scope to question things beyond the talking points and the accepted narratives it it's that permission to think that can take you somewhere else and i think if we're truly serious about overcoming some of our social issues then we need to be able to think about these things from a range of perspectives and through a range of frameworks which we're not getting at the moment and we can't have as long as we're as hostile to free speech or speech that is alternative um yeah i don't think that we're going to reduce these problems any anytime soon we can't at least have open conversations so what about safety some some people will say okay free speech for the most part it's all well and good until your speech begins to threaten my safety let's say i'm a a person of color or a trans person and you know your speech is you know if taken seriously and if widely believed i believe it would be a threat to my physical safety for example a recent example of this in the in the united states is the the the tom cotton op-ed i don't know if you heard about this but you know one of our senators wrote an op-ed for the new york times suggesting that that federal troops be shipped into cities in order to stop the rioting that was happening because local police weren't doing a good enough job and the new york times published it and then eventually retracted it because it got so much backlash but without commenting on that let's say someone someone says well tom cotton's speech that's an example where free speech goes too far because i think as a person of color that if the troops came in and trump you know and they were directed by trump that that would lead directly to something like a something close to a genocide of black people or brown people and that speech goes too far what do you say to that critique of free speech well for one i think our notion of unsafe is very generous at the moment you know and and very broad um unsafe can mean so many different things and i and i think a lot of the [Music] the cause of the tensions that we have in discourse at the moment is because of um you know we're using the same language but it has different meanings and so i think we need to be specific when we say unsafe um and maybe it's uncomfortable or maybe undesirable but unsafe i'm not so sure about so if i'm honest most of the time with most people's um claims of unsafety i'm always fairly skeptical you know if we're using the right term there um and let's say with this issue that you're talking about i think sometimes we just have a really uncharitable view of our you know fellow humans i think you know if there was truly something that could put lots of people's lives at risk um you know and cause something like a genocide you know i think we should have enough trust in our humans that you know most people are going to push back on that i i don't think it's something that needs to be um unspeakable i don't think people you know i don't think the idea um put forward um that you were talking about in the new york times like i don't think i don't think that's something that i don't know there just seems to be such a big jump between an idea right an idea i disagree with and death you know there doesn't seem to be any um any sort of room you know between those points and so i would just say that you know sometimes i think we need to be less dramatic uh less hyperbolic and i and and specific we need to be precise with our words um i don't think every idea uh that is counter to my own um or even you know let's say something about like sexuality i i don't think if someone let's say didn't believe uh in the right for for gay people to get married in a church i don't think that necessarily makes me unsafe you know i think that makes us disagree you know i don't know i may not answer it quite directly but i just think we need to be precise with our language yeah and i think the the other thing there is that a lot of a lot of the reason that that politics and ideas are complicated to begin with is because it's not obvious which ideas are increasing our all of our safety and which ones aren't so if we don't allow so like for example the idea that we should abolish the police if if we're going to obey um a kind of principle that says free speech is okay up until it you know has a plausible chance of you know killing somebody let's say that's our criterion should we be allowed to say let's abolish the police because in theory it you could very easily make the argument that abolishing the police will lead to more people dying and in america in particular more black people dying because black people are very over represented among those uh victims of homicide so it's curious to me that people only pick and choose when they use the safety argument so as to you know bolster left-wing biases as opposed to right-wing ones so so my position on this is just i don't i i'm not gonna obey anyone's injunction not to tell me not to speak because it's it's limiting someone's safety because often the very thing we're arguing about is whether this policy or idea is going to promote safety so how can we figure that out if we can't if if we pretend we already know yes exactly that um and yeah that's uh that's a perfect way to look at it um yeah no i i agree coleman um we have to be able to to have these things out loud um and yeah we we can't know i mean and the thing is when it comes to being unsafe people can do what they like with ideas you know you can put forward a very reasonable uh sensible claim or idea for something and someone will misinterpret it and and think that you are calling for violence you know i i don't think that i i just think it's a a slippery slope um and so yeah with you know unless it's the direct incitement of violence you know i think we should try to be somewhat more resilient there okay i'm gonna do something a little unconventional and just read you some of your tweets and get you to explain them sound good okay the fixation with your identity limits your identity what do you mean by that so what i mean by that um and it's an idea actually that it jumped out at me because i recommended from i think your conversation uh with john quarter uh was the shelby steelbook uh and it was the contents of our character which i read recently um and he said something that triggered that thought in me um and but it seemed i can't remember specifically what he said but what i took from it is let's say the more that we cling if you're a male you're a man and the more you cling to this idea about what a man should be you know what is masculine um and based on that you think about where i should go to eat maybe like who i should date um all of these things limit what your identity could be or if you have a strong notion of what it means to be black and let's say what it means to be black to you is always um reacting to what white people do you know because that's how you are authentically black let's say um that will just limit you it will stop you from exploring so many other things that could be a lot more interesting um it will navigate what you think you should read um who you should hang out with who you believe can understand you or empathize with you um i just think it's very limiting in that sense the more that we are obsessed with trying to work out what being black male a woman uh means yeah so that's what i think i think it's very yeah reductive of our of our characters the more sort of attached we are to them i agree with all of that um but i think there's a line of pushback that could go something like this don't people need limits don't people crave limits don't people i think in some sense freedom complete freedom having no lines within when which to draw is terrifying to people and um so why not why not go into your identity if it gives you a sense of structure in your life if you're not if you're not if you find you're not able to be completely free form why not why not be go into your blackness go into your gayness go into your trans identity whatever it is that's meaningful to you and identify with that i mean there's one thing to identify with it and i think there's one thing to be obsessed with it um and i would just ask those people i mean you can i mean we can all put whatever self-imposed limits on ourselves that we want and i think discipline is is a helpful thing um but how how fulfilling is it i think that's all i would ask a lot of people who were you know who maybe teeter the line of being obsessive about their identity is it fulfilling you know do you feel more enriched do you feel like um you are able to understand people more do you feel like you're having a good um or at least a a decent time navigating this earth and if you feel that you're constantly paranoid you feel like you're constantly searching for ill intent and offense uh i would probably suggest that you're not quite uh you're not quite fulfilled um and in that sense i don't think there's any negatives to loosening the reins on on what your identity should or could be it is really interesting to me that i i feel so you're clearly a very open-minded person i think and i i always push myself to try to be open-minded i remember as a kid a lot of what i disliked about the culture of the american right was the lack of open-mindedness that i perceived among people who you know were you know lived by a set of rules about you know how to be good which involved being religious in america at least being christian and it seemed to me you know regardless of any particular policies that the left was broadly the more open-minded section of the culture and the right was the more rigid and close-minded section of the culture and over the past five years it it seems to me now just pretty unclear where i'm finding the most open-minded people it's it's much less predictable than i felt it was and that that could have been a misperception based on the fact that i grew up in a very progressive part of the country still if you're if you're looking for people that are you know just open-minded and and sort of fluid and not trying to think rigidly and people who are playful with ideas it's increasingly hard to find that in very culturally left-wing spaces that's at least something that i found and that's always been something that i've craved and found very exciting is people who just like playing with ideas and and so i wonder if if if you agree with that at all um if you understand what i'm saying no i completely understand what you're saying and i remember i i did an interview uh or i did a conversation with a writer called alain he's a philosopher of sorts should i say and or at least you know he's like um everyday philosophy you know for a mainstream audience and you know i remember them asking like where do you find community and i and that was a really hard question for me because like you i am searching for people who are open-minded or you know maybe quite centric even with their thinking um and just don't mind to completely turn something on its head um and think about it from the opposite way that we've been taught to think about it um that's really hard you know and i'm in i'm entrenched in very left-wing spaces i'm only recently meeting conservatives i think for the first time um in yeah recent years which i feel kind of embarrassed about but i mean i think it is a testament to how um to the bias of the art world and and creative spaces um so yeah i don't find it very much on the left very easily not at all um i do find when i get one-on-one with someone who might be like you know a die-hard socialist or a communist i find that i'm able to be a lot more open there and even if they disagree they don't necessarily smear your character you know this isn't some irredeemable like stain on your morality whereas it is online you know and i think that's because everyone's watching online so no one no one wants to get you know no one wants to be left behind um but i do find that you know at least the conservative people that i'm getting to know and dialogue with and you know speak with on various social media platforms i do find that if they disagree with you again it's not it's no reflection on your morality it's just oh i think you're wrong you know that's just it it's it's no more no less um and so i think it's easier for me to to have discussions about things uh from alternative viewpoints with people who are who don't identify as being on the left they don't necessarily have to be conservatives either you know i mean still many a political people or people who are moved by i don't know some humanist principles that are untethered from mainstream politics okay here's another tweet maturity is being able to hear something undesirable about your in-group and view it objectively instead of defensively what do you mean by that well it seems to almost be one of the foundational problems of everything is that we cannot hear anything undesirable about a group that we belong to and so you know if we think about race now we're only willing to accept the narrative or we're only looking we're only willing to look at the part of the story uh that focuses on systemic and institutional racism you know any of the other uh potential um causes um for you know a certain level of black underachievement or you know the lack of progress in certain areas is you know you're not allowed to do that you know because we we're not allowed to acknowledge that any problem could potentially you know start at home um and i just think people can't people on the left can't do that there's people on the right who can't acknowledge um more unsavory elements of you know the ways many people from their camp do things and feminists may not be able to um contend uh with some of the ways that women work to um to make their situations um just as difficult or the ways that women are raising boys or whatever it may be um we just want to outsource blame constantly um and and because of that i think it makes uh conversations very stagnant and it's just again it's quite anti-curious to me you know i tried to be of the mindset where because i i i prioritize curiosity above many things uh and that has its own issues but anyway you know sometimes if someone was to say something even negative about me before i get defensive i'm just like interesting i wonder you know i i wonder if this is true um and and i'm more likely to interrogate it first um and i just think we were able to look at something with more curiosity than defensiveness i just think we'd be in a better position but i think we can only do that if we recognize that having undesirable aspects of our communities of our groups doesn't make them bad doesn't mean that you're a wrong person you know it just means that oh there's something here's a little texture you know but i think we just see everything as either good or bad yeah i mean that that's um something i agree with very deeply and it just seems it seems obvious to me that you you know just like a person can have flaws and imperfections and maturity in in this in in the case of an individual is an ability to see your own flaws and always be curious about them you know like if you're if your significant other if your partner says like hey you have this thing that you always do and it makes me feel bad your your maturity in that moment is the ability to say wait are they right let me think about this and maybe they're not but maybe they are right and i think we all recognize that that's true of the individual case but when it comes to groups it seems people are unable to do that so you know for example this is something i've talked about before if you're a black boy in america and you know this is something that everyone from barack obama to jay-z has pointed out that there is a phenomenon where if you are scholarly and you take a very deep interest in school especially if you're at an integrated school you are in some cases likely to be teased for acting white and that that's that's a problem because boys especially boys but girls as well you know you feel an enormous amount of pressure in your early teen and teen years to be cool and if there's a added penalty for scholarly curiosity if you have you know dark skin that's gonna have consequences uh that aren't gonna be good for the long term right and that's that's something that it's very difficult to see how white people could fix so if your politics commits you to every you know racial disparity say in education being a function of something white people have done and therefore white people can fix you're you're never going to be able to talk honestly about that problem and you know obama i think has gotten criticized for saying that but i really admired him for for saying it um yeah i do too and would you say i mean you know see me asking you a question now but do you think um that stereotype about you know the young black boy who's quite studious and you know the charge that he's acting white do you still think that's a thing do you think it's still quite prevalent yeah i do i think it it just depends where you are it depends where you are in the country it depends what kind of school you go to i think if you go to a school where it's almost all black and brown people that's actually less likely to happen it seems this is partly based on roland fryer's research and and lots of anecdotes but it seems like it's more likely to happen at integrated schools especially integrated schools where white kids are on average doing better than black kids which is most integrated schools so in that context where kids are seeing and noticing that the white kids are on average more studious getting better grades the black kid who is a studious risks being seen as a traitor because it's easy to make a comparison or to see the similarities between him and the white kids and lump him into that category and that could be very hurtful um to be told that you're not you're not an authentic you know you're not an authentic um you know holder of your own identity and then you know it's it's and then there's an enormous pressure to you know dumb it down um and i have a lot of sympathy for those people but yeah i do i do think it it is prevalent uh i don't know how prevalent it is it's hard to measure of course but you know roland fryer has has done uh probably the best research on trying to measure it yeah yeah and yeah exactly i i can't really see you know we're truly going to contend with things like that i can't see where white people would come in to to help that situation right um but it's also interesting because white liberals in particular are are very good at pointing to problems in their own group so so you know the problem of racism for example racism itself is a kind of cultural problem anti-black racism in particular is a cultural problem that white americans have historically had and part of overcoming that has been a white liberal critique of white people and i would argue with books like white fragility by robin d'angelo you know claiming that you have to agree with whatever a black person says about race that that is an example of that critique being taken too far but the critique itself viewed in the long in the long view of american history was was valid it was certainly you know it was it was valid to be a white liberal in 1965 saying hey we should be less racist there's this racism problem it's it's a problem we are perpetrating let's do better right so that's a that's a that's a kind of an inward looking um self-cultural critique that has happened and it's interesting to me that many liberals will allow for that kind of critique but won't allow for any sort of critique that black people make that is similar in the sense that it's inward looking yeah i mean at some points you know you have to wonder if there is something uh kinky even about um the position they hold and holding themselves accountable for all of these things because they're very desperate um to hold on to it um and again i'm not sure if it's this this this cult of goodness complex that a lot of people seem to take on you know or maybe some form of persecution complex uh that can can turn into something quite tantalizing after a while um but i always just think you know it's very rare in human life in general that you know if we're in an issue we're facing some kind of problem it's often rare that we can outsource a hundred percent of that blame you know like if we do the relationship uh analogy again you know if you're in a relationship with someone um and it's a bad relationship and maybe it's often a bad relationship because of this other individual you know if you were to go to like a couple's therapy session you know you're gonna come away knowing your part in this too you know there's always that's always gonna be there it's very rare i think that you know something is completely you know default of some external entity um so yeah it's it's curious to me why we're not able to do that you know i think it's going to be something very beneficial when we can do that all right here's another one of your tweets accepting i'm sorry accepting an apology you've demanded diminishes the meaning of a sorry it is either given freely or to coddle you what were you thinking about when you tweeted that i think it was the nature of public apologies you know i've been thinking about public apologies and just apologizing for a long time you know maybe from the first time i heard someone demand me to give an apology and i just kind of thought to myself if you've asked for it is it really an apology i'm just kind i'm just trying to like placate you you know uh surely that's kind of how it read to me and then i just thought about yeah it's an interesting demand apologies and that's enough you know as soon as they give they give us what we've literally asked for you know and then we feel good and i just think that's very interesting but when it comes to public apologies at the moment um which many people have to do if you're speaking publicly and especially if you're willing to say anything that doesn't it doesn't fit the script there's often um sorry we're often encouraged to give a public apology but from what i observe it never seems to go well you know it seems like offering a public apology is yeah almost bad advice a lot of the time i'm maybe not saying all of the time i'm sure there's instances where um it's helpful um but the idea that you should i don't know i just kind of think it's coddling i think if you've asked for one and it comes to you like someone is just giving you what you want i think you know an apology or at least when it's worthwhile is when you don't have to ask and people show you themselves what they think is the um the morally sound thing to do um so yeah i guess i was thinking a bit about public apologies and you know the act of demanding one doesn't that just by nature diminish it maybe not but it's i'm struggling with it in mind i wouldn't demand an apology from someone i would note that they haven't given one and that would i don't know that would probably be more compelling evidence of something yeah it is i think i'm like you in that sense i i don't know any time that i've demanded an apology from someone i think if i i you know interpersonally i think if i've felt wronged by someone and i feel like i need to tell this person how they've wronged me there's been times when i've had to do that and you know they they either offer an apology because they they agree they're like holy [ __ ] i yeah i shouldn't have done that or they don't in which case i know where they stand i know how they view what just happened between us and if they offer an apology then i feel good and if not then i i i rethink my relationship with this person i will follow an answer you know apologies also right but i i think of someone like louis ck i don't know if you followed um the fallout of his his uh you know situation but he i remember he offered uh an apology that was published in new york times it was maybe two paragraphs long and i do genuinely wonder whether it did any good for him because the only times i've i've heard about his apology talked about i've heard about it i've heard it said that it just didn't feel genuine to people it wasn't enough i'm not sure you know i read it it seemed it read as fairly genuine to me but it it does seem like you know and then you compare that to someone like trump who i don't think he's ever apologized for anything in his entire life yeah yeah um which is its own kind of pathology in his case i think but it it's also very effective and i think if there's um if there's if there's some kind of wisdom to glean from all of these cases it's that you should you should be willing to offer apologies when it actually when you actually feel remorseful for what you've done not just because you got caught not just because you know or not not just because you're you're being dragged on social media but because you actually agree on the substance of the issue you see how your actions or words are wrong you could explain in detail why they were wrong if pressed to and you feel they were wrong enough to merit an apology but if you don't i think it you know it just doesn't make sense to give an apology because it will inevitably not seem like enough to the people demanding it i think you know i think about this on the topic of reparations often and i think there's actually been times in my life where i've heard an apology from someone and somehow it made me angrier i don't i don't i wonder how many people can can relate to this but that's what i think of when when i see people demanding a national apology for slavery in the u.s context uh you know first there's the point that we've sort of had one already but uh you know i wonder actually you know it's possible to to think you're going to enjoy an apology if you're to think you're going to feel whole after an apology and to be completely wrong about your own prediction of your own mind yes completely um and i think there's something there's something like that going on with these historical wrongs that none of us have directly experienced but we all sort of learn about and learn to feel angry about i think the apology that a lot of people are waiting for is going to feel very underwhelming you know very underwhelming i don't think it's going to give maybe will it closure i i don't think it's going to give the kind of closure that you know one may hope to receive um yeah i'm similar to you there i i i think for me like apologizing about those types of things those historical wrongdoings i don't know it's just um it's just fairly and i i me and i can understand that maybe just my temperament is different but i fail to not read it as you know just empty symbolism you know i i can't i i failed to take something very meaningful from it yeah i think that's right i mean if you actually picture you know some politicians today it would have to be in america it'd have to be white apologizing for slavery i honestly what it is is i know that they're only apologizing for it because a culturally powerful contingent of the activist american left has demanded it i know that they didn't they weren't waking up 10 years ago feeling guilty about slavery i i know they don't give a [ __ ] at bottom and i know they're only doing it to save face they're thinking about their next election whatever it is so it can't possibly feel i mean and that's me that's someone who's you know more sympathetic probably to white people on maps than the activists demanding the reparations to begin with so how will they feel when they see a white politician getting up there saying we're so sorry about slavery it's the origin the original sin and we we genuinely feel we hope that this apology is accepted they're going to see that person as totally disingenuous and they're going to get they're going to get more angry probably because they're going to think really you think you can get off with a [ __ ] half-ass apology like that but it's paradoxical because they're the very people that are demanding the apology to begin with yeah yeah i just think a lot of the time i mean and you know this is me my very amateur psychoanalysis but it just feels like people are clearly in pain about various things and they are sometimes very misguided in where they're aiming that you know and so often it feels to me that they're they're targeting things people that can never truly you know give them what it is that they're looking for this closure or this um an awakened uh sense of you know positive esteem or something like that it just seems like yeah i think a lot of people can often think that what they want is what they want but it often is not um i think yeah something like that i don't yeah i just i fail to see how it's gonna bring those who are demanding it anything beneficial um and even let's say even with just maybe a lot of white help in particular in terms of fight against racism as it's called you know i think if you allow white people to do too much then you know that's also called a superiority complexity they call that a superiority complex but if they don't do anything and they're just kind of living their lives you know not necessarily hateful or anything like that but just carrying on then they're complicit you know and so it seems that you know the activist space or at least the mainstream activist space especially in the us um it seems like it's created a lose-lose situation you know for many people involved yeah i know this is a i don't know this is probably a very taboo opinion to some people but i just can't help but feel it in the past two or three months that i have sympathy for white people who have no idea what to do uh you know because in the wake i don't know if it was similar to this in the uk i'm curious but in the wake of george floyd the killing of george floyd in minneapolis um there was a month i would say where how you dealt with that news event on instagram was a a genuine full-time job for people and it was a full-time job for white people and what that what that meant was you know how much do you post about it do you post about it and you know any if you don't post about it i've heard from friends of mine who said they lost followers just because they didn't post anything right and to this will seem crazy to some people that i i care about this but you know it's such a a hype phenomenon because in america about 50 people get killed unarmed by the cops every year thereabouts um it could be a little higher what races you mean of all races yeah um the the biggest number of those will be white you know i think last year a little over 20 of those were black and a somewhat higher number were white and some of those are justified killing some of them the cop deserves to be in prison and everything in between so it's hard to generalize about about all of these cases and and have the same feeling towards all of them but the idea that this particular one that that if you don't post something on social media about this one that we've arbitrarily chosen to care about even though you know a white guy died the same exact way in 2016 and none of you cared or heard about his name if you don't post about this one and if you don't say exactly what we want you to say you're a horrible human being you're a bad person at your core so this is a problem that you know i think millions of of white people probably asians as well and to some extent hispanics have had to deal with in the past two months in america but if you're black it doesn't matter like post or don't post anything you feel you know as long as you don't you know sound like coleman hughes anything you post or feel is valid because you're black and you you know post as much as you want post as little as you want if you feel you need to take a break from social media it's totally okay if you want to be posting all the time that's totally okay too but if you're white it's like you post if you if you're posting too much then you're drawing too much attention to yourself and making it about you and truly anything you do is going to be wrong right yeah i mean and this is also probably a taboo position or opinion to suggest but you know i often think that many people more than not are more committed to the project of making white people feel guilty than any kind of liberation of black people um and at least as far as the racial discussion goes i'm i'm not bothered about what white people do or don't do that really isn't my concern i'm concerned about what black people do don't do and and how we see ourselves maybe more importantly how we see ourselves and how we think about our lives um but i think when you are committed to the project of making white people feel guilty which is you know very lucrative you know that's becoming an industry of its own um yeah i think yeah it's a full-time job you know holding them to account you know making sure that they do everything that you ask them to do and if they make a mistake a very human genuine mistake that we can all see um you will demean them for it you know and and make them feel terrible um that month was so hard for me you know even being in the uk um it was the exact same you know and so you know police killings happen here far less you know uh which isn't to say that you know people haven't uh been murdered in police custody but for one you know we don't walk around with guns like our police are often unarmed um so it's very rare that you know someone's ever shot or killed in in cold blood in the streets by a police officer here white or black um and all of a sudden i remember around instagram some people i know in fashion who you know they're black but generally the kinds of people who do not care about race and racism that's a boring conscious conversation um you know so yeah these people aren't you know far from what anyone would consider woke or activists like and all of a sudden those very same people are saying i'm scared to leave the house you know i i can't leave the house i'm scared to leave the house because i'm scared to have an interaction with the police i'm thinking what every white person that i know you know is posting a black square and i couldn't help but feel condescended and patronized from every corner you know because it felt like this whole apology situation that i mentioned where you know is something valid or even meaningful if it's only being done because i've asked for it you know and especially as something as you know like on social media it's not like we're doing actually much in the physical world um and it was really really difficult for me because it felt i mean you know i guess to some degree i've always understood or at least understood for a long time that it's easier to go with the crowd in life you know because um putting you know sticking your neck out with a different way of seeing things has its consequences and and many of them can be negative but to see it to truly you know to have this palpable visual representation of how much people are not willing to think and how scared people are and fearful it was terrifying to me like it was genuinely terrifying i think i had one night where i genuinely i think i i think i you know tears came to my eyes because i was so frustrated by the whole thing um you know and in an instance just kind of this international kind of um this international projection of victimhood onto every black person you know i was speaking to white people on online and sometimes i was taking a while to get back just because i'm like that or i was doing something and then they would come back you know just after the hello how are you and they'd be like oh my god of course i can't ask you how you are you know how insensitive of me and i'm just like you know people were acting like george floyd was my father you know like i had you know my actual father passed away and people weren't as as forthcoming my actual dad passed away and so it's i it's it was scary to me and i was desperately looking for a white friend who hadn't posted it because i knew that and obviously i didn't think that white person was racist but i wanted to know that someone you know hadn't felt the need to succumb to this collective international peer pressure yeah and there's there's something there's a really strange assumption there which is that if you saw the george floyd video and you're black that by definition it hurt you more than if you were white seeing the same video like there's some assumption that a white person couldn't have seen that and felt just as aggrieved and angry and disgusted right so that white people need to on mass reach out to their black friend and say how are you rather than you know in theory everyone reaching out to everyone and saying did you see this video wow this is this really affected me and if it did affect you then it then it did but it just it did seem there was a strange assumption that empathy and solidarity only happens or happens much more within race and i'm not sure that that's true at this point in history i'm not sure it's true no i don't think it is um no i mean i know myself and many other black people who obviously watched the video and were horrified but i can't say i was traumatized by it i'm not going to say that that's just not true you know and you know i saw memes and advice at the time saying to white people because there was so much advice to white people you know around this time and you know i saw something saying reach out to your black friends i saw other things saying don't reach out to your black friends don't talk to any of your black friends don't talk to black people for the rest of the month you know i saw things like this i saw people replying back to emails where they were given opportunities uh kind of like just pouncing on these people and talking about like how dare you do you not know what's happened you know like i'm traumatized or you know i seen bounce-back messages emails from people saying you know i'm out of office because i'm traumatized because of the situation and i you know i don't know i mean i don't think that we do feel um generally speaking should i say i don't feel that we see something happen to someone black and because they're black we all kind of feel this unanimous pain that's that's not what i understand but there was something very curious about um the george floyd situation i'm not sure why it was that one in particular that set in motion everything that happened i think it was partly because [Music] there was something about the video well i think it's partly because of coronavirus everyone is at home and watching more news and more social media and people are out of work and they're frustrated and they're antsy and the idea of a protest is way more appealing if you haven't left your house in three months than if you're sort of out and about going to school going to job and you have to interrupt your life to go to a protest rather than the protest is probably the most exciting thing you've done in the past month so i think that was a big part of it um but yeah it's you know you're you're right to know that a lot of the advice it wasn't advice it was demands a lot of the demands given to white people were directly contradictory and all of the demands are said as if as if you know the actions of a white person on social media are directly preventing more black people from getting killed by the cops it's like as if there's a connection between what you do or don't post on social media it's as if you know the future of of racism depends on your obeying the advice from or the demand of an activist and if you don't post you are thought to be you know you are the knee on on george floyd's neck right so so the idea that if you're white god forbid you don't have a strong opinion and you're actually the type of person who likes to think about something for weeks or months before you post on social media god forbid you are the knee on on on george floyd's neck and it's just i think that's a really insane way to approach race relations and politics in general because you know now i don't know if if if a white person is posting something on social media are do they really feel that are they terrified of not posting and if they are terrified of not posting you know is that why their post doesn't feel as genuine as it might otherwise feel you know it kind of goes back to the apology point that you wished in many ways that you know a lot of this uh movement especially in in the direction of race and maybe actually not just race in many directions it feels like we're just we're demanding people to placate us it doesn't matter if it's genuine just like just appease me that's all i need you know i don't care if it's genuine just do as i say um and i think because the collective esteem of so many people who are involved in such movements is quite low they can't see when they're being patronized they can't tell patronization from you know maybe solidarity um and this worries me this worries me because i think it's a reflection of you know our levels of self-worth okay one last tweet suffering whether current historical or imagined can often make people feel exempt from holding themselves to the moral standards they expect of everyone else yes so there is this idea now and it's and i'm sure it's probably always been around but it's um it's very dominant now uh that if you are a victim of something past or present or even imagined um that you are absolved from treating other people in the way that you wish to be treated you know so it's always been you know very important to me to just you know the basic thing of treat other people how i'd like to be treated i won't speak to someone in a way that i will get upset about myself um and i think it's a fairly easy principle to live by and you know a lot of people are demanding respect they're demanding equality they're all to be treated as human being but they don't want to treat many people as human beings you know we're saying that racial discrimination is traumatic and deadly many people don't mind to be racially discriminatory as long as it's to the right people which is the white people at the moment um and yeah we just seem to think that you know victimhood is synonymous with virtue or synonymous with innocence and it's a ticket it's a get out of jail free card to to do anything that you want to do and all i think this is doing is for one it's obnoxious um because most people in the world don't care you know like not everybody is a guilty white liberal most people have to get on with their lives they have bills they have their own mental um things to contend with you know stress just all of it and we don't care to you know to nust and babysit you know someone who feels that their suffering allows them to get away with whatever they want to do um i think this is causing resentment in people you know it's people can clearly see that well we're being told that racism is bad and we're being told that this discrimination is bad yet look at this you know this person is doing it in plain sight and yeah i just can't see the consequences for any of this being positive and i just don't think again it's good for the self-esteem of the individual who's behaving this way yeah i have um so i'm i'm one of those people that heard martin luther king's i have a dream speech as a kid and actually took it literally and believed it and i'm just noticing increasingly that many people just no longer use that as a reference point for what direction we should be trying to go in so like as a kid i i grew up in a very diverse town and i had friends of every race and we got together as a school every year and you know around martin luther king day and learned about the racism he was fighting and how he fought it and learned about the principles on which he stood to fought it to fight it which is just you know the idea that your race doesn't matter and that anyone you know anyone who's a making any serious claim that your race makes you less than whether it's less than a full moral person or whether it means your opinion is not welcome there they are the ones that are committing the error it doesn't you know obviously for most of american history the overwhelming majority of racism has been perpetrated by white people towards black people um at least the racism that has had the most powerful effect but in principle it is racism in itself that is the problem so you know there's there's recently you know i i guess it's not so recent but it's become more popular the notion that it's not possible to be racist to a white person because white people as a collective have the power in society and black people don't therefore it's you know you can be sometimes they it's parsed by saying sure black people can be prejudiced as if that's just totally fine but only white people can be racist i'm curious what you think of that idea if i'm honest i i can't not shudder at it you know i i can't i i find it really insufferable if i'm honest you know and i want to use milder language um but i i struggle to um because for one again i i i mean one not every white person has power in fact i would say majority of them don't you know you know not every white person is rich and powerful and has all this influence um and whether we want to call it racism or not racial discrimination we can discriminate based on someone's race and the same impact whether that's hurt feelings or uh feeling isolated or not getting a job let's say if you are applying an organization that has um predominantly many more black people like we can you know we are capable of committing um uh the same moral sin in that sense and i just think you know i i really think in so many ideas that may be meant to be radical all they do is confirm uh the myth of white superiority you know because that's a myth to me i i can't i don't believe the white people are superior simply because they have white skin you know that's something that some some very insecure white people think but it seems that many people are intent on on confirming this and i think an idea that only white people can be racist is to confirm this idea that they are collectively superior so much so that they have the power to hurt black people in a way that we could never do to them and i i i'm not down with that no it's not true i mean it's just not true i mean you can if you can kill someone and uh you can kill someone because of their race let's say because maybe you thought they were whatever um i can't see i can't see much more power than that you know the power to take away someone else's life because of their race um and everyone is capable of being able to do such a thing so yeah i don't think it's a helpful idea i think it's an idea that would be reasonable um to abandon as far as i can see i was actually you bring up the the idea of you know racist killings i was once on a debate panel with a native american tribal chief who sincerely believed that the only racist murders in the history of america had been white people murdering people of color that there has never been a case of a person of color murdering a white peop white person for racism this person actually believed this wow it's fascinating isn't it it is fascinating so like from my point of view it it's so obvious to me that racism and prejudice are human universals which is to say every group of people has had out group prejudice outgroup hatred um and you know killing that that's the that's a legacy a lot of what i object to about the way history is talked about is not that we shouldn't you know look into the enormous wrongs that people have committed in the past it's just that we should all kind of own them it should not be something that's narrowly pinned on white people um slavery being the perfect example you know if we're if we're going to make today's white people feel guilty for their ancestors participation in slavery then we should also make uh west africans feel guilty for their participation in the slave trade which you know they they sold the slaves to european slave traders in exchange for profit and goods so why is it that we only try to make people of a certain color feel bad for historical wrongs that if you were to trace all of our individual ancestral lineages we would all have ancestors that participated in and that's that did horrible things to other people things that that we couldn't even imagine today um so the the selective condemnation and guilt mining is what i object to so strongly yeah and i think you have that again for me what it comes down to because you seem like to work on um a principle of fairness you know you like things that are fair you know and i think that's very separate to equal but fair in treatment you know and i i resonate with that so yes i believe that you know history as you're saying you know has unspeakable and unthinkable wrongs um that happened that you know it was it was all of us and i think if if we think that only white people are capable of immoral behavior or or you know some of the the most wicked things that humans can ever have done um for one that's just not true but also we are i don't know we're we're deluding ourselves we're deluding ourselves to preserve a narrative a narrative that is flawed and if we can't comprehend and contend with the things that all human beings are capable of then these things will keep reproducing themselves it doesn't matter if you have all black trans women at the top of you know any system you know as long as you know people are prone to um you know unchecked insecurities and greed and jealousy and corruption and and and so on and so forth you will always get well like you know the one we have today or the ones that we've had you know yesterday because you know the world at the moment is is better than it has been in many ways um so i i just yeah i just think it's an oversight and very simplistic to think that a lot of these behaviors that we um are against are unique to white people all right well on that note this has been a really great conversation i usually i'm really glad i got you on this podcast and um can you point my listeners to where they can find you and and what you're up to yes so um you can find me on my social media it's the same act for both um which is mostly twitter and instagram and so that's my name at my last name sorry aisha underscore i can be so hopefully i don't know i don't need to spell my name it's in the description right sure yeah there's aisha with a t at the end right are you sure the silency um underscore can be yeah all right thanks so much [Music] you

Channel: Coleman Hughes

Views: 48,657

Rating: 4.9620304 out of 5

Keywords: identity, identity politics, politics, america, fashion, music, philosophy, free speech

Id: ZEC1g4NRha0

Length: 79min 30sec (4770 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020