Pod Save America - Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith

Episode Date: January 16, 2022

This week, the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joins Jon on Offline to talk through the viral essay on social media that she wrote last June. The two discuss what compelled her to write that essay, how the internet has changed the way we interact with ideas, and the changes she’s seen in recent literature.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

It seems to me that literature is the last thing that we can depend on to tell us the truth about who we are. Because politics can no longer do that. Politicians have to lie. I mean, they have to. I'm not talking about your speeches, John. No, I know, I know. I'm not saying you had to tell us a few burnished lies. Because Brother Barack had to say what he had to say.

I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. My guest this week is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian feminist and writer of novels, short stories, and nonfiction. In 2009, she gave a speech about cultural representation called The Danger of a Single Story

that's become one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time. A few years later, she delivered another speech called We Should All Be Feminists that became so famous it was sampled by Beyonce for the song Flawless. So why am I interviewing her for Offline? Well, last summer, when I was first thinking about doing the show, a friend sent me an essay that Chimamanda had written, an essay that went so viral it briefly crashed her website. It was about social media. And here's the part where my jaw dropped. Quote, She goes on to write that, quote, we have a generation of young people on social media

so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness, but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us.

It is obscene. End quote. So yeah, she has some strong feelings on the topic. And you can read the whole essay on her website, Chimamanda.com. It's good context for the conversation you're about to hear. But the story behind the essay is also really important. So I want to explain that too. Chimamanda wrote this piece about accusations of transphobia that were directed at her on social media by two people who had attended one of her writing workshops. One, a young feminist whom she was close to.

The other, a non-binary writer who later identified themselves as a Kweke Emezi. And the reason they accused Chimamanda of being transphobic is because of an interview she gave in 2017 where she said, When people talk about, are trans women women, my feeling is trans women are trans women. Many people, especially in the trans community, found that statement hurtful and exclusionary. They felt that Adichie's comment implied that trans women were somehow lesser than cis women, and that she should have included trans women in the broader category of womanhood. Chimamanda clarified her statement soon after the interview in a Facebook post, where she wrote,

Perhaps I should have said that trans women are trans women, and cis women are cis women, and all are women. Because saying trans and cis acknowledges that there is a distinction between women born female and women who transition without elevating one or the other, which was my point. I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people, not merely because of the violence they experience, but because they are equal human beings deserving to be what they are. End quote. This statement did not make the controversy go away. It continued on social media and in the press for the next several years until Chimamanda

called out her two former students in the pretty fiery essay she wrote last June. This is obviously complicated. A debate that probably shouldn't be adjudicated on social media because it involves nuance and requires context. And that's partly why I wanted to interview Chimamanda. Certainly not to adjudicate this controversy myself, though I do ask her about it, as well as her beliefs about trans women. And you can judge her answers for yourself. But what I really wanted to know is why this very prominent Nigerian feminist and global literary figure

has been so troubled by what she describes as a, quote, passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter, but not in the intimate space of friendship. I wanted to know why she thinks that good faith in a world of social media is dead, and why she believes that's dangerous for activism, for politics, and for literature. And so I asked. And she had quite a lot to say. As always, if you have questions, comments, or complaints about the show, feel free to email us at offline at crooked.com. Here's Chimamanda Ngozi-Ediche.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. I wanted to talk to you today about an essay you wrote last June on the subject of social media, because this is a show about all the ways that social media is shaping humanity for good, but mostly bad. And I figured you might have some strong opinions on that, especially after writing an essay that went so viral, I believe it briefly crashed your website. So for people who don't know, the story behind this essay starts with two people who attended one of your writing workshops in Nigeria. But before we get into the essay itself, I'm just curious, like, how long have you done these workshops? Why do you do them? What do you hope people get out of them? So I've done them for 10 years, I think. And really, I just, I wanted to give people kind of what I didn't have when I started out,

which is a community of writers. A community of writers who are not just Nigerian, but African. So the workshop is kind of, I think of it as Pan-African because I started it really with my very dear dear friend who's now passed away Binyavanga Wainaina who was a brilliant Kenyan writer and we both felt that we come from a continent where writing is still considered something odd to want to do and you know when I I was growing up, I was supposed to be a doctor because when you do well in school, you're supposed to do something serious. And I wanted to be a writer, right? And I think that's the same story for so many people. And so I kind of wanted

to, when I was published and started being well-known in Nigeria, I thought, I want to try and create this community of people who can gather in a room and realize that that thing that they want to do is perfectly normal. Right. And when you're surrounded by people who want to do the same thing, you start to feel less strange and less odd. Yeah. And also, I think I just wanted to let them kind of just give them a sense of here's what I did. Here's how it works, that sort of thing. So the writing workshop is not just about writing stories, which obviously, but I think stories are rooted very much in politics and in social issues. So we talk about all kinds of things.

And a dear friend of mine, I love to tell this story, a dear friend of mine who visited the workshop, who's Norwegian, said to me, it's not just a writer's workshop, right? And he said, A, you're brainwashing them for good. Always a good use of brainwashing. But I think what he meant was that we just talked about everything that we talked about. So you're writing a story, but we need to talk about the backdrop to it. We need to talk about the politics in Nigeria. I mean, anyway, so you can tell that I'm very passionate and proud of this workshop and it has created a community.

created a community. So in the past 10 years, there is now a community of people who went to this workshop and who have gone on to be published, who have gone on to start magazines, who are just doing things in the world and telling stories. And I think the only thing that I would say is a negative for me is that I have to write too many bloody recommendation letters. Because now they all... They all start to blend together after a while, don't they? So I probably shouldn't say this publicly, but we should do copy and paste. You know, they're all really brilliant. So like, brilliant, let them into your writing program.

I've been there. I've been there. No, I mean, as someone who was supposed to go to law school but wanted to do more writing, I would have probably benefited a great deal from being in a writer's workshop of a community of other writers. So it's fantastic that you're doing that. So can you talk a little bit about what happened with the two attendees you wrote the essay about? So really, I'm going to tell you a very short version of it, which is that one of them kind of became a person that I would ask to come to dinner at my house and lunch. And I would talk to her about things because she was a young feminist. And I, at the time, believed very much in talking to young feminists.

And so we would have these conversations. I think I took on a role of a mentor of sorts. And the other writer who didn't necessarily come to my house, but I supported because I would write recommendations. And then I gave an interview in London in which I was asked about trans women. And I said that I think that trans women and women have different experiences. This was then said to be transphobic but for me what

was just shocking was that these people who knew me, these two writers, then went on social media and just started writing utter nonsense about how I wanted to kill trans women and how I was a murderer. It was upsetting and quite hurtful, I have to say. But I thought, you know what, this is how it works now. So just, you know, just move on. And then my parents died. My father died in June of last year. My mother died in March.

And it's just really completely changed everything for me. I feel that I've become a different person in so many ways because my parents were such central anchors in my life, right? So, my nephew calls me one day and he says, auntie, he was upset and he says, Auntie, there are people saying that grandpa and grandma died as punishment for you because you're transphobic. And, you know, there's a kind of rage that is new to me now in the face of grief. I just thought,

I think I'm okay with being insulted because I think it's part of, but it just felt to me, this is a no-go area. You do not say that about my parents who have died. I mean, I just, I lost it. And so in a very sort of angry 3 a.m. in the morning phase, I wrote that essay. And can I just say I have no regrets. I would write it again exactly as I wrote it. That's the background to what these two people did. But I think for me, the essay then became about something bigger than these two writers.

It became about, and I don't want to sound, there are times when I worry that I'm starting to sound like a cantankerous old uncle, you know, where I say things like, we're not civil anymore. We do not talk to each other with compassion, but it's true.

I mean, and I find that really worrying on so many levels. Well, you know, we talk about this on the show all the time. I've had that same experience as you have as well, which is I think you and I are only a couple of years apart. And every time I'm complaining about the vitriol on social media, I always think to myself, am I just like some and I sort of want to get into them with you. And I think you identified the first, which is just sort of the nastiness on social media when you're sort of behind a screen and you don't see the face of the person that you're communicating with. And then I think there's a second issue, which is it sort of strips away context and sort of the full explanation from the positions that you take and what you believe. So just on that, like, I know that shortly after you gave that March 2017 interview, you wrote a Facebook post because you said you wanted to clarify your thoughts.

And, you know, you wrote in that post, perhaps I should have said trans women are trans women and cis women are cis women and all are women. So, you know, just trying to, again, the media coverage of this is like all over the place too. So was your statement simply about pointing out the different life experiences of cis women and trans women? And why was it important for you to just point out those differences? I did also say, I think in that post, that cis is not part of my vocabulary. And the reason I say that is that I think a lot of this conversation

is about language. And I, you know, obviously as a person who, you know, earns a living by writing, language is really important to me and clarity of language and meaning, right? It's really important to me to ask what does this mean and where does this come from? And I think, you know, I've strangely become a kind of feminist icon, which I like to joke about. And there are many good things about it. But that's not my day job. I'm actually a

storyteller. The thing that I'm interested in is reading and writing. I want to spend all of my time reading poetry and fiction and hopefully writing a bit of that too. But talking about feminism then made me become this sort of feminist icon. And I think maybe because I talked about it in a way that's accessible to people and in a way that wasn't about jargon and also wasn't about theory. But then what it did, I think, is that for many people, I was then expected to become this kind of expert. And the expectation as well was that I knew the language.

I'm actually not joking when I say that until that sort of furore that happened, I did not in fact know what cis meant. So I'm not in the feminist academic circle. I don't know the latest language. I don't, you know. I'm much more likely to read a memoir by a trans woman than I am to read theory about transgender ideology because I'm interested in stories and in human beings. So anyway, so I said that. And why did I say that it's important to note the differences?

Because it is. I mean, there are things that are fairly obvious, but for ideological reasons, we're no longer allowed to say them. I'm a feminist because from the time that I was three years old, I knew that being born in this female body meant that there were so many things I was going to be excluded from. Actually, we've just been having a conversation in my family because being female means that I cannot inherit certain things. My parents have just passed away. They're things that when you're a woman, you cannot inherit. And so my point was,

it's okay to acknowledge differences, but also it's important, I think, because what's happening on the left in the U.S. is that there's a kind of expectation that if you acknowledge difference, then you're attaching value to it, right? So now there's a hierarchy of oppression. So, well, she said that because she means that trans women are lesser than. And I'm thinking, of course not. I mean, and anybody who knows me knows I don't think that way. I don't think there's any human being who's lesser than, right? I mean, I just don't. The other thing I wanted to say is, just in talking about these two writers who went on social media,

for me, it's not, I really do welcome people disagreeing with me, right? I really do. I like, I really do welcome people disagreeing with me, right? I really do. I like, actually quite like a good argument about ideas. What I did not like and what I found awful was that they could easily have called me or sent a text or emailed because they had access to me and we knew each other. And so there's something very performative

about going on social media and sort of doing this. Well, it's like, it's interesting because as I sort of went down the rabbit hole preparing for this interview, and, you know, again, I came into the contact with the essay first. I read that first. And then, of course, I tried to look at the backstory. And it did seem like the entire controversy was centered around a misunderstanding where when you pointed out differences, people did attach a value statement to those differences.

And they thought that you were saying that somehow trans women should be excluded from womanhood in general, which sounds like it's not what you think at all. And like, it doesn't seem like, are there any policies that the trans community supports that you oppose, whether it's ability to access gender affirming healthcare or the inclusion of trans women in women's spaces? No, the one thing that I'm thinking about, I'm actually writing an essay about this and I've read, and it's interesting because since this happened, I feel like I've become an authority of sorts on this subject because I went and I read every damn thing I could find. Because I really was taken aback. I didn't quite understand what all of the vitriol was about. I really was genuinely taken aback by it.

And so I thought I'm missing something, right? There's clearly something that I'm missing. So I then started reading. For people listening and who are confused, you are, I've heard you say this before, you're supportive of the trans community and you're supportive of, you know, I think I heard you say, if any country is denying access to gender affirming healthcare, that's immoral. You're opposed to that. And that's all true. I am. I am. I mean, I'm completely but but, you know, there's also something about having to say this that I find upsetting. Right. You know, it's kind of like a politician who's kind of made to say, you know,

you're racist with no evidence and that a politician suddenly has to say, no, I'm not. And then the headline then becomes politician denies being racist, which in itself gives a certain kind of power to it. So I find myself really bristling, you know, really bristling and having to state what seems to me fairly obvious. I think that anybody who knows the things that I've stood for cannot possibly think that I would agree to a group of people being excluded from any kind of access to civil rights. I just, it's just not the person that I am. It's funny that you talked about being a politician, because in some ways, in many ways, social media sort of forces everyone to become politicians now. And like everyone, every public

figure, and even people who are sort of not really public figures are expected to like post their beliefs and statements and those statements and beliefs gets picked apart much like you would with a politician and again you know it's one thing if someone has a position that you oppose and they should be called out for that but sometimes the context disappears um when you're when you're on social media but i do want to get to your um your point about performance which you talked about and you know later in the essay wrote, you notice in certain young people today, a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter, but not in the intimate space of friendship. We've talked a lot on this show about how social media can turn life into an endless performance.

Gia Tolentino coined that phrase. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that is? Because there are benefits to it. There's very little to gain from being thoughtful or acknowledging nuance. But there's a lot to gain from having that sharp one sentence killer about someone, right? That you get the likes and you get cool and I guess you get more followers. So there are benefits to it. Offline is brought to you by Keeps.

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I've thought about it. And maybe this is what they know. And I should say as well that it's not just about people like me who, you know, are public figures and have a platform. The so-called young people who are participating in this kind of thing are themselves also, I think, suffering from it. Because I think there is a kind of fear that they live in not just a bubble of what I like to call a kind of ideological orthodoxy, but also a bubble of fear, of fear of saying the wrong thing, because they worry that their own will come after them. And so, you know, I think sometimes, and maybe this is also a consequence of my feeling that people are generally better than, I mean, I really

think that human beings fundamentally on the whole are not too bad, right? And so I sometimes think that the young people who are on social media and just writing this awful, nasty things are doing it out of fear. Because I think there's a sense in which if you then say, well, maybe we should have a bit more nuance in this conversation, your people will come after you because then they'll say you're, I guess, selling out or being a pick me. These are all the things I've been learning because I'm not on Twitter. Do you use social media? Like how much are you on social media?

I have an Instagram. Instagram, you know, Instagram is, Instagram is gentle. Instagram is really just a celebration of vanity. Certainly compared to Twitter. Certainly compared to Twitter. And I'm all for vanity. So I think Instagram, but I don't even do it myself. My assistant does. So we just talk about which picture should we put up.

But the reason I don't do it myself is really because I recognize that I have, I recognize my personality flaws. And I know that I would get into fierce fights. And so I just step away. fierce fights. And so I just step away. I would not have the self-control to not sort of get involved in rolling the mud. So that's why I'm not on Twitter. Well, I thought it was interesting, and you say in the essay, and you just mentioned that, you know, this fear of having the wrong opinion is sort of robbing people of the opportunity to think and learn and grow, partly because in this day and age, we are thinking and learning and growing out loud in public in front of everyone else. And so there's sort of less room for error. I think the challenge

is all of social media now is just flooded with opinions all day long. It's mostly opinions, unfortunately. How do you think we should distinguish between opinions that are merely bad or even offensive and opinions that are harmful or feel threatening to some people? And who gets to draw that line? Yeah, that's the question. Who gets to? And that's why, by the way, I really mean what you said about opinions for me. That's also one of my issues. I mean, what you said about opinions for me, that's also one of my issues.

I think maybe we should do less opinion and more like fact. So there's a, I love this line, this lovely line from a lovely poem by Robert Lowell. And the line is, and why not just say what happened? what happened. And I think about this a lot because, and I think also just in terms of thinking about what's going on in the US right now, for example, all of the noise about CRT. Yes, critical, yeah, critical race. Yeah, which on the one hand, for me, I just think this is just complete nonsense from the right, right? But then on the other hand, I think the answer for the left is not just to say, nobody's teaching CRT to your kids. The answer is maybe to talk about it.

How is, in fact, the history of African Americans taught in American schools? I kind of feel that maybe we should have more of a fact-based and more narrative approach to things. And so when a person has an opinion, maybe we should talk about what's backing up that opinion. You don't just wake up and pull things out of the air, right? I mean, so for me, I really want to gauge what a person is saying. If somebody has an opinion, I want to understand where is it coming from? What does it mean? What are the facts behind it? understand where is it coming from? What does it mean? What are the facts behind it? What's the story behind it? And the question about who gets to say which opinion is offensive,

that's part of living in a democracy. Nobody gets to say. And maybe this is also a question about that age-old idea of free speech and where the line should be drawn. So I'm a person who believes very much that the answer to a bad idea is more ideas. I do not believe that the answer to a bad idea is somehow to find ways to stifle it. Because I think that when you suppress things, they only fester. And I know this as a person who's a storyteller. I mean, just human nature is like that. And I think there's a lot on the left that is about suppression that I think is really unhealthy. Well, it's interesting on your point about critical race theory. I've thought about this a lot as well because, you know, you're right.

The right has their story about critical race theory. And their argument, their opinion is that the left is teaching kids to hate America. And then sometimes the left response is, that's not real. That's not really happening. But I think about, you know, your most viewed TED Talk ever about the danger of a single story. I do think this is, we're better off in a contest of narratives and a contest of stories with the right. And so if the right is going to say the left is teaching a history of America that causes people to hate America,

I think that the left should tell a story about America that is real, that is based in slavery as our original sin and the racism, the systemic racism that still exists here, but also the movements of people over the decades and the years, civil rights activists, women's rights

activists, who have overcome and made progress in this country. And that's why this country is still worth fighting for. That's why this ideal is worth fighting for. And so, if you start to tell a story that people can recognize them... Can I just say that's very Obama-esque. So, that's what you were getting... That's what you got up to when you wrote those speeches, right? He was my writing workshop teacher, yeah. No, but I kind of agree with that in political terms, but just more outside of politics. My thing is just say what happened. I think the focus on history should be more narrative.

I really don't think, and I think maybe if African-American history in particular were taught in a more narrative way, maybe the conversations we're having today would not be so fraught. I think that if people really understood just the magnitude of, and I'm just going to use a word like evil, that the American state perpetrated on black people, I think that most, you know, good human beings would not be so horrified at the thought of reparations, for example. I feel as though part of the problem with the state of the conversation, and I know that, of course,

there are always going to be people on the right, a certain kind of person on the right who just doesn't want to hear it. But I think if we were more familiar, right? I mean, I remember for me when I came to the US and I started reading African-American history, because even I knew very little about black history. And I just was stunned.

And so, you know, my American home is in Maryland. And to think that as recently as the 70s and communities in that state, people were draining their swimming pools so that black families would not swim. And for me, I'm thinking, what? You know, it's not slavery. It's in the 1970s.

And I think if people knew this, not in a way of saying somehow you're bad or even look how good you are because we've overcome that, but simply here's what happened. I think maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm being too optimistic, but maybe the conversation today would be, I don't know, maybe just less. It's just I just find that when race comes up in the U.S. on both sides, the left and the right, there's a problem with it. There's a problem with the way that it's, the conversation is had. I mean, you do not reach people by sneering at them. And there are people who believe the CRT nonsense, who actually believe it, who maybe if you're engaged with them and said to them, actually, here's what's been taught in schools. And by the way, here's your history. Maybe,

I don't know. Would it change their minds? I don't know. But I do know that yelling and sanctimony and sneering is not working. And the left is very good at sneering. Well, it's interesting. I mean, again, I come at it from the political standpoint. Some people, you won't change their minds at all, for sure. Some people, they believe it. And if you told them the other side, they'd still believe it. And, you know, they believe in racist ideas. But there's a lot of people in the country. There's 300 plus million people. I've been saying on the show is I think what social media does is we are very good if we're on social media a lot at knowing exactly what people think who are on our side, who think just like us, who are partisans on the left. We're also pretty good at knowing what people on the far right think because they're pretty loud on Twitter too. And I think that obscures the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people who aren't on social media, who aren't voicing their opinions, who actually have pretty complex views on a lot of different issues.

And I think we have to try at least to meet them where they are and then persuade them to come along. And I think that social media has made people feel that, yeah, maybe persuasion is just hopeless at this point because we know that the right is dug in and we know that we're dug in and there's no one left in the middle to persuade it. And in the middle is a problematic term anyway, because people think it means like you're centrist and that's not necessarily what it means. It means you could have all kinds of different views, very progressive views, some conservative views. Yeah. Which is interesting in itself, I think. But I mean, to what you said, I'm just struck by that word persuasion, because I am a keen believer in persuasion.

And I think I think it's important in politics. We cannot write a person off starting out. I mean, I feel like it's important to give a bit of room. And my general feelings is there's some people that I just will not talk to because there's no point. And I say this in conversations about feminism. And here I am in Lagos, and this is a country that is refreshing in the sense that people are very in your face about what they think about women, unlike in the U.S. where they will not tell you, but they're thinking it.

So, you know, it's true. So in the U.S., where they will not tell you, but they're thinking it. So, you know, it's true. So in the U.S., I think when Hillary Clinton was running, there were people who felt a woman cannot be president, but they would probably not be willing to say it. In Nigeria, I've just been in my home state, my ancestral home state, and a woman was running for governor. And a bunch of men just say, oh, but a woman can't be governor. They're just like, yeah, a woman just can't be governor. There are certain men who have these opinions that I think there's no point. They will never change. But in that cohort of men, there are people who I think we can have a conversation. And if I can try and shift his view just a little bit, he has power. He's then going to go on to

shift policy, hopefully. And that's how we change the world. I think change has to be incremental. I mean, we're not children in preschool who want everything and want it now. The sad thing about being adults in the adult world is to realize that, you know, persuasion is a good thing. Compromise in certain ways is a good thing. Do you think persuasion is possible on the sort of social media platforms we have today? Because that's where I keep... No. Yeah.

No, I don't think it is. I just don't think it is. The platform Twitter in particular, I think, because Facebook is kind of... Facebook is an entirely different kind of monster. I mean, it just kind of feeds people nonsense. But I do think that the social media platforms are not, you know, the DNA of these platforms are not to encourage thoughtful persuasion, I don't think. But can they maybe, I mean, they're not right now, but can they?

But can they maybe, I mean, they're not right now, but can they, what if we all kind of, you know, drank a potion that made us all sort of a bit more compassionate and a bit more patient? Would we use social media differently? I mean, I think there are spaces where, you know, you can text groups of friends and you're willing to have a more honest, thoughtful, nuanced conversation because the whole world isn't paying attention to every single word you say so that you're not arguing with this fear in the back of your mind that if you make a mistake, trip up, say the wrong thing, reveal some ignorance that you may have, which every human has, then that's it for you. Or people are going to come to you now. And so I think if there are ways, you know, the problem, you know, someone who focuses on disinformation always says it's not necessarily about free speech. It's about free reach. And everyone has free speech and there should be free speech on platforms. But you don't have a right to, not everyone has a right to say things that just go as far as possible, nor is that necessarily a good idea to have a situation where every single thing that we're saying all the time goes to every single person in the world. Because that level of connection, that intensity of having the whole

world be that much connected is going to lead to some bad things. Oh, and it has led to some bad things. Look at your former president and what he did with social media. Yeah, no, that was, that's a very good example of leading to bad things. I mean, you hit on something at the end of the essay that I think is sort of central to all this. You wrote, the assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness, but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out angel one another. God help us, it is obscene. Why do you think the assumption of good faith is dead?

Oh, I don't know. Do you know, I really don't know. It's something I think about quite a bit. And I think it's something that's kind of happened in the past, maybe 10, 15. I think it's relatively recent in the sense that when I, so I first came to the US in 1997 to go to college. And obviously social media wasn't much of a thing then. But in just having conversations, even in just small academic circles, I think there wasn't that much fear of, you know, tripping up and then having people come after you. I think there was more of an assumption of good faith. I don't know why that is, but it's obvious that that's how Twitter now operates fundamentally. And even taking back something one has said is no longer allowed.

I mean, there's an assumption that one hasn't changed from the person that one was 25 years ago. Right. I find that really troubling. I'm learning and growing every day. There are things I said 10 years ago that I don't believe anymore. Because I like to think that I'm slightly wiser now with encroaching old age. And to be made to somehow, to be made to go back to that person that I was and to be told this is who you are and this is who you will always be just seems to me very strange. Yeah.

No, I've been trying to figure this out for a long time. And I've been trying to separate out, is it just social media? You know, in the U.S., I think part of the problem is that politics are so polarized. And we have seen so many bad things from the other side, like our former president. But which came first? Right. For me, that's the question. Which came first, right? I mean, so all of this polarization and the assumption of good faith being dead, which came first?

where I've lived my whole life. So I think, Oh, maybe it's just political polarization and social media just fueled the political polarization that already exists. But what is it like in Nigeria? Is it, is the, are the politics polarized first or was it social media or,

or how, how do you see that? Nigeria is a, is, is different in this because our politics is not ideological and we don't have a left or a right. There's really no ideology. Our politics is a kind of patronage politics. And so I think because it's not ideological, that kind of polarization doesn't really exist. So what you have is the majority of Nigerians, furious at terrible governments, which has been our story since independence in 1960. So that

hasn't changed. Social media, I think, has given young people a voice in this country. So in that sense, I'm actually kind of pro-Twitter for Nigeria, because I think that it's given young people a voice. It's allowed young people to make complaints about things that they would not have been able to before. And it's also forced the government to sometimes react. By the way, I should tell you that Twitter is currently banned in Nigeria, has been banned for the past, has it been up to a year? For just the most stupid reasons. But of course, all the young people have VPNs, so they are all on Twitter anyway. But it just shows you the power of social media that the government felt that it should ban Twitter. But in terms of just thinking about the US, I think social media and the way that it's structured, it's kind of an American invention, isn't it? Yes. And so I think the US has managed

to export its issues to the rest of the world. So you have people fighting American battles that are not really their battles. You know, they call it political hobbyism here, is that it is, you treat it as like a daily hobby, you're fighting with other people, but the actual work of persuasion and democracy, which takes knocking on doors

and having one-on-one conversations, that is not as attractive to people because it is much harder work, slower work, much more, you know, and it's much easier to wake up, see the news, get outraged, and tweet something at someone. Yeah.

And then the benefits, you don't get, if you're doing the sort of grassroots on the ground walk, you don't get the high of likes. We can't, you know, I think it's important to, I mean, there are benefits

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welcome to earth starring will smith sitting around our own red table right now guys Podcast and message comes from Disney Plus with National Geographic's Welcome to Earth, starring Will Smith. Sitting around our own red table right now, guys. A six-part original series now streaming on Disney Plus. Through the lens of Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Darren Aronofsky and with some of the world's top explorers, Will embarks on an ends-of-the-earth adventure to explore the planet's greatest wonders. Welcome to Earth, all episodes now streaming only on Disney+. I've heard some people say that this debate about cancel culture or whatever you want to call it is really about a power imbalance, right?

Public figures have always had large platforms to say whatever they want, even if what they say is offensive or hurtful to others who may not have those same platforms. And social media merely corrects that imbalance by giving everyone a voice. What do you make of that? Again, this is the kind of statement that requires a lot of, you know, nuance.

So on the one hand, yes, right, obviously. And then I think in particular, in a place like Nigeria, and I think many other countries in the world where for so long, not just that young people did not have a voice, but that the system that was supposed to be democratic really wasn't. So I like to say that what we have now is an ostensible democracy. But so in Nigeria, yes, young people have had a voice. But I don't think it also means then that, so this idea that people in power have always been able to say what they want and now Twitter means that we get to, you know, hold them accountable.

Yes, but if you're holding them accountable with a bit of sense in your bloody head. My point is, my point is, again, it's not about saying that I don't want people to disagree with me or with people who are in power, but it's about saying we have to start with a good faith assumption. We have to engage with what they're saying. We have to, when we do disagree, disagree with intelligence and facts. And really, honestly, if these two writers had to go back to them, so I was upset that they did not sort of reach out to me to say, we don't like that you said this and here's why, which I really would have appreciated.

But had they in fact gone on social media and said, we don't like that she said this and here's why. I don't think I would have been so upset. It's going on social media and saying she's a murderer. There's a difference. And I just think that there's some things that are unacceptable. So I would not consider that holding quote unquote public figures accountable.

I think that's nonsense. I wonder if at the core of this, you know, good faith discussion and sort of how to restore the presumption of good faith, like empathy is actually what we're looking for here. I mean, you know, look, I again went down the rabbit hole on this issue, partly because I was preparing for this interview. But when you read, when you get past sort of the social media attacks and, you know, people saying you want to kill trans people and all that kind of stuff, and you really look at the issues, you think, you know, the trans community has experienced incredible pain and exclusion and violence. And you wonder if some people who are upset are just coming from a good place and a place where like, you know, look, I want to live my life. I want to be respected. I want to be welcomed. I want to be embraced. I want to be

just like everyone else. And when someone doesn't see that, and when I hear comments, again, they may be comments taken out of context, but you see them, you see the headlines that someone says, I am other, then that's going to hurt, you know, and I'm going to speak out and hurt. And I wonder if trying to put ourselves in people's shoes more, even if it seems like they're coming at us in bad faith, is sort of the answer here. I don't know what you think about that. So two things. There's a part of me that, the part of me, you know, me being a woman who's had sort of female socialization from birth already bristles

at that because I'm thinking, wait, hold on. Someone's being nasty to me in a way that I find very unfair and I'm supposed to be sort of the saint and I'm done with saintliness, right? I mean, I'm just not a saint. I'm not interested in being a saint. But on the other hand, I did have, and that's part of the reason I then went and started reading. And in particular, I wanted to read memoirs. I wanted to read stories of trans women's experiences. Because I do think that there were two aspects to all of the sort of backlash. And because I wasn't on social media, I mean, initially, I was so surprised at how people kept calling me and friends who sent me flowers were saying, hanging there. And I thought, my God, right? No, we forget

that being a public figure does not mean that you are somehow immune to depression and hurt and, and just sort of, you know, not wanting to get out of bed for weeks because you don't understand why people are after you, right? You're not vaccinated from all of those things just because you're a quote unquote public figure. But I do think that there were two things there, which is I did think that there were people who were genuinely hurt, who genuinely felt that somehow I was saying that there were other and less than. I think that there were people who felt that way. And that made me feel bad. that made me feel bad. But I think that by far, the noisier people were the performers. And that those people I had no time for. Yeah. I mean, we've been talking about this so far from, you know, a political perspective, persuasion. I was so curious how you think about it from a

literary perspective. Because one of the lines in the essay is, you know, you criticize people who claim to love literature, the messy stories of our humanity, but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. I wonder how you think this debate and these issues affect writers, people who write fiction, novelists, which, you know, you can write about characters that are horrible. You can write about, you know, like, how do you think about that? Yeah. So that's actually the thing that worries me the most, because obviously that's the thing I care about the most, stories and literature.

I just, I worry about what's going to, I think the art, and by art, I mean, I think the sort of literary arts that will be produced in the US in the next 10 to 15 years, unless something changes, will be awful. I think it will be flat. I think the characters will be terrible mouthpieces. Because what's happening now is people are afraid. I really think that people are afraid of not just writing about certain subjects, but how they write about it. I think art has to be able to go to a place that's messy, a place that's uncomfortable. You have to be able to write characters who are assholes in all kinds of

ways and not have that be somehow, not have that become something that explains you, the writer. Right. And so I've had conversations with young people who, and again, I find myself sounding like the old cantankerous uncle because I say to them, you're not reading with any kind of complexity. So, you know, I ask them what they think about something. And, you know, they say things like,

well, there was a character who said the N word. Or they'll say there's a character who was a misogynist. And that's the literary kind of feedback that they have about a piece of literature. And I find that to be awful. Well, first of all, it seems to me that literature is the last thing that we can depend on

to tell us the truth about who we are. Because politics can no longer do that. Politicians have to lie. I mean, they have to. I'm not talking about your speeches, John. No, I know. I'm not saying you had to tell us a few burnished lies, because Brother Barack had to say what he had to say.

No, no. But really, I think literature, we have to, for me, it's looking at literature and thinking literature is the last thing that can tell us how we really are. Literature is the thing that can reflect to us who we are. But if we have this kind of social situation where everyone is terrified, where there are things that people call sensitivity readers

in publishing houses, I think that's a bad idea, right? And here's why. I think some people will write terrible books, and I think novels have worldviews. So you can read a novel, and you can sort of tell that this novel has a racist worldview, right? You can read another novel in which a character is a racist, but it doesn't have a racist worldview. But we should allow both because then we can use ideas to talk about why the book with a racist worldview is bad. But the problem becomes where writers think they cannot approach certain subjects because they're going to be called out. I was reading a piece about young adult literature and all of this that's been going on in the young adult literature world where people have been called out for all kinds of things and,

you know, young writers have been banished and sometimes it's one sentence in the book. And I just think, my God, I really worry about the literature that's going to be produced. And I have to tell you, I mean, I don't want to name names or anything, but there are a few recent novels that I have read that I've found depressing. Depressing because I think there's so much potential here, but I can see, I can just see in the writing, the holding back.

No, I think that's interesting. I think that the argument is probably if there are a whole bunch of novels with racist worldviews or misogynist worldviews and there aren't necessarily people there to explain why those worldviews are bad, that those worldviews will somehow rub off on or shape the views of the people who read the novels. And then we're going to have more people who buy into that racist worldview. But again, that goes back to like, are you able to just get rid of those ideas altogether? Or do you just need to fight them without other ideas that say, this is the anti-racist worldview. This is the anti-misogynist worldview, right? Like it seems like that's the contest that you want to engage in. But I think for me, the question is, we cannot wish away misogyny. We cannot wish away racism. And I sometimes feel that there's an impulse on the left to do that, where, you know, and I start

to find it not just annoying, but also kind of patronizing. Misogyny is rife in the world. patronizing. Misogyny is rife in the world. And I don't mean just in, you know, it's not even just, oh, women are not CEOs and women are not. I mean, just fundamental things, the large swathes of the world where girls are not going to school because they are girls. I mean, they're real things happening. We have to be able to write about them. And especially in narrative ways, because that's how we can get people to feel. Because I think the thing that literature does well is literature doesn't just tell us what happens. It tells us how it felt. And we cannot wish it away. And we cannot write about it in ways that are always sort of ideologically correct.

So the world is complex. Women sometimes are the ones who are fiercely in support of FGM in many parts of the world, for example. That kind of ideologically isn't pure, right? Because women are supposed to support girls and women, but often they don't. There's racism in the world. Sometimes people on the left are very racist, so there are people who have very progressive views, but who have really messed up views about race. We need to be able to write about that.

I just feel that in literature, and I think you can see that my voice is good, I need to sort of take a deep breath because i feel so strongly about about the future of storytelling and i think that this whole the way that i don't like that expression cancel culture because i think it's been appropriated by you know sort of fox news um but but but what that refers to this kind of people feeling afraid, saying the wrong thing, this kind of what I like to call this sort of insistence on a kind of unrealistic purity, I think it's so bad for literature. I really do. I think there are, in fact, enough people in the world who can say this is bad and here's why.

I think that there are. who can say, this is bad and here's why. I think that they are. The problem is I think the gatekeepers on the left think that people are not as bright as they are. I mean, you know, I also think that, at least in my experience, your own ideology is shaped by, and you are more confident in it

if you are exposed to those other ideas. Like I went to a college, College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, and I was political science and sociology. And, you know, it was a college where there weren't all just liberal lefty professors. The political science department, there's a lot of conservative professors. And my sociology professors were very left, off the deep end left. And I loved them all. But I became a progressive in college because I would go and argue with my conservative professors after class. And I'd find out what their ideas are.

And then I realized to myself, oh, I don't like those ideas because I've thought about them. I've argued against them. I heard from my sociology professors. I think I like those ideas better. professors, I think I like those ideas better. But I wrestled with all of the bad ideas to come to a conclusion about what I believe that I felt much more confident in, because it was a belief that I came to after a lot of careful thought and argument with people who I disagreed with. So see, I couldn't agree more. I think fundamentally that progressive ideas are better. I think that they're better for the world in general. I also think that we

should be able to defend them. So I feel so strongly about, you know, having, I want to sharpen my ideas. I want to be challenged about what I believe. And that is why for a while, I must confess, I would turn to Fox News until I realized that it's just an utter suspect. It was not about ideas. It was just about a stupid performance. Right. Yeah. But for me, it's really important to. Ideas are better, but we should be open to challenge. And so when I talked about what I think this impulse on the left is to kind of suppress and don't say, don't talk, it almost seems as though the left does not have enough confidence in its own positions and so is unwilling to have it be

challenged. And I remember my early years in the U.S. sometimes thinking that, in particular on the subject of race, I used to feel kind of, you know, kind of sort of mildly annoyed with certain very left white academics who, when they talked about race, I just thought, I sometimes felt I was being bullshitted. I sometimes felt I was being patronized. And, you know, how they would say, you're not supposed to say that. Don't say that. And I would think, why? Right. I mean, black people are not inferior i know that for a fact so when you say don't say that when somebody says it i'm like no i want to tell that person why they're full of shit and i will tell them that with facts right i mean yeah no i mean look one of one of the one of the challenges with finding a good faith person on the right to challenge your opinion is

like you said with i think some of the trends that you're faith person on the right to challenge your opinion is like you said with I think some of the trends that you're talking about on the left happened on the right a long time ago and so you have you know Fox is nothing but performance and and most of right-wing media is at this point so it's tough to actually find a a good faith conservative to argue with these days which is which is part of the issue you know how did how did that happen but here's the thing where are the thoughtful um right-wingers in america where does one find them because even the wall street journal opinion pages yeah that's sometimes that's crap but sure yeah i'm like surely you don't even yeah i mean they don't even try there isn't even sort of a semblance of of i mean it's just really bad and

i read them and i think but surely you can tell that this is nonsense. But can I just say, I sometimes also feel that way about the opinion on the left, the New York Times. I really like the Washington, I think the Washington Post is actually really good. Yeah, Post has done good in the Trump era. Yeah, really good. So your last question on this, and then I'll let let you go you've been generous with your time um your last book was not a novel it was a beautiful and moving account of of you and how you and your family processed your father's death in in the early days of the pandemic uh it's called notes on grief and um i wonder did that experience put any of these issues we've talked about in greater perspective or did it make you think more about how

we should treat each other or interact with one another or what's really important that's such a good question um and um i don't want to get emotional i'm trying to i'm being i'm doing my tough persona today. So I'm resolutely not going to cry because I often will when I talk about how much I've been changed by my dad and my mother. But yes, I did think a lot about it. And I really just feel like I'm a different person. And it's strange because I think it's really important to think about what matters now.

I think about it all the time. Like what just really matters to me. And I'm so much more aware of mortality. So I'm always thinking about I could die tomorrow. So sometimes I'm like, I better do it today because, hey, I might die tomorrow. I mean, obviously, I don't want to die tomorrow because I do want to raise my daughter who's six. I don't want to leave her in the clutches of her wonderful father. her in the clutches of her wonderful father but anyway um it's also made me kind of have much less patience for bullshit by which i mean the things i i think before experiencing grief

i would let slide now i'm not willing to because i worry that um life is so short and if one feels strongly about something one should do something about it because we don't know how much time we have and and I think had my parents not died I would not have written my essay about about social media and it's not because I didn't feel these things before but I just thought you know just leave it alone. But now, now I just, life is so damn short. The people I love are so much more precious to me. I'm also, I think, it's also made me much more willing to say sorry.

I think saying sorry has always been a thing that I've struggled with. But since experiencing grief, I think life is so short, you know, reach out to people, that sort of thing. So I think I'm doing that a lot more. Knock on wood. Chimamanda Adichie,

thank you so much for joining Offline. I really appreciate it. I've had a really good time. Thank you. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau. It's produced by Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Austin Fisher. Andrew Chadwick is our audio editor.

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