Between Us: Stories of Unconscious Bias: Recent Episodes
Smita Tharoor
Host Smita Tharoor asks guests from around the world to share their story and to reflect on their life experiences with unconscious bias.
"We are defined by our narrative, our personal story, our experiences. These have an impact on how we make judgements and form opinions. A lot of time that’s just fine but every once in a while, we make snap conclusions that have a negative outcome either for the other person or ourselves. Just one particular experience can lead to a lifelong belief. That is our unconscious bias."
"When I joined the Army, at the age of 20, I was serving in Northern Ireland, leading a platoon of soldiers. I then went to university, a very different experience. And then I started writing. I had a very traditional upbringing. I went to boarding school public school, my father was a church warden in a very traditional British family. So, when I joined the Army, of course, my mindset would have been, were the good guys. You know, in Northern Ireland, it was the time of the troubles. We were there, and essentially, stopping Catholics from attacking Protestants and vice versa. And the sense of, I'm part of an organization that is here primarily, to benefit people. And my whole upbringing, you know, you mentioned empire and communism sucks, like, I guess up to that point, my whole education had been, you know, England, Britain, a good place. We've done good around the world. "Robert Newcome is best known for his novel ‘The Name Beneath the Stone’. Robert has had a career that includes being an officer in the British army, a retail manager and a management consultant specializing in leadership training. During lockdown he posted a 500-word story every Saturday and he now writes full time. War is often a setting for his novels. To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"One of the things that always struck me is it takes a village toraise a child. Right? And that's how we grew up. We had a whole neighborhood bringing us up, we could stroll into anybody's house and be fed by some aunty or the other. Right, and the parents didn't worry. Now to the elderly, it takes a community to transition the elder into death. It takes a community you need the support expanded. You need, you know, you need all of the support of not just family in your old age. I think it needs a community. I think it needs the community of elderly who can empathize, who know exactly what you're going through and it's not the younger who can empathize, it's the same age."When Shubha Priya was in her teens, she heard Maurice Chevalier singing the lyrics of a song in the movie Gigi: ‘Oh I’m glad that I’m not young anymore!” Struck by the way he sang it with such conviction, she wondered how growing old could ever be joyful,Fast forward to her 60s, Shubha moved with her mother to what most people referred to as an ‘old age home’. The stark side of ageing was visible all around her, a daily reminder of a Shakespearean vision coming true. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. Shubha’s mother passed away in 2021. But Shubha chose to stay on at the old age home.In between the teenage years and those of living in an old age home, Shubha served as a Creative Director in leading advertising agencies around the world. She is currently fulfilling her lost childhood dreams of being an author and musician. She wrote, illustrated and designed her book of satirical verses for adults, called Whimsical Brew. Shubha is hoping to keep dementia at bay by learning to play the piano! To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"At 28 My marriage broke. So those days,to say that you're divorced was very difficult. At this point. My son was about ten, My daughter was about nine. They were young and I thank God that my mother and my sister was there to give me support and help me and you know, be there for me because I had to keep going for training . But to lift my head high and walk in Agra, the place where I was in was difficult."It is 1979, a small-town young lady, a mother of two small kids, just 23 years old, decides one evening at an Army Party, to join a Skydiving Course at Agra. Unknowingly history was created. Rachel Thomas was the first Indian woman to compete for India in a skydiving competition in 1987. After 23 years, she ended her career in 2002, when she skydived from 7,000 ft over the North Pole also creating the record of being the first Indian female to skydive over the North Pole. During her career, Rachel has completed 650 jumps in 18 countries. She has won multiple awards including the winner of the National Adventure Sports Award and is a TedX speaker. In 2005, Rachel was honoured again by the Government of India, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award - the Padmashree To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
""Maggie Steber is an internationally known documentary photographer, educator, and photo editor whose work has appeared in major magazines, newspapers and book anthologies as well as national and international exhibitions. She has worked in 72 countries specializing in telling the stories of underrepresented people and her work has been seen in 70 exhibitions in 35 countries. Best known for her photo essays in National Geographic Magazine and her humanistic documentation of Haiti, she published Dancing on Fire: Photographs from Haiti with Aperture. Her nine-year project on her mother’s melancholic voyage through memory loss was made into a multimedia presentation by MediaStorm and won a Webby award. In her career Maggie has worked as a picture editor for Associated Press, a contract photographer for Newsweek, and as the Director of Photography at The Miami Herald. Maggie is a member of VII Photo Agency. Maggie has received numerous awards, too many to mention here but they include a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Guggenheim foundation fellow and a medal of honour for contribution to journalism.To see some of Maggie’s moving photographs just check out her website. https://www.maggiesteber.com/main.htmlMaggie lives in Miami, Florida in the United StatesTo stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"People around me, including my family, they believe that one day, a miracle will happen to me and that will treat & cure my disability. But I don't want that right now. I have accepted myself through my disability. I really care for empowerment; I want to be empowered and I want other people with disabilities also be empowered."Nematullah Ahangosh is from Afghanistan. Nemat studied school in Kabul and from 2014- 2018 worked as a young member with a group of peace activists in Kabul.Subsequently Nemat went to Chennai in India to study a Bachelor of Social Work at Madras School of Social Work where he was awarded the Budding Social Worker Award and the Best Library User Award in 2021.This was followed by a one-year diploma course in Trivandrum, Kerala in leadership and social entrepreneurship. Nemat has been busy writing poems in English since 2017, mainly about the day-to-day life of refugees, women and overall life in Afghanistan alongside studying an MA in Conflict, Security and Development at the University of Sussex. Apart from this, Nemat is a good swimmer and coach. He is the founder of Stretch More, a mobile empowerment parkour that empowers people with disabilities to survive natural and man-made disasters. Parkour (French: [paʁkuʁ]) is an athletic training discipline or sport in which practitioners attempt to get from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient way possible.Nemat’s first and upcoming poetry book, The Color of Peace, will be published by Haley’s Publishing, a company based in Massachusetts, USA. He is 28 years old. He says his ambition is to bring about change in the future leadership of Afghanistan, mainly in the social sector. "Of Women and Courage" -By Nematullah Ahangosh"that night when curtains were dancingin the presence of moonlightnobody was watching frogs and dogs outsidecreating a poetic jingleand anarchic music 'woof, woof' 'ribbit, ribbit''woof, woof' 'ribbit, ribbit''woof, ribbit, ribbit', woof'this moment! this small happy moment did not last, was taken away! " To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"What would you do if you had a ring of invisibility? And the children will say, well, I would rob a bank. I would go into a shop and Steve chocolate. Iwould have a stigma favorite packet of crisps. I would be going in and stealing money out of mymommy's purse. I would do all this and I do not moralize with the federal budget. Yep, I willturn and I read it up on the board. And then I say well, what should you do?"Kevin Mc Arevey is the Principal of Holy Cross Boys’ School in the Ardoyne area in Northern Belfast in Northern Ireland. Kevin has been a teacher in the Ardoyne area for 26 years with the last 10 as the Principal. Kevin has written a book "Think Think Respond (slow thinking) and TTR (fast thinking)". This can be purchased at the school at a price of £20. It’s a big book and all proceeds go to HCBoys. Kevin is also the main protagonist in the Film documentary Young Plato - a film about hope, peace and reconciliation.https://youngplato.comYou are able to stream Young Plato by renting or purchasing on Amazon, iTunes, and Google PlayThe Troubles, also called the Northern Ireland conflict, was a violent sectarian conflict from about 1968 to 1998 in Northern Ireland between the overwhelmingly Protestant unionists (loyalists), who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans), who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the republic of Ireland. Some 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 more were wounded before a peaceful solution, which involved the governments of both the United Kingdom and Ireland, was effectively reached in 1998, leading to a power-sharing arrangement in the Northern Ireland Assembly.To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"I suddenly felt that I don't belong, till then I felt that I was a part of this group. And at that moment, for me, it was like, no, I don't belong. I don't feel that I would want after the two got over to continue. You know, my friendship, you know,because very often people say that it's important to have discourse, have discussed with people. And then if you really think that I've spent my lifetime doing that, and at some point, you're exhausted in constantly trying to validate your identity. And now I'm at a point of life where I am like, it's your shortcoming. And it's not my job in life. It's not my duty, to spend my time energy effort to constantly educate people, about learning to respect someone else."Onir is an Indian filmmaker, producer, screenwriter and editor.Born as Anirban Dhar in Samchi, Bhutan, Onir spent much of his childhood going to the cinema.He received a scholarship to study film editing at SFB/TTC in Berlin but returned to India and worked as an editor, scriptwriter, art director, music album producer and song/music video director.In 1992,Onir directed and produced his first Documentary film on the painter Bijon Chaudhary, “Falling Hero”.He is best known for his film “My Brother...Nikhil”, based on the life of Dominic D'Souza, starring Sanjay Suri, Juhi Chawla and Purab Kohli. It was one of the first mainstream Hindi films to deal with AIDS and same-sex relationships.Onir won the Indian National Film awards for Best Film in Hindi for the anthology “I AM” in 2011. I AM is considered one of the first and largest crowd-funded and crowd-sourced film through social media in India. The film dealt with single motherhood, child sexual abuse, displacement and LGBTQI rights.Onir has also the received Likho Award (Trailblazer Award), the Diversity Award at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne in 2019 and in 2020 the Engendered Spirit of Independent Cinema Award at the Engendered Human Rights Film Festival in Delhi.In June 2022, Onir finished shooting, PINE CONE, a queer love story which is written by Ashwini Malik and Onir. It is currently in post-production. It is loosely based on Onir’s memoir; I Am Onir and I Am Gay which he has co-written with his sister Irene Dhar Malik and published by Penguin Viking. In August 2023, PINE CONE, a queer love story which is written by Ashwini Malik and Onir received the "Rainbow Warrior Award” and the "Rainbow stories Award" given by the Minister of Equality, Australia at IffMelbourne. This was followed by Honorary mention Best Feature at the International South Asian Film festival, Canada. It premiered at The KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival in June 2023.To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"I went back to Calcutta and I found a little magazine where they had published an issue on the Bengal famine. And in that issue, there were 16 interviews of people who were witnesses of the family, who were still alive, they had their photographs, and testimony. And these people are in their 90s, one person was 112 years old. And I just could not believe that these people were alive to tell the stories. These are just ordinary people who were farmers in the countryside.What happened when the rice disappeared, what they did, how they sold their house and home, fled for their lives, many of them went into the jungles in the Sunderbans, with the Tigers. And when I read those stories, I really did not want to read them. Because in a way that was shocking to me, but in another way, there were stories I wish did not exist, because the fact that they existed, meant that there were 10s, 100’s, 1000s of people who were out there who had stories to tell, who had simply not been asked, and one of the people who had not asked them was me."
Kushanava Choudhury is the writer of the Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta (Bloomsbury 2017).He has worked as an academic and a journalist in India and in the US. Most recently he was the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He spent much of the last decade living in India and is currently working on a book about what he witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic in New Delhi, and how it changed him.To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"I also think that if you're positive, more people are likely to help you when you need help. Because they think, Oh, I'm having somebody who's benefiting from this, you know? Oh, yes. They don't want to come and see an old lady. She sits in her chair and wounds all the time."Annette Smith nee Julien was born in Dec 1927 on the small Caribbean Island of Grenada into a privileged family. She was educated in Trinidad and returned to Grenada where she completed a year of Nursing before embarking on her journey to England aged just 18. She travelled completely alone and this was her first trip abroad.In 1946,post the 2nd world war, Annette became the only black nurse at the Guildford Royal Surrey Hospital. She married a Londoner and had three children before returning to her nursing profession as a community nurse. She has many interests including Poetry, singing, the Arts, Sport and continues to be a positive member of the community.In case you are wondering, Annette had Bells Palsy in her 50's which affected her face. This has not affected her attitude towards life.Bell's palsy is a condition that causes sudden weakness in the muscles on one side of the face. In most cases, the weakness is temporary and significantly improves over weeks. The weakness makes half of the face appear to droop. Smiles are one-sided, and the eye on the affected side resists closingTo stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"Now the simple question is very clear, Smita. Just for my audience to really rethink about this. From criminalisation to decriminalisation to re-criminalisation. How do you accept why your society is so rigid in deciding your identity? Lakhs of people have been killed,have been assassinated. Even in the United States of America or different parts of the world, people who are black, lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex people are being killed"Akkai Padmashali is a Social and Political Activist She is the Founder of Ondede an organization that works with Intersex Transgender and Sexuality Minorities on the idea of convergence. Akkai Padmashali has written a memoir : A Small step in a long journeyTo stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"I think affinity bias is the one where I feel is the deal breaker , if you can meet someone, and you can see something in them, that reflect you be a principle, be a belief, be it a way that you would like to be seen. I think that's the one that draws you in, you know, we talk about beingcharismatic, we talk about being charming,some people are very naturally charismatic, which means it's not, you know, they're not learned. It's not trained. But I also think there's an element of how does that charisma impact and affect us in different ways?"Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. Anthony is the winner of the 2023 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje prize for his most recent poetry collection “Heritage Aesthetics” published by Granta. The chair of judges, journalist Samira Ahmed, said Anthony’s poetry “is beautiful, but does not sugar coat. The arsenic of historical imperial arrogance permeates the Britain he explores in his writing. And the joy of this collection comes from his strength, knowledge, maturity, but also from deeply felt love.” His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts.His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year. In 2022 he founded Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press. This is what one reviewer says of Anthony and his work ‘One of the most politically engaged poets of our time, Anthony holds the busy intersectionality of history, politics and ideology in poems that remain fresh and open.To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"I think because I had such a difficult childhood. I have a very strong centre. And it was destabilised by Oxford, but it wasn't destroyed. And that kind of self belief I have, saved me.I don't think I'm better than anybody else, or I'm a superwoman or any of that. But I do know that the stuff I do, I can do, and I'm good at it. And that the b_stards will not beat me, that really drives me"Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was exiled from her birthplace, Uganda, in 1972.Yasmin is a journalist, broadcaster, author and part time professor of journalism. She writes for the I newspaper and Sunday Times magazine and has written for the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, New York Times, Time Magazine and other publications She has won several awards including the Orwell prize for political writing and in 2017, National Press Awards columnist of the year prize. She was specially commended for this award again in 2018. She is a national and international public speaker, a consultant on diversity and inclusion and trustee of various arts organisations. She is also the co-founder of the charity British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Their new report The Inner Lives of Troubled Young Muslims was published in November 2020.Her recent books include Refusing the Veil, Exotic England about England’s infatuation with the east, In Defence of Political Correctness and Ladies Who Punch. She has twice been voted the 10th most influential Asian in Britain. She has eight Hon degrees and sits on the boards of arts organisations. She is also a keen cook and theatre buff.To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"I feel somewhere, since everyone is constantly putting up a show, the world expects you to constantly put up a show. And now with social media platforms, I wouldn'nt be surprised that people are confused about the reel and the real, as time passes . This judgement about one's intelligence really comes out of show. If you are sitting in a meeting or you're with friends, you need to have something to say, if you don't have anything to say & decide to be quiet, that " oh, this person is not smart enough." will be your identity."Charmi Chheda is a filmmaker, writer, theatre Director in Bhutan. Charmi moved to Bhutan 10 years ago from India and now sees Bhutan as her home. Charmi has made two feature films, Ganganam Girl and Bulwa and is currently working with Samuh, Bhutan’s first OTT platform as a Creative DirectorTo stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"And so my dream was to become a teacher and I would play school every single day. And I could go places in my mind. All I was in foster care, although I was not having the best situation with my life. I began to dream and I would play school every day and when I would play school it would take me away from foster care. It will take me away from the abuse. It will take me away from the neglect. It will take me away from the feelings of wishing that I was dead and so playing school All was my safe place. And so I just realised that I could go anywhere if I just dream"Anthony Swann became the first sitting teacher ever to be appointed to the State Board of Education by the Governor of Virginia, USA in 2021. Anthony has been in education for 16 years as a classroom teacher and instructional coach. He has had the privilege of teaching every elementary grade except kindergarten. Anthony is currently the assistant principal of Monterey Elementary in Roanoke, VA. In 2018, Anthony began a program entitled “Guys with Ties” to teach boys the importance of honesty, integrity, and character inside and outside of the classroom.In 2021, Anthony was elected by his peers to be the Teacher of the Year in two different schools. If those accolades were not enough, Anthony then became the 2021 Virginia State Teacher of the Year.To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagramand follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"I have always loved my faith, and I have wanted to fully embrace who I am. So wearing a headscarf, praying, being Muslim is just, it's literally acore part of who I am & I want to be able to write about anything I want to with passion, authenticity & honesty. I also want to be able to communicate with people, I don't want to create a barrier between me and anybody else. Even though, my physical appearance might create certain barriers, but I work really hard to remove them"Remona Aly is a journalist and broadcaster in the UK with a passion for faith, lifestyle and identity. She writes for The Guardian, is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought and has been a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Something Understood, a half hour programme which explores a theme across different faiths and traditions through music, prose and poetry. She is also a podcast host for various platforms.
Remona is Director of Communications for Exploring Islam Foundation which specialises in PR campaigns and creative resources to better understand Islam. For example, one of her campaigns highlighted untold stories of solidarity between Muslims and Jews, with a focus on the Albanian Muslims who sheltered Jews from the Nazis in World War II.
Remona is the former Deputy Editor of Emel, a vibrant and glossy British Muslim lifestyle magazine which was the first of its kind to launch nationwide in the UK. To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"I just had a lot of questions about the culture of noise we live in. And I was also a bit fed up with people just constantly having opinions which to me, that was the assumption, something jarring about the way people were jumping on or do jump on bandwagons and what you know and offer their opinion on absolutely everything and have a take and it's all black and white. And I just, I felt like all this noise is you can't you almost can't hear yourself think which is why the idea of silence came about."
Ayisha Malik is author of the Sofia Khan novels, This Green and Pleasant Land and The Movement. She was winner of the Diversity Book Awards 2020, and teaches creative writing for the academies, Faber and Curtis Brown. Ayisha lives in London.To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram
and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
"Sometimes beautiful people are less likely to be heard. One study has suggested that highly attractive people are rights a disadvantages in the hiring process when the decision makers are the same sex for example, but highly attractive people of the same sex were judged as less talented than average looking people"Dr. Oshrit Birvadker is a foreign and defense policy expert, with expertise in the area of India and the Persian Gulf.Oshrit is a regular columnist in Haaretz, a writer of the “Miss India” Column in the leading business news website in Israel-“The Marker”.Oshrit is the first Bene Israeli Indian Jewish person who has appeared on Israeli news channels as a commentator for India’s affairs, written pioneering articles for top newspapers in Israel and continues to break new ground with her social and cultural enterprises. She considers herself a bridge between the ancient civilisations, the Indian and the Jewish ones.For many years Oshrit has helped connect the members of the Indian diaspora, especially the younger generation, to Indian culture by organising open dialogue in various forums, conferences, and activities to preserve Indian Jewish culture. Oshrit is currently focused on a social project operating in the periphery of Israel and helping to empower Indian women in their fifties. She is the Founder of the Social Project “Mantra”.To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Instagram or Twitter, and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
Jodi Anderson Jr. is the CEO and Co-founder of Rézme, an EdTech platform that facilitates economic and social mobility through specialized recruiting, professional development, and personalized learning for justice-impacted citizens.After serving ten years in juvenile and adult prisons, Jodi earned his BA in Political Science and an MA in Education from Stanford University.
His non-profit PipeDreamers helps to coordinate diversion programming in the Bay Area while bringing coding and design courses to youth incarcerated in juvenile facilities across Northern California. As an alumnus of Cornell University’s Prison Education Program, he continues to be an advocate for criminal justice reform and access to higher education.
Paul Stevenson is a lived experience ambassador at Genius Within and a public speaker. Genius Within is a social enterprise established in the UK to help neurodivergent people unlock their talents, whilst acknowledging and celebrating that this diversity forms part of the rich tapestry of human experience.
They advise governments on policy and provide consultancy to businesses, driving systemic change that allows all employees to thrive. They provide in-work support in the form of coaching, training and assessments. They also support neurodiverse/neurodivergent thinkers who are not in the workplace, who might be studying, unemployed or in the criminal justice system.
As Paul says of himself “I have Tourette Syndrome- it doesn’t have me! I’m not broken and don’t need fixing.”
See https://geniuswithin.org/what-is-neurodiversity/ for further information on Genius Within.
"And I started to analyse where these tics were coming from, you know, tics in Italian - and I can't speak Italian. So I spoke to one of the guys who I work with, and he said, is it possible that when I was young, everything that I've heard all the words that I've absorbed, actually remain inside my head? I never forget them, but maybe lost the ability to recall them. But everything is there as a memory and Tourette Syndrome, the vocal tics, has an ability to access those in a rapid sort of speed."
“So, when you get embedded in a network, what happens is your freedom to think wider than what the interests of the network represents is compromised. What happens is that your faithfulness to a tradition becomes unfortunately, unfaithfulness to your own personal integrity. Because there are very many questions with which you’re struggling in your life. And no system in the world, no religious institution or structure in the world can accommodate those questions, much less answer them.”
Professor Valson Thampu is a former teacher and academic administrator in higher education, as well as a theologian and freelance contributor to the national print media. He was a member of the Delhi Minorities Commission (2000-2004) and the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (2004-2007). He was nominated twice to the National Integration Council (2004-2014) under the category, ‘distinguished citizens of India’. He now lives in retirement in Kerala, South India, actively addressing issues pertaining to religious reform. His recent book titled Beyond Religion: Imaging a New Humanity is the manifesto of his reformist agenda.
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Seema Anand is a mythologist, a storyteller with a focus on women’s narratives and a specialty in the erotic literature of ancient India Seema believes that the narrative of the Kama Sutra was deliberately silenced. This was the first text to give women a platform of equality. It was a brave book that tried to change the position of women in society.
Her seminal work ‘The Arts of Seduction’, a commentary on the metaphors and lost narratives of the Kama Sutra is an effort to reclaim the book for its intended purpose.
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Octoli Tuccu is a Learning & Development expert with over a decade of experience. Octoli is originally from Nagaland in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, in the northeast of India. She has lived in five countries including the USA, Qatar, Thailand, China and India. Octoli has trained over a thousand professionals globally on various leadership development subjects.
"People would constantly ask me where I'm from, or like what my education background was. And for me, that was them asking me his questions to almost belittle me. Until that day that I met you, and you asked me, what if they just want to know where you're from and what your background is, just out of curiosity? I had never thought of it like that. And it was such a liberating experience for me because I had created this bondage for myself. And I was living in it, believing that I will never be taken seriously because I'm not a man and I'm not of a certain age. So all of these stereotypes that I have of people buried deeply in my mind, they do impact the way that I treat people and the way I think. As unintentional as they are, I definitely don't believe that they're harmless. So this, for me, is unconscious bias."
Jo Uff is a Confidence Coach based in England for women who want to lead a more fulfilling life, but feel that something is holding them back from being, doing, and having more of what they want.
Jo supports them to reignite their interest in life, move forward, and achieve the changes they want to make. She works with them to define their future with intention, overcome the personal blocks holding them back, and take actions towards achieving what they now want in their personal or professional life.
"It was small things, it was kind of telling me that I wasn't good at something, or even teachers telling you that you could have tried harder, or you should have done better at that. And you kind of build up, and I built up, these just small things, bit, by bit, by bit, that led me to a stage of thinking. Well, I'm just no good at anything. And I'm just not confident and everything fills me with fear."
Richard Thomas and his wife Susanna have led Hillside Church in Wimbledon for 27 years, where he is the pastor. Richard also serves as chaplain to The Priory Hospital, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Cancer Centre London. He is passionate about how we respond spiritually in our darkest hours.
"Historically, epilepsy was believed to be caused by demons. So that automatically put anybody who had a seizure, or a fit, as in the evil camp. Now we sort of know that it's caused by an electrical imbalance in the brain. But still, it's a disease that's stigmatised and looked down upon. I remember when I was diagnosed, the doctor could not have done a worse job of telling me. He almost couldn't look me in the eye. He avoided any deep conversation about it and I was in and out of the office in just a few minutes, and then saw him treating an old lady with so much tenderness and care. I wondered what was wrong with me and, of course, it was epilepsy."
Christos Demetriou is an entrepreneur, music producer, songwriter and pastor.
Chris’ commercial history embraces multiple areas of business activity, including a sports promotion and public relations company, a television broadcast network (with affiliates in 28 countries), an entertainment exchange portal, a media rights and brokerage business (still active after 32 years) and a registered charity (celebrating 32 years).
Chris is also the author of four books and hosted “It’s All Greek to Me,” a TV programme which is aired in 36 countries.
Chris is responsible for three top 5 chart hits and two number 1 songs. One of Chris’s compositions featured in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games and appears in Q magazine's Top 100 Singles of All Time (at number 77). Guinness Book of Records cited the original version as being the first ‘sample’ ever used in a music production.
Having worked in different capacities with many well-known celebrities, Chris is professionally linked to world renown music artists such as Cat Stevens, David Bowie, Mike d’Abo and John Kongos.
In 1990 Chris and his wife Loraine founded Cornerstone Ministries, a registered charity and Evangelical Christian church based in Surrey. Cornerstone Ministries started as a small Bible Study that grew rapidly to a congregation now exceeding 600 people. Cornerstone is a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic community made up of 41 nations.
Here is a link to the song he mentions in this interview:He’s Gonna Step on You Again
"And I remember when I was working with Cat Stevens, and he found Islam. And he tried to convert me to Islam. And then he said, Chris, you're still searching, and until you find that, you're not going to be settled. And I agreed with it. But he couldn't persuade me to lead my whole life and take on this new life. So I had to have an encounter with God that was personal and real, which I did have, and that's what turned me around."
Nicola Horlick is a British investment fund manager nicknamed 'superwoman' in the media for balancing her high-flying finance career with bringing up six children. She graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a degree in Jurisprudence, later joining SG Warburg as a graduate trainee in 1983.
She was initially placed in the asset management division of Mercury Asset Management, where she stayed for the following 8 years, becoming a director at the age of 28. In 1991, she moved to Morgan Grenfell Asset Management and in 1992 was made Managing Director of the UK investment division.
In 1997, Nicola was asked to set up a UK investment business for SocGen, a French bank, with the aim of accumulating £5bn of funds under management over the following 5 years. In 2013, she founded Money&Co, a peer-to-peer lending platform where she remains as CEO today.
"Diversity comes in many forms and one of those forms is not having everybody going down the same funnel. Doing their GCSEs, doing their A-Levels, doing a degree going and doing internships during their holidays. Going on the milk rounds and choosing a bank to work in. You know, it's all very narrow, isn't it? Actually if somebody's been a professional musician for a number of years, they've had all sorts of adversity to overcome and. And having different life experiences really adds to a team and to a business."
Ashok Ferrey is the author of five books, all of them nominated either for Sri Lanka's Gratiaen Prize or its State Literary Award. He read pure mathematics at Oxford and was a builder in London before becoming a writer. Ashok Ferrey's new book, The Unmarriageable Man just won the Gratiaen Prize - Sri Lanka's premier literary prize founded by Michael Ondaatje.
In a parallel world Ashok is an architect whose last building, The Cricket Club Cafe, was nominated for a Geoffrey Bawa Award for Excellence in Architecture. By day Ashok is also a personal trainer.
"And herein lies the rub. I mean, once you get used to [technology], you absolutely cannot do without them. And then you wonder how you managed before. They are absolutely beautiful but what they also do is they take possession of your soul. Even the very fact of writing a novel on a computer. I think I must be the last person on Earth, well, maybe I'm not - I write with a pencil in an exercise book. Why? Because it seems to be more expendable. When you write on the computer, there's an air of finality about it. And I don't want that, because at that first draft stage, it's a slippery fish that can go in any direction."
Vanessa Maria is a DJ, Broadcaster at Foundation FM, and a host at Resident Advisor.
Named as one of the most important young people in music, Vanessa has made her mark on radio stations across the country sharing her love for underground UK music. She’s been busy making appearances at Boiler room, Dazed Magazine, Warehouse Project and HÖR in Berlin.
Vanessa’s work in and around mental health has also not gone unnoticed.
As the key presenter at Resident Advisor, she currently hosts a music and mental health-related podcast and documentary series. She has been named as a leader in shaping the future of London’s nightlife by The Face Magazine.
"It means feeling so othered that you clearly stick out in a certain context. That might be the way you look, your race. In my case, it was being black at university. But in that same context, even though I was so visible - and it was so clear that I was present and there because I stuck out - I was also so hyper-invisible because I was in the minority. My voice was felt so insignificant, and I felt so unimportant and I felt so undervalued in that same context. So it was a weird feeling to navigate, to feel visible and invisible at the exact same time."
Monica Alcazar-Duarte is a Mexican-British multi-disciplinary visual artist, whose work acknowledges her indigenous heritage while exploring current ideals of progress. Her work references Western society’s obsession with speed, expansion, and resource accumulation as an index of advancement, at a time in which ecological disaster looms. It considers other ways of seeing, knowing, and being in the world.
She embraces themes related to science and technology and their influence over society and the natural world. In her projects she mixes images and new technologies, such as Augmented Reality, to create multi-layered work, producing meaning through seemingly disconnected narratives. Monica’s work has been exhibited and collected throughout Europe, Mexico and the United States.
"We live in a in a post-colonial society. So for example, every time I come back to the country, there are a series of signs that come to the surface of my skin, in almost a hurtful way. And that is in that every person that I see, for example, in advertising or TV, is aspirational. And they look very European, and usually they're kind of light skin, and their features have nothing or almost nothing to do with 90% of the population in the country. And I find that shocking, that it is still very accepted."
Carlos Hidalgo has more than four decades of executive management expertise and development of strategic programs for Fortune 500, mid-market companies and non-profits.
With an extensive knowledge of Latin America, Carlos has developed programs for Logoi (publishing), the Government Tourist Office of Mexico, and for bus builders in Mexico and Brazil.
He also has widespread experience of the non-profit sector having served as the Chief Operating Officer of Word of Life, an international non-profit organization. In that capacity, he directed long range and day-to-day operations in 81 countries around the world.
Carlos was appointed Commissioner on the Michigan State Commission on Spanish Speaking affairs by Michigan Governor John Engler and served one term.
Carlos presently serves as a member of the governing board of the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.
“The things that we lost are not the important things in life. The important things in life, first of all, is the love that you have seen in your home. That's one, number two, is the integrity that you have seen in your home, and the integrity that you have seen in your mother, the integrity that you have seen in me, the integrity that we have taught you over the years to you and your siblings, that matters.
What also is important is the truth and the ability to speak the truth, always speak the truth, even when the words that you speak, will come back to harm you. You speak the truth.”
Carlos Hidalgo is a Life Design coach, a Corporate Culture Development Consultant, two-time author, TEDx speaker and international keynote speaker.
Over the span of the last 25 years, Carlos has held corporate roles, started his own entrepreneurial ventures, led his company to receive multiple Inc. 5000 awards and has served in non-profit organisations. Carlosis now dedicated to helping others design a life they love to live, through his Life Design coaching and Corporate Culture services.
Carlos’s last book, The UnAmerican Dream details his journey from a workaholic to a life that he loves.
You can follow Carlos on Twitter @cahidalgo or on Instagram @life_design_living
“And so, throughout my teen years into college, and even into adulthood, my entire drive was about just proving them wrong, or trying to shake in a very improper way and very useless way the weight that was in my backpack. Rather than dealing with it and addressing the self-limiting beliefs head on and addressing that unconscious bias head on, I carried it around with me. And that's the thing, it became such a weight on me because I refused to deal really with the hurt and the pain that went with all those things.”
"We all have an unconsious bias, where we're walking down the road, and I could see somebody and I will just presume their life, or wonder what they do, or how many kids they have. I will just be inquisitive like that, because it's in my nature, I think, as a barber."
Content warning: This episode deals with themes of sexual exploitation and death.
Laura is a competitive powerlifter, mother of four and grandmother of two. She lives in Dublin, Ireland. Laura Kavanagh is the co-host of the 'Talk of the Town' podcast that features "3 Dublin girls addressing different issues of daily life". It can be found on Instagram at @talkofthetown_podcast_, as well as her personal handle @Thismammy.
Laura has many stories to share.
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“And then when my turn was there, I go to the stage, I realised that I couldn't utter a single word. I was completely, like, nervous, and I couldn't. I was stammering as you know, I was stammering , I was spitting. A lot of struggle was there. So the words were not coming out of my mouth. And everyone was simply - they were laughing. And when I saw some teachers, they were hiding their faces, but I could see them giggling as well. I was trembling, but I finished my speech, I didn't give up. In that moment, that very moment, I decided that I'm going to become a leader.”
Puneet Singh Singhal was born and brought up in a slum called Sangam Vihar in South Delhi,India.
He grew up facing domestic violence and poverty. Due to his stammer, he also faced a lot of bullying.
Despite these early years, Puneet went on to complete his undergraduate degree in English Honours from the University of Delhi.
He then worked in the Royal Bank of Scotland as an operations Analyst in the Anti-Money Laundering Department.
After a year of working there, he realised that corporate life is not for him. He has since worked with organisations like Amnesty International, Action Aid India, Vision India Foundation and Association for democratic reforms.
He is a former member of the Delhi Minority Commission and a current member of International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
He is currently running a social organisation working towards normalising speech and communication disorders and advocating for a more inclusive and accessible society for people with disabilities.
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“Forgiveness is quite different. First of all, we do it for ourselves. So, I had to get rid of the bias that I am doing it for somebody else. I am doing it for myself. I don’t want to be carrying around this anger inside me. It’s like a form of taking poison when we are angry with anybody. For a long time. I am not talking about just in the moment - for a long, long time. We keep telling ourselves a story about what they did and we are engaging in victim consciousness.”
This is part 2 of my podcast interview with Robin Shohet. Robin is a therapist, supervisor, trainer and author of the book he co-wrote with his wife:In Love with Supervision. Creating Transformative Conversations.
In the last episode, we discussed the idea of what unconscious bias meant to him. What is individual consciousness and how does this affect all the decisions we make? This interview can be found in Season 4, episode 3.
This time, Robin will share some stories of a more personal nature. His understanding of the word forgiveness and how that may affect his unconscious bias.
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“There is a basic core principle of the work that I have done all these decades. It is the principle that nobody should be punished simply for what we put into our bodies. There is no legitimate basis in science, in medicine and ethics, the Bible, you name it, for distinguishing between or discriminating against people, based upon which substance they put in their body.”
Described by the American magazine Rolling Stone as "the point man" for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad.
He founded and directed first, The Lindesmith Center and then the Drug Policy Alliance from 1994 to 2017, during which time he and his colleagues were at the forefront of dozens of successful campaigns to legalize marijuana and advance other alternatives to the war on drugs.
Ethan currently hosts the leading podcast on all things drugs: PSYCHOACTIVE.
Trigger warning to listeners. This episode deals with stories around abortion and racism that could be distressing to some listeners.
“Here's an unconscious bias and a cognitive phenomenon.The human brain likes simple causality.So if a case got in front of a jury, the experience from talking to lots of people, including on long flights from one part of the country to another is that, if it comes out of your vagina, it must be your fault. The ability to think in any complexity about pregnancy doesn’t really seem to exist.”
Lynn Paltrow is an attorney and the founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a non-profit advocacy organization. NAPW works to ensure that no one is denied civil or human rights because of pregnancy or any outcome of pregnancy including birth, miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion.
This week’s episode is sponsored by Audible, Visit www.audibletrial.com/tharoorassociates for a 30 day free Audible trial and one free book token!
“I don't have to become British, I don't have to become Japanese and I don't have to put on a front or a mask in order to just exist. This is the centre in my body that gives me the validation that I need. That it's fine to just be exactly who I am. And that changes day to day as well, there's a fluidity to it.”
Kate Kinoshita is a writer, movement artist and mentor based in West Yorkshire.
She is of Japanese and white British descent and graduated from Oxford University in Chinese Studies.
Her chronic health conditions led her to explore ch'i-based movement practices in Taiwan, and to living and working in rural Japan.
She is interested in non-dual animist frameworks and the impact of colonialism upon the collective and individual soma.
Kate runs regular online group classes exploring meditative movement.
~ you can find details via her Instagram @_oakshine.
Between: Us Stories of Unconscious Bias is a society and culture-based podcast hosted by Smita Tharoor.
Between: Us Stories of Unconscious Bias connects with guests from all over the world, asking them to share their stories and to reflect on their life experiences with unconscious bias, with an end goal of bringing us all closer together.
Listen to Between: Us Stories of Unconscious Bias on the Tharoor Associates website or the streaming service of your choice.
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Tharoor Associates website: https://tharoorassociates.com/stories
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/454nZEq
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Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR
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Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast
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Radio Public: https://radiopublic.com/stories-of-ou
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Breaker: https://www.breaker.audio/stories-of-
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Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/rkdsoc2b
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/
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Find Smita @SmitaTharoor on Instagram or Twitter
This week’s episode is sponsored by Audible, Visit www.audibletrial.com/tharoorassociates for a 30 day free Audible trial and one free book credit!
“Feeling a heightened sense of my family being in peril really made me realise that a lot of what people were doing and saying and reacting to was based on a couple of things. One, a lack of experience with the groups or the cohorts that they were rallying against. And the second, being their only exposure to those people or concepts was through media, which is common through so many people's lives. If you don't have access to a specific culture or group or cohort, the little bit that you do becomes the whole, the totality of your perception of that group.”
Damion Taylor has spent the last 15 years applying data and technology to entertainment. Both analytical and creative, he brings a unique skill set that’s in high demand for brands and media companies.
However, being Black in media and technology, Damion has experienced first-hand the impact of pervasive unconscious biases.
Damion has now begun the journey of helping to bring those biases to light for himself and for others. He hosts a podcast : Professional Confessions.
Where to find Damion’s Podcast - https://shows.acast.com/Professional-Confession
The Professional Confessions Website - https://professionalconfession.com
“And we have centuries worth of information at our hands and we really don't find time to do the sort of work we should, as individuals, to make this world a more thoughtfully choreographed place rather than one where we have existing inequalities and the powerful manage to control media and the way we think. I think we have it all in our power to actually be more informed.”
Simone, a Bangladeshi-Brit, is an economist and photographer and grew up in North London in the 1970s.
Aged 5, Simone along with her family escaped from persecution during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war and moved to London.
She grew up in a fairly politicised family, her parents influenced by the left politics of the 1960s, and their activism grew with the movement to liberate Bangladesh.
She herself married a South African involved in SA’s liberation and has spent much of her working life working in the consensus building space with different stakeholders on economic policy, gender rights, climate and worker safety.
After the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh and the tragic death of over 1000 workers, Simone has been working with safety for workers in the global supply chains with some of the largest global brands and local industry.
She chaired BRAC UK for ten years, was on its global board and is now on the founding governance body of BRAC which is the world’s largest development NGO.
BRAC is ranked number 1 in the Top 100 NGOs for the last five years running - with scaled impact on health, education, livelihoods, gender rights and a trailblazer in eradicating extreme poverty.
“When I first heard the term unconscious biases, it actually had a negative connotation to me, as the word bias often does. But after some thought, I realised that unconscious biases are actually very natural. What separates us as humans is our ability to learn from our experiences, both good and bad. Now, like emotions, we have positive ones and negative ones, the problematic ones are the bad ones, like for example, anger. How do we deal with that negative emotion, we have to acknowledge it, we have to manage it.”
Sonia Dandona Hirdaramani had a career in finance, fashion and entertainment before pivoting to personal investing and non-profit work after her move from New York to Sri Lanka.
When she was working in entertainment and fashion, she was commended by Hillary Clinton for building bridges between South Asia and the USA
She currently lives in Sri Lanka with her husband and two young sons.
An occasional writer, Sonia writes a column, Island Life, Global Views, in the Daily Mirror, the English newspaper with the highest circulation in the country.
She also wrote a chapter for Anupam Kher’s best-selling book, “Your Best Day Is Today.” She is a graduate of Columbia University and completed a Harvard University Graduate Proseminar in Journalism.
“So here's the question, the unconscious bias is not that, that you got a tendency to go for the, smaller dog in the fight. The question is whether you do it to glorify and validate yourself. In which case, you know, there’s no real pure energy involved in that. As some selfless Jesus like figure, who is willing to give his life to save humanity, because that's what he wants to do.”
Cyrus Broacha is an Indian TV anchor, theatre personality, comedian, political satirist, columnist, podcaster and author.
He is also a prankster, best known for his show Bakra on MTV and his show The Week That Wasn't on CNN News18.
He is also the host of #CyrusSays on IVMPodcasts which is one of the best podcasts of the country.
"I recently read how it's only .01 percent of our DNA that's responsible for the expression of our skin colour and our traits, all of which are our outward appearance that we define as race. But those things are the things that we use to define each other. We are biased when we look at a person, when we are talking specifically about race"
Marguerite is an American writer and editor with a background in literature, translation, and magazine publishing.
Marguerite currently has a book out titled The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, which you can locate at here website linked below.
Focusing on world cultures, she aims to understand the nuances that separate us, with the resolve to further our understanding of each other through her work.
Marguerite has spent many years living in different environments that are & foreign to her - Holland, Chile, France, and now lives in Sri Lanka.
She is currently editing memoirs by Iranian, Kuwaiti-American, Bangladeshi, and Ugandan-American authors, and gathering writings for an artist book about birth traditions around the globe.
Marguerite recently curated a collection of diverse stories by authors from many Muslim worlds, entitled The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human, which was published by Penguin in December 2019.
She says her mission is to try to promote cultural awareness by supporting the voices of those heard less often than her, specifically through literature.
Marguerite’s website - https://www.margueriterichards.com/
Marguerite’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/margueriterichards/?hl=en
Marguerite’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9ESu76fwhqn9_NRndQ2Eg
“So, I think the first thing we must realise that there is no end-game here. It’s not like 10 years, practice this and in 10 years you’re going to be relieved of all unconscious biases, thats never going to happen. First to understand that, that’s a perpetual operation within our, our mind, it’s going to always be there. So I think what it requires is, I mean, you know, kind of acute awareness of it, I mean, can we be aware of it?”
Thodur Madabusi Krishna or T.M. as he prefers to be known is an Indian Carnatic vocalist, writer, activist and author. As a vocalist, he has made many innovations in both the style and substance of his concerts and is known for his individuality. His concert stage, whether in his hometown of Chennai or anywhere else in the world, is wholly classical but his concert practice is uncompromisingly his own.
In the year 2016 he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for “his forceful commitment as an artist and advocate to art’s power to heal India’s deep social divisions, breaking barriers of caste and class to unleash what music has to offer not just for some but for all” In 2017 he received the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration Award for his services in promoting and preserving national integration in the country. In 2017, he has also received the Professor V Aravindakshan Memorial Award for connecting Carnatic music with the common man.
T.M. speaks and writes about a wide range of issues, not confined to the cultural sphere. His interests span the breadth of left-wing activism, be it the environment, the caste system, social reform, religious reform, combating communalism, innovation in classical music and more. He has started and is involved in many organisations whose work is spread across the spectrum of music and culture. Recently, he has spoken out against the destruction of statues of Lenin, Ambedkar, Gandhi and Periyar
In collaboration with Ashoka University, T.M. Krishna is now involved in The Edict Project, an attempt to reimagine Ashoka’s edicts in musical form. The project aims at creating vibrant aesthetic, socio-political and academic conversations around the edicts.
Syima Aslam is the founder and director of the Bradford Literature Festival (BLF), a 10-day literary and cultural celebration, which she established in 2014. The BLF welcomes more than 70,000 visitors to Bradford annually and is celebrated as the most socio-economically and ethnically diverse literary festival in the UK.
Under Syima’s directorship, the BLF has made a significant impact on the country’s literary landscape. It has been hailed as ‘one of the most innovative and inspirational festivals in the UK’, bringing together literature from all genres, promoting intercultural fluency, providing a platform for marginalised voices, and reflecting the changing face of contemporary Britain through a programme which celebrates diversity, empathy and artistic excellence.
"I went to nursery in the UK, but when I came back at the age of eight, I'd lost all my English. So the perception and the way you see a culture at that point is different. But I had my memories of that culture having had those younger years. One of the things that I find quite interesting is the way that you are viewed changes with the way that you are dressed. I grew up in Halifax, and my parents did what a lot of first generation migrants do which is desperately try and hold on to this culture that they had in their heads. So, if I was at home, I was dressed traditionally, if I was at school, I was dressed in my uniform, if I was with my friends, I was dressed in my jeans. And I have found that when people meet you, depending on how you are dressed, they will talk to you differently, they will relate to you differently."
“For me, one of the many things that is most significant about being a person of colour, a brown person, having been brought up in the ‘70s, in an exclusively white English family, but in an almost exclusively white English context, is that the ideas and beliefs that I have gained and have been transmitted down through my parents, my grandparents, have influenced the way in which I think and behave. Not only towards people of colour, but to other people too.”
Nick Pendry identifies as a brown Indian man. He is married to a woman, and lives in southeast London with his two teenage children. Nick was adopted as a baby by a white English family. He is a social worker and family therapist, who has spent his entire working life in the public sector.
Annette Smith (née Julien) was born in December 1927 on the small Caribbean Island of Grenada into a privileged family. She was educated in Trinidad and returned to Grenada where she completed a year of nursing before embarking on a journey to England aged just 18. She travelled completely alone and this was her first trip abroad. In 1946, post-WWII, Annette became the only black nurse at the Guildford Royal Surrey Hospital. She married a Londoner and had three children before returning to her nursing profession as a community nurse. She has many interests including poetry, singing, the arts, sport and continues to be a positive member of community.
"I arrived to do my nursing training in England, and we got into Southampton. And of course, in those days, everybody came by ship. And I remember standing on the deck and looking at the luggage being handled by white porters. And I never, ever thought white porters would do that job. Because out in the West Indies and the Caribbean, black people always did that. So that was an example of unconscious bias. And I just couldn't get over it."
Sabriye Tenberken, from Germany, knows what it is to be marginalised after becoming fully blind at the age of 12. She studied Tibetology/Central Asian Sciences at Bonn University and helped develop the Tibetan Braille Script. In 1997, Sabriye travelled on horseback through the Himalayas and in 1998, along with her partner Paul Kronenberg, started the first school for the blind in Tibet. This school formed the foundation of Braille Without Borders, an organisation that empowers blind people to take their lives into their own hands. In 2005, Sabriye and Paul founded Kanthari in Kerala, south India, a leadership institute for social change makers. Kanthari fosters individuals from all over the world who have overcome adversity and because of that, carry a desire to create social change.
Sabriye is a public speaker, the author of My Path Leads to Tibet, a book that has been translated into 16 languages. She has also taken part with Paul in the award winning documentaries BLINDSIGHT and KANTHARI – Change from Within.
"We had little children who, who came and would say, why do they throw stones at me? And then other children who were longer in our place, they say, because they are stupid! They don't know who you are, and they don't know that you're a human being. And they don't know that blindness is something that has also a lot of advantages. For example, you can read and write in the dark. Who can do this? So I do feel that especially working with kids - back then I've worked with kids, but for adults it comes the same - I think it's very important that we are constantly reflecting on what people try to make us believe. And how is the reality for us? What do we believe? What do we make out of it? And this is getting out of the unconsciousness of our biases into the consciousness of our biases."
Q, also known as Francesca Mudannayake, is a Sri Lankan based singer/songwriter who has been performing since she was 6. After honing her skills at the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in the UK and singing at the Barbican Theatre, Q released her debut EP Hysteria in April 2021. Blending alternative R&B with lyrics on female sexuality and independence, Rolling Stone India described it as “everything you want to hear in music of empowerment”. In addition to this she has modelled for fashion brands and has appeared in magazines like L’Officiel Italia and Cosmopolitan Sri Lanka. An actor too, she was most recently featured in Deepa Mehta’s Funny Boy.
"I can speak from my own self, that I am a bit of a weird, complex creature that is very emotional and very sensitive to things. So for the past couple of years, I've just been going through all of those emotions and thinking, well, I should just really put this all down in an EP. Because these are all my lived experiences. And maybe, just maybe if a girl is listening to it, they might be a bit more comfortable with themselves, you know, and think to themselves, oh, I don't need to be just this, and I don't need to be just that. I can be all of this. If you can come to that sort of point where you're at peace, with all of these different personalities that you have, I think it's a better way to live."
Listen to Hysteria, her debut EP here: https://li.sten.to/hysteria/. Follow her on Instagram https://instagram.com/musicby_q or Facebook https://m.facebook.com/musicbyq
Safiya Yasmin Badzhva (pronounced Bajwa) is a 22-year-old marketing student from Moscow. She was born and raised in Moscow to a Russian mother and a Pakistani father. Safiya sees herself as 100% Muscovite, but her appearance doesn’t fit into the stereotypical image of a local Russian. Safiya feels that Moscow is getting more diverse, so it's important to question the idea of xenophobia and racism in modern Russian society.
"I define myself as a local as a Muscovite and person with the Russian mentality. And my first language is Russian. But despite all this, people don't perceive me as a local, much less as a Russian person. First of all, my appearance is not typical for a Russian person, also, my name and my religion. And every time I meet a new person, I feel like I have to prove that I speak language well, that I know this city and old traditions. And sometimes many people are simply surprised. They say how well you speak Russian, they compliment my Russian. It could be perhaps an example of a positive unconscious bias. And sometimes they think that I'm a liar, and some people could be just, frankly, rude to me."
Priyanca Radhakrishnan is a Member of Parliament in the New Zealand Labour Party and a Minister of the Crown. Her portfolios include Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities. She is the first person of Indian origin to become a Minister in New Zealand.
Born in India, Priyanca went to school in Singapore, and then moved to New Zealand to further her education. She has spent her work life advocating on behalf of people whose voices are often unheard, including survivors of domestic violence, and exploited migrant workers. She strongly believes that everyone has the right to live with dignity - meaning equitable access to affordable housing, quality education and decent, secure work.
"So it's this whole process of negotiating your identity. Who are you? When I came to New Zealand, I realised that I wasn't quite as Indian as I thought I was. I had lots of friends who were international students from India, and I felt that I was, again, a little bit different from that. I had to then acknowledge the fact that growing up in Singapore means that had shaped my identity and who I was, as well. It's actually when I moved here that I even acknowledged that which was quite a revelation for me. So this whole process of negotiating that, and then coming to a point in my life, where I thought, well, no, I'm not going to conform to something that people want."
Papa CJ is an award-winning, international stand-up comedian. He has performed over 2000 shows in over 25 countries. Forbes Magazine called him ‘the global face of Indian stand-up’ and Harvard Business Review called him 'one of the most influential comedians around the world’. He has won awards for both Asia and India’s best stand-up comedian. He is also a motivational speaker and corporate training coach.
"Even in our [Indian] education system, when we grow up, we are told these are the answers. Suddenly, you go abroad and study, and your faculty member asks you, what do you think? And the first thing that comes to your mind is like, what do you mean, what do I thin? You're supposed to tell me what's right. So when you get to this point in this profession, where there are no boundaries. You tend to start looking inwards. And you really start to question, what are the things that I value? What do I believe is right? And eventually, even your audience doesn't matter. Because you present your truth. And what you're saying is, this is what works for me, if you like it fine. If you don't like it also fine, I respect that."
Maria Arpa is the founder of the Centre for Peaceful Solutions and the executive director at The Centre for Non-Violent Communication. She has dedicated the last 20 years of her life promoting non-violent communication as an alternative to mainstream systems of domination culture. Through her career, Maria has worked in some of the most violent areas of the UK and the USA, including with families, in schools and workplaces, within neighbourhoods and in prisons.
"I think it's true for everyone who was around in the 60s and 70s, and even into the 80s. That there were cultural jokes. There were jokes around particular groups of people, or particular races, or particular colours, or particular religions. And we thought nothing of telling those jokes. In fact, it was a way of bonding with, in inverted commas, "like minded people". That we could pick on a race or a culture or an affliction, or a personality trait or something. You could pick on something. And you could make jokes about it over and over and over and over again. And the level to which that reinforces something."
At age 27, Hosna Jalil was the first woman appointed to a high Interior Ministry post in Afghanistan. She held the post of Deputy for Policy and Strategic Affairs and later Deputy for Women Affairs. Until the age of nine she lived under the Taliban regime, not being allowed to attend school. Despite this she went on to achieve a BA in Physics before completing a master’s degree in Business Management at the American University of Afghanistanan. Hosna is an independent, feminine, wandering soul. "Women have not been allowed to move out of the house, or even have a professional carrier. Not at all, because that was according to the ruling system of Taliban. That led to a mentality being created unconsciously within me, that whenever I was thinking of a woman, there has been a word associated to that. And that word associated to women is the word 'dependent'. And whenever I was thinking of being a woman, the first thing that I could think of was being an dependent individual, or a dependent human being. Who is fed by a man, who works day and night at home, but at the same time, is not rewarded like a man."
Matt Davis lives in London with his wife, Eliza and two children, Isaac and Tabitha.
13-year-old Isaac is autistic and was diagnosed with autism at age 3.
Matt writes a blog about this journey and shares his thoughts and feelings at mysonisaac.net
Matt is a Trustee of Autistica and Parent Patron and business ambassador for Ambitious About Autism.
He is also a partner at Red Brick Road, an advertising agency in London.
"Even at that stage, I had no idea of autism. So I might go to the nursery, something as simple as driving a different route. And he would scream and be so distressed. I'd have to drag him out of the car and take him into the nursery. And hey wouldn't understand why he was so upset. And everyone else would just go 'Oh he's two, he's having a tantrum'. And those comments used to grate and eat me up inside. I think weirdly my unconscious bias, it's a double edged sword, because part of my unconscious bias was going, you're doing something wrong. But the other side was, I knew something wasn't right as well. I just didn't know what it was. I didn't have the language or the knowledge to translate all these points he was struggling with."
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC one of Britain's most distinguished lawyers. She has spent her professional life giving voice to those who have least power within the system, championing civil liberties and promoting human rights.
In an interview from a few years ago, Helena was asked about her best and worst days of works. Successes like the release of Paul Hill, one of The Guildford Four, is a given, but what was moving and powerful was to hear Helena talk of supporting and winning cases such as the battered women who killed their husbands after years of abuse. Or perhaps the wife of the bomb plotter accused of failing to inform on her husband.
Helena has conducted many prominent cases of terrorism, official secrets and homicide. She is the founding force behind the establishment of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. In 1997, she was elevated to the House of Lords where she is a Labour peer.
She has published two books on how the justice system is failing women and has written and broadcasted on many issues over the years. Currently, she has taken on the role of Director to the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. She directs the Institute’s work upholding the rule of law and human rights globally.
"Important in, in my sort of evolution, was that when you're at the bar, and you're doing a case - and I was a sort of warrior on behalf of people who were often the underdog. There is a thing about doing a case is that you would fight hammer and tongs with the person on the other side. But somehow, afterwards, you were still part of the same world, which was to preserve the rule of law. And so it was, it was one of the things that was an important part of maturing, was that you don't, you don't loathe the person who's who's on the other side. You have to find a way of having a proper discourse. There has to be some way in which you can cross that divide, if you want to make make any kind of progress."
Habeeb Akande is a sex educator, author and historian. His work explores an ancient African sexual practice for women's satisfaction, which he believes can close the gender pleasure gap. His work also covers race relations and sexual intimacy in Brazil and Muslim cultures. Habeeb is the author of the Amazon bestselling book Kunyaza: The Secret to Female Pleasure,which was featured in the BBC documentary, The Orgasm Gap. Habeeb aims to present a positive representation of African cultures and sexually empower women with culturally-competent sex education.
"The fact that we have female body parts that are named after European men. This idea that the G-spot was named after Ernst Grafenberg in the 1950s, the Fallopian tubes, again named after a man, the Skene's glands. And this is because the Europeans have done a very good job of documenting their findings, but they are new findings to them. They'll document it, and then it's disseminated across the board as if this is the standard for everyone to adopt. And anyone that that might have "discovered" this prior to the events are dismissed. So when I've written proposals for some sex journals about my research, about like, the Kunyaza tradition, and eastern Africa and their practises, they understand of sex and sexuality. Many times they don't want to hear it unless I'm speaking about female genital mutilation"
Dr Yan Wang Preston is a British-Chinese artist interested in the connections between landscape, ecology, identity and migration. She has specialised in conducting long-term projects that are demanding both physically and intellectually. For example, she photographed the entire 6,211km Yangtze River in China at precise 100km intervals for her Mother River project. Yan has published two photo books, 'Mother River' and ‘Forest’ with Hatje Cantz. She holds a PhD in Photography and lectures at the University of Huddersfield.
"When I came [to the UK], I realised in the last 16 years - it's a gradual realisation of my own unconscious bias, of trying to be perfect. Trying to be this woman who puts on dinner at the right time, for everyone. But also who appears beautiful, intelligent, all those things. And only a few years ago, actually through the exposure of feminism movements here [in the UK]. I have began to ask myself why? Why do I want to be perfect? Is it because men want me to be like this? Or is this from my own standards? And where did this standards come from? So actually, from quite a few years back, my New Year's resolution to myself has stayed the same. Try not to be perfect."
Andrew Feinstein is a former African National Congress (ANC) Member of Parliament who served in South Africa under Nelson Mandela. He resigned in protest in 2001 at the ruling party’s refusal to allow an unfettered investigation into a massively corrupt $10bn arms deal. He is an author of the critically-acclaimed The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade which reveals the corruption at the heart of the global arms business. He is also a film-maker and campaigner on the damage wrought by the global arms trade, and Executive Director of the London-based non-profit Shadow World Investigations. Andrew is the son of a Holocaust survivor and is married to Simone, a Bangladeshi woman, with whom he has two children.
"I lived in an area surrounded only by so-called White people, and the only people who were black African or so-called coloured or of mixed race - and I'm sorry to have to use this apartheid-era nomenclature - I would see people who are not white, anytime between the beginning of the day and sunset, and thereafter they would disappear. And I never fully understood that they were disappearing to their own racial group areas. And of course, they were only doing certain menial jobs that were allowed to them. I remember very early on my South African grandmother referring to the person who worked in her garden - who must have been in his mid to late 60s - and she would refer to him as boy. And I think growing up in that sort of environment, where these notions of superiority, both conscious and unconscious, are almost taken for granted, is incredibly, incredibly damaging."
Emeka Onwubiko was the first Nigerian-born footballer to play for the Republic of Ireland and wear the Irish jersey. Today, Emeka is a UEFA Certified Coach coaching inspiring young football players.
On the weekend of May 1st, 2021 a number of football organisations in England are going silent on social media to highlight increasing levels of racist abuse on social media platforms.
"When you play without shoes is basically like, not having a lot as a child. For example, you know, most successful people never really had a lot as kids, so that inspired and motivated them to do a lot more. It's how you turn those situations of not having a lot into having the surplus. I mean, that motivates you to do a lot. That example, like having no shoes, and you have a feeling of knowing what having no shoes is like. So, when you do have shoes, you're like more grateful and more appreciative of having that."
Indira Kaur Ahluwalia is an activist and entrepreneur turned advisor, coach, and now an author. She’s worked in federal government contracting, particularly international development, to build equity, accountability, and sustainability.
As Indira fulfilled her life’s passions and professional obligations, she was diagnosed with stage IV advanced breast cancer with bone metastasis at age 38. Her fight, and the lessons she learned, led her to write Fast Forward to Hope: Choosing to Build the Power of Self — a memoir to enable others to face and walk beyond their own issues.
"But you know, whether it's the cancer in terms of the disease, or the cancer of racism, or the cancer off infidelity, or the cancer of other conflicts or challenges. You know, it's our choice. When something happens to us, regardless of the conditioning, regardless of the programming that the world does for us. We're stuck in the box, and it's our choice to become conscious about our ability to break the box. And it doesn't have to be a grand gesture, it has to be a decision in my mind. And I think that was a fundamental point in in my journey. There was no question about whether I was going to live or die. There was absolutely that was not up for debate, even with God. It was a decision I had made. I was going to live."
Jaishree Misra is an author of Indian origin living in Britain. She has written eight novels published by Penguin and Harper Collins. She has also written a non-fiction account of building a writer’s studio on the beach in her home state of Kerala, India. She is a postgraduate in English Literature from Kerala University and has two diplomas from the University of London, one in Broadcast Journalism and the other in Special Education. She has worked in special education, journalism and as a film classifier at the British Board of Film Classification. She lives in London with her husband and daughter. Her daughter, Rohini, is a woman with special needs and specific difficulties with language and communication.
"I tend to assume that people, even my dearest friends, are not that interested in my stories of parenting Rohini. I'm perfectly happy to hear stories of their sons, you know, going off to New York and doing a flash job, or someone else's daughter getting into medical school. And I love those stories, I have not a moments envy or resentment or anything. Because I genuinely enjoy the company of young people, my friends children. So I love those stories. I think I do tend to assume that they might not be as interested in my stories, a little triumph when Rohini came out with a new word. I mean, she's 38, for God's sake, to come out with a new word at the age of 38, I tend to assume would be a little bit embarrassing to announce to the world. So yeah, I hold back."
Jonah Batambuze is a Ugandan-American, multidisciplinary creative, and founder of a community for Black and South Asian people called the Blindian Project.
https://www.blindian-project.com/
"For me growing up, the culture, it was you were dating. People dated from when they were like thirteen. Like, my parents met some of my girlfriends, but there was never an expectation that Jonah is going to marry this girl. It was just a part of life, really. Now, I know that my wife, Swetha, didn't grow up like that. What I found is that in the South Asian community, it's not the majority open practice that you just introduce anybody who's your boyfriend or your girlfriend, to your parents. I think for me, it was more of accepting and understanding that me not meeting them within the first couple of months, it wasn't something personal."
Robin Shohet started his therapeutic career in 1976 working in a residential therapeutic community with people who had come out of psychiatric hospitals. He left in 1979 to work freelance as a therapist, supervisor and trainer. He is the author and editor of several books, the latest co-written with his wife, Joan, called In Love with Supervision: Creating Transformative Conversations. He is a student of A Course in Miracles, a book that has had a profound influence on his life.
"As soon as I become Robin and you, Smita, we separate. The analogy I give is, if you look at your hand, and look at the fingers on your hand. Imagine that each finger had consciousness, but had forgotten it was part of the hand. So one finger looks at the other and says, it's bigger than me, I hate it. It's bigger than me, I want to destroy it, compares and everything. Forgetting that it's actually part of a hand. So what we've done is we've got individual consciousness, and forgetting that we're something much bigger. So we're like these fingers that kind of go, he's better than me, all these sources of separation. And we're not actually going to the root cause, which is we've forgotten, we're all part of the hand."
Eliza Griswold is a journalist, poet and contributing writer for the New Yorker. She was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for her book, Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America. She’s a distinguished writer in residence at New York University and lives between New York and Philadelphia with her husband and son.
"Basically, what we did is look at how cultures welcomed and and insisted that adolescents include a period of going to the edge of the society. Like coming of age rituals, liminal experience. You know, you get your period, you have to go live in the hut. You've got to, you are encouraged, you are required to encounter meaning at the edges of society, at the edges of civilization. And in American society in the 90s, when I was in college - George Bush - there was no welcoming of the edge whatsoever, you stay as close as you can to the centre, the edge is devalued. And so for me, who was who is a child of the edge, I was terrified..."
Amish Tripathi is a diplomat, author and columnist. He is currently the Director of The Nehru Centre in London, the cultural wing of the Indian High Commission.
Amish was been listed among the 50 most powerful Indians in 2019 by India Today magazine. Forbes India has regularly ranked Amish among the top 100 most influential celebrities in India. In 2014, Amish was also selected as an Eisenhower Fellow, a prestigious American programme for outstanding leaders from around the world.
Amish published his first book in 2010, and has written 9 books to date. His books have sold 5.5 million copies, and have been translated into 10 Indian and 9 international languages.
"One of the things that I keep arguing for in India, is that our ancient traditions are being forgotten, and our ancient wisdom is being forgotten. You see the public square debates in India as well are falling into that same paradigm. There is the right and the left, and you have to prove loyalty to your tribe. And you have to win over the other person. That is not the ancient Indian vada tradition. It's not the ancient Indian debating traditions. And all of this comes from an unconscious bias. It comes from a belief that my truth is the truth."
"I didn't write politically conscious songs or songs that talked about the skin colour of my first child. I didn't write those things, saying, I'm going to change the world and this is how I'm going to do it. I wrote those songs, because that's the way that I felt, like everything that I do with my music. There’s not a disconnection, and it's just a focus on 'how can I market and get my music out'. I write my music the way that I feel. And that's all it is. Because my music is an expression of how I feel as a distinction. It’s not a commodity to be packaged up. And that's what was happening when I was 19, when 'role model' was put on me as a label. The media and the industry infrastructure were trying to craft me into the person that they thought that I should be because I was a brown woman, I was rapping writing my own songs."
Teremoana Rapley currently works as a senior creative economy advisor for the New Zealand local government cultural and economic development agency, Auckland Unlimited. She is a stalwart of the music industry as an award winning singer songwriter. She stepped into the industry at the age of 14 with the politically conscious rap group Upper Hutt Posse and was inducted into New Zealand's Music Hall of Fame in 2018. She has worked in indigenous broadcasting for over two decades gaining over 3000 production credits as an executive producer and many production roles. Teremoana has worked in a community action and development space for the past 30 years with her latest co-created social change initiative focussing on intergenerational and intercultural place-based community building using the arts as the connector.
"And I walked away, thinking, right, okay, so this kind of dominant view as a man, that if you have an encounter, that you have to kind of become this alpha male who's gonna kick butt. Even though I spend a lot of work on myself trying to, you know, remove the idea that violence is the way to solve problems and so forth. That, in that challenge, I couldn't just say to the guy, well, actually, given the choice, I'll always sidestep an opportunity to engage in violence as the kind of dominant way in which people settle their disputes. I just defaulted back into that."
Hári Sewell is founder and Director of HS Consultancy and is a former executive director of health and social care in the NHS. He is a writer and speaker in his specialist area of social justice, equalities and ethnicity, race and culture in mental health. Hári is honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire and Specialist Guest Lecturer at University of Bradford. Hári has had various books, articles and book chapters published, with new material emerging regularly.
Hári has a reputation for being a strong communicator. He is a nationally and internationally recognised trainer on critical race theory, unconscious bias, leading diverse organisations and teams and issues of equality and social justice.
Hári worked with another local campaigner to secure services for survivors of sexual violence and currently runs a campaign “Men Supporting Women’s Rights” including “Men Against Rape”. He is increasingly studying forms of masculinity and the possibilities in practice and employee relations to recognise the intersections between masculinity and other aspects of identity.
www.hsconsultancy.org.uk
"And so, I was brought into this family, who already had two children. They were my parents' biological children, two boys, very white. So, it was very interesting, when we would go out as a family. I would be stood there with classically sort of Pakistani colouring, you know, I have jet black hair. I have amazingly dark eyes, with my brothers and my parents who are blond and blue eyes. And it was, you know, it was quite amusing, really, because I could see people looking at us as a family, and questions going through their heads and said to say, what's happened with the daughter, she looks a bit different."
Anna Harrington grew up in the '70s in a white, middle class area on the Pennines, an area juxtaposed to the multicultural population of Oldham. She is adopted and mixed race. She has both benefited from white privilege and experienced racism throughout her childhood. This has allowed her to viscerally recognise the effects of not fitting in and how the social environment influences behaviours. She now has her own business advising on how to enable employees to be productive and thrive through work.
"There still is an aspect of always having to come out, basically, because the status quo is that you're straight. Therefore, in work and that kind of thing, there's always a bit of friction there when you meet someone new who doesn't know. You will end up telling them, you know, ‘at the weekend, what did you do?’. Oh, well, I was with my boyfriend or whatever. And there's always going to be that, well, what are they gonna think about that? I mean, it's not a problem, I suppose, in the context of, British people, or Irish people nowadays. With people from countries where it's not acceptable to be gay, I definitely do assign them. I’m maybe a little bit more worried. For example, in work if I had a colleague who was from somewhere where it's not acceptable to be gay, to tell them about, what I did over the weekend with my boyfriend, because I may be a little bit more worried about what they might think."
Seamus Beirne is 29 years old (30 next month). He lives in Oslo with his boyfriend. He works as a data analyst for a grocery delivery company.
"Let's say now, you're getting married. You've no relations to call on to come to your wedding. You're aware of that at the time. Then when your first kid is born, you've nobody to ring up and tell - aunts, uncles or anybody. Nobody to ring up. You have plenty of friends and that, which is great. But you could always feel the other person had all the wives, uncles, aunts to ring up, whereas I had none of that. Now, I thought about it, but I didn't let it get under my skin. Because if you allowed things like that to get under your skin, you'd be seriously affected. And I wouldn't let it affect me, because I still knew I had to survive and get on with my life."
Jude Hughes was born in Dublin in 1941, to an unmarried Irish woman and a black man. He was initially told his father was from Trinidad. He spent his early life in St. Patrick's mother and baby home. The rest of Jude's childhood was spent in institutions - first in a convent, and later in an industrial school, where he learned a trade. Growing up in Ireland, he rarely saw another black person.
Linked to Jude’s story is the recent report of Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, released on 12th January 2021. The 3,000-page report details the conduct and survivors of religious institutions in Ireland. These institutions housed women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage. Most relevant to Jude is the policy of the institutions preventing him from tracing his parents, or as Jude says, being told that the information was 'redacted'. Ireland denies adopted people the legal right to their own information and files. The report is understood to chronicle many of the lies and obfuscations of priests, nuns and officials.
"You get respect when you are someone, when you're doing something. When you're no one, people forget you. They forget what you have done for them. They forget who you are, or they even forget what you have done in your past. So, at that time, I learned that if I will not accept myself for who I am, if I will not respect myself for who I am, no one is going to do that. Because the world is very cruel. You have to stand for yourself and you have to accept yourself for who you are."
Naira Manzoor is from Kashmir currently living and working in Delhi. Naira says she's 24, feels like 65, but has the soul of a teenager. She loves books, deep talks, travel, singing, thinking and exploring life. Her life is focused around learning and she believes in being herself and refuses to change for anyone. "Life is a journey, a taxing one", she says, "I am up for it".
This is an extended two part episode. Part one is just under half an hour, followed by a brief segue into part two which is approximately twenty minutes. Please do listen to both!
“The other thing that was my unconscious bias, I'd always perceived myself as a strong woman. I am a strong woman and I've coped with some pretty significant adversity in my life with pragmatism and a degree of humanity. But this one stripped me not only of my humanity, it stripped me of my motherhood, it stripped me of me. And that was very, very surprising. And I have come to understand why it is.”
Kate Nicholls is the author of Under the Camelthorn Tree in which she shares her experiences of raising her five children in Botswana, and home-schooling them, and living in a lion conservation camp. Kate is currently running a homeschool business in Rome and is passionate about integrated education. She is also writing her second book.
Content Warning: This episode deals with sexual abuse and violence.
"We were told that everyone was butchered, was literally butchered on the way to India. Now supposing we were there, what would happen? I think it made me more resilient. Subconsciously, having escaped death at such close quarters and at such a young age. It allows me to be a little more cavalier in my approach to life. Not careless, but carefree."
SP Rawal was born in 1940 to a rich landowner in what is today, Punjab, Pakistan. At the age of seven, he was forced to go through the trauma of India's partition, travelling as part of a caravan of bullock carts, staying at a refugee camp, and doing all sorts of menial jobs. Today, aged 80 he's the chairman of a leading brokerage firm, dealing in arbitration support both nationally and internationally.
"These kids are so privileged...I knew that they were all going to third level education, they're going to be doctors and engineers... I realised that the class structure was so profound and it's developed at that level in education, right from the very get-go. Where those kids would have been in local creches or play schools, the Traveller (indigenous ethnic group) kids lived on the other side of the road."
Ken McCue is a graduate of the International School of Politics and Culture, Moscow. He holds a Master of Philosophy Diploma in Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin and a Post Graduate Certificate in Cultural Planning from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.
Ken specialises in the area of Cultural Integration and Social Capital in urban regeneration. Ken is a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and was officially declared an Atheist by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
In 1997, Ken co-founded Sports Against Racism Ireland (SARI) during the European Year against Racism.
For more information, visit https://www.sari.ie/
"What I'm saying is, is that because they're not aware of their unconscious bias, they think they actually believe that what they're doing is right... There are a lot of people who disagree with me, not just the people on the left or the right, because many people on the right refuse to recognise how complex racism is.... People in the middle recognise that racism isn't just black and white, it's actually far more complex. And it reveals itself unconsciously, in all kinds of ways, both on the right and on the left. We tend to just think people on the right are racist people and people on the left are not... I'm saying, no, what they're doing is signalling virtue, they are not actually being virtuous."
Katharine Birbalsingh is the Headmistress and co-founder of Michaela Community School in Wembley, London. Michaela is known for its high standards of discipline, tough-love behaviour systems, knowledge curriculum and teaching of kindness and gratitude. In 2017, OFSTED the Office for Standards in Education, graded the school as “Outstanding” in every category.
Katharine read Philosophy & Modern Languages at The University of Oxford and has always taught in inner London. She has made numerous appearances on television and radio and has written for several UK publications. Katharine has written two books, edited a third and a fourth called Michaela: The Power of Culture has just been published. Whether you agree with Katharine or not, she will make you think. In the 2020 Birthday Honours, Katherine was awarded CBE.
Follow Katharine on Twitter: @Miss_Snuffy
"We were exactly the class which filled the Imperial hierarchy...sufficiently well connected to get a place with the East India Company or in the Raj Civil Service, but desperate enough economically to need to send the younger sons out... It was a guy called Stair Dalrymple who ended up in the Black Hole of Calcutta in 1756. And so, generations have been there one after another and like almost all the Brits, probably all the Brits who I'd ever met, it was assumed that colonisation was an act of bringing civilisation to poor benighted natives."
William Dalrymple is a Scottish historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a broadcaster and critic. His books have won numerous awards including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Kapuściński Award and the Wolfson History Prize. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literary Festival.
"Others conspire that if you're not cut, you are not clean, nobody will marry you. You are not going to be the same as other girls. You're going to school and you feel like you're different. Because you are not cut. That is why I am an activist and campaigner on female genital mutilation."
Ifrah Ahmed is an Irish-Somali activist, campaigner and Civil Society Organisation director working in the field of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting abandonment. She has also set up the United Youth of Ireland in 2008, in response to youth immigrant integration issues in her adopted country.
The Ifrah Foundation is working with the UN for the worldwide eradication of FGM/C by 2030.
A feature film, A Girl from Mogadishu, based on her life is out now.
"In 2017/2018 I opened a restaurant called Tapestry in New York City that served food from 17 or 18 countries at one time on the menu. And people loved it. It was in the West Village. And we had the who's who of New York coming to eat with us. But there were certain food critics that were absent. And I then got an email from one food critic who said to me, don't you think you're being too daring that you're cooking something other than Indian? And I asked them, do you ask this question to all the American chefs born and brought up in America, who are cooking French, Italian, Vietnamese, Mexican and Indian? Do you question them about the cuisine they are cooking?"
Suvir Saran is the author of three celebrated cookbooks: Indian Home Cooking, American Masala, and Masala Farm, as well as the chef and owner of The House of Celeste, a modern Indian restaurant in Gurgaon.
Saran’s approachable style has helped demystify Indian cuisine and earned him the first Michelin star awarded to an Indian restaurant in America.
"When I pray five times a day, it's interesting that the way I start my prayers, I refer to God, as the God of all creation. I don't say the God of Muslims, I say the God of all creation which includes everyone on Earth. So that's part of my faith. And that's why I feel that my faith underpins and underlines the way I behave, and I interact with people."
Reza Beyad is a multilingual entrepreneur, philanthropist and fundraiser. He's a practising Muslim who completed his schooling from a Jesuit school. One of his main interests is to engage in constructive interfaith dialogues and help build bridges between different faiths and communities. His own faith underpins his efforts to create a more caring, just and inclusive society. In 2014, for his work in this regard, he was given the freedom of the City of London.
"A lot of the young people that I work with, see themselves in a troubled state. But the minute they start engaging with something positive, they have an identity shift, they start to position themselves as an artist. And that takes them away from what they perceive themselves to be in the past. We can all create these identity shifts, but it's about just taking that one positive step and having a reinforced positive loop to keep going."
Rosemary Jane Cronin is an artist and university lecturer specialising in fine art, gender and psychoanalysis who has exhibited and performed at The Freud Museum and The National Portrait Gallery in London. Her film Reverie was selected by the Guggenheim Foundation as part of their 'Under the Same Sun' season in 2016. As an educator, Rosemary works for the Outreach department at University of Arts London and museums and galleries across London to help make art accessible for all.
Content Warning: This episode deals with material of a sexual nature.
"The Kama Sutra was written in metaphors. And it talks about pleasure so delicately and with such elegance and refinement that it actually inspired about 2000 years of ancient Indian literature."
Seema Anand is a mythologist and a storyteller with a focus on women's narratives and a specialty in the erotic literature's of ancient India. Seema believes that the narrative of the Kama Sutra was deliberately silenced. This was the first text to give women a platform of equality.
Seema Anand is also the author of The Arts of Seduction.
"I guess I could see unconscious bias in other people's ideas of a Muslim. You could be White, Asian, Black, you could be from any type of background. It's a religion, like other religions where you choose to become a Muslim and fall in that religion. People make a lot of assumptions, on what a Muslim looks like. It could be anyone."
Matt Henderson is originally from Scotland and lives in Yorkshire. With over 20 years’ experience as a community worker, Matt is currently working as a project manager for Bradford for Everyone, a UK Government social integration pilot programme
"In September 2019, Aditya Atri was defined by what he did for a living, what car he drove, what his status was in society. Post September 2019, Aditya Atri is defined by the fact he has cancer."
Aditya Atri has over 30 years' experience as an advertising and marketing executive He has managed large consumer facing programmes and campaigns for both local and multinational brands across South Asia, Middle East and Australia. He has held leadership positions across financial services, retail and marketing communication companies.
"I remember going into the Miss England competition being told by my organisers, just go take part -the Asian girls never do well. And I basically got told you're not going to win because the Asian girls don't do well. And I remember being at the competition and confirming this bias. "
Dr Bhasha Mukherjee is the reigning Miss England and NHS front line worker in the battle against the Covid 19 pandemic.
"I mean, I say to people in this country, you know, not everybody who voted for Trump is an idiot. There were a lot of smart people who voted for the guy, just look at the numbers. You look in London with Brexit, a lot of smart educated people voted for Boris Johnson. And I don't think you can dismiss that."
David Knaus is a collector and patron, focused on photography and contemporary arts - he works actively with photographers consulting on the placement of their archives so their work is both preserved and accessible.
“If you're able to speak many languages, this means you're able to live many lives, or be immersed in many identities.”
“Be the best version of yourself and then the world will adjust to you eventually.”
Dr. Ghida Ibrahim is a global citizen with many hats; a technologist, a data scientist, a tech for good entrepreneur, a community builder, a lecturer, a speaker who has appeared on TEDx, a World Economic Forum appointed domain expert and an occasional standup comedian.
“You are different - your accent speaks of privilege. Foreign living and foreign exposure, and therefore you're not authentically one of us is what some people think. Accent can be used to separate people from the person noticing the accent.”
Shashi Tharoor, author of 20 books, former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, current Member of Parliament of Trivandrum, Kerala and my brother.
"What happened to me is that because of unconscious bias, I was stolen from my mother, I was stolen from my family. I was brought up in institutions, with foster parents who I believe, had a lot of unconscious biases towards people of colour."
Google the name “Lemn Sissay” and all the returning hits will be about him, because there is only one Lemn Sissay in the world. Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA nominated award winning writer, international poet, performer playwright, artist and broadcaster and Chancellor of The University of Manchester. He was awarded an MBE for services to literature.
"I was injured in 2011 while working in Afghanistan. I stepped on a landmine and lost my legs and my arm. I was 39 years old when that happened. And I went from being a white, privileged, middle class English man who travelled the world who had a very privileged position( and I was aware of that) to somebody who's living with a very serious disability. And it was interesting because I suddenly saw how the world treated me differently."
Giles Duley is a documentary photographer and storyteller, whose work focuses on the long term impact of conflict. Giles is also the CEO of the charity, Legacy of War foundation. https://www.legacyofwarfoundation.com/
"I was at an international conference and had a very interesting conversation with one of the speakers who had walked up to my table. But when I met him outside at the end of the conference, he was shocked with disbelief on his face when he saw me walking with a caliper because he had no idea that I had a disability."
Neena Bhandari has been a career journalist for over three decades. She has worked in India, the UK and Australia, writing on a range of issues from Health and Science to Environment and Development, gender and human rights to travel and indigenous issues.
"The minute I would do the role of an educated woman, an affluent person, I will immediately be told either by the director or the camera person or the makeup person that I know you don't like to lighten your skin. But just for this, could you, because this is an educated open character."
Nandita Das is an actor and director who has acted in more than 40 feature films in 10 different languages. Nandita has passionately supported the campaign against colour bias, ‘India’s Got Colour’. She was conferred the ‘Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters’ by the French Government and was the first Indian to be inducted into the Hall of Fame at the International Women’s Forum.
The charity Nandita supports "India's Got Colour"
"I accepted transgender people, but in my head, and this was something that I wouldn't say to anyone, I sort of thought, oh, isn't that weak to change your body like, shouldn't you accept your own body?"
AJ Juer is a transgender guy living in New Zealand. He's currently based in Christchurch, where he studied at the National Academy of singing and Dramatic Art. AJ has a degree in performing arts, and is now pursuing a career as an actor.
"And one thing about our culture that makes it a little challenging for us when we come abroad and places like the UK and the US, some of the biases and the discrimination goes straight over our heads, because we're not accustomed to it."
Cheryl Hernandez is an executive trainer, life coach, author and international speaker from Trinidad & Tobago who has spent over 40 years helping clients to improve their personal and professional relationships – from CEOs to teenagers. Formerly a music teacher and ordained minister, Cheryl is known for her ability to turn difficult students and employees around.
"The colour of my skin marked me out as it didn't matter whether I was an immigrant or from immigrant heritage, it was the colour of my skin that they saw and attacked, which is why I wrote an album called Beyond skin rather than beyond heritage or beyond anything else. "
"It was actually the fact that your skin colour will be the first thing that people encounter or will see."
Nitin Sawhney is a CBE, a composer, producer, and multifaceted polymath who engages with the arts in every conceivable way through the filter of music.
"We're all human beings you know, let's just get on. And I think that's where I kind of say brush it off, but able to keep going."
Brendan Gilbert is a born and bred Londoner of West Indian Heritage, who runs a security systems company based in South London.
www.bdgsecurity.co.uk
In part two, Anthony Loyd speaks of his experience discovering Shamima Begum in a refugee camp in Syria. “The worst moment for me was of realising how much the focus of rage – for conscious and unconscious bias – that she became to this society.”
Times war correspondent, Anthony Loyd, shares his stories of unconscious bias in regions of conflict, “I'm speaking as someone who is full of prejudice, because I'm neither dead nor a rock.”
“I feel when an Indian girl gets married. She doesn't become a wife. She thinks she should become a mother to the man.”
“I always felt small in my bigness.”
"I can spend the rest of my life hating my body and I have nothing to show for it. Or I embrace myself, because no one else is going to if I don't."
Vidya Balan is a multiple award-winning Bollywood actor who has pioneered a change in the concept of a Hindi film heroine and is referred to as the first female hero of modern times.
Besides being known for her path breaking work in cinema, she's also known for the humanitarian causes she has supported over the years. https://www.arpan.org.in/about-arpan/