Najma Sharif
Hi, I’m Najma. I&#8217;m a culture writer. And when I say culture, I mean, I write about everything from film and music to politics. I try to analyse and theorise about the world in the ways I can. Aside from that, I guess I would be a critical thinker and Somali woman living in the US.
Shadee Malaklou 
It&#8217;s nice to meet you, Najma. I’m Dr Shadee Malaklou. I am the founder and inaugural director of the <a href="https://www.berea.edu/bhc/">bell hooks centre</a> of Berea College. I&#8217;m also the chair of the Women&#8217;s Gender and Sexuality Studies Department. I am a scholar of Black feminism and Black liberation thought in the vein of Franz Fanon, and I actually read Fanon as a Gender Studies text, much through the lens of bell hooks and other Black feminist writers. It&#8217;s a real joy to be here. Thank you for having me.
Najma 
Oh, nice! Fanon, I could talk about him all day. So where am I going to begin? In an interview, bell hooks once said that the line between culture and political writing was that the intent of political writing is to change how people think about their political reality, whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there. hooks is known for engaging in both.
Shadee 
I think bell was really invested in the feminist politic of making the personal political. I once asked her – I had the supreme pleasure and privilege of befriending her – if she would describe herself as a Black feminist, and bell said, “No, I&#8217;m a feminist”. Without the additive. And she took that seriously, insofar as she wanted to use feminism as an anti-racist analytic to think about the way the world worked, and her place in it, and our place in it.
She named those intersecting worldings “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”, and later, in the conversation with Laverne Cox, added “cis” and “hetero” to patriarchy. This is what is especially powerful about bell’s work: she locates, with precision, the intersections that others abstract. When we abstract intersectionality, we misunderstand it as an analytic of intersecting experiences of oppression. And that&#8217;s not what it means to analyse and really disarticulate the intersecting structures of oppression that bell named and agitated against, both in her writing and in her person.

bell was a contrarian. That much I can recount from sharing time and space and conversation with her. To those ends, I would actually argue that the cultural and political merged for bell, because to change how people “think about their political reality” requires helping folks see “what’s already there”. And I do think that social media is one way that we can help people see past “imperialist white supremacist capitalist cis-hetero-patriarchy” in order to re/think their political possibilities. However, bell did not personally engage social media platforms, and warned that “social media is clutter and life is already full of clutter”. So, I guess what I’m saying is that social media can be the space of vapid filtered selfies and images of food (as “clutter”), but it can also be the place where we rattle and rage.

bell wrote about popular culture as the political, and, before she fell ill, invited well-known folks to her Institute at Berea College to do this kind of thinking with her – like Emma Watson, Laverne Cox, Cornel West and Darnell Moore – all of whom (perhaps, excluding Emma Watson) straddle cultural and political critique in a public-facing way.
One thing that bell talked about a lot was her <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/11/capitalism-of-beyonce-lemonade-album">critique of Beyoncé</a>. Until the day she died, she was upset about the amount of vitriol she received because of writing that. bell was a spitfire and a dissident, even (especially) when it got her in trouble. She was a critic of our time. I become quite frustrated when the public opines and obsesses about her love ethic and forgets the critic that she was. They really de-politicise what she means by love. But for bell, love is the way and justice is the destination. There can be no justice without love, and no love without justice. And so even as she drags Beyoncé, there&#8217;s a love there. And I have to be honest, I was one of her closest friends, and she dragged me too, sometimes. But it was always with care.
Najma
I remember the response to the Beyoncé essay, talking about criticism and love, right? Was that part of her radical approach to this fearless, bold critique too? Was love what empowered her to put herself out there, and face the vitriol, or was it just the love of the criticism? The theory, the thought, like, how did she think about that?

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Shadee 
On the voicemail recording that bell took with her from home to home in Berea, she says, “All awakening to love is spiritual awakening”, which is a quote from her book All About Love, but it&#8217;s also inspired by the writings of the Sufi poet Rumi. For her, love is a verb, an action, a community, a care, an accountability, a possibility. And all of these things are what creates an anti-racist feminist praxis for addressing the intersections that bell critiques.
I do think that she came to love out of her Buddhist practice. And that&#8217;s something that she found a little later in life, not in opposition to theory, but as its complement. In an interview about the first time that she met Thich Nhat Hanh, bell recounts that she came to him with anger and rage, and that he told her to use that anger as <a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/bell-hooks-on-meeting-thich-nhat-hanh/">“compost for her garden”</a>. Which is to say, theory (bell’s garden of possibility) was made possible when she turned her anger and rage into love. The two co-existed for her.
Najma
I’m very curious as to the boldness in her critique that we don&#8217;t see today, because if it is coming from a place of love, knowing that source is important.
Shadee 
bell was really skilled at making academic jargon accessible. We see that sometimes with academics who write for the public. Imani Perry and Cornel West do this, and I think that’s why they were invited to the Institute to have conversations with bell, because they similarly had one foot in the public sphere. They weren&#8217;t talking in this echo chamber of academia – a masturbatory practice in which one only speaks to other people who know their language, as a means of self-aggrandisement. You know, Dionne Brand says, “Black people are people without a translator”. And I think what is so beautiful about bell is that she tried to put words to something that is outside of language and its structuring logics of grammar – something that didn&#8217;t exist before she described it.
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Najma
I have this really big book of contemporary writers, and I found an interview with bell hooks and Cornel West, when she started moving away from the more academic work, the early stuff, and he called her a “Black prophet”. What do you think of that?
Shadee
I do think bell was a prophet. Absolutely. To name just one example: ten years ago, at the National Women&#8217;s Studies Association Conference in Puerto Rico, she said that, given the choice, white women will always choose their race over their gender. And then <a href="https://platformonline.uk/tag/donald-trump">Trump</a> happened.
Najma
So happy I asked that. I was very afraid of dehumanising her or making her out to be some sort of deity.
Shadee
She is an elder, an ancestor now, so I feel she was part of a Black prophetic tradition. I think that&#8217;s what Cornel West was getting at, too. That it wasn&#8217;t just that she was a prophet in the popular sense; she was engaging this prophetic tradition of call and response, and radical critique and liberation theology, to make her interventions known.
Najma
How did bell hooks approach transgression in the classroom? I saved this quote where she says, “The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility.” So…
Shadee
Yes, thank you for that quote! So Fred Moten, a cultural critic and Performance Studies professor at NYU, describes the classroom as a potential <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/sNGVmAEACAAJ?hl=en">“undercommons”</a>: a space of possibility within but not of the university. Another thinker, who publishes under the pen name ‘la paperson’, describes this mis/education as a project of the “third university”. <a href="https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/on-black-negativity-or-the-affirmation-of-nothing">Jared Sexton</a> talks about how under-the-radar, life-affirming socio-political spaces can exist: these are “not lived in the world that the rest of the world lives in, but [are]… underground, in outer space”, or underwater as the case may be. So for example, returning to Beyoncé, in Lemonade, she curates Black life almost entirely underwater, in an underworld where Black persons can actually breathe. I think that bell created a space in the classroom for those kinds of questions.

Najma 
It’s interesting you mention these third spaces, because bell hooks can be attributed to a lot of digital feminists, really. A lot of people learned about her work online. Was that something that she thought about, like how her work came into the Tumblr sphere? Someone was saying there is no golden age of Tumblr or digital feminism without bell hooks, and that&#8217;s how I came across her work, on Tumblr at 16 years old.
Shadee 
That’s so interesting, she would want nothing to do with that.
Najma 
I know she hates social media. [Laughs]
Shadee 
Yes, and she hated the computer. It was her sister and I who answered bell’s emails and received her correspondence. She didn&#8217;t have a mobile phone either; she only had a house line.

Najma 
I guess I&#8217;m talking about how the digital space becomes a space to learn. You know, she talked about transgressing academia, and a lot of folks study online and come to terms with her work online.
Shadee 
I agree with you, even if bell wouldn’t. I think that virtual and social media spaces can be a location of the Otherwise that bell wanted – an underground outside of the white gaze. Or, the space of an “oppositional gaze”, to use bell’s own language. It is very much a space where you can make your own possibilities. And to make your own possibilities is transgressive.
Having said that, we must beware – and I think that this is what bell feared – of how those spaces are appropriated. Representation will not save us. We see this with Black Twitter, for example. Spaces like Black Twitter are no longer sacred. They are available to woke, virtue-signal plucking and retweeting. bell was very much against that. Once usurped in this way, Black spaces are no longer the underground, undetectable, and yes, transgressive Otherwise of Black mutuality and care – those things that make Black life possible.
Najma 
I remember witnessing the beginning of all this, and it was that safe space for Black women. Black non-binary people, plus-size Black women, Black Muslims, where there was nuance in the discussions being had at the time, and now it&#8217;s very much what you describe.
I want to follow through a line of where all this leads to, like what&#8217;s going to be the future of this? I hate the word “wokeism” but it’s the best way to describe the kind of virtue-signalling, grandstanding, self-righteousness that happens online with young people. Because when I think of bell hooks I think of intersectionality, nuance. I think of not looking for the most oppressed person in the room – there’s also solidarity, right?
Shadee 
Well, bell was very concerned towards the end of her life about feminism, and that feminism was dying. She was very into feminist sisterhood beyond racial distinction.
Najma 
A lot of what I&#8217;m seeing happening today is people trying to re-package misogynistic white supremacist patriarchal dynamics as radical. Like all the girls are saying they want to be housewives right now, and it’s like, are we in the ‘50s? Um, I think we already went through that wave of feminism?
Shadee 
But also, which women have the privilege to be a housewife? Feminists of colour have held white feminism accountable for precisely this privilege. <a href="https://platformonline.uk/posts/we-need-to-talk-about-claudia-jones">Claudia Jones</a>, for example, and Toni Cade Bambara, to list another example, implored that we “get our house in order”– that we think first about our own participation in “imperialist white supremacist capitalist cis-hetero-patriarchy” before we go lead a march or participate in some movement out there. What about the Black and brown women who are cleaning these feminist activists’ homes, who these white feminists are paying under the table – in other words, not a living wage – so that they can go out and climb this patriarchal ladder at the behest of capitalism? “<a href="https://thefeministwire.com/2013/10/17973/">Lean in</a>”, and all that.

Najma 
And then there&#8217;s the other facet: this isn&#8217;t a reality at all because men aren’t even making money – they&#8217;re not even the capitalist patriarchs that they used to be.
Shadee 
Black men certainly aren&#8217;t.
Audre Lorde says Black people were “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147275/a-litany-for-survival">never meant to survive</a>”, and I think she means not just slavery, but its afterlife. People weren&#8217;t paid living wages on purpose, so they would starve and die out. I think it&#8217;s very, very intentional that communities of colour, especially Black communities, cannot find work that makes life possible.
Najma 
I would think that intersectional feminist lens, that nuanced, caring, holistic viewpoint of the world would come back as people struggle, but instead, people are reverting back to harmful ways of thinking, because they&#8217;re realising they didn&#8217;t benefit from the virtue signalling. They benefit more from performing, I guess, heteronormativity, hegemonic ways of living, like playing into these housewife dynamics. I feel very alienated as a Black Muslim woman, right now, so I&#8217;ve just been thinking a lot about how to make a u-turn on the thinking. What are we gonna have to do?…cause it’s bad out here.
Shadee 
There&#8217;s several strands to what you just said. I&#8217;m going to try to tease them out.
You talk about Black men and youth: bell was very, very invested in the children&#8217;s novels that she wrote. The thing that she was most concerned about at the end of her life was that she wanted to not write academic books, but more children&#8217;s novels. She wrote novels specifically about Black boys. She wanted Black boys to feel that they could be tender and soft.
The second thing I want to say is I actually see a different move from what you do in terms of romantic dynamics and gender and sexuality. As Hari Ziyad says, “<a href="https://afropunk.com/2017/07/my-gender-is-black/">My gender is Black</a>,” because gender in Black culture has always been fluid. Black genders and sexualities are not imagined as modern or postmodern, in other words, at the apex of human civilisation and progress. Instead, we locate them in “the bush”, in a time before human time, marked by sexual excess and gender ambiguity.
I think a lot of sex/gender performance in communities of colour, such as what you’re describing, is an attempt to climb that ladder of civilisation through white mimicry, to appeal to whiteness in order to accrue what Fanon describes as <a href="http://www.critical-theory.com/frantz-fanon-argues-no-being-through-others-for-people-of-color-in-1952/">“ontological resistance”</a>: the human recognition that makes secondary markers of identity like gender and sexuality cohere.
So, you go to any non-white country and the first thing that you see at the pharmacy is skin-lightening creams and hair removal products. Communities of colour have an obsession with laser hair removal and electrolysis, and an obsession with nose jobs, specifically, aquiline noses. I don’t think that this is just about being “marriage material” or having romantic sexual appeal. I think that it&#8217;s about having white feminine appeal specifically.
In terms of what bell might say about this, I encourage everyone to revisit her first book, taken from Sojourner Truth’s refrain, <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780861043798/aint-i-a-woman/">“Ain&#8217;t I a woman”</a>.
Najma 
It&#8217;s very interesting that you say all that is for white appeal. Because there&#8217;s an entire genre on TikTok right now of women who teach each other etiquette and how to dress. And they&#8217;re getting nose jobs, and the amount of money they spend on just everything, filler, extensions. They&#8217;re teaching you where to grab the champagne flute from, because, you know, we all do that every day (!)
Shadee 
Do you think that this is about respectability? Respectability politics is always white. I was never invited to cotillion [a ‘ball’ in which children are taught etiquette] when I was growing up in multiculturalist Southern California. Yes, even (especially) in a liberal haven, one must perform the trappings of whiteness.
Najma 
Respectability politics is making a huge comeback, like for sure – there&#8217;s a whole culture of it – men and women, all genders, all races, across religions.
Shadee 
I’m not on TikTok so I feel like an idiot.

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Najma 
Don’t come! You don&#8217;t have to do that. [Laughs]
It has damaged my brain! But yeah, that was very illuminating because it definitely ties together something I have been witnessing in politics and culture and social media.
So, what do you think are bell hooks’ most underrated books and essays?
Shadee
I like Bone Black, mostly because she talks a lot (and lyrically) about her childhood in that book. I also like Appalachian Elegy, because in it she attributes her dissident feminism not to the cosmopolitanism of (post)modernity, but to the culture of hillbilly folks in the “Kentucky backwoods”, who she describes as her “ancestors and kin”. bell was Appalachian, but we don&#8217;t think of her that way, because she&#8217;s Black. Appalachia is imagined as this white coal mine region. There are plenty of Black and Indigenous Appalachians. bell was Indigenous as well, which again, we don&#8217;t talk about because she&#8217;s Black, and Black almost cancels out anything else. So, I think her books about growing up in Kentucky are really meaningful.
Najma
Before you dip on us, I wanted to know more about what bell was like as a friend and as a colleague?
Shadee 
Oh, she was a spitfire, and she was a gossip. She was obsessed with Juicy Fruit gum. I’d buy it for her in bulk. And she didn&#8217;t like the sugar free kind or the kind in a canister; she liked the old school Juicy Fruit gum packets. Before Juicy Fruit, she was obsessed with peppermints, specifically, soft fluffy peppermints. Not the hard kind.
She was the first person who called me in the morning and the last person who called me at night. And she&#8217;d want me to bring her coffee in the morning. And I&#8217;d be like, “bell, I have to teach!”, then she&#8217;d call me fifteen times during my class because she wanted a McDonald&#8217;s cheeseburger.
bell was in a lot of pain towards the end of her life. And she could be – well, she described me in this way, but I think this applies to her too – “strident”. But, you know what, I loved that about her. I loved that she was a truth teller. It was her love language. A tough love, but love. She wasn’t airing dirty laundry; she was curating an honest, intentional, beloved feminist community.

I would sit with her as she devoured mystery novels. I think that the kind of friendship we had gave me a lot of love, because we would sit there, and she would be reading in silence or napping. And I would be working. And it was a kind of friendship where you didn&#8217;t have to talk. You know, there was an ease there.
She said it like it is and took no prisoners. You knew when she loved you, even when she knocked you around, even when her loving and doting gaze turned into her trademark side-eye. I loved her, too, and I&#8217;ll miss her forever.
Najma
Wow, that&#8217;s… wow. Thank you so much.
Shadee 
Thank you. I&#8217;d love to be in conversation again soon.
Najma
That&#8217;d be really dope.

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<a href="https://www.najmasharif.com/">Najma Sharif</a> is a culture and politics writer based in the USA. <a href="https://www.berea.edu/wgs/faculty-and-staff/dr-m-shadee-malaklou/">Dr Shadee Malaklou</a> is the founder and inaugural director of the bell hooks center of Berea College. This interview took place on 25 February 2022. This is a shortened transcript edited by <a href="https://platformonline.uk/author/td">Theodora Danylevich</a> and <a href="https://platformonline.uk/author/zainab-rahim">Zainab Rahim</a>.

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Featured photo: bell hooks speaks on campus at UW-Madison / University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives Photo Collection

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Dr Shadee Malaklou, director of the bell hooks center at Berea College, speaks with journalist Najma Sharif, sharing insights into bell hooks&#8217; life and work in light of our current social moment.

The critic of our time: An interview on bell hooks’ life, love and legacy

Content warning: This piece explores issues around mental health, depression and suicide, which some readers might find upsetting.
Dear Dad,
The day you ended your life I remember you telling mom all you wanted was to get better. Years of therapy, rehab, increasing dosages of various medications, and you still felt like a lost cause, like there was absolutely no way you could ever get better for us. I remember overhearing this conversation on the phone, and, honestly, I wished you would get better too. I was tired of the fights, having to call the cops when you got too mad, wondering if I’d ever see you again when you stormed out of the house. But I think I was most tired of seeing how tired you were. I didn’t want you to feel hopeless anymore; I just wanted you to be normal.
Normal. What I used to intensely desire for you to be, now aggressively repulses me. I’ve learned to appreciate the parts of ourselves that deviate from normal. Normal is the enemy of happiness and the destroyer of contentment. To strive for normalcy is to strive for a subjective, arbitrary societal standard that is simply impossible to attain. However, I wished for you to obtain this, and for that I am sorry.
However, I am not sorry about wishing you got better– although I think my idea of what constitutes better is different now. I hate everyone that fed into the idea that your mental illnesses were burdensome, scary, and unmanageable. Sh*t, I hate myself for doing that. I think my old idea of “better” closely parallels society&#8217;s idea of perfection, this idea that we need to be motivated, accomplished and contagiously happy 99% of the time. But f*ck perfect. If I knew what I know now, I would tell you how beautifully imperfect you were. The most imperfect people do the most brilliant things, have the most unique perspectives, and undoubtedly are the strongest fighters. Striving for this unachievable perfection is what kills people. It killed you, and I hate that it took me 20 years and one disability course to figure that out.

Do you remember my obsession with shooting stars? You and mom told me you had wished upon a shooting star for a baby girl and then you had me. After that, I think I tricked myself into believing every plane flying through the night sky was one of these magical stars, because I so desperately wanted to make a wish. I remember carefully contemplating what I would wish for. It had to be something magnificent, because I only got one chance to wish for something that could completely alter my life. (So, of course, I wished to be best friends with Taylor Swift).
I see shooting stars less often now, possibly because I am now able to differentiate between a falling meteor and a flashing plane light. But when I do see them, I still wish. Except now, all I wish for is you: Not a “healthy” or “normal” you, just you and everything that made you, you. Because you were magnificent.
One of the things I know you did love about this world was learning- I assume that’s why you stayed in school for 12 years and became a doctor. And Dad, I’ve learned a hell of a lot. Specifically, I’ve learned a lot about disability injustice, and through this I think I’ve learned a lot more about you. No one ever told you that your illnesses were a piece of yourself meant to be appreciated. Yes, sometimes life can feel unmanageable because of your disabilities, but that doesn’t require you to remove yourself from the world, that requires the world to remove those things that are making life feel unmanageable.
I realise now, the world might be a relatively ok place for the few people it was created for: the nondisabled- the people that are physically and mentally capable of doing everything with ease and without any accommodations; as well as those whose identities escape bias and oppression. I don&#8217;t think anyone ever told you that these people are few and far between, but that society assumes they are everywhere.

In reality, so many more people deviate from this norm. Society has forced us to think we should hide the parts of ourselves that are messy, when the truth is, everybody and everything is messy. Author Kai Cheng Thom once wrote that, “beneath all health lies sickness”, and I think that’s beautiful. I think this truth is the foundation of our communities. Our differences, our battles, our messy deviations from “normalcy” are what make us the same.
Dad, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being angry at you for leaving me. I’m sorry for lying to my friends about how you passed. I’m sorry for not understanding. But mostly I’m sorry that you felt you had to be sorry for your disabilities. You so deeply wanted to prove that you were more than your bipolar disorder and depression, rather than being unapologetically yourself: A person disabled by society and all the challenges the world gave him.
The day you ended your life I remember you telling mom all you wanted was to get better. Dad, I wish I told you that you were already the best. You were my best everything- my best friend, best dance and singing partner, best fishing buddy, best supporter, and best dad.
You used to always call me your little angel, but now you’re my little angel. And I know you’ll be watching over me for the rest of my years on this earth. And throughout those years, I hope I can prove to you and the rest of the world that disabilities are not burdens, that “different” is not bad, and that life is worth living. I love you to the moon and back.
With love forever and always,
Kennedy
Afterword
When I remember my dad, I like to remember the good. I like to remember him taking me to get a milkshake when I experienced my first heartbreak. I like to remember belting out “I Knew You Were Trouble” by Taylor Swift outside our favourite restaurant. I like to remember every time he made heavy things feel a bit lighter by telling a remarkably cheesy joke.
It’s human nature to illuminate the good, the happy, the “normal” in our lives, but if this letter teaches you anything, I hope it teaches you that everything that doesn’t fit into those categories is equally as important. I hope it teaches you that you and everything about you is worth loving, worth caring for, worth living for.
For further readings on dismantling this idea of normal, as well as promoting disability justice in general, I recommend Mimi Khúc’s Open in Emergency, a compilation of relevant mental health pieces, as well as Eli Clare’s Brilliant Imperfection.
Helplines
If you have been affected by any of the issues this letter touches on, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (US) or the following UK-based organisations:
Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM): 0800 58 58 58
Samaritans: 116 123
Mind UK: 0300 123 3393
Photo Credit: Alex Ivashenko on Unsplash

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What your death taught me about disability, mental health and striving for perfection in an imperfect world.

A Letter to my Father

you rang me at the end of the world 
and asked if I was going into war 
with the three o’clock connecting train
at Limerick Junction I threw a few punches 
down the phone and took shots 
of a mountain I didn’t know the name of
things like and how is she, my replacement? 
it was a shitty thing to say 
but I wanted to say it
make you feel bad for liking brunettes 
you pretended to take offence 
but that kind of thing is the reason you still ring me
are you ok?
there is a tenderness still there 
a care that hasn’t been harmed 
in our surrendering of arms
yours are for holding 
someone else 
and mine
well mine have gained some resolute sense 
now I just hold a pen and let the other hand itch 
for a cigarette that I won’t give it
there was a threat today 
six times the size of Chernobyl
the grass glowing yellow 
the sky an infinite blue
the mountains 
have lain down to die 
in a brown and purple hue
and every time
the world ends 
you ring me 
to provoke me 
into reminding you 
of what it was all for
and why
we can’t describe love 
without the language 
of war.
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<pre>Photo Credit: <a style="color: #999999;" href="https://unsplash.com/@ekarchmit?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Ernest Karchmit</a> on Unsplash</pre>

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Poem: Shots at close range

As both a woman of colour who has received maternity care from the NHS, and as a midwife who advocates for justice and dignity for marginalised women, I have always been keen on investigative documentaries that expose institutional injustices. I therefore anticipated watching <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-black-maternity-scandal-dispatches">The Black Maternity Scandal</a><a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-black-maternity-scandal-dispatches"> by Channel 4 Dispatches</a> to see the metaphorical glass ceiling being broken by words and actions of truth. Keen public interest in maternity care has always been present due to the vivid experience the majority of women face when giving birth, tying all mothers together through a sense of shared humanity regardless of race. After all, birth is possibly the most intensely emotional, spiritual and physical experience of a woman’s and birthing person’s life.
The comfort of having access to the NHS in a high income country means we often take live births for granted; any deviations from this expectation appear to be relegated to a long lost pre-anaesthesia past, or across some far away border in a country seemingly too poor and undeveloped to help itself. But negative birth experiences, even traumatic ones, are very much present in modern, high income countries too. Although maternal mortality rates are significantly lower in the UK than in countries still suffering the ischaemic insults of colonialism, a <a href="https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/assets/downloads/mbrrace-uk/reports/MBRRACE-UK%20Maternal%20Report%202019%20-%20WEB%20VERSION.pdf">report by MBRRACE UK</a> published in 2019 that collected data on all reported maternity incidents between 2015 and 2017 in the UK, exposed a shocking statistic: that Black women were five times more likely than white women to die as a consequence of pregnancy and childbirth. This statistic raised many eyebrows in the UK as such an indication of inequality was not thought possible in a society that considers itself post-racial.
More recently, The Lancet released a systematic review of nine studies <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/series/miscarriage">analysing miscarriage in Europe and Northern America</a>, and concluded in their key findings that Black women were more likely to experience miscarriage in comparison to white women. The study did not expand on why this has arisen, but added that risk factors included stress from night shift work and environmental factors such as ingesting pesticides. These are more likely to affect impoverished communities which largely include people of colour. The study thereby reflects social neglect of Black women in relation to their wellbeing and reproductive health.
Though the UK’s maternal mortality inequality was known in 2019, and many were advocating for change around race in maternity and healthcare, it was only after the murder of <a href="https://www.platformonline.uk/tag/george-floyd/">George Floyd</a>, the most viewed public lynching in history, and the subsequent anti-racism campaign, that institutions were shocked into holding conversations about the racial disparities they housed. A consequence of this activism led to Channel 4’s The Black Maternity Scandal, a 30-minute documentary, which bravely delves into this racial disparity.
Presented by Rochelle Humes, a singer and TV presenter of mixed white and Afro-Caribbean heritage, the documentary did well in bringing to the forefront the bitter inequality of Black women suffering higher maternal mortality than every other ethnic group, but unfortunately, it did little to address the true source of these disparities.
The documentary did include well-known professionals in the maternity world such as Mars Lord (Activist and Doula) and Professor Marian Knight whose name is first on the authors list of the MBRRACE UK report. The inclusion of these voices added credibility to the investigation, and well-complimented the anecdotes of other women interviewed about their respective harrowing experiences in facing maternal mortality and morbidity, which worked to solidly humanise the people behind the statistics. This was a much-needed element in the discourse around this unjust topic.
As a midwife, I understand the instinct we sometimes have to defend our work and colleagues when confronted by media that calls into question our practices and clinical outcomes, but this confrontation is vital in building partnerships with the women we serve, to develop care for all, and to tackle inequality. The documentary did well to highlight the NHS’ responsibility to Black mothers, one that it is evidently not upholding, but it did not even scratch the surface of institutional racism, the effect of colonial history, or actually even mention the word ‘racism’, which insinuates a hesitancy in the editing, and belies the urgency of its opening message.
Though The Black Maternity Scandal did mention that ‘the system’ is biased against women with social complexities, and fleetingly touched upon class, there was very little discussion that unpacked these multi-layered components which lead to the shocking and important disparities in maternal mortality in terms of race. It can be argued that 30 minutes was not enough time to enter such a thickly complex topic, but this proved to be the documentary’s most potent handicap. The need for more time meant that discussions around unconscious/racial bias, the role of poverty, migrant experiences, mental health complexities, difficulty accessing healthcare and austerity were left wanting. These conversations, had they happened, could have been contrasted to the experiences of affluent white women to reflect inequality not just in healthcare but in all fabrics of society.
This silence on institutional racism runs in parallel to the recently released <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/974507/20210331_-_CRED_Report_-_FINAL_-_Web_Accessible.pdf">Sewell report</a> by the UK government’s ‘independent’ committee on race and ethnic disparities. The document gallingly declared that there was categorically no systemic racism in the UK, that minorities experience poorer outcomes derived from their cultural ‘attitudes’ rather than any misdemeanour the British may have imbued in their systems, and that remarkably, the UK is a beacon example for racial equality which European countries should endeavour to replicate. Not only is this negated by the findings of the MBBRACE report, but it is also a concrete insult to women of colour who face very real threats by our current healthcare systems.
On the subject of class in particular, I was expecting more commentary, as the UK is persistently classist and class is profoundly predictive on a child’s prospects, but unfortunately the issue of class seemed to be blanketed over by the notion that it didn’t matter all that much – that a Black middle class woman would be just as affected by racial disparities as a Black woman from a working class background. I strenuously disagree because, from my experience, the impact of institutional racism is more severe and insidious for working class Black women. This is reflected in my own work in healthcare, where Black working class women are more likely assumed to be ‘difficult’ or uneducated, and is explored further in an article by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/28/toxic-concoction-women-colour-pay-highest-price-austerity">Maya Goodfellow that describes the extra burden</a> working class women of colour face through austerity. By neglecting to address the extra burdens of Black working class women and their maternal health outcomes, the narrative of the documentary held a very middle class gaze.
Though I appreciated the documentary attempting to conclude with remedial actions to correct the racial disparities, such as ‘Continuity of Carer’ also known as case-loading, I was frustrated by the brevity with which it was mentioned. Continuity of Carer is a model of work which ensures that a pregnant woman or birthing person receives the majority of their care through one midwife. This enables good relationship-building, less room for inconsistencies, and is a <a href="https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/national-maternity-review-report.pdf?PDFPATHWAY=PDF">proven method</a> to protect health and promote dignity. However, it is a model of work that is not feasible for all midwives and is often employed by staff without children of their own, as the work requires high availability and commitment to many on-call shifts through the night and day. Of course, having children is not needed to be a good midwife, but considering the forcefully female dominion of midwifery, many of the workforce continue to have children of their own (such as myself) making work as a continuity of carer midwife incompatible with having a family, and calling into question the longevity of the plan. The documentary visited Newham Hospital and briefly interviewed a continuity midwife and her client, who both expressed positivity, and though this was encouraging to the viewer, lacked much needed fibre to fully understand the benefits and difficulties of the continuity model in our current healthcare system.
Midwifery professionals of colour also face disparities in the workplace, which was just jointly reported on by the <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fc52bcaf7cf8c754046992e/t/6092d7853bb4505b999ac766/1620236167034/What+we+need+to+thrive_+ASAM+and+SoAC+report+2021+%283%29.pdf">Association of South Asian Midwives and the Society of African &amp; Caribbean Midwives</a>. The report displays the shocking treatment these staff face, and if staff are not well supported in the NHS, then women and birthing people will undoubtedly be inhibited from accessing the best care the NHS could give.
Overall, the documentary is a decent watch for advocates against racial disparities in health, as it does bring to the forefront of societal awareness the appalling racial inequality and indignity faced by Black women in the UK, which is certainly needed in order to bring about change. The documentary was not long enough to do justice to the ‘whys and hows’ of this racial disparity, which was unfortunate and frustrating, but it inspired hope that change, or at least awareness, is on the horizon. What is now needed is for institutions, organisations and government to take heed of these warnings, commit to further research into the effects of institutional racism, and step up to the responsibility they hold, in protecting the lives and wellbeing of the most vulnerable women in our society. This they can do by critiquing their own established systems which metastasise institutional racism, and holding the people within those systems to account.

Black Maternity Scandal

Channel 4’s Dispatches missed out important factors on class and institutional racism in its brief exploration of maternity care experienced by Black women.

The Black Maternity Scandal: A Lens on Racial Disparity in Healthcare

after Charlotte Nichols MP
I didn’t know the meaning 
of &#8220;incursion&#8221; or “dealt with” 
the negative connotation until this morning. 
Didn’t realise the possible definitions 
of “parasite”, “rubbish dump”, “bad human material”. 
Didn’t know until this morning the connotations 
of “dismantle”, “pikey”, “assimilate”. 
The negative meanings of “scum”, 
“child thief”, “branding iron”. 
Didn’t know “dirty”, “asocial”, “expel”. 
The connotations of “a people involved 
in the manufacture of human freaks.” 
Didn’t know the meaning until now 
of “Rahoonery”, “pollutant”, “Pharajimos”. 
The problematic side of those over the age of five 
being taken away and civilised. 
Didn’t know the meaning of “The Devouring”, 
“The Cutting Up”, or “behind concrete walls”. 
The negative connotation of “whoever kills one, 
shall be guilty of nothing.” 
Didn’t know the meaning of “deport” 
until I saw it done this morning, 
clean as a Police Superintendent’s signature 
or a Councillor’s campaign for re-election.

Poem: The Candidate Explains

The tributes amass, the media chimes 
out the pre-rehearsed phraseology: 
“a life of service &#8230; a man of his times”
and woe betide anyone who begrimes 
with a smear of truth this man’s memory. 
The tributes amass. The media chimes
its dull carillon of state-approved rhymes: 
nobility &#8230; dignity &#8230; history &#8230; 
a life of service. A man of his times,
a racist lording it in foreign climes, 
the natives expected to bend the knee. 
The tributes amass, the media chimes:
world leaders weigh in. Their quotes are sublime, 
teleprompter whitewash used liberally: 
a life of service, a man of his times.
Flags at half-mast. Follow the sad clown’s mime, 
black-armband a myth, mourn self-consciously. 
The tributes amass, the media chimes 
a life of service, a man of his times.
&nbsp;
<pre>Photo Credit: <a style="color: #808080;" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unveiling_Young_Darwin_statue_HRH_Prince_Philip_2009_Christ%27s_College_Cambridge.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></pre>

Unveiling_Young_Darwin_statue_HRH_Prince_Philip_2009_Christ&#8217;s_College_Cambridge

Poem: A Man of His Times

For the first half of <a href="https://www.itv.com/hub/oprah-with-meghan-and-harry/10a1332a0001">Oprah with Meghan and Harry</a>, the audience witnessed a Black woman telling her story to another Black woman, making legible her perspective, and reclaiming her humanity. Much ink can be spilled about Meghan Markle’s complicity in propagating the fictions of a racist institution such as the British monarchy. Similarly, the iconic media mogul Oprah Winfrey has profited from the racial, cultural and social forces that created and sustained the myth of American meritocracy.
However, radical Black feminist thought urges us to focus on the systemic mechanisms of racial hierarchy that excludes Black lives from the domain of full humanity. Instead of criticising specific public figures, such as Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, and of course, Meghan Markle, Black feminism gives us the tools to talk about the compounding oppressions that affect the lives and livelihoods of Black women. In this short piece, my aim is to use these tools to address the royal family’s dismissal of Meghan Markle’s plight as an example of superficial diversity that infiltrates much of modern racial discourse, as well as reflect on the TV interview’s evocation of Black aesthetics as a political and cultural category of resistance
<h5>On diversity and inclusion</h5>
For a brief lull, the interracial royal wedding was lauded as a golden opportunity to shepherd the monarchy into modernity. But what does this modern sheen encompass? By incorporating a Black woman into its system of kinship, the modern monarchy appeared to signal the end of racism and locate an endpoint to the glaring realities of the afterlives of colonialism and slavery. In this fantasy, any talk of racism ruptures (white) national harmony, which is mobilised by what the feminist philosopher Sara Ahmed calls <a href="https://feministkilljoys.com/2019/04/29/nodding-as-a-non-performative/">“non-performative” speech acts</a>: words that are not followed by actions. In the ecology of a multicultural society, positive-sounding words, like “embrace” and “love” in Kasie Hunt’s tweet below, neutralise and contain attempts to address race and racism.

screenshot-2021-12-01-at-19-45-40

Screenshot 2021-12-01 at 19.45.40

A screenshot of a tweet by Kasie Hunt that says: “Prince Harry alluded to this, but it’s true — his marrying Meghan was a once in a generation opportunity to bring the monarchy into the 21st century and embrace a new version of the family that the modern world could embrace and love [.] They didn’t just fail. They spat on it.” 9:44 PM, March 7, 2021
&nbsp;
What makes Markle’s withdrawal from the royal family radical is the reclamation of her voice and agency after her pain and suffering were devalued and swept under the carpet. In the <a href="https://www.itv.com/hub/oprah-with-meghan-and-harry/10a1332a0001">ITV broadcast interview</a>, Markle criticised the virulent racism of the tabloid establishment, and the royal family’s indifferent response to her cri de coeur. “I wrote several letters,” she said over and over again, about the injustices and indignities surrounding her. The Firm, as she sometimes called the royal family, did not shield her from the persistent structural and cultural vilification as she performed “her job”. The monarchy’s treatment of Markle’s racialised depression and fatigue – “I didn’t want to live anymore,” she confesses – exposes the inner workings of white institutions that ruthlessly silence Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) groups in the name of civility, love, happiness, propriety and tradition. Here, I draw on Ahmed’s identification, in Living a Feminist Life, of civility as one of many strategies that oppressive powers use to coerce minoritised people. In these sentiments, Ahmed locates “the violence and power concealed under the languages of civility, happiness, and love, rather than simply or only consciousness of gender as a site of restriction of possibility”. Indeed, the inequality at the heart of Markle’s disillusionment with the royal family resonates with so many Black and other BAME women in white institutions that fail to support and protect them. In Markle’s case, the trauma of racism drove her towards suicidal ideations, which were dismissed as bad publicity for the institution.
What are the implications of Meghan Markle’s refusal to perform civility, to remain silent, to absorb her erasure until she reached the precipice of death by suicide? The personal and the cultural are always political; Meghan Markle’s personal experience of racism points to a larger, public phenomenon of racialised hierarchies. As minoritised people, we are forced to remain subservient and to paper over our feelings of dispossession. We internalise that we are undeserving of fairness, that the racism we encounter is a figment of our imagination. When we speak out, we are faced with the disavowal of institutions that demand proof of our oppression over and over again. The world does not need Meghan Markle to tell it that Britain is a racist place, that there is a deep-seated investment in white supremacy at the heart of the monarchy. All it takes is a look at the daily news, to learn how <a href="https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/bjom.2020.28.10.718">COVID-19 has affected the maternal mortality rates of BAME women</a>, to see borders closed in the face of refugees, the bodies of Africans drowning at sea. What Meghan Markle’s story cemented is that superficial celebrations of diversity and inclusion, or what scholars call “the politics of representation,” without deep, de-centered, and structural transformations do not constitute change. Quite the opposite, it is a conservative ploy that gives racist institutions a modern veneer. And most damagingly, it demonstrates how feel-good progressivism always defaults to neoliberal fictions that silence the oppressed and affirm the powers that be.
<h5>Black beauty as empowerment</h5>
What is striking about the ITV broadcast is its use of the iconography of Black liberation.
Black feminism gives us the vocabulary to dwell on the political and cultural significance of Black aesthetics. Having analysed the <a href="https://the-rambling.com/2019/01/26/issue3-kafantaris/">fantasy of white British domesticity </a>that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s engagement interview evoked a few years ago, I was struck by the aesthetics of this special, particularly its rootedness in Black self-fashioning. Here, I wish to introduce Zora Neale Hurston’s “will to adorn” theory of Black aesthetics, a concept that illuminates how Black people have understood and willingly performed their embodiment, power and position in a white society. From music, to visual language, to sartorial choices, Black people seek to beautify the world around them as a political stance of resistance, community, and care. I borrow Zora Neale Hurston’s language of intentional adornment here, because I find it useful in my discussion of Meghan Markle’s Oprah interview as a representative of an oppressed population responding to a history of injury. How does this perspective reconfigure our understanding of Meghan Markle’s conversation with Oprah? Allow me to start over.
In a lush, sun-kissed, Southern California garden, across from an olive grove, two powerful Black women testify about virulent racism and institutional violence. On our right, a seasoned and decorated matriarch of American broadcasting wears a pink sweater with a crisp white shirt underneath it. She radiates an air of authority, experience and compassion; her ethics of care unfurl the tessellations of Meghan Markle’s “unsurvivable” life as a senior member of the British royal family. Markle’s sartorial choices are as suggestive of the ethos of this conversation. Donning a black dress, she is visibly pregnant. In her voluptuous embodiment, Markle performs her vulnerability, beauty and power. Where Markle’s wedding dress featured the flowers of the commonwealth, which acknowledged her full immersion in the symbology of colonialism and its aftermaths, the lotus flower adorning her flowy silk dress is packed with meaning. As a blossom floating on the surface of the water, the lotus emblematises regeneration that is always rooted in the slime underneath. I see the slime as representative of the structural racism that devalue a Black woman’s insistence on her subjectivity, her humanity and her personhood.
My work on premodern queenship and racial formations can provide a backdrop for understanding the longue durée of these tropes, or modes of thinking, about elite or powerful women in the public sphere today. The persistent fictions surrounding “good” foreign royal women script them as passive, with their mobility restricted and their desires shaped by the will of the patriarchal institution. This iconography is meticulously fabricated through visual and material culture, and can help us understand how Meghan Markle deviated from the ideal in which she was conscripted.
One telling example is the representation of Anne of Bohemia, King Richard II’s queen, in the early modern cultural imagination. For instance, in the anonymous Thomas of Woodstock (1590s), Anne is portrayed as an exemplary queen who gets absorbed by Englishness, her past identity completely erased. On the other hand, an unruly foreign queen like Margaret of Anjou, who performs her political power without reservation, is demonised as the “she-wolf of France” in William Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays (1590s). Margaret’s refusal to abide by the codes of meek English womanhood renders her as a racialised infection gnawing at the heart of the commonwealth – a cultural, political and physiological infection that needs to be excised.
Meghan Markle refused to remain differential to an indifferent establishment who did not care about her welfare and that of her child’s, and for that reason she was vilified and considered incompatible with true, white-centered Englishness. More importantly, her affirmation of her worth and beauty in an idyllic California garden speaks to a long tradition of an “aesthetic of Blackness” – a lineage, an inheritance, a desire “to bring delight, pleasure, and beauty into lives that were hard, that were materially deprived,” to use the words of bell hooks. Seen in this light, Meghan Markle’s control of her narrative, aesthetics and agency, despite a damaging and dehumanising context, is in itself a radical act. It connects her to a history of Black people’s transformative capacity to love themselves and the world, in spite of a world that does not love them back.
&nbsp;
<pre>Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons</pre>

Prince_Harry_and_Meghan’s_carriage_procession_through_streets_of_Windsor_05

Meghan Markle’s famous television interview fits into a history of iconography of Black liberation, just as it exposes the inner workings of a white royal institution.

Oprah, Optics and Oppression: What Meghan Markle&#8217;s Interview Tells Us about the Iconography of Black Liberation

If this boy had been more prudently 
dropped into life on, say, a street 
with trees that throw out their annual yellow 
to make a welcome parade for the sun; 
had as childhood neighbours a Circuit Court Judge 
whose front door had no letter box, 
a Garda Chief Inspector with an opinionated 
and over-confident dog; 
kicked a ball up and down summer evenings, 
dead apart from the occasional well behaved bee, 
with the boy next door (but one) who blossomed 
into a political correspondent 
and now gets to make up truth, 
another way would’ve been found.
But for coming at Gardaí 
with a chemical imbalance, 
what some people are calling 
a machete 
and a totally inappropriate 
post code, 
the only sentence 
was that ethically administered, 
democratically accountable, 
bolt action firing squad.
The eminent and learned 
bottoms we employ to sit 
on the inquiry into this 
need not fret the task ahead of them. 
For their report is already written.
&nbsp;
<pre>Photo Credit: <a class="owner-name truncate" style="color: #808080;" title="Go to Paolo Trabattoni's photostream" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mctraba/" data-track="attributionNameClick">Paolo Trabattoni </a>/ Flickr</pre>

Garda Police

Poem: The Case of George Nkencho

Ominous opening credits theme ebbs 
to silence. Fade in: shaky-cam footage 
from various news agencies; a montage 
establishing time, place and the threat
unfolding unstoppably on a global scale. 
Headlines whirl. Graphs and charts stamp 
stark projections onscreen. Editing ramps 
up urgency, drama, the stakes. The tale
about to unfold is one of humanity 
at its worst and best. The selflessness 
of carers and keyworkers put to the test 
and emerging heroic. Cut to: the inanity,
the dithering, the bullshit of those 
in high office, the Etonian provocateurs 
bluffing and blustering, pitifully unprepared 
for a crisis that can’t be diffused
by three-word slogans and posh-boy jeers 
during PMQs. We’re on shaky ground. 
Any half-aware test audience crowd 
would demand a hero they can cheer,
not some Greek chorus of doorstep applause 
curtailed in the second act as too political. 
This floundering narrative is antithetical 
to mainstream cinema. It’s like Star Wars
from the POV of an admin assistant filing 
the performance review of a storm-trooper 
who got shot two scenes ago, or the blooper 
reel from a public information film on tiling
or basic plumbing for beginners. It’s not 
the film you paid your money to see. 
You didn’t pay to watch the idiot-in-chief 
ignore the science, grin deathlessly, toss off
some half-arsed soundbite, execute 
a soft-shoe sidestep from responsibility. 
Whither the nurses, shop workers, delivery 
drivers &#8211; the real heroes? Let’s reboot
the project, focus on them; let’s weave 
multiple stories, Short Cuts style, celebrate 
the under-appreciated, the underpaid; 
let’s give the audience a reason to believe,,
a grand finale. Let’s put a Hollywood spin 
on this year-long real-time clusterfuck, 
flip the narrative, double-down on feelgood; 
rewrite, recast, re-edit. We can do this thing.
&nbsp;
<pre>Photo Credit: Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street</pre>

Boris Johnson Coronavirus Update Conference

Poem: The 2020 Movie

for Susan
Whenever I show them the Future, 
they refuse it; 
say: this future has bad hair, 
waves its arms around too much, 
is too Jewish, 
or not Jewish enough, 
too not-a-woman, 
or the wrong sort of woman.
This Future has a face that one day 
might raise the corporate tax rate 
by zero point five percent, 
and is a little too insistent 
that poor people be allowed live, 
give or take, as long as the rest of us. 
That sort of thing scares the people we dine with 
nights we’re not dining with you.
I ask the barman for more finger food, 
picture the ocean raging into the restaurant, 
and them still sat there muttering at the chicken goujons: 
the people we talk to won’t vote for 
such extreme solutions. No one wants to live in Cuba, 
one of them says, as she’s washed out the door.
I pray, when all the futures 
they’ve turned their noses up at 
are safely in the mud 
and the men in boots and leather come 
to escort us all to the Processing Centre 
in the back of a truck 
that I be shot, cleanly through the skull, at the front gate, 
so I don’t suffer their groans 
about the quality of the gruel, 
and how that last beating one of them got 
was clearly in breach of the Human Rights Act 
and worthy of a curtly worded, 
but still civil, letter to The Observer.
&nbsp;
<pre>Photo Credit: <a style="color: #999999;" href="https://unsplash.com/@henniestander?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Hennie Stander</a> on <a style="color: #999999;" href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/barman-restaurant?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></pre>