Adulting - #34 How To Slay In Your Lane with Elizabeth and Yomi

Episode Date: June 16, 2019

This week I speak to the authors and curators of Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible, Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slay-Your-Lane-Black-Bible/dp/0008306303/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr). We discuss the intersections of race, class and gender, and how they impact our perceptions and opportunities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in again. I really hope you enjoyed last week's episode with Jamie. In today's episode, I speak to Elizabeth and Yomi, who are the co-authors of Slay in Your Lane, A Black Girl's Bible, which sees different articles from inspirational women of colour who carved their own paths to success, despite coming up against so many hurdles from systemic injustice and institutionalized racism. I found it quite a shocking but necessary read in this climate. And I really do recommend that you pick yourselves up a copy. It is also now available in paperback.

And again, thank you so much to everyone who's rated, reviewed and left me a little message on Instagram or on my various platforms. I am always so grateful for your feedback. One last thing to add in this episode, I might sound a little bit lispy. I have Invisalign and I had just put on a new aligner. So I think I was talking a little bit funny, but I hope it doesn't spoil your listening. Please enjoy. Bye. Hi guys and welcome to Adulting. This week I'm joined by Yomi and Elizabeth who are the authors of Slay in Your Lane which is the black girl bible. Hello. Hi. Thanks so much for coming on guys. So today we're going to be talking about exactly that, how to stay in your lane, how to thrive as a black woman, how to find your voice and platform others and I guess that was kind of your inspiration for the book. Do you want to, you talk about it in the intro and it's discussed in the book but how did you come to writing this?

So I was working in the city, like just graduated and it's Elizabeth by the way, we sound alike sometimes so I want to clarify that and I guess I was just you know starting out and you've got all the enthusiasm in the world and you want to kind of like you know make the most of opportunities and I was encountering challenges about how to navigate the kind of workplace and challenges such as microaggressions and a lot of responsibility and just making sure that as a black woman you're kind of like seen and heard in the best possible way and at the same time I was I saw my boss he was he was a white male his boss was a white male his boss is a white male and I was asking myself

okay will I thrive in this environment will ever like Will I be able to kind of like rise through the ranks sort of thing? Is this the best place for me? And so that kind of like, I guess, frustration, but there was also optimism as well. So I would go to like loads of events and networking events in London and meet different types of people, different types of black women. And we all had this sort of energy, energy that I still feel now, an energy that is just part of the, you know, just when you, I think,

when you have to kind of like make do, but you kind of make lemons, you make lemonade from lemons sort of thing. So not everything's perfect, but these women that I met just had so much drive and ambition. And so it kind of all led me to kind of call Yomi my best friend. And I was like, well, I think you should essentially kind of write this book for me, essentially. I love that you asked, you're like, can you write me a book please? Such a tiny teeny request. Yeah.

So then you decided you ended up going to embark on this together and what was your background? So you're working as... Yeah, I was a journalist at Channel 4 News and was essentially, I mean, as Elizabeth said, like she sort of pitched the book to me because I sort of had these grand ambitions of one day writing a book but I had like no idea what it'd be about no kind of like plan to make it happen and then she kind of just gifted me this idea and um yeah it was pretty much like it was

I guess kind of perfect with what I was doing anyway I used to write a lot about sort of black women and had started like a publication sort of aimed at young black women and um this kind of felt like the I'm always kind of say that primordial goop from which it was spawned but like not exactly because this was Elizabeth's idea it was kind of like inadvertently came like to the same conclusion I was trying to do with what I'd been doing before in journalism a thread that runs through the book which I actually as I read it it didn't sound foreign to me I think I've even heard it used in in relation to people of color the the idea that you have to work twice as hard. I feel like, I don't know,

obviously my parents weren't saying that to me, but I know that that was a common thought process that existed when I was little. I don't think I hear it as much now, but when I was at school, that wasn't like, I wasn't shocked by that, which is shocking in and of itself. Did you find that in writing this book,

you came up against barriers or do you think the world is becoming more inclusive and diverse or do you think that inclusion diversity sometimes is um unfortunately tokenism or like trying to fill quotas which I think you talk about a bit and especially like in going to university in certain spaces I'd say I think it's a mix yeah I definitely think it's a combination like in terms of sort of the barriers that we faced when doing this book I think any barriers that we did face are so different to the barriers that somebody else would have faced sort of five ten years ago we always kind of say that this is a book that

has been needed for generations but had it come out sort of five ten years ago would it have necessarily had like a nine-way bidding war would it have had that much sort of press would have had so much excitement around it but then then I also think that obviously it kind of illustrates that there has been so much progress. But then at the same time, as you said, it's kind of like that double edged sword of like, is this just a momentary tokenistic thing? I think that we're kind of of the idea and kind of belief that, you know, even if that is the case, you can take advantage of things and make sort of real change with it. So, yeah, I think it's kind of a mix. is the case you can take advantage of definitely and make sort of real change with it um so yeah I think it's kind of a mix um and I guess even when you look kind of like outside of publishing outside of journalism outside of like Elizabeth's working like marketing where things everything

does feel like it's changing um but then we always kind of talk about institutional change and sort of being like if those changes have to be implemented by you know middle class middle-aged white men um is that really the change that we need to see? Which is that we still, our change, the change that we see is still at the hands of somebody outside of our lived experience deciding whether they want to make a book like this happen. It's still not people that look like us necessarily deciding whether black books, Asian books, books from people from the LGBT community, from whatever background,

books by disabled people. This goes with films, goes with everything. If they should exist, it's not people from those groups necessarily, which kind of makes you feel like you're at the mercy of somebody else. Totally. And I completely agree that progress is often found in the fact that we've been telling these stories. So Me Too is horrific, but the fact that the women are able to talk about it and platform stories is progress in and of itself. another really interesting point you made which I think is so true is like we walk into a bookshop and we forget like once upon a time it would have only been white men whose stories were reading then it was a mixture of just general white people but so when you're buying a book you're not really realizing subliminally the messaging you're reading is

not coming from different cultures or different ethnicities or backgrounds and I think you're right this book's been needed for so long some of the racism you were talking about that you uh the thing that went on at Cardiff Uni I was trying to work out if I was even still there that is it is horrific how because it's not I mean the microaggressions I think I've come to understand at a later date but I just have never really the more literature I take in from black women and different people from different cultures I just realize how naive I am to how every day it is um and how do you how do you cope with it or what what do you feel like have you you had a bit of a positive spin in that actually in the book as well you say that like it seems like people do have ways to talk about it because we have language now to talk about it um and it's well I don't know on the flip side the thing that just happened with Danny Baker awful but he's been sacked but

you're right like those he was still had a voice a massive voice and made a huge racial slur which to anyone in their right mind you know that the connotations with using that kind of language in reference to a person of color is going to be racist so it's kind of that weird I think we're living in a very weird flux. Yeah, and I think as well, he had a show the next day and it was like 1,000 people there and he got like a standing ovation and he was like making jokes and things like that. 1,000 people gave him a standing ovation.

I think that says it all. Like, I think as much progress as we feel like we do make, progress can be undone. Look at what's happening in Alabama like things like that like as much like things can kind of be reversed which is very sad to see um but I think when it comes to like microaggressions and dealing with it we always say that there's no one way to kind of like deal with it because I think as black women we always police ourselves we police each other as well within the community of how to deal with like racism and um it is not like there is no one like you know one rule at all it's it's we it's Michelle Obama talks about

it in a way of like it feels like cuts to you bit by bit and then what at some point you're like you're bleeding but you don't even know why and it's just obviously very serious but um yeah with microaggressions they can be you know very like just off-handed comments but then they can also hurt and I think a lot of the time with microaggressions they always happen quite publicly but you are meant to deal with it in a very private manner um because you can't or you feel a lot of the time that you don't feel empowered to kind of like deal with it right there and then um so yeah it's a very double-edged sword. And I think it was very intentional for us to put terms and language to these things. I think we, like, it was important for us to kind of, like, really put it out on a black paper and just in a book to kind of talk to black women and just say, yeah, these things, we know what they are.

If someone's not, you know, doing a Danny Bakery baker or like which is obviously very overt yeah um or someone's not calling you like a name um other forms of microaggressions and unconscious bias can still leave a stain in how you feel and and things like that so um and you do you can form power to go to your hr go to your boss and talk about it in a way that you know you know makes you feel empowered I think black women have a voice a lot of the it's not they don't have a voice a lot of the time is sometimes you don't feel empowered to use it and that thing goes goes for a lot of like minorities and women as well definitely I mean as you say so many of these stories been told it's just they're not platformed so your book I'm sure these stories so many women will relate to that and be like this has happened to me but it's just that you haven't been able to get into the spaces luckily you'll be trailblazing now for so many young black women

who feel like they want to get their voice heard and I think that your right progress can go back and all the abortion law stuff that's going on the minute is so scary but you see in the faces of the people that voted that and it was 25 white men um which goes to your point about institutional yeah if the same people have the opportunity to take back the rights and take back progress, then it makes such a big difference. So it can't just appear diverse. It has to be more of us grouping together and recognising that the more diversity we have, the better it is for everyone. Sorry, just to Elizabeth's point, there were, I think, four women in the Senate that pushed against it. They were the only people, I think senate that pushed against it um they were

the only people i think that didn't vote for it to take place and that's the law that would actually affect them like as women and it's just you know that thing of like when you when your life and your livelihood and how you're going to live your life is at the hands of people who aren't even affected by the legislation they're passing it's the same thing with you know when you're in the workplace and you know people sort of like repeal um you know sort of hr things that are going to sort of protect somebody or safeguard somebody against sexism racism people aren't necessarily going to be you know most victimized or marginalized by that kind of behavior in the workplace it just i don't know it's just really depressing to feel that somebody else can kind of like totally

bang down a gavel and be like this is what's going to happen to you even though it's got absolutely nothing to do with my experience it is that and it's it's so weird in a world I feel like every time I do an episode at the minute everything's so polarizing because you've got one side where everyone seems really liberal really woke moving forwards and making changes and then you just get these things going on and you're thinking how how can those things coexist you talk a lot about how we say that racism is about ignorance and it's people who aren't educated when actually a lot about how we say that racism is about ignorance and it's people who aren't educated, when actually a lot of the time it is the people in the educated places.

A lot of the time people from a lower socioeconomic background live in more diverse areas, actually have more access to culture and understand it more. And even I recognise, so subconscious racial prejudice I have is walking down the street. If a black man's behind me, I feel more concerned. And I have to tap into that and be like, why are you thinking that? Because that's not necessarily more of an issue than a white man walking behind you.

And I have to really, really think about it. And I think it's good to access that conditioning. Sometimes we all go, oh, I'm not racist. But we've all been conditioned to believe it. It's not necessarily your fault, but it is your fault if you don't try and undo it. Yeah, privilege is, what is it, invincible to those who have it? Invisible, yeah. Invisible to those who have it, yeah.

And I think it's not just about being a woman or being a person of colour, it also is about disability as well. So some disabled people, we talk about people being able to come to the table and have a seat at the table. But if the building isn't wheelchair accessible, then those people can't even get into the building. But that's invisible to a lot of us if you don't have close family friends or just haven't encountered um people who have that lived

experience because um and i think it's what i think we we're all on the journey it's not when we don't wait we're not born woke no like we all have that moment where things become a bit more clearer and we're still on the journey like no one's perfect closely um so i think yeah i think that was really important for us as well and i think that's what's really helped with the book where um we haven't started this. We didn't come to this conversation trying to beat people with a stick and try and like force them. It's very much an inclusive conversation. And I think it was very important for us to have these conversations with black women,

but also like have these conversations with white people as well in the same room. Because there's no, because like people, we know this and as much much as it's very empowering we need everyone to kind of have the conversation together yeah um and it needs to be less passive um i was i was at like a marketing event and someone's like oh how can you like how can we help more black women in like you know creative industries and um and i was like well sponsorship and mentoring is obviously a really big thing and i think that's something that we should be doing more of um we took we talk about it in a book and but I was like rather than you waiting for that black girl to come to you and say um hi knock knock knock can you mentor me why don't you feel empowered to go to her and ask her what she needs it has to work both ways

it can't just feel as if like like we're always further like always kind of you know asking um it has to kind of feel like the conversation is inclusive yeah and you talk about intersectionality in the book and i think that what's happening especially with feminism is feminism's reach so far is recognizing that we might need to go into schools and pick women young girls to do stem subjects we need to get girls to do this but as we go further intersectionally if you're a black if you're black and a woman you've got two like an extra layer're right, I think that feminism then needs to reach even further and go it's not just about gender, it's about ability, it's about race.

Class. Yeah, class, exactly. All of these things that are going to impact someone. I met a guy the other day, I did a TEDx talk, and this guy was like, oh, there's no such thing as privilege. He was like, I'm a mixed race, and if you just want to get there, you can get there. And I was like, it's just not true. If no one's one said to you you can do something much like you said at the beginning

of the book um I can't remember which one of you was that I'm going to be a nurse or a teacher and those were my only options obviously as a young girl you're just like oh fine it's very hard to imagine a world if you can't see and you also talk about representation actually could you talk about representation a bit more yeah I think it's just essentially crucial and just even going back to your point about the guy, the mixed race guy that was kind of, I don't believe in privilege. The thing that's so frustrating about that is that because of his mixed race identity, that then often emboldens people to be like, well, if he believes, exactly. Which is why it's so important to make sure that like everybody's voices are heard. Because what tends to happen is that the minority of minorities that kind of have that view are platformed to sort of be examples within the community to say oh we'll look at this person they don't agree with the wider narrative of what's actually correct but in terms of representation

yeah um for us it was just it's just crucial I think that sometimes um representation what's very very important can be used as a kind of like red herring or kind of distraction from like talking about institutional change and I think that's why we were so as much as we spoke about it like through every pretty much every single chapter in the book we also spoke a lot about the kind of fact that there are a lot of things that are sort of outside of like minorities control disenfranchised people's control that means that unfortunately you know it is that kind of thing of waiting for somebody to kind of decide whether they're going to sort of create the change that you need to you know I mean we can talk a lot about being the change you want to see but again as Elizabeth was saying if you know you're asking to you know pull

up a seat for people and it's physically impossible because you know it's not accessible to them um there's only so far that can go but on the sort of flip side of that like representation so important because if you don't you know there's that phrase that says if you don't see it, then you can't be it. Yes. And I think that's definitely sort of been like a thing between me and Elizabeth. Like even sort of being these authors, it's been super strange to kind of become this, you know, we always kind of talk about the fact that when you do think of an author, when you do think of like, you know, when we, the sort of interviewees that we've had that are like space scientists, you know, we always kind of talk about the fact that when you do think of an author, when you do think of like, you know, when we the sort of interviewees that we've had that are like space scientists, you know, Karen Blackett, who's like the most important woman in advertising, Vanessa King-Gorey, the publisher of British Vogue. You don't necessarily when you kind of hear their titles, I don't think that those the what they look like is what you'd see in your mind when you kind of think of like a space scientist you don't necessarily see like a black woman you don't necessarily even think of a black woman when you hear things like um author so you know me and Elizabeth have

gone to events before and like sort of um sort of gone to panels and been like you know when we've gone to reception and been like oh we're here for the event and people have kind of sort of been like okay well you know you've got a sign in here and we're like oh no no like we're the authors and there's that kind of awkward moment where they're kind of mortified because but then as Elizabeth was saying it's about an inclusive conversation because we're not whilst that's a microaggression we also understand that that's because you know I wouldn't necessarily meet somebody that looked like me or Elizabeth and assume that they were an author because it's just not something you see. I remember once I told Elizabeth, this was like just after the book came out, that there was an article which was talking about how Cardi B's

dentist was like receiving loads of clients after she mentioned her in a song or something or mentioned her in an interview and then accompanying the article of a picture of Cardi B and a black woman with her. And I swear, I just looked at it for like three minutes and was like, oh, where's the dentist? FanDuel Casino Daily Jackpots. Guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do.

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Insane. I was literally like, this is something I write about all the time it just did not cross my mind i've never in my life ever seen a black female dentist i know in america because and it's so funny because elizabeth watches loads of like um you know real housewives and all those kind of upwardly mobile you know the very there's a very big black middle class in america yeah so there are loads of black female dentists and elizabeth was like she'd never make that mistake because she watches all those kind of shows but she was like I understand why you did because I watched the more kind of like ratchet side of like shows a lot of like love and hip-hop and stuff like that but I'd never watched the kind of more like yeah upwardly mobile one so I've never seen a black female dentist so

I just looked at the picture and was like oh wait that's the dentist and I was like but this is exactly what happens to me and that's why I think again representation is so important because it's not just about you know people in positions of power sort of pushing microaggressions and saying, you know, this is what you can be. It's also as black women, as minorities, internalising what we think we can do. Because I never thought I could be a journalist. I definitely never thought I could be an author. I definitely never thought the spaces that me and Elizabeth occupy we'd ever occupy because I've never seen, I can only say to this day, day bar me and Elizabeth I've never seen people that look like us in them yeah so that means like not just being black black dark-skinned young working class she's from Streatham I'm from Croydon

I've never seen Peckham I'm in Streatham sorry oh my god how could I get that wrong I love bringing up Peckham but yeah so I think representation matters not just because of, you know, white men restricting who we think we can be, but also who we believe we can be. Yeah. Well, I think that's what's so interesting that you're talking about it. And we all forget that we've all been conditioned the same way. So many like young black women, I've got a friend who's mixed race and I used to always say stuff about her hair and I'd touch her. And she didn't even know. She was like, we grew up in such a white culture.

We've only spoken about it a few years ago where both of us came to the same understanding race at the same time and she was like I don't even know she was like because we've all been trained in the same way so I think that message of like gentle learning not that it's your emotional labor to teach everyone but when when someone does something a girl that I love called Florence Gibbon always says you can't cancel people for behaviors that you've only just unlearned which I think is something people do behaviours that you've only just unlearned which I think is something people do straight away

they learn a word they're like you can't say that and get really annoyed it's like no you can educate actually I'm naughty doing that sometimes

but yeah we've got to be like gentle with each other and recognise that we've all the systems have kind of played us all in teaching us

where we fit and how other people fit like I still hold really stupid ideas about what it means to be a woman sometimes and I'll like think certain things and you have to unlearn them whether about you or other people.

Yeah. And to your point about emotional labour, I think when we get the representation of like, you know, black people, black women or any sort of minority in a space that, you know, like that they are obviously the minority, that additional labour of having to feel like they're the diversity champion or the person that needs to kind of it's such I don't think we talk about it enough how challenging that can be because it's not their job because

the whole job in itself yeah like it is such a big job I'm not a diversity expert by any means so I'm always hesitant when people ask we're always like we don't you know like we haven't got like this is an actual proper like career for people and I think that we need to ask the experts we have we need to ask the people who actually like make a living out of this and have proven like experience because these people who you know like or they can provide representation but I can't provide you know institutional like yeah how to how to you know restructure this thing that essentially wasn't pre-exists yeah entire life and this yeah exactly and it's so i think like it's such a burden that and i don't like to see as a burden

but i think that you become i think in the book um with uh amir sante talks about when you you know get the seat at the table and you realise you're the only one at the table and you're the minority, that you feel like there's a conflict of speaking from your own voice but also speaking from the voice of your community as well and also having an inclusive conversation with the people that are there and trying to marry all that together. And yeah, I think it can be challenging

and I don't think it's the burden or it's the work of the people who, you know, have kind of like been let through the gate essentially. It's a whole work on its own. I know that. And as you're saying that, I know I'm guilty of making women of colour or people who are the minority group in the room do that.

And it's really tough, isn't it? And I know that I've got a friend, it's really obvious in the fitness industry, but I've got a friend in the fitness industry who's often the only woman of color on a panel and that is just her immediate question she's probably one of the most qualified there and just as you're saying that I was recognizing that I wouldn't walk into obviously this book is tied into race so it's a bit more credence to talk about it but no one's going to be like so you're a white author what's it like what's it like being a white author a white woman I've actually tried to start saying when I talk about someone she was a white woman just so that there's a balance there

because it's really it's really hard to know how to balance out the way that we talk about and signify like labels yeah and being and being a black woman is part of my identity yeah but also being from a working-class background also being you know best friends to your me there's so many facets to my personality but there are things that obviously institutional things that hold me back from thriving and obviously one being me being a woman and obviously me being definitely um black but if i had a disability a physical disability that'd be also be at the forefront of my identity as well um but shouldn't it shouldn't have to be but it is because we're still at the point where we're kind of trying to challenge like

these confections conventions and things that these traditions yeah i think sorry i was just gonna know i was just about to say as well like in the same way that being a black woman informs elizabeth's and my identity like being a white woman does yeah women's identities because then there is relative privilege that literally when you're contextualizing a story and being like oh that it was a white woman like I do that all the time with stories because I do, in the same way that, you know, with my experience and how being black might mean that, you know, I don't know,

there's just a different kind of worldview and just different lived experience. And I feel that oftentimes white people and middle-class people and men get really tetchy about, because they feel their experience is default, but it's not. It very much shapes them in the same way that being from a working-class background, and men get really tetchy about because they feel their experience is default but it's not it's very much shapes them in the same way that being from a working-class background being you know having a

disability shapes anybody else and it's really interesting because um my sister has a disability she's quadriplegic and the other day we were talking about um mental health because i was writing a piece about mental health and accessibility to it and she just told me something i'd never even thought of which was that she was complaining about the question standardized questionnaires they provide for people that um have that are seeking counseling and she said that oh you know she didn't feel they spoke to her and I was like why and she said because for me when I'm sort of trying to access mental health services or anything like that I feel they don't speak to me because racial stuff and cultural stuff so she was saying on that level they don't speak to her but also they'll ask

questions like okay in terms of depression like did you feel able to get yourself ready in the morning she's quadriplegic she's not able it doesn't matter exactly if she is you know i get really annoyed about stuff like this but it doesn't matter if she is you know in a great mood she still won't be able to do that yeah it's such a such an oversight because i'm not saying that you know they shouldn't include those questions but it doesn't apply to a very large part of the population and again that this is why I'm like every facet of who you are does inform what you do and how you think and what your lived experience is and we don't think about that hence why we get these questions that would alienate me and Elizabeth on one level alienate my sister on

another level alienate like loads of different people on different levels well the sad you talk about systems and the sad thing is that systemic injustice is because they were designed to alienate this world was created by white cisgender middle-class men and i i intersect on all of those levels apart from the man so i am heterosexual cisgendered able-bodied etc so pretty much all the worlds i can get into most doors and i can appear and whilst I have problems of gender inequality most of the rooms are able I'm able to access but the further you go down those systems the problem is they're so deeply entrenched with the sisters so long that whilst we're all becoming our generation of women especially I think are really like I want to

let people in it's like those forms have been printed the same as past like 30 years and no one's so it's the small I think sometimes the loud voices like the media and maybe not mainstream media but we are getting stories out there but it's in the really small the minutiae like fat people want to go to the gym and everyone's like you're really overweight you should go to them they can't get through the freaking barriers yeah literally it's like if it's just the most obvious yeah so it's like you can't and people like we don't really see disability it's like of course you don't who's going to get on the tube in a wheelchair how are you going to get there so I think because it's outside it's out of mind and whether that was done years ago with really abject racism um and people

didn't recognize it because they didn't see it like now we're seeing it more so it wasn't built for like you know if you're not a straight white male it wasn't built for you to thrive and it's so hard because it's so hard because our like same lane is obviously very optimistic optimistic and it's you know black we can't we can't sit there and just cry all the time you know this is bad this is bad we have to make do and make the most of life and that's like we and we have our brand is essentially you know like you know being optimistic and because that's just a black female experience it isn't just you know resided in just know, being optimistic and because that's just a black female experience. It isn't just, you know, resided in just misery. But it's so hard being, having, struggling that with, you know, advice and optimism because, you know, as well, because when people ask us about advice and like, oh, how do you do this? How do you do that?

And a lot of the time, especially when it's to do with like corporate structures, a lot of the time I'm always, it's always hard because I always think that as much advice I can give you it's not these these are make do as well bits of advice they're not going to massively you know empower you means that tomorrow you can rise up in the ranks and things like that like it's always I always find it challenging and it's something that kind of like, you know, bears on my conscience a lot of the time because I always think that we're talking about, you know, how to thrive and how to, you know, slay and how to do this as black women. And we're trying to advise other black women.

But the problem isn't us. The problem is the institution and trying to balance, you know, that communication as being something that's, you know, not just miserable, like, you know, oh, doom doom and gloom but also balancing it with optimism is something that I personally struggle with and I'm still struggling with but I think you I think you have to be optimistic because I think that whilst I agree with you the systems are against us a lot of the time I do actually really believe in like people power I really do think that we're coming up like there's so much of us that we're just so disengaged with the establishment when I cannot relate to you I do not understand your train of thought

and actually if we band you together and that does mean that our feminism needs to be inclusive of black women and people who are disabled and not just like white feminism that's marches of just white faces and inclusion of like trans people etc and I think that will make a difference but I think it's you shouldn't be like you say what bearing the weight of all it on your own absolutely and often you you physically can't and I completely get what Elizabeth was saying about that conscience thing because some of the reviews and feedback we've had has been like well I wanted to learn how to stay in my lane why don't you guys tell me and we're like because we don't know and because honestly like to honestly say like yeah this is how the answer would probably

be literally usurping the entire like western society as we know it and starting again and we can't do that so when like for instance I had news yesterday that like um Warwick University where we went has um decided to lower did you see that Elizabeth like lower um entry like requirements for people from disadvantaged backgrounds that is so important. That is what, like, you know, that's what we're talking about when we're like, okay, you know, there's certain things that, that's not something we could have done. That's not something anybody could have done, like, as an individual. But there was somebody that decided that, because, you know, funny enough, Ifua Hirsch, one of the interviews in our book, suggested that. She was like, I think that if you've gone to private school and you've been primed for Oxford your whole life and you get three A's, it's not the same as somebody that's gone to a state school, is on three school meals from a single parent household and has got three B's.

Yeah. That is like, that person has truly managed to absolutely outdo themselves given their background. And the fact that Warwick, which, you know, despite lots of stuff that's said in the book, has always been, like, quite a progressive, quite, like, you know, they've really tried in terms of who they've let in. Absolutely. Because there were a lot of us from, like, you know, working class backgrounds from South London, like, in our year group. Well, not a lot, but there were.

Like, you could just see in terms of who they allowed in. Like, they definitely were thinking about it. And the fact that they've, like, lowered that entry requirement, obviously we know there's going to be pushback of, like, oh, this is, you know, like special treatment or whatever. But I'm glad that they've understood that. You know what I mean? That difference is the same thing as like when my sister gets extra time because, you know, she uses an eye gaze to write her essays.

You know, she's probably smarter than anybody there, but it physically takes her longer. You know, they're not going to be like, well, you're going to get the exact same amount of time because, you know, you're literally using your retinas to type. Like they've accommodated and i think that lowering of entry um requirements is exactly that thing we're talking about where it's like we need to kind of talk about why these things are important but somebody needs to make that decision like those assholes did in alabama to like yeah you know i mean pass an abortion like that legislation we need people to be doing that for the right things and deciding universities as well absolutely i think because one of the things especially in corporate world and in the city it's like well if you're lowering the you know requirements to get into university you're lowering

requirements to get into a job like that means that you know the quality i just want the best candidate okay if i go on your website right now and majority of your senior leadership are white male are you telling me that's because of talent no so it doesn't work so your system doesn't work so it's it's you know i mean so we're not when i go on like all these websites and i look at all the kind of like people who are in the senior leadership or even middle management and they're all white it's not because they are better no and i think as when you're minority you're kind of fed and when you're you know from a working class background you think that you know people are there because they're meant to be there,

because they're better, because they have bigger brains and they're clever. No, it doesn't work like that. It's not like... I actually went to private school and I think that's a great idea. I totally agree. It's like, why would you not redistribute that? Like, the level of education, the class size, it's ridiculous. Like, you should be doing well.

It's actually, if you're going to pay, like, that makes makes total sense to me Katya Moran said an amazing thing once she was like what the government make you do is they make you punch down they don't want you to look up so they'll make you feel like it's someone below you's caused this or it's it's your fault and you're never really yeah you're never really looking at what wait a minute why have I been put in this position I think about about money all the time like why would you want to be a billionaire I don't really get it. Do you see that stat? It was like you'd have to spend,

if you've spent like £33,000 every day for so many years and still wouldn't spend your money. So insane. And that weird idea, I don't know why you'd have it when you could read just, everything would be better if everyone, it's so weird.

It's the same reason why people vote for people who are from working class backgrounds vote conservative and policy and economic policies to kind of in terms of like tax and things like that that don't benefit them. Yeah. Because one day they feel like they can achieve that. Yeah. And if they do become a millionaire tomorrow, they want to be able to benefit from that. And that's a lot of the type of thinking and it's just it's hard because then you have that imposter syndrome that you think that oh the reason like you feel like you're imposter even when you do like you know do well and it's

it's you're not an imposter you're not you're not there because you snuck in because the people that are there aren't aren't better than you by any means but they've been raised to think i think this is the one thing about private school it's so fascinating i mean noticed it when warwick is that you you know and it's's not necessarily a negative thing. I just wish everyone was raised to it. It's very different when your parents are paying for you to do well because you absolutely believe that you should be in specific spaces. And you're raised to know that, you know, these aren't unattainable things. All of Parliament looks like you went to schools went to the same schools like why would you look at a space like I want to be prime minister and see that as unattainable when you know that is what

the majority of parliament's made up with but then when you're just this like normal person from a normal background and you don't see anybody and this is going back to that representation point like and again it's that thing of even being a billionaire like I think one of the reasons people can hold wealth in that way is because it becomes very easy to look at another human being and feel like you deserve to have more than them which is so dangerous but it really is that that ideology like it's you know it's the same thing with classism white supremacy sexism when you know when you've been raised to be like I am superior in some way whether that's because you're white because you're male because you're rich you can look at genuinely another person it's that you

know not to get or whatever but honestly it's why we can see natural disasters and you know um tragedies happen in other countries and it's like you know let's say the death tolls like 77 77 brown bodies versus you know a tragedy of like 10 exactly white people exactly we don't we don't humanize anymore no i agree um yeah so i think people can sit there spending 33 000000 a day when they could literally change somebody's complete life and just feel like well I deserve this because you know

it's almost like divine rule I work harder yeah and we have a monarchy so we definitely believe that certain people just are born deserving to have more things

I think that fundamentally it always comes back down to this for me it's education it's if we could redistribute wealth and redistribute education there just wouldn't be

inequality because we know that if we educate girls about contraception we know that will help with the environment we know there'll be less poverty and all of these things and as much as you feel like you don't know how to say so in your lane you've written a fucking book sorry that's unbelievable and that is education and that's something that someone can go and buy even if they can't get a uni degree so i think we have to respond very hard left very sweet very very communist i know i'm loving it but I think it's just to recognise

how I think we all get that feeling of imposter syndrome and I just want us all to see that we can actually do like if we dump down things down

and go oh like I can't do this and it's like you'll never do it and we've got to believe that things that we're saying like see the change be perseverant

whatever I actually think it's amazing did you have anything else you wanted to add? I think that was great thank you so much a lot off our chest

honestly yeah thank you so much that was so great it's really lovely to meet you guys likewise man thank you and if people want to find you online or are there any events you're doing

that you'd like to so our paperback comes out oh yes June the 13th so that's really we're excited for that so we'll have some events around that time and our social media is slaying your lane at slaying across all social media platforms and we'll be announcing events and things that we're doing via those channels amazing thank you

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