In this episode, black liberation theologian Prof Anthony Reddie and the poet Ravelle-Sadé Fairman reflect on black experience. These searching thoughts begin with the recent murder of George Floyd at the hands of US police officers, and from there reach into a knotted web of power and oppression: the disproportionate suffering of black people from Covid19, the enduring roots of European colonial rule, the dynamics of white fragility, the experience of black embodiment, the veneration of the statues of slave traders, and the emerging anti-racism movement. 

We have made this episode public domain, so you are free to upload it onto your own podcast feed. We ask that you don’t edit the episode, but please do feel free to add your own introduction and reflections. We also ask that you acknowledge Nomad Podcast, and the producers Tim Nash and David Benjamin Blower. Please also list the contributors and permissions in your show notes.

Click on the download button to access the MP3 and WAV files, and guest images and bios.

---

QUOTES

“It’s interesting that the Prime Minister is going to set up another commission, in order to tell us things that many of us have known for a long time…What we need is not more analysis, what we need is structural change. And firstly to recognise the toxic and poisonous nature of white supremacy.”

“The use of extreme violence, as in the case of George Floyd…is the extreme end of the manifestations of racism. Most original white people are not involved in that. However, what they don’t notice is the way in which society is constructed on notions of white privilege, that allows a certain level of advantage of white people over black people and people of other minority ethnic identities, that is not based on anything other than a presumption of superiority.”

“White people will have individual black friends. But how much of your life is still codified by living in, effectively, a white domain with white norms? You may have the odd black friend, but how many of you have immersed yourself in contexts in which you are the minority? … In what ways are you living in a multicultural nation in ways that are challenging your sense of settled whiteness?”

“George Floyd’s death has enable people to see. And once you see something and you know it, you can’t unknow it. And not bring able to unknow it means that more ordinary people, who thought this had nothing to do with them, will now realise that for the cause of peace and justice and for a better equitable way of being human in the world, change needs to happen and they will be committed to that change.”

Click on the subscribe button if you’d like to be added to a mailing list to be kept aware of future public domain podcasts.