The Netmums Podcast - S14 Ep3: Marvyn Harrison: Redefining Black Fatherhood

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Welcome to another episode of The Netmums Podcast, sponsored by Duracell. This week, Wendy Golledge and Alison Perry are joined by Marvyn Harrison, the inspiring founder of Dope Black Dads. Marvyn shares his journey of creating a supportive community for black fathers and delves into the challenges and triumphs of black fatherhood. Discover the powerful story behind Dope Black Dads, from a heartfelt Father's Day message to a thriving community of over 250,000 members. Marvyn discusses the stereotypes black fathers face, the importance of peer support, and the unique struggles and joys of being a black father in today's society. He also highlights crucial issues like mental health, financial literacy, and the higher risk of prostate cancer among black men. This episode is packed with invaluable insights on parenting, masculinity, and the importance of community support. Marvyn’s wisdom and candid reflections offer a fresh perspective on fatherhood and the ongoing journey towards equality and understanding. Stay connected with Netmums for more parenting tips, community support, engaging content: Website: netmums.com / Netmums socials: @netmums / Facebook / TikTok / X  Series 14 of the Netmums Podcast is produced by Decibelle Creative

You're listening to The Netmums Podcast with me, Wendy Gollich. And me, Alison Perry. Coming up on this week's show... If I'm in school and my school teacher, which did happen, told me that I'm never going to be anything other than a criminal, and I'm like, what? You don't know my mother. But before all of that... This episode of The Netmums Podcast is brought to you by Duracell. As parents, we do everything we can to baby-proof our homes. We all know about risks like sharp corners, electrical sockets and steep stairs,

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in the world, to discourage babies and toddlers from swallowing them. Duracell also has tamper-proof packaging with a double blister to avoid accidental opening. There's an on-pack warning and an engrave warning on the batteries themselves. Duracell lithium coin batteries also have a smart safety sticker which must be removed before the battery is inserted into the device, reminding parents to keep the coin cells secured. So the next time you're buying batteries, remember that Duracell is the safest battery brand for your family. Hello everyone welcome to another Netmums podcast. Now Alison dare I say the c-word? Depends which c-word you're talking about Wendy. Let's be honest. The non-rude one. We're recording this in early September, folks, and I'm getting emails and Insta posts and adverts about advent calendars and stocking fillers,

and I am downright fuming about it because I hate Christmas starting in September. Tell me, A, are you getting this shit too, and B, do you care? I am. I'm glad that you said I hate Christmas starting in September because I thought you were going to say I hate Christmas and I was like no I'm not that bad you can't be friends yeah I'm getting them too but actually I've had the opposite reaction to

you Wendy it's made me think because I got like an Instagram advert for like a Taylor Swift um advent calendar but that's like your button so I know but i was like a minute since taylor swift you say bye i do i'm like here's my credit card details um no but i was like oh this is useful this is handy and this is going to help me get organized because i do need to start thinking about christmas already no because otherwise i leave at the last minute and then i'm just running around like a headless chicken getting really really stressed so i'm on board okay sorry we do the sexy intro and then we can ask our guest whether he gives a hoot about Christmas in September because I need some solidarity let's do it you might agree with me though so our guest today is a dad of two and he's

a community leader and a broadcaster which you will hear from his amazing podcasty voice. He started Dope Black Dads back in 2018, and it offers support, education, and a celebration of the black dad community. And now, alongside Dope Black Mums, Dope Black Women, Dope Black Men, and Dope Black Queers, it provides peer-to-peer learning through podcasts, meetings and events and the Dope Black community has 250,000 people in it. Marvin Harrison, a warm welcome to the Netmums podcast. Hello, thank you so much for having me. I feel so warm by being

here, I've been warmed. So first question before we ask you anything serious christmas in september yes or no no well it was nice nice to speak to you marvin thanks very much off you go and i feel it just is in september i'm just getting over six weeks holiday i don't want to think about another big have a big commitment. Just give me until November 1st and then I'm all yours. I'll play along. Okay. Yeah, I'm with you.

November 1st seems reasonable. But I live with an elf, so he'd have a tree up on November 1st if I gave him one. Do you know what? I live in Bromley and we had a massive Christmas tree go up last week. So it was August. And in the high street, we had a massive Christmas tree go up last week. So it was August. And in the high street, we had a huge Christmas tree go up. And honestly, the locals were kicking off in disgust. And then it turned out it was for some kind of film or some kind of TV show they were filming.

But it was a massive, huge Christmas tree outside Primark. It was crazy. So, yeah, I think you're definitely not alone in feeling that way, Wendy. Yeah. Also, there's just this thing called Black History Month. We've got to get through that first. That's like a whole month of October. This is it.

And it's a season to celebrate. This is it. Let's kick off with talking about that WhatsApp. The WhatsApp text that you sent to a bunch of dads that you knew back on Father's Day 2018. What did it say? So just a little bit of contextualizing is in January of that year, my daughter was born.

I went from one child to two. And anyone knows that that transition is where you become like a couple with a child into a family and there's no going back. And you wish you'd become an octopus at that point oh my god i wish you almost need two parents per child so if it was at all normalized it would be just like more um so it's six months in of just trying to handle that adjustment and it was father's day and father's day is just a weird holiday because no one really celebrates it and even though i was trying to celebrate it and

someone texts you which is always nice but it's it's about the level it goes to um i didn't really feel particularly worthy and so when i was receiving the messages i was a bit like and then i got my socks and breakfast in bed and i was a bit like yeah thanks but you know it's not really but i appreciate it. And then they all just went downstairs and left me in the bed, which I think was like their idea of giving me space, which is a very noble thing to do, by the way. But in return, I just felt alone.

I sat there with these feelings of like not really feeling worthy. And so I was going to take a nap and I was kind of like half, I half created the group. So I picked the 23 people I wanted in it. And I hovered over the kind of create a group button for a while. And then I actually went to bed and woke up and just thought, I don't care. I'm going to do it.

And I did it. And the message was, thank you so much for being the kind of dads that I get to look at and feel like you're trying. And I don't actually know what you're doing, but it provides inspiration. Just whatever, I think it's something to do with like, I saw somebody pushing their kids on the swing.

And I know what he does for a job. And I know how crazy his Monday to Friday is. And that's really what it is. You just have to increase your capacity. So that message was very much, thank you for letting us see that see that well letting me see that because I need to see it and how did that then snowball what did that okay create group lead to well I think it's the first time that that group of men so we all kind of knew each other directly or indirectly and everybody is I don't want to say clicky because

it sounds like there's some sort of mean girl thing going on but like um more more just people live in their own little bubbles and you never actually ask these questions to other men it's not you meet other men you talk about arsenal and you talk about what happened last night the pub you went to a club you went to you're not going went to. You're not going to say, like, my kids, I'm really struggling with getting into bed. No men don't say that. So it was the first forum, official forum, where that was allowed to be said. And I mean the group was active.

We're talking 500 messages a day minimum for literally six months straight, nonstop. Just people sharing every single part of being a man, being a dad, being a black man dad all of those things how to co-parent you know relationships you know my me and my partner aren't together anymore and I'm struggling with this thing it was limitless the amount of things we talked about suicide we talked about mental health we talked about checkups prostates it just went everywhere in the space of six months it's incredible why do you think

that nothing like that existed before you created it i mean black dads have existed for a long time right since the beginning of time yeah this this community where you could talk about these things just didn't exist yeah i i think when we discuss my masculinity and depending on the era in which you were raised in the the sort of diagnosis of what a good man is is actually very similar to old school versions of what children should be it's kind of like seen and not heard like do your man thing but like also don't interrupt what we're doing and most men find themselves sort of outside the family so this is where they over index and put a lot of energy and time into careers and you know friendships and hobbies and other things to get fulfillment um but we've seen

generation after generation it doesn't work like the amount of dads and men in their 50s and 60s who are alive alone who die alone who suffer from mental illness who you know break up with their family that they started first and you know on your third marriage which is definitely not a judgment because you know those things can happen but it's always the men that seem to be outside of the thing and trying to recreate new families or you know the first one didn't go to plan so I I'm going to try another one. And it's just, it's, it's that mentality which I think fractures society, to be honest, it has a massive knock on effect where there's so many individual mothers who

are raising children on their own or over-indexing and raising, and then they deplete, they deplete at such a rate that they're not able to build a broader life for themselves. And our children see that. And there's many, many consequences of that situation. And we know that, you know, we know the problems

that toxic masculinity create for men. Is there an extra layer of problems for black men? So the thing, so firstly, I feel if you are truly masculine, masculinity is divine. It's of the highest order and you cannot put toxic next to something that's divine. You're just not being masculine if you're doing those behavioral traits. And when I talk about the black experience intersected with masculinity, it's a very specific thing because firstly,

if you don't understand masculinity, you will not understand how problems arise. But if you don't understand blackness, it's another layer of just not really knowing. So that person lives under two shadows and two stigmas. And if we look at where we are today, I think about young men entering adulthood, they're entering a space where the dialogue around being black and being male is being challenged in a way that they didn't contribute to. They didn't choose. And we have no recourse. There is no culling of language, no curation of speech to speak to those men. And so they grow up really easily being radicalized by other men who are too lazy to evolve. And they're leading

the tone of what masculinity is. And it's just a massive rejection of being othered. And I think, you know, when we talk about men dominating and leading and ruling and being in charge, if we're being really honest, that operates at a very specific intersection of men. Not all men have those amazing opportunities. There is, in addition to that, a form of male privilege where maybe I can go into my workplace and say, oh, Arsenal had a great weekend. And it's like, oh yeah, yeah. Do you want to come for a beer? And you know, there's this sort of hidden world that men disappear off into. But I promise you behind those walls, it's not sophisticated. It's not, we're not sitting there plotting the demise of,

you know, how do we respond to these women asking for stuff or, you know, there is nothing. It's the most simple and basic environment. And I almost feel men protect it because it's so simple and basic. It's like it's the place where there is no judgment. It's just, you know, having a laugh internally or talking about something that's surface level, laughing and, you know, moving on. That's it. There is there is no strategizing in these private men's male circles. And you've said you've talked about stereotypes and said that you want to challenge outdated stereotypes about black fatherhood. But what were the stereotypes that you came across and have come across since you've become a dad? So lazy, absent, not

being present and not being supportive and being oppressive, at times being violent, being over-sexualized, being criminals. These are the things that really impact not only how you are seen, but how you see yourself. So it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I'm in school and my school teacher, which did happen, told me that I'm never going to be anything other than a criminal, and I'm like, what? You don't know my mother. No doubt that's going to happen in my life of crime.

There's no way that's going to happen. So when you hear that in school and then you become a young adult and you go outside and one day you realize you're not a boy in the eyes of the police, you're a man and you're a danger. And you're like, no, I'm a really nice guy. What do you mean? And the police are like, stand up against this wall, squat, and we want to see if you have drugs on you. And you're like, what? Drugs? You definitely haven't met my mother. What drugs? We don't do, that's not my thing. And then, you know, then there's another day when you're outside and your life is being moderately threatened. I've been chased by the National Front, by, you know, skinheads. And there's a certain picture of white male chasing me that just lives in my head. That doesn't leave me when I become an adult. I never forget that.

In fact, I had a reoccurrence. I went to an Arsenal game and all the yelling and shouting, which obviously is clearly towards our pro Arsenal, which is obviously what I care about, just felt energetically very similar to me being yelled at and chased as an 11-year-old. Like that doesn't leave me. That's PTSD.

The thing is, I'm trying not to diagnose, but yes, for the people listening, it has an impact. It doesn't leave. And all the work I've done in the last 15 years, the amount of therapy sessions, the amount of coaching and courses and development and retreats and silent retreats,

and the intention in kind of repairing all the thing damages that society has created or just how my life went is come at a great cost itself. So I protect now my peace and my joy, like strongly. And I'm fearless in doing so because it costs me enough to achieve it. So all of those characteristics create a completely different lived experience. And I also want to make clear, I'm not really asking for anything from the world. I'm not saying, look how hard my life is, poor me. My job is to figure out how to make the most of it. But I tell you, it does come out of a cost. And a lot of that is now just like energetically. And now I'm 40. I'm

exhausted by the world at times. And I tune out. Like you have to understand daily there is a news story which tells me that my lived experience is unsafe. Like no one knows what it's like to see the riots and see someone with my likeness just because they're standing there as a black man being beaten up in Manchester.

And then another guy having his car destroyed and then the company that's meant to represent him keeps all the money it's just like these these types of things people don't understand when you see yourself being harmed in that way if you need to disassociate and so it does have a knock-on effect in terms of how black men feel about contributing to society in a good way just a reminder that Duracell is partnering with the European Academy of Paediatrics to educate medical experts and parents about the dangers of swallowing lithium coin batteries and how to prevent it. Yes, with its baby secure technology and tamper-proof packaging,

Duracell really is the safest battery brand for families. Now you've gone on to tackle some pretty important issues facing black dads, like the higher risk of prostate cancer, financial literacy in black families, intersectionality in race relations. But which conversation do you think has had the biggest impact? Male suicide has been huge because I think that conversation connected really close to home. People that I'd known for many years

that I had no idea were dealing with really heavy things. The most beautiful thing is that we now have a language between us to raise the alarm that something isn't okay. And then we now in between us have raise the alarm that something isn't okay and then we now in between us have the behavior to follow so we'll turn up at each other's house if someone says that in fact someone said today that i'm just not been doing well that's why i've gone quiet and i'm going to

his house on sunday i've already earmarked he doesn't even know so you know before he does and i'm coming i'm going to take my kids and distract him and show him that he's loved and appreciated. That conversation is universal, but specifically impacts black men in a particular way. The only other one I will be is just like, what happens when things don't go to plan with your family? And I think we need to have an honest conversation as a society. We always reframe family as like 2.4 children, as a mom, as a dad. But when that isn't the case and your family breaks down or changes dynamics, probably a better language. Like, how do you make that keep going? Like I strongly believe it's better to do,

to intentionally change the dynamics of your family through divorce separation than it is to make it happen by force, because now neither of you can tolerate each other to the nth degree and the children pick up on that um so like conscious uncoupling which was mocked a couple of years ago now becomes actually i think that's wise i think that's actually the best thing to be doing i think you might still have to call it something different i don't think i could get on board with it being called that it's just no it's forever fainted I think you know what's really interesting because I have a thing about language and I think when you use language that doesn't connect to harmful ideas people receive

actually better overall and so when you say divorce it sounds so violent it sounds like we we we're prioritizing ourselves it sounds like there hasn't been any thought into it yeah that children are now at danger all these stigmas arise and actually as someone who's been through divorce it's hilariously horrible on your reflection how people respond to the idea of you being divorced like it's like these ideas of abandonment and who did something and investigating where the harm is. And it sometimes, and this is again, only through wisdom do you have this where it's like, we're going to consciously break this down

in a healthy way, but maintain the best of it. We're going to co-parent. And now my co-parenting, you know, with their mother is amazing. Like like when I mean amazing and I don't even like talking about it too much because I like to preserve it for it is so important that I don't even want to waste the energy on like bringing it into the world unnecessarily it is amazing like I love her more than ever because I really see how she shows up on this particular mission and it wasn't our calling to go through life together but in this way we just kind of are in a way and so there's a certain level of care a certain level of thought a certain level of love that just has to be maintained and respect to be able to raise two children and it's become

incredibly beautiful so i feel like we've come a long way in the last few years with a greater awareness of black issues um concepts like white fragility and white centering are more commonly known and considered but what in your eyes do you think still needs to change i think now there's two things the first phase is always about education i still think a lot of white specifically white brit British people, European people, are unaware of the true history of what has happened between Europe and the global South. There's so little awareness because it's been removed from all forms of education. And it kind of gets whitewashed as like, you know, Britain is the main reason why slavery ended. Like we ended it.

But it never says why. And the main reason why is because the US was getting incredibly rich off of the back of the slave trade, and they wanted to stop it so they can maintain their place in the world order. It wasn't centered on the victims of what was going on. And Britain had already made a significant amount of wealth from it and now got to the point of financing, insuring and funding it. And that's where they were making their money. So it's those types of things which I think make at times when you engage with white people about this issue is they don't actually understand the magnitude of how much harm was done and for how long.

You have to understand that independence arose in the 60s for some African and Caribbean countries but that didn't end the day it was over it wasn't like handed back and like everything is fine the majority of the wealth in those countries still resides in non-African hands or non-Caribbean hands and so that means in terms of creating true change in that country they're still tied and beholden to whoever has invested in it historically so the legacy does continue um so i think at this point the education is the one point though and then the second point is is about now it's about actually readdressing the balance as much as you can and everybody has a role in that and sometimes it's as small as you

work on frontline services and you see a black person on the frontline genuinely building capacity to interact with them with a bit more love than you probably normally would and you have no idea where that person has come from to be in front of you if you're interviewing someone just having the capacity to try to understand the perspective that they have changes their life if you that person gets the job because you really see who they are, that changes their life. The goal is that we will, for our own self-determination,

make those changes. But what we don't need is additional barriers, blockages. We don't need to be mocked or gaslit about our experiences on the way. So that's the next step. And then I think the last part is just integrating.

We don't then want to create this imbalance where white people are inservient to us because i'm too scared to speak to us or about us we want you to be so comfortable with the language through affinity though like if you're comfortable for affinity you can say things to somebody like i feel if i have an affinity to my female friends i can talk to them about women's issues from an inclusive point of view if If I have no affinity and I'm like Andrew Tate's best friend, then maybe when I say it, it frames completely different.

And I think that's the big difference that I think most people are too scared now to have conversations. But if it's coming from a loving place, it can be 100% excused if you make an error. I think that's why kids get it so right because they just have those conversations from a place of complete inquisitiveness rather than anything else.

I think staying curious is a life of value. And I stay curious. And obviously, the rate of change in society is not just around race. It's around gender. It's around sexuality. It's around religion. I have to pay attention to all of those things if I'm going to be an active member of society I can't shut down because it's like well women have another ask and it's like well what's the ask and what what are you experiencing and is that a role for me to play or is it just about me getting out of somebody's way you know it could be many things that's so true I think the stay curious constantly be trying to learn and you know think about things from other people's

points of view and then also be quick to adjust if someone says to you actually you've got that wrong or look at it from this point of view make that adjustment quickly I think those are probably speaking as a white person with massive privilege that's I feel like that's probably a good place to be. Now, Marvin, parenthood is a learning curve for so many of us. What have you learned about yourself since you became a dad? So like what I talked about in the beginning about, you know, finding it really difficult, I went through a depressive episode is what it's called, where you're just stuck.

You don't want to eat. You don't want to go anywhere. You lose confidence in your ability. You start dressing terribly. You're just doing the bare minimum to get through the day because you can't figure out why you're stuck. And to go from that until I literally just came back from Cape Town for the second half of summer holidays, which is in three weeks in South Africa, and to take my children away by myself in a different country and create a life of safety, joy, substance is so life-affirming. And I think a lot of time when men hear their obligation in parenting, they feel like it's like, I'm doing this for my children. I'm doing it for the mother of my children or my partner. And you're not. You're doing it for yourself.

The richness of that experience is one of the top, top experiences in life where your children are seeing you on a consistent basis in action, navigating the world. And they will learn so much from you just by watching you and observing you, how you exist. And so I'm so full from that experience so full but now I just miss them incredibly they're back with their mom and I just feel like I'm just like hovering around like hey how's your how's school I just constantly just check it in and you know that attachment is something that I think men have missed out on which has allowed them to detach from their family unit so much so that just either creating another family or just not bothering to be around for extended periods of time is perfectly normal.

So any man that does that, I challenge them. And we can't be friends if you're not working towards your family. You can take a break. You can be tired. You can take a day off, a week off. But if you're ongoingly disengaged and you think you're okay with that we will have zero alignment in life and I just won't you know I won't accept it around so are those the kind of values and messages you're instilling in instilling in your kids as they grow up kind of what's I know they're little but what's the important things to you as you raise them my children are six eight. We have adult conversations all the time because as far as I'm concerned,

I think, and maybe this is a privilege of being protected by more elements of society where you just know that if you engage in a police officer, it's like that police officer is going to be fine and they will bring you home back to me. And it's like these really nice ideas. I don't have that luxury.

So feeding my children with knowledge, information, our family values, the behaviors that we have. And, you know, for my daughter specifically, because going on how are you and i allow her to express herself and i affirm her often and with my son it's about understanding how powerful he is now but also how that can be interpreted as he gets older so we're in man training at the moment he's eight and it's the most fun thing because this is some things i'll get him to do i'll tell him to clear out the the back garden you know getting like and i'll you know i'll make it just so it's just hard enough that at the point of him wanting to give up i'll teach him to create capacity and then i'll help i'll get involved no i'll do it with you you can ask me and i'll come and do it with you and i will do the last bit together but i'm just trying to get him into a routine you know he wants to be a football player so he had to change his diet and he has to

go to bed at 7 30 to get a certain amount of hours rest we asked chat gbt to tell us all the things that he needs to do to prep himself to be a football player and he's on his own and he's now in the school team he's a year below um he's there a year early the team is normally for year five and six years he's in year four and in his first day he got put into the team he's super over the moon so i'm just trying to create real behavior but his own self-determination and it's the most important thing in the world to me is that those values from a family our last name means something it's a brand of behavior and consistency and but also in the most loving way possible like he's not a machine he's like but he's amazing maybe i need to ask chap

to tell my daughter i was telling her just as a backstory my daughter had wet shoes this morning because she came home in wet shoes and she left her wet shoes by the door and oh lo and behold they were wet this morning so maybe that's the solution she could ask chat gpt what's going to dry her shoes because it sure isn't her mummy yeah and the thing is i think like the values around you are responsible and i think this is something that everybody understands i think some people defer a lot of power to other people in terms of their outcomes in life. And yes, some people are responsible and contributing, but the primary function is if you show up with your 50% into every scenario, and then it's on the other person to do their part. If they don't do their part,

you're much more capable to hold them to account than you do if you just turn up and be like, I'm a person, please look after me. You have to say things, you have to do things, you have to act and show up in a way that's befitting of what it is that you want for yourself. So, you know, it's like having his football kit and his bag ready is super, super important. If you forget something, I'm not bringing it. It's like you have to know, and we talk about this on a daily basis. So a lot of it is around development, but this is why I know the balance between me and his mother, who's significantly more nurturing in a different way and she will hug him all day and I feel we both do 80 20 of the other thing that we don't do and

I think it's a really beautiful like connection between our goals and how we want our family to to develop and I'm super but having spent that two three weeks with them has taught me that there's truth in the work that we're doing. Now your children's book I Am Me is brilliant at providing affirmations for kids in a really engaging way do you practice saying affirmations with your kids each day? So this is the 3.0 of affirmation. So the affirmations was specifically from pretty much two to about six and daily. And because we did it, it was so fun. It was like screaming into the mirror, being like, I am brave and like doing a sign and, you know, all those types of things. And it was such a great way to connect because for many dads, the kind of logical brain framework that you use to achieve your work doesn't work with children

and children operate in this gray fun space of like you might get eight seconds of their attention at a time and then they'll just disappear so a lot of the things and the gifts that men have get overlooked early early on so finding things that you can do is a great way so we have animal game where you know we play if you go on google and type in animal sounds you can play animal sounds on your phone to your children say guess which animal it is great game and these are things that you can do over the phone these are things that you can do of your laptop and in person and each of them including mirror talk which is what became the book i love me were massive things for me and they would ask for it every day and i'd be like what country am i there's an eiffel tower there's this and there's this and they'll be like oh Paris France and just those

games are what built my connection to them in the early stages and now I get to feed them with all this other information that they're now ready for and the affirmations is the foundation for it so when this goes out you mentioned earlier when I preemptively started talking about Christmas that first we've got Black History Month to get through. So what are your hopes for schools this Black History Month and how, well, and going forwards, how they teach and represent black children and black history? What are you kind of gunning for? So the theme is about reclaiming narratives this year in black history month and i think a lot of it is just telling the stories of real black people and the impact globally um and as well as things like colonialism or just being black in britain and region being black from a regional

part of the uk all very different experiences and so it then becomes super important to allow those stories to be told i would like schools to be allowing people to tell what happens in your home. Like people don't understand that Christmas in my family is completely different. The dinner that we have, the time we have it, it's just different. And if I see a Christmas ad and I don't see planting and I don't see chicken that looks like my mum's chicken, which is actually darker because she'll use some sort of jerk sauce attached to it that's homemade, it doesn't resonate to me. I just see it as othering. It doesn't connect. If you don't understand that, you will keep selling me these visions of a

Christmas that I don't know. The timing of opening presents is different. The way the trees are wrapped and the presents are wrapped and the trees presented are different. Our homes look different. And so a lot of the time, the kind of erasure of our presence in this country and how we do things is just part and part of being a minority in a country. But if you really want to speak to that audience, which is in very much so culturally rich and much where a lot of culture is derived from, you have to see us and centre us in a different way. And so I would like that to be happening for Black History Month. Those stories of why, you know, is incredibly important.

And what can parents, so people who are listening, who perhaps they feel like their schools are doing the kind of token Black History Month thing in October, and then it just sort of gets forgotten about by, you know, by February, March, there isn't really much going on. What can we as parents do to try and kind of kick the school into touch a bit? So I think I would say for parents is to move independently. Schools are such powerful institutions.

So, you know, my son's son and daughter's teacher, his word is as powerful as mine. Miss Watts has power in my house. And when they were little, little i used to do the whole if you don't do that i'm going to tell mrs stokes i do that every day wendy i do it every day so my my position to parents is you have to be able to have a certain level of impact away from the institution of school because school is so powerful and they're there for so long and it's affirmed with their friendships that actually if you then give up that power additionally then when they're finished school they look for that same meaning in something else outside of school which can then be a problem um and it sounds like your daughter is at the phase of where friendships are paramount and I need to

be able to speak to my friends 24-7 on every device that we own whereas so I think things like centering especially very young but centering diversity in your house and that can be food that can be books that you buy podcasts that you listen to tv shows that you watch and really looking at it as a family from a curious lens. And trying to understand it through the arts is a really easy medium. Going to different types of theatre shows, going to different types of plays, that will really help develop their understanding and taste for a diverse approach to just something that's really universal. Because it already happens in music.

A lot of music permeates really easily into different people's homes, but it's not always real and honest and true in terms of its reflection of people. And so it's normally heavily exaggerated. And in that, it dehumanizes the experiences that many people go for, go through. So I think, you know, books, toys, food and film and TV and shows are really easy ways to start the conversation and watch with them. Make the food with them. Don't make the food and present it to them on the table. Get them involved, explain what different ingredients are and taste them together and then eat together. That becomes a process. Also, it's like I always say an indicator is if you look around your life and in your school, hobby, friends, work, all the different

places in your church, in your religion, all the different places, and you don't have a diverse representation of people, it's an indicator of the life that you have and there's something missing. And it's a really good platform to go and ask the question, why aren't there these different types of people in these spaces? And if you can go a whole week without seeing and being close proximity of someone from a different background then that's your design and that's a real mirror if you that's really is your manifestation that's you know if you leave from living in Shoreditch when it was cool and now you've lived in somewhere as far away as possible you're in Kent or something and the diversity is zero you chose that area for a reason so it's super important to understand that you've

made these choices but you can look at that's why I say it's an indicator rather than a condemnation which is how many people receive it it's an indicator that you have actually moved away from that side of things and it's important to redress the balance you're full of wisdom this is amazing thank you so much for coming to chat to us this morning, Marvin. It's been great to meet you. No, no worries. This has been so fun. Thank you. Don't forget, you can get in touch with us on all social channels,

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