Zainab 
Gosh, Martin. We’re a day away from the World Cup final [at the time of recording]. Exciting times, right? I know it’s going to be difficult for you. It’s not England!
Martin
I&#8217;m very excited, it’s all going to come to its culmination! I wanted England, I wanted Mexico. And then I wanted Morocco. None of those three teams have made it. So I will just be watching it as an avid football fan and hoping that the best team wins.
Zainab 
Fantastic. So that <a href="https://twitter.com/mertesakib/status/1598698752574996480">viral video</a> of you, featuring the now famous pairing, “it’s coming home” followed by Falasteen Hurra (“Free Palestine”), has been viewed at least 5.5 million times the last time I checked, and that&#8217;s just one video on Twitter. How does it feel to be an icon at World Cup 2022?
Martin 
Imagine you&#8217;re just going about your daily life minding your own business. And then all of a sudden you have 850 messages on every social media platform, including from people that you haven&#8217;t seen in years. It&#8217;s really bizarre.
I left the England v Wales match full of adrenaline, you know. There was a camera crew. They saw me with my England shirt, the ghutra on my head, and the England flag painted on my face. They probably thought he looks absolutely ridiculous – we should get him on TV. Yeah, so it just kind of took off. I wasn&#8217;t expecting it.
In fact, you know, “never read the comments” is probably the most important rule you should ever stick to if you go viral. I did read those comments. Some people are like “he&#8217;s a plant”, “he&#8217;s actually a fair-skinned Qatari”, “he&#8217;s not from England at all”. Those are just the ones I can repeat. It’s been a whirlwind.
But more than anything, I&#8217;ve been touched by all the support that people have shown, including people from Palestine, who’ve written to me or commented on the video. I think we can see by the support generally at this World Cup in Qatar that, as <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/palestine-is-still-the-issue">John Pilger</a> said, “Palestine is still the issue.”

<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" style="max-width: 605px; min-width: 325px;" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@footballjoe/video/7172604241020833030" data-video-id="7172604241020833030">
<section><a title="@footballjoe" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@footballjoe?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@footballjoe</a> This England fan says Free Palestine 🇵🇸 🎥 Al Jazeera <a title="fyp" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#fyp</a> <a title="palestine" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/palestine?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#palestine</a> <a title="israel" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/israel?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#israel</a> <a title="qatar" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/qatar?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#qatar</a> <a title="qatar2022" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/qatar2022?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#qatar2022</a> <a title="englandfootball" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/englandfootball?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#englandfootball</a> <a title="itscominghome" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/itscominghome?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#itscominghome</a> <a title="threelions" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/threelions?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#threelions</a> <a title="soccertiktok" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/soccertiktok?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#soccertiktok</a> <a title="soccerboy" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/soccerboy?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#soccerboy</a> <a title="footballedit" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/footballedit?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#footballedit</a> <a title="aljazeera" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/aljazeera?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#aljazeera</a> <a title="fypシ" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp%E3%82%B7?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#fypシ</a> <a title="fypage" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fypage?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#fypage</a> <a title="♬ original sound - FootballJOE" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7172604246364408581?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">♬ original sound &#8211; FootballJOE</a></section>
</blockquote>
<script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>

Zainab
I do sense that there&#8217;s been a shift in consciousness on this issue, even prior to the World Cup. <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution">Human Rights Watch</a> and <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/#:~:text=This%20is%20apartheid.,order%20to%20benefit%20Jewish%20Israelis.">Amnesty International</a> both released reports in the past year or two, calling out Israeli apartheid. I think that&#8217;s the first time that&#8217;s happened. Why do you think it was so important to put Palestine on the agenda?
Martin
I think we&#8217;re seeing a disconnect between local governments in the Arab world, and their relations with Israel, and what people on the ground are saying and feeling. If we&#8217;re talking about the UK or the European context, I really think there&#8217;s been a shift in attitudes and even a softening in mainstream media, which a couple of decades ago was just ardently 100% staunchly pro-Israel. Many years ago, people who would talk about Palestine were often put into one little box. “You’re only complaining because you&#8217;re Muslim,” or “you&#8217;re only complaining because you&#8217;re a far-left trot”. That&#8217;s not the case anymore.
Zainab
And you&#8217;ve been to Palestine yourself. What was that like?
Martin
Palestine? Wow. Palestine was an amazing experience for me. I went about four or five years ago. It touched me on an emotional level, in a big way. You know, I went there, because I’d always wanted to visit. I was shown around by a local Palestinian guide, I went and met many Palestinian people, and I&#8217;m not shy – if they don&#8217;t speak the same language as me, I still try and get into conversations.
You just see an incredible strength in the Palestinian people in a way that is so inspiring. They face some of the harshest conditions, their lives are made to be very, very difficult. I spoke with one guy, and it’s something very simple but touching, he&#8217;s like, I&#8217;d love to be able to take my kids to the zoo, but I&#8217;ve not been able to get a permit, because the zoo’s on the other side of the separation wall. Going there and seeing things for yourself, with your own eyes, is a completely different kettle of fish.
Zainab 
Were there any towns that stood out to you?
Martin
One of the areas that, for sure, was the most impactful was Hebron. You have the Palestinian markets at the bottom with all the traders, then you have literally above them, the settlers. So when I went there with my guide, he took me up as far as he could go, to the entrance of the settlement. And, you know, he is from Palestine and his great, great, great grandparents were too, and he&#8217;s not allowed in. I just kind of rock up as a tourist with a British passport, and they let me in, which for a start made me think “there’s something wrong about that, but okay”.
So you go in there and… all of Palestine has gone through great injustice, but Hebron felt like next level. And then, you know, we started to talk to people, some of the shop sellers in the market, and they tell stories about the settlers throwing faeces and urine down from up there, and all sorts of things about police brutality. People being taken away in the middle of the night. Kids not just being attacked, but dying. Just absolutely heartbreaking.

Zainab 
Really heartbreaking. Okay, so back to football for a moment. We all know the stereotypes around being a football fan, not least an England football fan! Always getting drunk and causing mayhem. Just wondering what your perspective is on that from the stands?
Martin
I&#8217;ve been going to England football matches for about 20 years, possibly more. You know, a lot of the time the loudest or most extreme example of something is the one that&#8217;s the most newsworthy, but that&#8217;s not really representative. When we&#8217;re talking about England fans specifically, the vast majority are well behaved, they don&#8217;t get into fights, they don&#8217;t get in trouble.
Over the last 20 years or so, I’ve seen a change. For a start, we&#8217;ve got a much more diverse football team now, but we&#8217;ve also got more diverse fans going into the game. The British media likes to make out that the only fans in the world that have a problem with hooliganism is England, and that&#8217;s not true. England is not even in the top three worst. It did have a great problem with it in the 1980s and beforehand, but we don&#8217;t have the same levels today as many parts of Latin America, as Indonesia, as many others. That’s why it was great to have <a href="https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/no-british-fans-arrested-world-cup-report-2022-12-15/">read the news</a> that there wasn&#8217;t a single arrest of any British fans at Qatar. I was there. People were just having a good time, smiling, laughing, just supporting their football team.

In particular, I want to say, the Moroccan and the Iranian fans. Wow! You know, I was lucky enough to go to a game featuring both teams. Let&#8217;s talk about the England v Iran game. 6-1 down. And the Iranian fans were still jumping up and down, they were singing… I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s many nations in the world that when they&#8217;re 6-1-down are still drowning out their opponents, and they were, so all credit to them. That was fantastic.
The World Cup is kind of like this international party atmosphere, it&#8217;s people getting together, having coffees, exchanging ideas. You know, I made a friend at a World Cup in South Africa that I then ended up working with. Qatar is very much a coffee culture kind of place and I love coffee, you know, having a sit down and just talking about the world and talking about life is amazing.
Zainab 
I love coffee too, so we’ll need to meet somewhere in the world.
Martin
Probably, let&#8217;s do that.

Zainab 
With football at home, there have been instances of racism, particularly when it comes to Black players, or the problem of Islamophobia. How do you reconcile those kinds of contradictions in football?
Martin
Yeah, I mean, it&#8217;s very interesting. I&#8217;ve had messages from many British Muslims directly, and somebody said they didn&#8217;t feel that they could support England until my video. Pretty mind-blowing to me. There&#8217;s definitely been issues, like at the <a href="https://www.skysports.com/football/news/12016/12360852/fans-in-england-surveyed-on-racism-in-football-after-abuse-of-england-players-following-euro-2020-final#:~:text=Over%2070%20per%20cent%20of,of%20Euro%202020%20in%20June.">Euros</a>, although I think that actually says more about the organising and lack of policing at that particular event.
I&#8217;m very aware of the fact that I wouldn&#8217;t necessarily see a lot of racism. I don&#8217;t want to be the white guy that just says, there&#8217;s no racism here. What I can say for sure, as somebody who used to work for a social media company, a lot of that is because you&#8217;re clicking on things, and we&#8217;re being polarised, and extreme positions are being given a platform that they wouldn&#8217;t have got before.
I remember when BBC Panorama did a special on hooliganism after England fans were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2003/apr/27/newsstory.sport5">banned from travelling</a> to the Euro 2004 decider in Turkey. Fast forward 20 odd years later, and you’ve got multiple England fans, shouting “Free Palestine” on TV. That, to me, is indicative of how things have changed. Is there racism among some of our fans? Sure. That&#8217;s because England fans are a reflection of society. I think some of these things are not necessarily a football issue, they’re more of a society issue. And so whatever problems are in society, well, obviously, they&#8217;re going to be reflected when you get a stadium of 80,000 people together.

Zainab
What team do you support at home, by the way?
Martin
I&#8217;m a Liverpool fan, for my sins.
Zainab
Liverpool fans will always have the exemplary legacy of <a href="https://platformonline.uk/posts/making-doodles-and-recording-history-hamja-ahsan-on-diy-cultures-2017">campaigning at Hillsborough</a> for 20 years. Could you tell us a little bit about that, or how football intersects with politics in that way?
Martin
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am a ‘wool’ as they call me in Liverpool, ‘<a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/origin-woolyback-what-makes-someone-22693259">a wooly back</a>’. So I&#8217;m from the outskirts in Cheshire. People back home are incredibly political, especially in Liverpool where I spent a lot of my youth, in a way that they aren&#8217;t in the rest of the country. So for a very working class, socialist city, like Liverpool, to have the kind of issues that we had with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/oct/21/the-great-betrayal-how-the-hillsborough-families-were-failed-by-the-justice-system">Hillsborough</a>, which is not just an incredible human tragedy, with the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-61079095">loss of 97 lives</a> now. But also the terrible injustice that happened right afterwards, whether that&#8217;s from disgusting rag newspapers (I won&#8217;t even mention the name of) maligning Liverpool fans, playing on all sorts of negative stereotypes about Liverpool fans – stealing money off corpses, urinating on policemen – these were 100% lies. I was very young at the time, but there was somebody at my school who lost a family member, so this is something that&#8217;s personal for me as well. Finally, it was given away that it wasn&#8217;t the fans, it was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-hillsborough-idUKKCN0XN14W">the police that were at fault</a>. Now, there&#8217;s been no criminal proceedings against any police officers in particular, but yeah, it was a big deal.

The people of Liverpool are very strong people. They are salt of the earth kind of people. They care about other people, they are collectivists. Whether it&#8217;s the Dockers Liverpool Football Club, which has had a strong association with socialism over the years. Or whether it’s Bob Shankly, talking about his favourite type of socialism, or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/gallery/2008/dec/03/1">Robbie Fowler lifting up his shirt</a> after a goal to show support with the striking Dockers, you know, all the way to today. Different views on modern-day politics compared to the rest of the country, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/27/liverpool-sun-boycott-remain-vote-hillsborough-disaster-eu">different voting patterns</a>, when it comes to party politics or Brexit, then all the way to today where we&#8217;ve got the Egyptian king – Mo Salah, Mo Salah.
Liverpool is already famous for being a very multicultural and accepting city, but ever since he&#8217;s arrived, the <a href="https://www.skysports.com/amp/football/news/11669/11734787/mohamed-salah-signing-has-reduced-islamophobia-and-hate-crime-rates-in-liverpool-study-finds">rates of Islamophobia are reduced</a> – what better way to prove or to show that football can be a uniting force. Mo Salah prays on the field, which for many people is the first time they&#8217;ve ever seen a Muslim pray. So I think that football has a way of breaking down barriers, of bringing people together. Having one of the best players in the world, come on to the pitch, score a goal, and then get down and pray in front of everyone is really touching. And that builds relations that no politician, no PR company, nobody can do.

Zainab
True! Returning to the World Cup for a moment. There’s been significant attention on human rights issues and workers’ rights issues in Qatar, and I guess the scale of these kinds of issues are unbelievable. What were your thoughts on World Cup 2022 being held there?
Martin
Football is the beautiful game and it’s a global sport. So if we really want to be taken seriously in saying that it is a sport around the world, that means we need to host tournaments and games around the world, and we need to accept that not every country is the same. Some countries have different beliefs. Some countries have different religions. Some countries have different ways of viewing the world.
I think Qatar gets spoken about in a way that other places don&#8217;t, you know. I don&#8217;t remember all these cries of boycotts, or “don&#8217;t show the opening ceremony” when it comes to the Beijing Olympics or Russia. All sorts of potential issues there, the <a href="https://platformonline.uk/tag/uyghur">treatment of the Uyghur people</a> in particular.
We’ve really picked on Qatar. It&#8217;s a small country, but a rich country too. It&#8217;s also a country that the UK and Europe does a lot of business with, we all get our gas from Qatar. So why are we picking on football – is it just because football is a soft target? So are we saying that we should not put the opening ceremony on, but our politicians continue to receive financial donations from Qatar? Germany itself did a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/29/germany-agrees-15-year-liquid-gas-supply-deal-with-qatar">15-year gas supply deal</a> right after that famous photo of the footballers covering their mouth. So what are we expecting exactly? I just don&#8217;t think football fans need to be the ones that suffer for their politicians being the ones that are doing all sorts of deals.
Zainab
Did anyone buy you a ticket to the World Cup final?
Martin
No, no one bought me a ticket sadly!
Zainab
What next for you? Are you going to <a href="https://platformonline.uk/author/martin">write for the platform again</a>, sometime?
Martin
Yeah, I mean, I&#8217;ll just keep on doing my thing. I think I will write for the platform again, that&#8217;s a good idea. I miss my creative outlets. I will just have to find the right topic!
Zainab
We can’t wait. Thank you so much for your time.
This interview took place on 17 December 2022. This is a shortened transcript edited by <a href="https://platformonline.uk/author/zainab-rahim">Zainab Rahim</a>.

Martin_Zainab_cropped

Our editor Zainab Rahim sat down with the World Cup viral sensation Martin Near to discuss football, politics and the many shades of an international sports tournament.

“Free Palestine” viral England fan gives us an insider account of World Cup 2022 at Qatar

The current cost of living crisis lays bare the faults of our economy – vast inequalities, irreversible environmental damage, and an economic policy unable to achieve prosperity for all.
It may then seem surprising that given these challenges, the top economic priority of recent administrations has been public finances, that is, maintaining public sector spending roughly equal to its revenues and ensuring that government debt does not exceed a certain proportion relative to the size of the UK economy.
<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63335671">Liz Truss’ failed economic agenda</a> brought a major shake-up precisely because it departed from this commitment. By not outlining how the revenues lost in the proposed tax cuts would be compensated for to prevent government spending and debt from ballooning relative to government finances, Truss broke one of the key principles of modern economics adopted by the Conservative governments since 2010 – that of a balanced budget.
As the decades of austerity implemented in the UK and around the world have shown, prioritising balanced budget has not improved wellbeing; instead, it has raised poverty and inequality and constrained economic growth by limiting resources people have to spend. Why do politicians still cling to the idea of balanced public finances and what else is needed to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable economy?
<h5>Economic policy is shaped by politics and ideology </h5>
The economic model at the heart of today’s policies dates to the Reagan-Thatcher era in the 1980s – prioritising economic growth above other aspects of societal wellbeing and boosting economic resources of the rich and deregulating with a belief that income and wealth would then eventually “trickle down” to the rest of society. This has been justified by economic theories based on simplistic assumptions. But our understanding of the economy is not subject to universal laws predicted by such abstract mathematical models. Economics is inherently political and ideological, because it examines human behaviours and power structures that relate to how money and goods are created and distributed in society. Economic research that underpins policy is inseparable from economists’ own biases and convictions.

<h5>The fantasy of growth under economic neoliberalism</h5>
The obsession with balanced public finances is grounded in ideas of economic neoliberalism. For over four decades, it has defined national economic policy under both right and centre-left governments, and internationally, by organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It argues for the withdrawal of the public sector from the production and distribution of goods and services, in favour of private markets in which people are free to pursue their own interest and try to out-compete others to capture as much economic resources as possible.
Economic policy range has therefore become narrow. Its objectives have been limited to promoting economic growth, neglecting broader goals such as nurturing an equitable and sustainable economic life. The actions of central banks have been restricted to changing interest rates and trading financial assets, while the government machinery has been focused on regulation intending to help markets work better, using taxes and social transfers to redistribute unequal economic resources. Public spending exceeding government revenues has been labelled as “irresponsible” towards future generations, who would need to contribute to the repayment of government debt, and a hindrance to economic growth. Many public services have become privatised in the name of improving performance and relieving the pressure on public budgets.
<h5>When economics misses the bigger picture</h5>
The above has been fuelled by the dominant practice of economics that glorifies quantitative data and methods as “rigorous” and objective. Overarching issues that shape the production and exchange of economic resources such as colonialism and post-colonial relations, racism, patriarchy, class-based inequalities and planetary boundaries have been largely excluded from economic modelling and thus from the design and evaluation of economic policy. So it is not surprising that economic neoliberalism has been linked to numerous local and global crises since the 1980s. It has increased inequalities in income, wealth, health and housing across social classes, gender, race/ethnicity, and generations, as well as irreversible degree of environmental degradation that will erode the quality of life in the foreseeable future.

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, public attitudes towards the economy and economic policy has shifted to challenge growing inequality and climate change. But a corresponding shift in the theory and practice of economics has been much more gradual. Economic theory and policy have retained many of the fundamental principles of economic neoliberalism, and alternative ideas are not being valued quickly enough. Meanwhile, economic growth has been slow, while cuts to public spending have been unsuccessful in improving production, and they have also increased poverty, as many essential public services such as healthcare and education have been more expensive and chronically underfunded.
<h5>Who wins and who loses in the ever-freer market? </h5>
Sunak believes in making markets as free as possible by reducing government regulation. But this often limits how much can be produced and at what cost, and for how much firms can sell their product, preventing them from earning excessively high profits. What he grossly misses out on is that in the current cost of living crisis more people struggle to afford basic necessities, and are less likely to spend on other, non-essential goods and services. If people don’t spend – on going to restaurants or to the gym, on new gadgets, clothes or vacations – eventually businesses won’t think it’s worth investing and expanding, and economic activity can collapse.
Without support to a typical household, growth is unlikely to take off. Instead, it is by strengthening the demand side, and supporting people’s incomes through public spending aimed at improving universal services, and prioritising the wellbeing of those on middle and low incomes that policy could create space for firms to innovate and produce more.

<h5>The rich won’t save us </h5>
The “trickle down” argument suffers from a similar shortcoming. It assumes that the rich are inherently smarter, more hardworking, and better at making money, and that their resources are used to invest in innovative ventures that create jobs and promote growth, which benefits the rest of the economy. But this view ignores the unearned privilege of wealth coming from one’s class background, race, gender and age. It also neglects the fact that much of the wealth of the rich is invested in personal luxury consumption or financial assets that further enrich the wealthy and have little impact on job creation and innovation.
<h5>We need a radical change in economic thinking</h5>
As the new government’s decisions regarding its finances will come under scrutiny in the coming months, we should be asking the question of how taxation and public spending work. Cutting taxes is not necessarily bad if it targets financially vulnerable individuals. Similarly, abandoning the balanced budget won’t be beneficial if it is used to enrich the wealthy at the expense of further cuts to public services. We need more detailed design and evaluation of economic policy that look at who benefits from the proposed changes in public spending and taxation (as well as interest rates).

The decision to retain Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor signals that, as a prime minister, Sunak is likely to continue with the commitment to balanced public finances that he showed as Chancellor under Boris Johnson. Hunt has declared that he was ready to do “whatever is necessary” to reduce government debt in the name of maintaining strong public finances, which, in his view, are “the foundation of a strong economy”. And it is no longer just a Conservative ideal – Keir Starmer has vowed to turn Labour into the party of “sound finances”.
Yet what the experiences of economic neoliberalism show is that prioritising balanced public finances over equality and sustainability will make the ongoing crisis even worse. The obsession with rolling back the state to “liberate” markets will be a death sentence to some, who won’t be able to feed or heat themselves this winter while large energy companies enjoy record high profits. Economics can no longer be used to disguise those policy choices as inevitable laws of nature. The widespread criticism of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/30/how-kwasi-kwarteng-mini-budget-hit-uk-economy-in-numbers">Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget</a> sparks hope for a shift in the public’s expectations of economic policy. Such transformation requires a broader change in economics that accepts its ideological and political roots – and there are plenty of alternative theories and experts that Number 10 should learn from.
<pre>Photo Credit: Number 10 via <a href="https://flic.kr/p/2jKRhgk">Flickr</a></pre>

Rishi Sunak

UK economics desperately needs to move on from flawed prescriptions into a fresher more agile model that responds to today’s crises.

A new UK prime minister is not enough – the current economic model needs a radical overhaul

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>