The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - 120. Leaving the Cult of Wokeness ｜ Africa Brooke

00:00:00.000 You know, and this is what I've been objecting to with regards to this group mentality from the beginning.

00:00:06.300 It seems to me that it's fundamental danger.

00:00:10.720 The fundamental danger is the devaluation of the sacredness of the individual as the primary category.

00:00:19.260 You replace that by group identity.

00:00:21.520 You have no idea what kind of devil you're messing with.

00:00:24.720 Or maybe you do to some degree.

00:00:26.580 You experienced it a bit because you messed about with that devil.

00:00:29.240 and you got tempted and 7 000 people told you you were right it's like imagine you're a political

00:00:35.720 leader okay now imagine 30 million people tell you that you're right and they chant that in a mob

00:00:42.820 and they do that everywhere you go that's what happened in germany and then you play to the

00:00:49.500 crowd you you're that actor you play to the crowd and you get hungrier and hungrier for that

00:00:54.940 validation and you train yourself to say anything the crowd demands no matter how dark right right

00:01:03.300 right and i i find it extremely worrying which is why i speak very very loudly in the way that i do

00:01:11.560 especially online because that's exactly what we're starting to see online people saying

00:01:16.760 whatever it takes to get that same level of validation and affirmation every single time

00:01:23.240 Welcome to episode 120 of the Michaela Peterson podcast.

00:01:30.240 This is an absolutely incredible episode.

00:01:34.240 It's with Africa Brooke and my dad.

00:01:36.960 Africa is one of the most eloquent guests I've had on, and her interaction with my dad was heart-wrenching.

00:01:42.260 She wrote the viral article, Why I'm Leaving the Cult of Wokeness, which I've linked below.

00:01:48.240 Africa Brooke spoke about what made her write that article and the effects it had on her life afterwards.

00:01:53.240 we ended up discussing wokeness to politics, religion, racism, how to stop your ego from

00:01:59.220 destroying your life, how to stop narcissism from destroying your soul. It was mainly an episode

00:02:04.580 between Africa and my dad. I surprised her with my dad, to be honest, but I enjoyed it immensely.

00:02:11.780 This is not one to miss. Also, I'm staying in Nashville. Nashville's awesome. Franklin's amazing

00:02:18.120 too, but I'm very allergic to it. It's just outside of Nashville. So back to a condo for

00:02:23.060 me surrounded by cement. If you enjoy this episode, hit subscribe.

00:02:36.660 Afra Brooke, welcome to my podcast.

00:02:40.040 Thank you. I'm so thrilled that we're able to do this. And I think the timing is perfect

00:02:45.080 actually because i know we've tried to do it a few times before um but there's something about

00:02:50.820 this time specifically just the timing of this that feels that feels very very aligned so i'm

00:02:57.180 very very happy to be here with both of you thank you maybe we had to cancel a few times because my

00:03:04.160 dad had to join who knows right i i think so i think that might have been it okay before we get

00:03:12.160 started um one i want to read a paragraph from the article you wrote that went viral uh and then

00:03:20.380 i'm going to get you to introduce yourself and then we can get started so this is this is why

00:03:25.660 i'm leaving the cult of wokeness i can no longer be an active participant in any culture or movement

00:03:32.560 that encourages groupthink outrage on demand fear and violence revamped segregation fabricating

00:03:38.920 history cancellations masked as accountability self-centeredness normalization of racism towards

00:03:46.160 white people the disempowerment of black people masked as social justice the constant redefining

00:03:52.520 of existing language ignoring self-responsibility constant pathologizing oppressed versus oppressor 0.83

00:03:59.460 mentality and the preference i almost did the entire thing with no errors and the pressure to

00:04:06.680 conform and comply it's exhausting and honestly I have better things to do with my time not to

00:04:11.500 mention it's killing us okay now you can do your intro so my name is Africa Brooke and I am a

00:04:21.100 writer I'm a consultant and I'm also a speaker there are many other things that I do but that's

00:04:26.780 the best way to kind of encapsulate everything so my journey into the work that I do now which

00:04:32.620 is specifically focusing on the costs and the effects of self-sabotage and self-censorship

00:04:39.420 began about five years ago.

00:04:42.560 We can go into this later, or I can kind of just give a little bit of a brief summary

00:04:48.220 now.

00:04:49.180 It began five years ago when I got sober, and me getting sober wasn't just a decision

00:04:55.100 that I made overnight, and then now I have five years of sobriety.

00:04:59.180 it was actually a very grueling, soul-destroying process. And I had relapsed seven times before

00:05:05.880 that, between the ages of 19 to 24. And I always say that what was different about that final time

00:05:13.400 in 2016, when I was just so physically exhausted with that cycle, is that I became curious about

00:05:20.220 what that cycle actually was. I started to get curious about human behavior, about the concept

00:05:26.420 of self-sabotage, which is something that I discovered just through researching, wanting

00:05:30.560 to understand my own behavior. And it's what leads me to the work that I do now, where I ended up

00:05:38.100 looking at my own subjective experience, but it ended up speaking to hundreds, now thousands of

00:05:43.480 people, speaking to academics, speaking to people that were addicts, speaking to people in my family

00:05:49.680 who also experienced addiction. And it slowly started to become something that felt like a

00:05:55.640 responsibility for me to give people this information. And now I don't just focus on

00:06:01.960 the self, the individual. I now look at self-sabotage and self-censorship through the lens of the

00:06:07.520 collective, which is where my letter comes from. And it kind of speaks to that.

00:06:14.720 Okay. So when is this letter from and how many people have read this?

00:06:19.420 this letter was published on January the 2nd 2021 and I had been writing it for about six months

00:06:30.580 but you know two years in the making if you will but when I published it it was only to a very

00:06:36.960 small newsletter of mine maybe 2 000 people and it just it just took off and by month six it had

00:06:45.960 been read by 3.5 million people and i mean it's it's not a short lesson it's 4 000 words which

00:06:51.940 for anyone to have read even half of that in in the time that we're in right now where people

00:06:57.060 prefer anything that is short and quick um it really tells me something and now it's been read

00:07:02.620 by over 4 million people wow okay so before you you wrote this you said why i'm leaving the

00:07:11.420 cult of wokeness so what were your beliefs prior to the publication of this letter

00:07:17.280 and how have they changed that's a good question let me just sit with that for a second what were

00:07:25.120 my beliefs prior to this letter i wouldn't even be able to sort of list them in a very neat way

00:07:33.860 um because i thought i was a very balanced person i had never over identified with any

00:07:40.380 kind of movement I had never um seen myself as a firm part of social justice if you will I I had

00:07:49.040 friends that were part of those movements etc but I had never seen myself in that way but the thing

00:07:55.160 is you don't often realize just how much a label is impacting you until you see yourself act in a

00:08:04.100 way that you wouldn't expect so in terms of beliefs for example I didn't believe that all

00:08:09.000 white people were racist even though this was common rhetoric that I was hearing and to the

00:08:14.080 point where it was just kind of normal and expected for me to hear people say things like that you 0.91

00:08:18.600 know but then in my mind I would say okay they don't actually mean every white person they're

00:08:22.860 just talking about the system of whiteness etc etc so I had been in certain spaces long enough

00:08:29.620 to kind of understand what people quote unquote really do mean um so it's not as if I thought in

00:08:35.460 that way but for me the fact that it was even normal for me to hear things like that is what

00:08:42.120 started to make me a little bit uncomfortable um my beliefs were still very much what they are now

00:08:48.560 but I think the issue was that I was afraid to actually voice what my true values were

00:08:53.600 I was afraid that if I say actually no I don't agree with that person who's on the left and I

00:09:00.360 actually very much agree with that person who is on quote unquote the right that I shouldn't be

00:09:05.840 thinking that way that it was I was betraying the movement in some kind of way you know that

00:09:11.400 because I'm black because I'm women because etc etc I shouldn't be thinking in this way so I would

00:09:17.520 say my beliefs weren't really different from what they are now but I was holding back from actually

00:09:23.640 expressing my true values and my truest thoughts how did you how do you think you found what your

00:09:29.800 true values and your true thoughts were? And how did you come to the realization that you weren't,

00:09:35.940 you know, that you were implicitly participating in something akin to self-censorship?

00:09:41.600 Yes. You know, I think it's when I realized that I was crossing my own boundaries.

00:09:48.040 That's when I was reminded of what my true values were, because I value honesty,

00:09:52.620 even when it's uncomfortable. And that's something that I've always spoken about publicly in many

00:09:59.000 different ways and talking about other things but essentially I believe in honesty even when it's

00:10:04.520 deeply uncomfortable but I wasn't being honest myself maybe behind closed doors I was maybe

00:10:11.100 behind closed doors I was listening to thinkers like yourself Jordan who I had been told that I

00:10:16.220 shouldn't listen to you because of you know certain identity markers like the ones I've mentioned

00:10:22.400 black woman etc um so it's when I realized that I was crossing my own boundaries and it was

00:10:29.440 actually making me quite sick because I think for many people many people might resonate but when

00:10:34.840 you suppress something long enough it has to go somewhere so if you if you just hold it and hold

00:10:41.060 it and hold it you can get physically sick and migraines are something that I've been guessing

00:10:46.000 since i was about 11 actually and from about 2019 or throughout 2020 last year i was getting severe

00:10:55.120 migraines and this was when i was internally battling with just censoring myself and feeling

00:11:00.480 like it's wrong for me to think these things let alone express them publicly um so i would say that

00:11:08.000 i was reminded of what my values were when i realized that i had been crossing my boundaries

00:11:13.200 Okay, so I got a couple of questions about that.

00:11:15.940 So if I got your story right so far, you said that you had more or less implicitly and perhaps somewhat explicitly accepted a version of yourself that was in alignment with group identity categorizations.

00:11:33.780 you said well i'm black i'm a woman i'm young um so i have to so the proper set of opinions for me

00:11:41.540 to have and express is this set and then you noticed that you felt or thought at least some

00:11:48.920 things that were in contradiction to that and then you noticed that you were afraid to express those

00:11:54.080 and then you started to realize that perhaps the fact that you weren't allowed to express those or

00:12:00.840 to explore them was associated with well with stress at least and and then with whatever the

00:12:06.440 contribution of the stress might be to your vulnerability so exacerbating your so and then

00:12:11.960 so was it and then did your explicit your new explicit beliefs start to to develop as a

00:12:19.260 consequence of that and and what changed for for you what changed for me was a very was a very very

00:12:27.820 very specific uh moment that I mentioned in my letter as well it was last year when I would say

00:12:34.340 this was May May or June um when you know the racial uprising in the U.S. was happening George

00:12:41.780 Floyd um his story the story of his killing spread all across the world essentially and

00:12:49.280 this was a time where I found myself feeling extremely challenged I found myself feeling 0.96

00:12:56.780 the pressure to perform in a way that was identical to other black people that I wasn't 0.95

00:13:03.280 allowed to actually sit back and say wait what what actually happened what is what is the story

00:13:08.440 there was a very specific story that I was supposed to take on board and I was supposed to

00:13:13.980 outwardly what was that story that you were supposed to take on board exactly right so the

00:13:19.240 story specifically that I felt I needed to take on board was that black people were being hunted

00:13:24.900 down in the U.S. and that racial divide, the current racial divide that we're seeing in the

00:13:32.080 U.S. And bear in mind, I don't live in the U.S. I'm in London. I'm in the U.K. I've never been to

00:13:37.240 the U.S. my entire life. I'm not, I wouldn't be able to tell you the ins and outs of the politics

00:13:44.060 of America. Black people are being hunted down. And as a Black person, it is your responsibility 0.94

00:13:52.320 to speak against white supremacy. It is your responsibility to turn to every single white 0.74

00:13:58.440 person in your life and ask them why they are not speaking about this very specific situation in the

00:14:04.520 US. So it was along those lines, but it wasn't just happening online. It was also happening

00:14:10.980 offline. And I felt this pressure. And you know what? I'll be very honest. At the same time as me

00:14:18.120 feeling that pressure I felt a deep sense of connection to people that looks like me it was

00:14:24.360 a very emotional time I felt like we were all coming together and there's this sort of unity

00:14:30.400 that I had never experienced before yes there was a lot of anger a lot of frustration and I think

00:14:35.540 both can be very essential ingredients depending on the context um but soon after that I started

00:14:42.940 to feel uncomfortable because there seemed like there was there wasn't any room for questioning

00:14:47.720 you just had to follow what you were being told to do you just had to play along to the script 0.75

00:14:53.400 and if you were white you were supposed to um apologize for all the sins of your ancestors 0.97

00:14:59.320 and the sins that you are going to commit yourself in future because you're white right so do you 0.89

00:15:05.500 start to wonder then maybe that the point of the moral outrage is to encourage the following that

00:15:15.100 you were finding psychologically objectionable, rather than to redress the hypothetical social

00:15:20.720 wrongs that were being manifested. Is that right? Yes, that's, that's exactly it. That's exactly it.

00:15:29.740 And the specific incident that I'm talking about here was born from that. So my following was

00:15:36.800 pretty big at that time, I would say 50,000 or so, which is still a lot of people. And I was

00:15:43.120 resharing a lot of um posts that other people were sharing as well uh about why it's important

00:15:49.780 especially if you're white to speak up at this time etc etc and what's interesting about this

00:15:55.620 is that I've never been someone that will just instantly share something or say something because

00:16:00.560 I feel that I should which is why when Michaela you asked before what were your beliefs I I could

00:16:06.260 easily say that I feel like I've always believed the same things but it's about what what I was

00:16:10.980 actually expressing outwardly right um so I was sharing a lot of things because of the emotions

00:16:17.240 that I felt because of the narrative that as a black person this is your opportunity to stand

00:16:22.200 for something you know um resharing a lot of things and there was a man who sent me a message

00:16:29.060 and this wasn't an unkind message or anything like that when I look at it now in retrospect

00:16:35.060 he was just asking if everything that I'm sharing and everything that I'm saying right now

00:16:40.520 is the best approach to take. I believe this was a man who was familiar with my work before. So he

00:16:48.200 felt as if there was something out of character. So he asked me if this was the best approach to

00:16:55.260 take. This was a private message. And instantly, it didn't even cross my mind to have a conversation

00:17:02.760 with him privately. My instant thought, which is a thought I had never in my entire life had before

00:17:08.520 was how dare you question a black woman in that way that was my that was my first thought I've

00:17:15.080 never I've never thought in that way before I'm open to having conversations difficult conversations

00:17:20.680 I've been doing it for years but in that moment because there was just such a perfect environment

00:17:27.160 that had been created that was my first thought so I screenshotted that message and I posted it

00:17:34.660 onto my feed to my audience for all to see um and of course I got exactly what I needed in that

00:17:41.940 moment I got exactly what my ego was looking for thousands of people uh telling me that this man

00:17:48.540 was wrong uh people telling me that I shouldn't have to educate anyone you know that's kind of

00:17:54.640 the common social justice language no one is here to educate you especially or to do unpaid emotional

00:18:00.180 labor. Right. There we go. Emotional labor, especially because I fall under certain identity

00:18:06.360 markers, which are seen as more important than others. You know, a black woman shouldn't have 1.00

00:18:10.660 to educate you. So that was about 20 minutes, 20 very, very long minutes and thousands of people 0.96

00:18:19.320 sort of swarming. It was a very, very visceral. And the validation and affirmation that I felt

00:18:28.100 in that moment was like nothing I had experienced in a while and it was almost like an out-of-body 0.99

00:18:36.280 experience and maybe someone else hearing this might think well it's just a fucking Instagram

00:18:40.400 post but I was seeing myself in a way that I had never seen myself before it's almost like I was 0.93

00:18:46.960 hovering over myself holding my phone seeing a flood of this validation coming in so I publicly

00:18:53.580 shamed this man who had simply just asked a question you know um and I didn't I didn't even

00:19:01.020 have to deal with him it's not and it's really important for me to talk about these things in a

00:19:05.840 very um in a very open and honest way but in that moment I I dehumanized him he wasn't he wasn't a

00:19:13.120 human being he was just that's just a question that I received and I didn't have to process it

00:19:18.840 ask myself, why do I feel uncomfortable? Is this man, is this person not owed some kind of response

00:19:25.040 or not at all? He messaged me in a private place. Should I not give him the respect of doing the

00:19:31.540 same? No, I didn't. So within that 20 minutes, I think about six to 7,000 people commented or

00:19:40.020 liked this post and something just felt as, you know, with the same intensity that it felt

00:19:46.340 validating and affirming i just felt sick it was it was just like that as if i i had snapped out

00:19:55.580 of something and i know what that something was because obviously now i know i had been you know

00:20:01.220 almost ideologically possessed and i had no idea you know um and what an appeal to narcissism you

00:20:08.360 have it's stunning it's it's an i'm amazed that you it's so interesting that you experienced that

00:20:14.120 in all its potency right the elevation of your opinion to unquestionable the social validation

00:20:19.760 of that extraordinarily powerful and tempting and then to notice that it actually made you sick

00:20:26.300 that's really something right that is that's really impressive yeah i don't think people

00:20:32.180 are built for the level that social media can give you at the moment like 6 000 or 7 000 people

00:20:37.200 all agreeing with you it's really hard to psychologically overcome that right in in 20

00:20:43.540 minutes in 20 minutes which on social media is it's it's two minutes if you're sitting there

00:20:50.580 and you're holding your phone and because I'm a very visual person sometimes I picture this

00:20:54.480 being surrounded by that amount of people who are telling you that you've done a great job that man

00:21:01.140 he was wrong he shouldn't have spoken to you in that way that speaks to a part of me that needs

00:21:05.840 that a part of me that needs that in a way that is completely unrelated to what was actually

00:21:10.820 happening in that moment but that moment that i felt sick i just felt like africa what are you

00:21:17.480 what are you doing what what are you actually doing and i removed the post um and what what

00:21:23.940 were you doing what were you actually doing what do you think it was that made you sick

00:21:33.680 I was performing I was performing I was performing and I know performance very very well having have

00:21:46.340 gone through what I did with alcohol and my my father when we were growing up he was also an

00:21:53.280 alcoholic we grew up in a very very abusive home he was physically abusive and which is where

00:21:58.960 self-censorship actually came from for me from a very young age because when you're in such an

00:22:03.700 uncertain environment you you learn how to navigate it pretty quickly you learn how to

00:22:08.480 censor yourself so that you can stay safe um so I learned how to perform from a very very young age

00:22:15.000 to perform whatever version is gonna is gonna make him happy whatever version is gonna make him less

00:22:20.620 likely to hit me or my siblings or my mom and in that moment and I've only said this out loud maybe

00:22:27.180 twice but in that moment with that man that kind of awakening uh that very rude awakening i felt

00:22:35.880 like i was performing the version of myself that would stop me from getting hit or mobbed by the

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00:24:40.520 get superleaf.com slash mp code mp for 20 off enjoy the rest of the episode so you removed the

00:24:47.400 post and then yeah what happened afterwards what where did this go i removed the post and

00:24:56.820 I just retracted internally but externally I just removed the post and I pretended that it had

00:25:05.280 never happened a lot of my the work that I do is public a lot of the conversations I have

00:25:11.120 public so I kind of just continued but behind the scenes this is when I started to really want to

00:25:19.700 understand exactly what had happened in that moment what had I been experiencing for the past

00:25:24.420 two years and that's when my letter started taking shape and my letter was just a journal

00:25:33.480 entry to begin with just writing it to myself so that I could say that I'm done I don't want

00:25:39.000 to play this game anymore this game is not just making me sick but it's making all of us sick

00:25:45.920 and writing has always been the way that I'm able to really make sense of how I feel without

00:25:52.560 feeling like I need to necessarily express it vocally and I I would say that's what really

00:26:00.820 saved me from slipping into shame because everything that had happened with that man

00:26:05.460 it was a it could have been very easy to shame myself or to either just pretend it never happened

00:26:14.300 which is something that I see a lot actually um just denial just the theme of denial runs through

00:26:21.540 everything that I'm seeing play out in the culture I see things like that all the time where someone

00:26:26.260 will publicly shame someone or they will misrepresent someone and then maybe find out that

00:26:32.100 they were wrong in a very public way as well and then they'll just pretend that it never happened

00:26:37.340 you know and they get to move on but that person do they get to move on you know when I think of

00:26:42.800 that man who I have reached out to since um he doesn't necessarily get to move on in the same

00:26:49.320 way i did because if i've shared his handle maybe there's someone that has me on such a pedestal

00:26:54.420 that they feel that africa shouldn't have had to go through this so i'm going to you know i i don't

00:27:01.280 know make sure that this man pays or it happens all the time it happens all the time right um

00:27:07.080 so behind the scenes that's when i started writing this letter

00:27:10.580 do you have i'm sure that this is going to resonate with people this conversation

00:27:19.480 um do you have suggestions for people who might be feeling that kind of like i know what you mean

00:27:26.860 when you do something that you're like your soul doesn't agree with and it's like i call it i think

00:27:32.080 what i get is some sort of existential horror it's just like yeah it's just like everywhere

00:27:37.180 and it's like you're going in the wrong direction of reality or something so if if people are stuck

00:27:43.480 in that and are scared how how do those people try and stop and switch to going in the right

00:27:51.300 direction hopefully that made it some semblance of sense right right and you know what Michaela

00:27:56.320 I wish there was a you can imagine that I get asked that question hundreds of times a day

00:28:02.920 and i think we want a simple answer don't we we we want just one answer that

00:28:09.240 i i don't think there's one answer um part of it is to to try to listen to what you say

00:28:18.060 to what you're saying and see if it makes you feel stronger or weaker yeah like each word is

00:28:24.340 like a stepping stone through a swamp you know and and if it's the right word then you step on it

00:28:29.940 It feels secure and stable compared to the territory around it.

00:28:35.260 And you test that out and then you dare to see if that's the way you think,

00:28:40.060 as opposed to that persona that you're putting on for public adulation and protection, right?

00:28:46.180 That's the temptation of the actor.

00:28:49.440 So in the movie Pinocchio, when Pinocchio is trying to stop lying and to become a real boy,

00:28:56.160 he faces two major temptations apart from lying.

00:28:59.940 one is to be a victim and the other is to be an actor it took me a long time to to figure out why

00:29:09.740 being an actor was a temptation but you put your finger on it with your description it's to adopt

00:29:17.320 a set of roles that will well appeal to narcissistic inflation something like that it's

00:29:24.060 it's and there's a terrible totalitarian danger in that it's terrible yeah so yeah and and that's

00:29:31.840 my suspicions are that's what you were reacting to so viscerally that you were participating in that

00:29:36.900 and you had your reasons but um you mentioned something that i think maybe the three of us

00:29:42.800 could discuss that would be would be interesting you know this idea about all white people being

00:29:50.220 racist so so i kind of wondered about that as a psychologist but more broadly because maybe you

00:29:58.840 could say well are all people racist and here's here's what i mean by that well we all have an

00:30:08.500 in-group preference now what that group might be you know it might be you and the person you love

00:30:13.720 might be you and your family might be you and your town might be you and your state

00:30:18.520 or your country might be you and your race you know that who that in-group is can vary

00:30:25.620 but we do have preferences for people and we do have in-group preferences and the corollary of

00:30:31.680 that is that we have out-group skepticism and maybe fear and maybe disgust and all of that and

00:30:39.040 from what I've been able to understand anthropologically that's more or less a

00:30:43.260 universal as as different peoples have been brought around the world into global community

00:30:53.260 let's say one of the things that anthropologists have found is that it's it's almost always the

00:30:58.340 case that any given tribe of people will use the word that refers to human beings to their tribe

00:31:06.800 and some other word to everyone else and so it's possible that that's a deep tendency that we all

00:31:16.080 have to fight against and i mean there's part of the reason these ideas are so compelling to people

00:31:22.480 and able to possess them the wokeness ideas let's say to use a casual category is that

00:31:28.180 you know they contain an element of truth you know people have an in-group preference

00:31:36.620 that can easily be distorted into something that's that's quite akin to racism i mean you

00:31:42.780 even see that in chimpanzees for example they'll go on raiding forays into neighboring territories

00:31:49.360 and if they outnumber the males do this if they outnumber the foreigners that they come across 0.99

00:31:56.180 they will tear them to pieces so it's yeah yeah that was a stunning discovery lovely lovely that

00:32:03.020 primatologists made jane goodall's team discovered that in the 70s it was a real shock right so they

00:32:09.280 were trying to find all the nice chimps yeah well they're like oh they just rip each other

00:32:13.180 to shreds well okay yeah exactly well no one had had any inkling previous to that that that human 0.99

00:32:20.200 tendency for for war you know broadly speaking was so deep that it was even shared by our you

00:32:28.440 know closest animal uh relative so this is very deep so you know the idea that racism

00:32:36.120 and in-group preference all of that is something that human beings struggle with is true and then

00:32:41.940 you say well you know you twist that a bit you say well that's particularly true of white people

00:32:46.340 because they hold the power it's like well you know it's an interesting proposition but the 0.62

00:32:52.300 question is well if it's true exactly how it's true how is it true and what's its limits and

00:32:57.480 you know how does that play out in the case of other races or groups asians for example

00:33:04.300 and what are the dangers of putting the idea that way like and what makes you so sure that

00:33:13.640 that's also not true of your group and how does power play into that like these are all these are

00:33:19.820 all genuine questions that we should be asking ourselves instead of like hammering home the idea

00:33:26.500 that we have the answer to this it's like how all you know you you you you said you know you you got

00:33:33.520 elevated as a black woman in this well it's very difficult to see that to not see that as an

00:33:40.880 exacerbation of your in-group preference and then an exaggeration of that implicit or explicit racism

00:33:47.480 on your part and i think that's part of what you were rebelling against yes yes yes yes oh and and

00:33:55.220 you know what the questions that you were just asking before those are the exact questions that

00:34:00.920 i had just simple questions um and it started to signal again that something wasn't right here that

00:34:08.600 I couldn't even just ask the simplest questions or at least felt that I couldn't I could have

00:34:14.220 but I was much more scared of the consequences of asking the questions than leading with the

00:34:19.680 curiosity of getting some kind of answer right um and in my letter Michaela you read this part out

00:34:26.960 earlier about the disempowerment of black people that's how I started to feel extremely disempowered

00:34:34.000 you know even when people would say things like yeah it's because white people have all the power

00:34:39.160 according to who and in what context are we talking about does it matter where in the world

00:34:44.760 you are which ones right I had I had an experience like that um it's not exactly like that it was

00:34:53.960 like that but for me and I was taking sciences um because I'd switched out of humanities because 0.77

00:34:59.380 there was a lot of you know I was taking a course on Homer and it was Homer through the feminist

00:35:03.520 lens and i was like that's not what i came that's not what i paid you guys for so i switched into

00:35:09.240 sciences and about every couple months somebody would come in and they'd say okay for all the

00:35:15.320 women in the room i know you've had you've had a much harder time getting to where you are than 0.99

00:35:20.460 the men have and i was just like are you are you telling me i'm stupid like what exactly are you 0.98

00:35:27.900 saying here and how dare you suggest that it was just it was like insulting and kind of a 0.98

00:35:32.780 condescending way which was the complete opposite of whatever they were well and maybe it wasn't

00:35:37.440 the opposite of what they were trying to do um but yeah it's condescending and irritating yeah well

00:35:43.760 it loved me well think about what that does in some sense it makes your generic femininity

00:35:49.040 and your generic vulnerability far more important than your individual particularity

00:35:58.200 you know and this is what i've been objecting to with regards to this

00:36:01.880 group mentality from the beginning it's it seems to me that it's fundamental danger

00:36:08.620 the fundamental danger is the devaluation of the of the sacredness of the individual as the

00:36:16.720 primary category you replace that by group identity you have no idea what kind of devil

00:36:22.080 you're messing with or maybe you do to some degree you experienced it a bit because you

00:36:26.740 messed about with that devil and you got tempted and 7 000 people told you you were right it's like

00:36:33.440 imagine you're a political leader okay now imagine 30 million people tell you that you're right and

00:36:39.840 they chant that in a mob and they do that everywhere you go if that's what happened in

00:36:45.520 germany and then you play to the crowd you you're that actor you play to the crowd and you get

00:36:52.200 hungrier and hungrier for that validation and you train yourself to say anything the crowd demands

00:36:59.000 no matter how dark right right right and i i find it extremely worrying which is why i speak very

00:37:08.300 very loudly in the way that i do especially online because that's exactly what we're starting to see

00:37:13.980 online people saying whatever it takes to get that same level of validation and affirmation

00:37:21.100 every single time and when we go back to the question that you asked earlier of what did you

00:37:26.360 then do after you removed that post there were also other things that I did um behind the scenes

00:37:32.680 which is where you come in again Jordan I thought to myself okay so who were some of the people that

00:37:40.040 I discarded in the past because I was told to not because it was a conscious decision that I made on

00:37:47.500 my part. What was I told that I shouldn't read, that I shouldn't agree with, that I shouldn't

00:37:53.060 listen to? And I specifically started listening to speakers. I would say actually this was

00:37:59.980 more so after that specific incident online, but I had started doing this from late 2019,

00:38:06.440 just challenging myself to sit through conversations being had by people I would

00:38:12.180 never have listened to, people that are, let's say, on quote unquote the right, which is interesting

00:38:17.260 because I've never identified as being part on the left it's assumed it's assumed because

00:38:23.580 because of all of those identity markers and the things that I might agree with mostly the things

00:38:30.320 that I'm most aware of it's just assumed to the point where maybe I started to assume that about

00:38:36.240 myself which is why I had resistance to the right um no Michaela go go go no no I just liked your

00:38:46.680 that was all that was all you go ahead but it's um and and also there's a cultural aspect to this

00:38:54.880 so I was born and raised in Zimbabwe that's that's where I'm from that's home that's still

00:38:59.100 the first language that I speak at home with my family um and I left there at the age of nine I'm

00:39:04.760 20 I'm 29 now and over identifying with a political party is just not really culturally

00:39:12.640 a thing no one even says things you know like they're on the left or the right or they're

00:39:17.380 zanapia for mdc those are the political parties but they're not um it's something that i i see

00:39:24.760 more of in the west if you will like a you know on dating apps people will have left leftist or

00:39:30.460 lefty or things things like that they've become markers of religious affiliation

00:39:35.980 yes and that's also a terrible thing because when politics becomes religion

00:39:41.860 it's gone too far and that's part of the danger of the loss of religion is that

00:39:49.460 you don't you can't get rid of it it crops up somewhere something else gets inflated into

00:39:56.040 religious dimensions and that's when paul and that's when when things are you're supposed to

00:40:01.820 render unto Caesar what are Caesar's, and render unto God what are God's, what is God's.

00:40:06.900 And if you render unto Caesar...

00:40:08.400 I just read that yesterday.

00:40:09.400 Great, great.

00:40:09.980 That's weird.

00:40:10.860 That's weird.

00:40:12.160 Okay.

00:40:12.400 Really?

00:40:13.120 And if you render...

00:40:13.960 Yeah, really.

00:40:14.880 If you render unto God, if you render unto Caesar what is God's, then Caesar gets inflated into a God.

00:40:22.640 And that's another danger and an existential danger for everyone.

00:40:27.560 Like, we have this rational idea that we can dispense with our religious values.

00:40:32.980 But by definition, our religious values are our deepest values.

00:40:37.040 By definition.

00:40:38.940 And you have to have deep values or you're disintegrated and aimless.

00:40:43.740 And they're going to come from somewhere and be placed somewhere.

00:40:47.720 And if they slip out of a domain of religion that's set aside specially for that,

00:40:53.840 then it's easy for the political to become inflated and that's it's we don't want that

00:41:00.640 that's that's that's not good right okay so that's not happening in zimbabwe so no and you see it

00:41:09.600 here oh i see it oh i see it hey second ad what here i am again with my dinosaur shirt i wanted

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00:42:51.780 of the episode so what I what I decided to do was to just listen to different people and I remember

00:42:57.520 listening to some of your some of your lectures Jordan I wouldn't be able to tell you which which

00:43:02.160 one specifically because I listened to so many but in the beginning and this was still happening last

00:43:07.880 summer as well I was sitting there just watching alone and I remember even for a few months

00:43:15.280 feeling like I'm doing something wrong and this was you probably were you probably were

00:43:20.120 and this was such a bizarre feeling because again maybe I would have experienced this differently

00:43:29.020 if I had family identified with being on quote-unquote the left or being a feminist I've

00:43:36.220 never identified in that way or just any of these things that would kind of make sense for me to

00:43:41.200 fully physically reject what I'm watching right now but I had always considered myself to be quite

00:43:46.480 quite balanced right but it took me sitting down listening to you amongst other people

00:43:53.900 to really realize just how sucked into these echo chambers I had been because I felt as though I

00:44:00.360 was betraying the movement in some kind of way and you know what's so interesting when I say the

00:44:05.320 movement, I wouldn't be able to tell you which one any pick pick any that I'm betraying some kind

00:44:11.300 of bigger collective purpose. Why did you continue? Why did you do it? Why did you continue? And how

00:44:17.880 did you know that that voice wasn't the true voice of your conscience? Yeah, that's a good question.

00:44:23.960 That's a good question. I knew it because that the discomfort that I felt wasn't anything

00:44:36.160 compared to the sickness that I had felt for the past two years, actually being immersed in those

00:44:42.980 spaces. And more than that, everything that not only you were saying and that other thinkers were

00:44:50.360 saying I remember listening to Larry Elder for example and feeling the very same things if not

00:44:57.540 more because I was receiving certain information from a black man and I've never heard anyone speak

00:45:04.560 in that kind of way before in a very objective way talking about certain data as to why maybe

00:45:09.840 he doesn't think there's systemic racism in the US etc etc just data-driven research and I still

00:45:17.680 felt that I couldn't it the cognitive dissonance to just put it very simply the cognitive dissonance

00:45:24.600 was intense but I sat with it because I'm very familiar with discomfort I always see my sobriety

00:45:31.700 and the journey to getting sober as the foundation that holds me in place when I'm feeling any kind

00:45:37.900 of discomfort because I when I go back to getting sober for example that final eighth time I felt

00:45:45.360 i felt so uncomfortable there was nothing in that moment there was nothing empowering about it it

00:45:51.540 wasn't this profound decision that i made and that now i live a sober life it was i had no other

00:45:57.640 choice otherwise i was going to be sick for the rest of my life i think you make you make a choice

00:46:02.800 like that not in pride but in abject humility yes yes yes and i see that process that i took myself

00:46:11.580 through um of kind of giving myself back to myself is the way that I think of it you know

00:46:19.500 sitting through those lectures hearing you talk um because I had had an experience in relation

00:46:26.060 to you years before where I had made a firm decision that I would never in my life listen

00:46:33.080 to anything this man has to say based on a three-minute clip mind you do you remember what

00:46:43.780 it was that i said that was so profoundly irritating i mean oh there's many can you

00:46:49.000 tell me what can you tell me what that was of course you were talking about the gender pay gap

00:46:55.520 um and this was a this was part of a longer interview the you know the interview that you

00:47:00.980 had with kevin newman and this was a clip three minute clip you were talking about the gender pay

00:47:06.800 gap and you were saying that you know paraphrasing here but that the reason for most women is because

00:47:13.280 most women are agreeable most women don't negotiate etc etc i i believe that was essentially

00:47:19.840 essentially giving people options as to why it could be that there's this thing that exists or

00:47:27.400 doesn't exist and I didn't even finish the clip I didn't even finish the three minute clip but

00:47:33.980 based on the things that another out of context clip that I had seen before and the way that I'd

00:47:40.260 heard your name being spoken of before in in the context of the trans conversation that that was

00:47:45.740 happening around that time 2018 right exactly um again I was watching this clip and it's almost

00:47:53.720 like i wasn't even listening to what you were saying i had already decided that i i don't like

00:47:59.020 this man because someone that i trust has told me that i shouldn't like him so therefore you know

00:48:04.580 the decision is made why do i even have to finish that video right and it was just right and it was

00:48:09.740 just normal well you know we use heuristics like that all the time you know and it's easy to get

00:48:14.900 caught up in them because well you can't listen to everyone and so you kind of have to make a snap

00:48:20.680 judgment about almost everyone and and this and the default is you don't listen because there's

00:48:26.660 like seven billion people so obviously you're not listening to most of them so you don't need much

00:48:32.180 of an excuse and it's really easy for that to get and i mean it's not like i haven't experienced

00:48:37.140 that like you know on my podcast you know i invite people on abigail schreier for example she wrote

00:48:42.720 i don't remember oh yes the name of her most recent book but it's a investigation into the

00:48:49.500 downside of the of the rush to make everything gender fluid essentially and i was terrified when

00:48:57.160 when i had her on i mean i was in rather irreversible damage yeah and you know i want to

00:49:03.660 have andy no on my podcast but that also makes me nervous too and you know because he's tarred with

00:49:09.340 the fascist brush and and then you get it's guilt by association and that might have been part of

00:49:15.100 what you were feeling so uh those so you think well you need a simplifying heuristic and part

00:49:20.520 of that is well that most people aren't worth listening to and he's definitely not worth

00:49:25.080 listening to and right and then that can so easily become politicized and once it is especially when

00:49:32.340 the political has become religious it's really really hard to overcome that yeah so it really

00:49:39.340 is you know a lot of the things that the radical left are pointing out are in some sense universal

00:49:44.640 human failings and so they have that truth about them i mean because we could ask ourselves

00:49:50.980 um given the implicit tendency for human beings to have a pronounced in-group preference

00:49:57.300 and the potential we have for violence against out-group members how do we all address our 0.51

00:50:05.020 proclivity to damn the foreigner okay that's a really important question i feel like i've got 0.93

00:50:12.660 a good i've got a good answer okay let me add the one the one end to that and then the next thing is 0.99

00:50:17.300 well we all have these proclivities how are they exacerbated by by power and privilege

00:50:24.760 right those are good questions but as soon as we make it instantly racist well then we can't even 0.94

00:50:30.800 ask the damn questions properly anymore so mick sorry my joke is over now oh i'm sorry i stomped 0.86

00:50:38.800 all over your timely joke you stomped all over my tiny little joke uh i was thinking about that 0.99

00:50:44.480 question earlier though uh if everyone has these tendencies which they certainly do i've noticed

00:50:49.900 that if i have a guest on my podcast and i think my audience is fairly open-minded but then i'll

00:50:55.620 have a guest on that and they'll hate them and they'll be like well you can't just even if you

00:51:02.340 don't agree with them maybe and maybe they are wrong but like you can't just cancel people

00:51:06.240 because they don't agree with you because you're doing exactly the same thing that the people you're 0.99

00:51:09.960 complaining about well you know and also maybe you're maybe your stupid opinions aren't right 0.99

00:51:15.240 they're probably not right and like are you so sure your life is going so much the way you want 1.00

00:51:20.860 it to go and you're such a bloody paragon of virtue and the light is shining out every orifice

00:51:25.500 that everything you think and say is correct and everyone who disabuses you of your notions is evil 0.76

00:51:30.700 you're really so sure of that are you gosh so you know you wander around and you think god maybe i 0.99

00:51:36.880 should listen to this person because i'm such an ignorant bastard and i'm so full of malevolence 0.99

00:51:40.980 and maybe they'll drop one thing on me that won't make me like miserable and doomed to hell and to 0.98

00:51:46.520 drag everyone else there too that's yes yeah well you know i i i felt something similar when when i

00:51:55.460 finally leaned into listening to you properly because what was interesting even after that

00:52:00.800 moment in 2018 watching that three-minute clip deciding this man is evil I want nothing to do

00:52:06.460 with him ever again and of course I didn't think I would ever have anything to do yeah look what

00:52:10.900 happened yeah right um people in my especially people that were not really connected to the

00:52:24.300 digital world a lot of my a lot of older men in my life for example and women in my life would

00:52:30.160 always tell me to read your book it's honestly I people would always say to me Africa you will

00:52:36.900 really love this book I would have friends of mine send me lectures I think you're really going to

00:52:41.340 like this and I would just completely ignore it and in my mind I'd be thinking what am I what am

00:52:48.320 I going to find what am I supposed to like because again I have this idea of you built up in my head

00:52:54.200 So I'm finding it very confusing that people that know me very well are telling me that

00:53:00.040 there's something that I'm going to like, right?

00:53:02.820 Yeah, what the hell?

00:53:04.060 Very confusing. 0.64

00:53:04.200 But again, for years, what the hell?

00:53:06.760 For years, I ignored it.

00:53:08.620 So when I started watching your lectures late 2019 and last summer as well, in the beginning,

00:53:14.900 I could notice myself listening to you and finding, waiting for a moment where I could

00:53:21.840 say, aha, see?

00:53:23.160 see right i i i knew i was right and you know what i waited i went that moment never came

00:53:31.120 that moment never came that comes for me right all the time

00:53:36.060 and that again so it's like there wasn't one moment of being awake and then it's done

00:53:45.080 so many little tiny seemingly insignificant moments where i'm just sitting here by my sofa

00:53:52.000 just watching and listening observing myself waiting you know for that confirmation that I'm

00:53:59.320 right and then it never coming and then I have to deal with that and then so again my curiosity I

00:54:05.560 finally allowed myself to be curious again and now Jordan I can say you have been one of the

00:54:10.940 most influential people to me for so many reasons reasons I couldn't even mention right now

00:54:16.100 um but to be able to have the conversations that I do now publicly you have and I I could have

00:54:26.320 never never imagined this ever in my entire life this is things like this don't just happen

00:54:34.120 and the fact that I can tell you this oh no thank you just thank you

00:54:43.140 thank you you got him

00:54:49.060 pleasure it's a rough pleasure but

00:54:59.700 you know did you knew what happened to me with uh marvel comics

00:55:06.460 that was something it's really something to see yourself portrayed you know i got accused of being

00:55:17.300 a nazi pretty much when all this happened was really something because i had been teaching

00:55:22.600 students what we're talking about today about these temptations that you faced and how people

00:55:29.180 and its individuals get sucked into that totalitarian hell, you know, and then, so that was something

00:55:36.800 for that to happen, such a reversal, and then to have that comic book come out, well, it 0.61

00:55:41.160 was surreal, it was absolutely surreal to be portrayed, because Nazi wasn't enough,

00:55:46.760 right, we had to go right for the archetype itself, so I think we've raised about $400,000

00:55:52.620 for charity now on the basis of that so that was a fun reversal but it was really shocking when i

00:56:00.200 first saw that i i just couldn't believe it i was very ill at the time too and i thought this can't

00:56:05.700 be real this has to be photoshopped this cannot possibly be happening it's so completely beyond

00:56:12.220 comprehension and you know to come from the pen of one of the foremost black intellectuals and i

00:56:19.940 I use the racial category only because that's the categories that he's used to operate within.

00:56:26.260 So life is really weird. 0.95

00:56:31.580 This is true.

00:56:32.600 Right.

00:56:33.540 This is true, as this whole conversation illustrates.

00:56:38.680 So what have been the personal consequences for you of writing this letter and having it go?

00:56:45.160 I mean, have you been pilloried?

00:56:48.840 has what's what's happened to you um I haven't I haven't I haven't received and this this is

00:56:59.180 something that I don't think about so much actually because I prefer to just allow it to

00:57:06.260 be whatever it is right now to not expect it or it just is but I actually have not received

00:57:12.700 any pushback from this and for it to have been read by over 4 million people and for me to not

00:57:22.540 have been aggressively dragged through the streets of social media you know by my neck it's

00:57:30.380 why not why hasn't it happened why do you think what what's what's operating to protect you do

00:57:37.560 you think you know what i it would be very naive of me to think that my identity markers the ones

00:57:45.460 we've been speaking about don't have anything to do with that i think people are more willing to

00:57:49.860 listen to what i'm saying because of the fact that i'm black if i had been white for example

00:57:56.880 a lot of what i'm saying the more universal things that are not specific to me being black

00:58:02.160 or in Zimbabwean um they would have just been dismissed because there are many things people

00:58:07.840 have been saying over the past years that are just common sense they make sense people have

00:58:13.240 genuine questions but no one will listen to it because the first thing they will see is that you 0.97

00:58:18.840 inhabit a white body so you don't get to speak you know so I think people are more willing um 0.98

00:58:26.180 to hear what I have to say because of that and I think it's also because I'm not preaching to 0.94

00:58:34.060 anyone I'm not telling anyone what to do yeah that's a yeah right I'm not an academic I'm not

00:58:41.340 trying to give you data and this is not about that this is a very personal account from someone

00:58:48.320 that has been in it I'm not righteous I'm not above you or below you right this is just me

00:58:53.840 saying hey no i'm opting out of this game and we all get to opt out you know and i i think that's

00:59:01.440 why it has been received very well because i'm speaking from the eye i'm speaking from my own

00:59:06.900 experience and i think it can be very hard to dispute that well you can't well see there's

00:59:14.420 something interesting about that too eh because one of the mantras of of the left i hate to use

00:59:19.380 these categories but we're stuck with it at the moment yes yes you know the the the uh implicit

00:59:26.060 truth of subjectivity and the thing is this yes right and the thing is there's something right

00:59:32.300 about that because you are there is a domain of knowledge that you have privileged access to

00:59:40.200 that no one can dispute and that domain of knowledge is your honest representation of

00:59:48.160 your subjective experience and that it does have the kind of power that you just described

00:59:54.040 and so there is there's some sense in noting that as a form of truth but then it the claim seems to

01:00:03.720 have got twisted and perverted in some way which which is it kind of gets elevated narcissistically

01:00:08.940 it's like because i have this domain where i'm i am the only person who has access to those

01:00:15.020 experiences then all of a sudden that gets in it gets inflated in this political way into a

01:00:21.320 narcissistic claim that you know that means overall my truths are as good as any truth and

01:00:26.920 they're as good as anyone else's and there's an error there right because there's despite the

01:00:31.940 fact that there are things that you can say that only you can say that no one can dispute there

01:00:37.560 are all sorts of things that you can't say that you don't know and that are absolutely subject to

01:00:43.200 dispute yes and so it's it's it's the it's the narcissistic inflation of the claim beyond its

01:00:49.240 reasonable boundaries and then your conscience i think was operating in you to say well where are

01:00:56.340 the boundaries of this claim like the click the let's take the war so to speak between black

01:01:01.540 people and the and police in the united states well obviously that's a problem but it's a really

01:01:06.540 really complex problem and maybe we want to have an instant solution to it but we don't have an

01:01:11.440 instant solution to it and so the claim is well this is a problem and then the next claim is well

01:01:17.580 it's based in racism and the next claim is it's based in white supremacy it's like well

01:01:21.620 wait a second there's a problem here

01:01:25.060 and the problem with coming up with the solution so rapidly is well you don't know

01:01:33.480 you actually don't know this is actually a really complicated problem and your intuition that it's

01:01:38.800 problem is is dead on and your intuition that it would be reasonably more reasonable morally to be

01:01:45.840 concerned about that is dead on but the right approach is questioning not answering and i think

01:01:52.340 part of the reason that i've got away with my lectures online i think maybe and as a professor

01:01:57.120 for that matter is i do my best to always question and even my public lectures that on the tour

01:02:04.320 i usually think of a question that i'm trying to answer then when i go out and lecture i'm

01:02:09.200 i'm trying to explore the question i'm not telling the audience what they should think

01:02:13.200 i don't know what they should think i don't even know what i should think and so i can guide them

01:02:17.560 through the process of exploration and and that that seems to well so far that seems to be working

01:02:24.020 and that's what we're doing in this conversation and that's partly what makes it a good conversation

01:02:28.760 you know is we're trying to figure something out that we don't know

01:02:31.960 yes oh i love that i love that and yeah i i think that directly speaks to um why my letter has

01:02:42.300 reached people in the way that it has and it's received such a positive reception overwhelmingly

01:02:48.920 so i still receive hundreds of people messaging me every single day emails and it's but you don't

01:02:57.340 get the sickness from that that you got with that other okay so that's interesting too so how do you

01:03:02.460 know that this positive response is credible oh that's a very good question how do i know that

01:03:10.460 this positive response is credible

01:03:13.160 it's a knowing that I don't quite have language for because the another reality of this is that

01:03:27.420 when you have so many eyes on you and you know that something like this is out there

01:03:33.380 there is a discomfort that comes with it um but for me that discomfort is

01:03:40.500 adding to my well-being it's not taking from my well-being so it's very it's very difficult for

01:03:49.600 me to sort of give a neat answer to that but it's a it's a very deep knowing and I'm sure you both

01:03:54.060 know what I mean by that and that when I receive messages from people in all corners of the world

01:03:59.800 telling me that my letter has freed them people sending me voice notes crying and saying that

01:04:06.560 they you know they were ostracized by their family members for not supporting certain political

01:04:13.440 movements last year or not making certain medical decisions that they don't think were the best ones

01:04:19.180 to make etc etc because we're in a time where I in my lifetime anyway we're more polarized than

01:04:26.040 I've ever seen before it's it's so intense um so the messages that I receive from real life people

01:04:33.920 giving me specific accounts of what is happening in their lives and how coming across my words

01:04:40.240 words that I didn't even think were going to reach many people um and that four million means

01:04:46.640 something and it's not just a to me it's not a vanity metric of saying four million people I

01:04:51.920 couldn't give a shit about anything like I really don't it's about what that represents when I have 0.91

01:04:57.580 people when I have other black people telling me that I've given them some kind of permission slip 0.99

01:05:03.060 to think differently you know because as black people this is something that i have to be honest

01:05:08.020 about especially in the west we're not afforded the same level of individuality as everyone else

01:05:14.080 we're sort of placed in the oppressed category by default you know it's almost like you have to

01:05:20.300 fight for your individuality where i say this in my letter but black people what's the weight for

01:05:27.880 what is the weight of that so i mean hypothetically right the theory is well we're trying to help you

01:05:34.640 by defining you as oppressed right i mean that's the theory because we see that well even if you

01:05:41.820 use racial metrics for example there's inequality and so the inequality is directed at you as a

01:05:49.300 racial group so the first thing you have to swallow is that you should be referred to primarily by

01:05:53.880 your racial group right to be the beneficiary of that victim status so that's something very 0.91

01:05:59.840 insidious it's very insidious but but you can give the devil his due and say well there's some 0.78

01:06:05.120 genuine concern there too but Michaela mentioned earlier how she felt when she was placed in the

01:06:11.280 oppressed category you know briefly in a science class and it's like you just said that you're in

01:06:17.360 some sense burdened with that struggling with that all the time what's the cost of that or is

01:06:24.700 that what we're talking about continually in this conversation that's that is what we're talking

01:06:29.520 about that is what we're talking about and again i i see all of these conversations quite differently

01:06:34.480 because i wasn't born and raised here in the western world so i have i i do have something

01:06:41.060 else to compare it to and of course because of my geographical location being in zimbabwe being in

01:06:46.660 Africa where everyone around me is the same I know I always say I I found out that I was actually

01:06:53.200 black when I was nine years old when I came here I didn't know that before I didn't have to think

01:06:58.660 about that I why would I have had to think about that now suddenly I'm hearing black black black 0.99

01:07:04.740 you're black you're this oh you you like you know motley crew but you're black black people don't 1.00

01:07:11.880 like that or you do you like Led Zeppelin right I love Led Zeppelin but should I 1.00

01:07:18.120 definitely not definitely yes definitely yes definitely right so now there are suddenly all

01:07:25.260 of these pre like this list of things that I should and shouldn't like but they're attached

01:07:30.240 to my skin color so to me a lot of this has always just been extremely bizarre so I've never over

01:07:36.960 identify with any of those labels I do understand their importance I really do I really really do

01:07:42.880 um and I I do know that because of those identity markers I'm treated in a certain way etc etc but I

01:07:49.480 don't over identify with them in the way that some people wish I did which I think was the issue of

01:07:56.060 everything that I've been experiencing um but yeah I I think I just view a lot of this

01:08:05.260 very differently because culturally it just doesn't make sense for me to make my

01:08:13.160 quote-unquote blackness the entirety of who i am it it just it it doesn't it doesn't fit it

01:08:22.000 doesn't make certainly not an accomplishment of yours right right i mean it's not associated with

01:08:28.100 anything you've done good or bad as an active agent and so it's it's it's it's hard for me to see

01:08:36.860 the advantage of that kind of identification

01:08:41.320 and easy for me to see the disadvantages so right okay guys we have to call it quits

01:08:53.180 that was an absolute honor to host both of you i am so happy that we all got to do this

01:09:00.280 before we go africa could you tell people if they don't follow you

01:09:04.780 where they could go to follow you where you are online of course so my only social media at this

01:09:11.220 moment in time is instagram you can find me at africa brook with an e at the end i have a lot

01:09:17.540 of live conversations there i do a lot of live podcasting i'm just a curious person and i

01:09:23.000 I allow myself to do that publicly with all of you so you can join me there if you want to find

01:09:29.480 out more about my work my website is africabrook.com thanks guys that was that was really

01:09:37.280 cool it was a pleasure meeting you and talking to you very nice to meet you and you too Jordan

01:09:42.920 thank you so much thank you

01:09:53.000 Thank you.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - October 12, 2021

120. Leaving the Cult of Wokeness ｜ Africa Brooke

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