TRIGGERnometry - An Honest Conversation About Race with John Barnes

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Liverpool and England football legend John Barnes joins us in the studio to discuss Race, Racism, BLM, taking the knee and whether we live in a racist society. Buy his book The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-racism/john-barnes/9781472290380 Get TICKETS to TRIGGERnometry Live with Ayishat Akanbi here: https://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873621622 Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'd love a day for a black man and a white man to have a fight without being a racial incident. Why can't you have a fight because you just didn't like him? Yeah. Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. A brilliant guest we have for you today is the former Liverpool and England legend.

John Barnes, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. I mentioned you're Liverpool legend, so Anton is already triggered. But it's good to have you on the show. First of all, they're no legends. They're just normal people, normal footballers who contribute to the success or the failures of your football club. And as much as fans may see us differently depending on how well you do, as individuals or as football players, which is what I learned at Woffel and Liverpool,

is we're all just part of a team, just like in here. Well, we're part of a team. But to people of our generation, you're one of the iconic footballers of your era. You must be old. I am, mate. I absolutely am. But the question I want to ask you is, you know, how have you gone from that? Because in your introduction, I didn't mention that, you know, one of the reasons we wanted to talk to is you've got a book out, the uncomfortable truth about racism.

How have you gone from being a very successful footballer, then being a very successful pundit, commenting on football, to where you are now, which is right in a book that's going to piss a lot of people off on both sides of the argument? I haven't gone from being a footballer to what I'm doing now. This is who I always was. What I was was a footballer. Who I am, I'm not changed at all. I've always had perceptions on things and thought about things. Unfortunately, a lot of people look at football, and if you talk about footballers themselves, they get caught up with what they are, with who they are.

And of course, we're all different because if you are, whatever job you do, that doesn't mean that's who you are, that's what you do. So what I did was a footballer, but who I was always was someone who probably thought differently to other people in terms of discrimination, sexism, homophobia, lots of different things. So I haven't changed at all. So you always had this book in you is what you're saying? Oh, not necessarily.

I didn't necessarily think I was going to write a book, but I always had these thoughts and these perceptions, and now they've come out in book form. So if I didn't write a book, I would still think it. So, as I said, why I decided to write a book, and why it took so long, it took eight years, at least maybe 10, because it wasn't ghostwritten. I wrote it myself. So, of course, I didn't have to go to people who are a bit more intelligent

than me, meaning my daughter and my children and my sister so they could get the spellings and the punctuations and the paragraphs, right? So they're my words, but of course, now they're all spelled correctly. Right. Punctuations are in the right place. Yeah. And look, before we get into some of the ideas and the themes in the book, can you just give everybody, because I think when we talk about the issue of race and racism now,

a lot of young people in particular, they don't really know what people of your generation in terms of football actually went through playing in this country in the 80s. Can you give people sort of a sense of what it was like at the time? The book has got nothing to do with that. And if I want to talk about it from my perspective, if you go through different things, don't we? So what did happen was you got racial abuse from the stand

and bananas came on the field. Which other football? What can we say that's different to that? And you can see that now. So for me to say what I went through, isn't any different to what any black player went through and what black players are going through now as much as bananas may not be coming on the field,

but if it's looking at it and it's like on social media. So it's all the same. So the book isn't about what I went through. The book is my perception of it. And even, not mind the book being my perception of it, it's also my perception of what I was going through is completely different to Ian Wright's perception. of what he went through. Just to give you an example, what I went through was, first of all,

you have to look in the context of where I came from. I came from Jamaica as a 13-year-old boy, light-skinned middle-class, elite family who growing up in Jamaica would look at the discrimination towards black working-class people from people like me, light-skinned and elite people, and understand that here is a similar thing. It's not, it may not be, it wasn't racial in Jamaica, but it was still an elite and an un-elite situation. Here, it may be racial discrimination. But it's still the same. It's about the narrative that we have been told about a different group of people

who we feel superior to or inferior to. So, of course, now coming to a 13 years old, fully formed as a human being, fully confident in my own ability. In fact, probably feeling superior to most working-class people, if you like. When white working-class football fans want to abuse me, how can I feel inferior to them?

So therefore, it never affected me at all. I never suffered racism. I experienced racist incidents. But that never affected me made me feel less than our unworthy or wanting not to play football. So obviously I completely empathize with all the black footballers who would have had a different experience growing up to me, who suffered racism and it made them feel less than and they felt unworthy.

Because even when I came to England, we lived in Golis Green Highgate and Mayfair. My dad was a diplomat, so we had diplomatic plates and I could go to the higher echelons of any industry that I wanted to, and as a footballer, I still can. So what I always felt as a 17-18-year-old boy was while I was getting racially abused on the football field, as much as I know that if I came off the field, those saying people abusing me,

you'd probably want to pick on an autograph, wouldn't they? Probably, individually. And when I looked into the stand, and while people felt sorry for me or black players on the pitch, when I looked into the stand and I saw black football fans, working class football fans who no one cares about, being racially abused, being beaten up, no one speaks for them, and we're still doing the same thing now.

40 years, 30 years later, 40 years later, talking about how terrible it is for the footballers, whereas nobody talks about, if you want to look at it from a footballing perspective, football fans who get abused every day, but no one talks about them. So let's go back down, even more so where it affects people in society and no one's talking about what's happening.

The kids read knife crime, education, housing, access to social care. And I said, I've got a solution to the problem in knife crime. 100% I could solve it tomorrow. Let them start stabbing people it may fare. Then it'll be gone because we'll do something about it. So that is really what the book is about. We have to do it from the bottom up looking at how we have to have a perception of the average black person.

It's also intersectional, the average woman, the average gay person, rather than from the top down looking to put these positions in people in positions of power, thinking that it'll filter down to affect everybody down below. So really, that's the essence of the book. But of course, as you rightly say, you can take little snippets of the book and push back to either prove one way or the other. And a big problem I'm having is because a lot of people on one side of the argument and saying you're saying nothing is racist and football fans aren't racist,

and you're defending racism. And on the other hand, you have people saying you're saying everything is racist. So I just want them to argue out between themselves. I just do what I do. it's a very interesting point. One of the things I found really interesting in your book was how you were talking, because you came here as a 12-year-old boy from Jamaica, that you were judged more harshly, even to black players in the team who had grown up

because it was more like one of our own whilst with you, you were constantly having to prove that you were proud to play for England and play for the team. Well, that really came from a story that Jimmy Greaves wrote about the fact that I wasn't born in England, So therefore, how committed I am I into England? And secondly, even more importantly, and then, of course, growing up in Jamaica and the 70s, even coming to England in the 70s, that's when the West Indies cricket team were the best in the world.

And, of course, I used to have a bit of banter with Brian Robs, and other players about, oh, Westerners are better than England. And, of course, that was then putting the paper to then show that I'm not committed to England. So, you know, that's understandable because this is conditioning by the media to make us feel certain things. So if you want to just use that as a microcosms, how have we been conditioned to think in terms of hierarchy,

racial, gender or sexuality, it is completely understandable, completely understandable. I always use the example of, and it's not just the ones who get caught, who say something. Most of us believe that because we wouldn't throw a banana on the pitch, we're not racist. We'll never rape a woman, so we're not sexist, and we'll never beat up someone who's gay, so we're not homophobic. But we are somewhere along the line, all of us, it's not a binary choice, it's not either are you want, so the majority of us are. But of course, because we then think that, you know, we wouldn't do that we're not, we're not racist or sexist or homophobic.

that is the big problem. Martin Luther King said in 1963 that it's the shallow understanding by good people rather than the total misunderstanding by bad people is a problem, meaning it's not the idiots who throwing bananas on the field who are the problem. But systemic racism affecting people here in the inner cities in terms of jobs and indication,

is the ones who don't think that they are. And that is why, to use it as a football example, when a female referee goes onto the pitch, the vast majority of men think before they see whether she's good or not, because men will go always say, oh, I'll wait to see how good she is, so therefore I don't have a judgment. But our initial thought is, I think a man will be better, the vast majority of us, but we won't admit it, will we, because we'll get sacked, we'll get cancelled, and until we can have this honest conversation, like the truth and reconciliation in Rwanda and South Africa about how you really feel, nothing will change. All we'll do is we'll just cancel and sack the ones who get caught.

And from the vast majority of us who may feel the same but not say anything, we'll then convince society that we've given the illusion that everything is okay. It's a really interesting thought, John, because you mentioned being cancelled, and I think that's one of the difficulties in having any conversation. I'm really appreciating the way you're coming at it. Because how do we have a conversation? Because we've got to a point where any insensitive comment, any insensitive remark, is automatically now, you know, it's the worst thing you can do in society, saying something wrong.

And you will get destroyed. Your career will be ruined, et cetera. But how do we, how, like you've just said. something which I think is probably true, which is a female referee, a assistant referee. A lot of men will be like, well, let's see it. At the very least, they'll be extra wary, right? How do we have that conversation? Because you've just admitted that that's how most men will think.

But if anyone said, I think a woman is probably less capable, you'd be wrecked. That's what I mean. But so what we have to do, we have to challenge why you think that in the first place. So I think a man will be better. And I'm happy to say that. But what I mean by that is that my initial thought is, yes, a man will be better. And then before I even see whether he's better or not, she's better or not, I say to myself, why did I think that?

Because I've only with myself. And I say, why I've thought that? Because life has wrongly shown me that men are better than women. But that's wrong to think that. So because I've owned it and I've said, then I can change it. If I just go, well, no, I don't make, that's what the truth of reconciliation is we have to be honest with ourselves. And it's not just with women.

It's with race. It's with gender. It's with North and South. I got off the train yesterday. I got off the train yesterday at Houston. I had to go from Kingscross to Blackfriza, where the event was. And I'm walking through.

There's lots of building work going on. And there was a conversation going on. I haven't got a clue what the conversation was. I just heard the man who I consider to be the foreman because he seemed to be in charge. I just heard his voice. Didn't hear anything else. All I heard him say was,

that's a very northern attitude to have. Now, I didn't even have to think what kind of attitude that would have been, but I knew it would have been, the perceptive would have been an inferior attitude. Because that's how we've been conditioned to think. So don't blame the individuals who get caught. Look at the environment they've been brought up in and challenge that

rather than thinking, no, this doesn't exist. You know, bias is not about, in fact, the book is not about race. I call it uncomfortable about racism because racism is a hot topic at the moment and hopefully get more books sales. But to be honest with you, it's about, it's about, it's about, it's about, it's about, it's about, because from a black perspective also, you look at what's going on in the Caribbean and Africa. And this is not a, this is not a judgment on the Caribbean and Africa.

It's a judgment as the legacy of colonialism, which meant that from an elite, point of view, you know, because there's still colonial, and from an economic point of view, there's still the legacy of colonial exploitation from a financial point of view, because of course, the West still controls the economic. So it's economic colonization is still going on. So don't blame Black Africans for disenfranchising Black Africans or Black, or light-skinned elite Black Jamaicans because this is what has happened. But we're trying to simplify it by making it a white and a black issue. But it's not because of course, one of the most discriminated against groups who are considered at all in this debate are white working class people. Because they're suffering

equally as well, not because they're white, but in other ways. So this is really what the book is about so that we can have an honest conversation about discrimination, basically. But do you not think, John, that every time, you know, somebody says something which is racist or derogatory, or even it can be a slip of the tongue. And you see people being dragged for it on social media and you see it being cancelled and then it turns into a Twitter storm and there's a pile on. Every time we have that, it just sets us back. It's another step. It depends what it is. That's why I'm saying, intents is the most important thing. Look at it, for example, like with Amber Rudd and Diane Abbott. When Amber Rudd said that women have it hard in politics, let's have that conversation.

Women in politics have a hard time. Let's have that conversation. A more hard hitting and meaningful conversation is how hard black women have it in politics. But Amber Rudd said, colored women have it even harder. She's not being positive about, but she said the wrong words. She said colored instead of black. So instead of Dan Abbott saying, well, you know, you should have said black, not colored, but there's a discussion about her heart. It is for black women. She never said that.

She said sac her because she said colored. So that conversation's lost. You're so right. You know, I used to run a comedy club. I've given this example. People who watch a show regularly will know. And one of the acts was a friend of ours. He does an act called President Obonjo.

He puts this military dictator. He's an African guy. And he does it. And after the gig, a member of the audience came up. to me, this is like a rural gig in Tumbridge Wells, a guy in his probably late 60s came up to me, and he said, oh, I love that first act, you know, the colored chap, because he'd forgot.

And I thought, if you'd taken that as a video and you put it online, this guy's life would be destroyed, but what was he trying to say? How good he was. Alan Hansen said the same thing. Alan Hansen said, colored players are fantastic, they brought so much to the game,

they wanted to be sacked. I said to Alan, you know what you should have said? Can we swear? Yeah, of course. It's not going to be a real swear. I said, Alan, you know what you should have? have said? You should have said black players are shit because it means you got the word right, black. And he would have been in trouble, would you? But instead of saying colored players

are good and he'd get in trouble for that when he's trying to praise us and say how good we are, Greg Clark went through the same thing when he talked about colored people. But then he went on to say also, and this is where the nuances around language and understanding, particularly with new concepts coming forward every day. And Greg Clark said about gay, he would love a gay player to come out. He would get so much support. You get so much love and trust. And this is what we need to support the gay community because we love a gay player to come out because, you know, he made a live choice to be gay, oh, no, he didn't, obviously. But of course, he doesn't know it. But he's trying to be positive to say he wants gay people to come out. And because at his age, he doesn't

understand that. He's now been cancelled and now he's left his job because of that. And I say to young people now who use language, particularly just language as the, as the marker rather than intent. In 30 years time, whatever you're using now may change. Oh, 100. And then what's Five years time. Yeah, five years time, ten years time. And then what's going to happen when you are used to saying something and you have the right intention, but you say the wrong thing? Do you expect them to be sacked or cancelled?

So that is why intent is the most important thing for me. It's amazing how we tinker with language. But we're more obsessed about discussing whether BAME is racist than actually having the discussion. Because it's easy. Well, it's very similar to taking the knee. The discussion is now not about why we're taking the knee and a tangible difference that's made because we're highlighting a problem, it's now whether we have the right to take the knee.

If you look at the Me Too movement, which was started by Tarana Burke many years ago, to highlight the sexual abuse for young black girls in the inner cities, that's not the Me Too movement is. Me Too movement is about a Hollywood actress who was abused by Harvey Weinstein and elite groups of women who now may be, you know, not being given opportunities because of sexism, whereas that's not what it was.

That's not what it was. So it's been hijacked by an elite group of people for their own end, rather than the original meaning. So just like taking the nearby Colin Kaepenip, was about injustice and police in the unity, it is, it's now about I have the right to take the knee. So the discussion now isn't about why we're taking the knee, is, should we take a knee or not?

What for? Don't really care. But we should still do it. Because as we've passed a red card down the line in the Champions League for 25 years, that's made no difference. What it does is it highlights the problem. So what football can do is highlight the problem. It can't change or solve the problem.

But we believe, just by highlighting it, that's enough. And the more we just keep talking about that and feeling that we're doing something, we're doing something, we're doing something, nothing changes. for the majority of people. Do you support the Wilfred Zaha position? I don't know if you know his position, which is I'm not going to take the knee because it's a token gesture

and therefore it doesn't achieve. I support his decision and I support the decision of the people who want to take the knee just to highlight the problem because Wilfred Zaha, not taking the knee, doesn't tell the problem either. What it does, it highlights his stance

and I'm making a stance against it. But just by not taking the knee and maybe even doing that, that's not going to change anything either. What's going to change something is us to make a tangible difference is to talk about why are we taking in the first place?

Why am I standing in doing there? That's why I use Marcus Rashford as an example. Marcus Rashfield, who single-handedly changed government policy towards, and this is not to do with race, but it's to do with underprivilege. He used his platform to change government policy about feeding underprivileged kids with free school dinners. Not about Eastern European racist fans or stream bananas on the field to stop doing that. Because Eastern European fans throwing a banana on the field or racially abusing,

of course it's wrong. And we have to do something about that. But that is not the reason why there are kids stabbing each other in London and can't get jobs and housing and a good education. And the more we just focus on that and ignore that and think that that's making a difference. What that's making a difference to are footballers. Nobody else. So, yes, we have to do both as people keep telling me, but we're not doing both. The elite are talking about things that are going to affect them.

And systemic racism doesn't affect footballers. Individual acts of racism, bananas on the field. and for the other six days of the week the system rewards them in the money they make, the houses they live the places they can go, they can go to all of the elite places which the system allows them to. Systemic racism affects people in the black

in the community and that is where we have to really tackle it. Yes, we have to do both but we're not doing both. John, one of the things I'm a bit confused there to clear up is I think what you're saying quite a lot and you mentioned this a lot obviously in the book is it's largely a class issue right so well not just class elitism as well yeah it's quite nuanced but yeah go ahead what's the difference between class and elitism because you can have not because you can have

working class people who are elite footballers are working class the majority of them but they are in an elite system because they're allowed to be there so point i mean footballers are obviously a tiny minority of society exactly actors singers rappers yeah but these are the ones who are we are focusing on they're a tiny they're a tiny group of disenfranchised people but we're we're disproportionately making out that what we have to do is we have to support them more than the masses. Yeah. I guess what I'm getting at, and I'm just posing this as a devil's advocate, understand this, is it helpful to add race into the conversation, or is it just a class issue in terms of focusing on solving it? Absolutely not. Of course you have to have race into it,

when race is applicable. Right. But there are times when race isn't applicable, but of course, because everything is a racist. And that's the point I'm trying to make. I guess what I'm saying, let me give you an example. So take education, for example, right? People talk about problems for people from the Afro-Caribbean community, particularly, specifically in education. And what you see is West Africans, for example, do very well in this country. As opposed to Caribbean boys. Exactly. And white boys do even worse.

White working class boys do even worse. And even Indian boys to Bangladeshi boys. Exactly. Of course. So I would argue that's not, I mean, it might be an element of race involved. But if you look at it on the surface, you're going, well, white boys are at the bottom of the pile. Africans and Indians are doing great. That's not a race issue.

That's a class issue. That's not a class because Bangladesh boys aren't necessarily a lower class or West African boys aren't a lower class, the Caribbean boys. So that's not a class. So what is the issue? That could be culture. Well, I'm not allowed to say that. You are.

Well, yeah. Well, it could be. That's what I'm saying. And it could because if you look at Indians to Pakistanis, for example, because of course, you know, the caste system in India has nothing to do with, you know, whether you're Indian or Bangladesh or Pakistani. So those are the nuances around you. And these are the conversations they have to have to have.

I'm glad you said this. But unfortunately, what has been pushed into it, and that's why it's quite good to be black now because we can say a lot of things and get away with it. That's one of the good things about being black, whereas I know white people can't. And of course, you know,

yeah, you've recently become white because Greeks weren't necessarily white. Well, I'm Jewish as well. But there's no hope for you, is there? And that's interesting, because I got a bit of abuse for talking about in the book. Because what they've done, they've taken little bits out of the book,

and they've had this conversation and go, oh, that's terrible. Because the whole idea of, are the Jews a race of people? In terms of because you can have blonde hair, blue-eyed Jews, you can have Ashkenazi Jews, you can have Sephardic Jews, you can have black Jews.

So if you have Ethiopian Jews, are they, are they Negroes or black, or what are they? And it's more to do with the fact that everybody's discriminated against, but you can't just lump everything with race. And what is race and what is racism? There are certain discriminations that aren't racism. I would love the day to go back, not to go back to the old days,

but I love a day, I love a day for a black man and a white man to have a fight without being a racial incident. Why can't you have a fight? because I just didn't like him. Yeah. Music to our ears, man. It's true.

But we seem to live in this society where everything is becoming hyper-racialized, yet we don't want to solve the problems that we have. We would prefer to win an argument than to solve a problem. And when we've reached that point, you think, well, we're screwed, aren't we? Because we are arguing at this lower level, which is completely inconsequential to the real problem, which is up here whereby it's about discrimination for different groups of people,

and the more people we can discriminate against. the better the system works. We live in a capitalist society. This is what happens. This is what capitalism is. The more people we can disenfranchise and exploit for the few, but what will happen now

because we are now becoming more enlightened, you have to then allow more people to become the few. So a lot of black people will become the few. A few women have become the few and it's still discriminated against the masses. So the point I'm making is that once we get rid of discrimination,

racial discrimination, homophobia and sexism, to name just a few, there are other dynamics. The vast majority of black people, women, and gay people will still be exactly where they are. But it won't be because they're women, black or gay. It'll be other dynamics.

Then it'll be the way the world should be. The people are willing to get up and work hard. The people are willing to go to school. The people are willing to study. They will be rewarded. Because at this moment in time, as much as we say, that is applicable to everybody, it's not because there are certain black people,

Bangladesh's, other people, who these opportunities aren't afforded to because of the negative perception we have of them, no matter how hard they work. And you will still have many black people, Bangladesh's women who will get to the top despite not being given an opportunity because they're because of their innate human qualities. And then they're used as an example that, see, you can do it as well because they did it. What we have to do is provide an environment for

everybody to do it fairly. And still, the ones who are willing to work hard will then get there. Rather than the majority of people are up there disproportionately are white middle class men. And because they're white middle class men, a lot of them, not all of them, of course, the majority of them deserve to be there. But because of the majority of them deserve to be there, But because we have a perception of that particular group, it is disproportionate, and productivity will go up because you'll have the right people for the right job. See, this is why you're starting to lose me a little bit because it sounds very utopian when we get rid of discrimination, when we get rid of it. No, no, no, no, no, no. Utopian means that everything will be equal. That's utopian. I'm not saying everything will be equal.

I still say the vast majority of people still will be working in the inner cities, working jobs and not being given opportunities. But the opportunities that they won't get won't be because. that they're black or because they're women. It'll be because they're not prepared to work hard. They're not clever enough. They're not intelligent enough. That's why the whole idea of, you know, this idea that everything has to be equal

from a political point of view. That's why socialism never worked. Socialism can't work in the modern age because, of course, there are people who would always want to work harder than somebody else to be rewarded more. But if we're going to say that, you're not going to be rewarded more because everyone's going to be the same. What's the point of working harder? So we're not going to be as productive. I'm from the Soviet Union. You don't need to tell me.

Exactly. Yeah. Flipping hell, you're Jewish, Russian, Greek. You're flipping everything, aren't you? You got into Jamaican in you. Yeah. Yes. So that's why it doesn't work.

And you can see, obviously, Russia and China now, they've got millionaires and stuff like that. So I'm not saying that we want everything to be equal. But at this moment in time, what we're trying to sell, particularly the black people, is that the reason why you're not there is because it's racism. Now, lots of black people aren't there because they're lazy. Like, white people are lazy and everybody's lazy,

but that's not what we're saying. That's not what we're saying. We're saying is because of this. So I did a talk the other day. Hold on. Hold on, hold on. So you're saying a lot of very interesting things, and I think I just want to take one at a time.

So I'm not going to repeat what you say, because I'll get in trouble. A lot of black people are lazy, is what you're saying. You take that in isolation, then of course. John Bond's up for a racial and apologies. I know exactly what you meant. You don't, but there you go. This is going out unedited.

That's the point of the show, right? So you're not going to get misrepresented out of this. Well, not by us anyway. But what I'm saying is, so you're saying basically, racism isn't what's stopping those people from achieving quite often. Racism is what stopping some people from achieving. The people who are enamored with those qualities to be willing to get them to go to work, study hard, but the system discriminates against them and women and other groups of people.

They're going to be the odd one of those who, despite all of that, will still make it, but there are lots of them who won't make it because the system is designed to stop them making it. How is the system designed to stop them, John? Because we live in a capitalist world, and capitalism is about the control of production by a few people and everybody else does the work and some people benefit, a minority benefits. So if you go back to from a political point of view, China should have been the first capitalist. China is in the background. I don't know if you've got to that point yet.

Because before Christopher Columbus discovered America, there was a maritime leader in China called Zhang He, who China had bigger ships that even have now. And they had more, they were stronger militarily from a scientific point of view. They were way ahead of everybody else. and they were trading in India. These are merchants trading in India, trading in East Africa. This is before Christopher Columbus even went. And what the government did, they recognized that if we allow this to continue,

those merchants will become disproportionately richer than the population, and then they will be able to influence the politics, which would mean that they would become even more richer because they influenced politics and policy to the detriment of the average person. So they burnt every one of those ships to stop that, because they knew. But what did we do in Europe? we did the opposite. So the merchants became powerful. So it became disproportionate. The wealth and

inequality became disproportionate. And that's what we have to this day. Now, we can't go back. So it's not a question of going back to socialism or common, because it doesn't work, as you can see in China and India. But just to give you an example of how capitalism is about disproportionately discriminating and exploiting the masses for the few. And that's the world we live in. And we know where we want to be, all of us. But we're willing to work hard to do so. Right. So this is the point, which is why I use the word utopia, but I, come back to this because, you know, we've had a lot of view behind you, there's Brett Weinstein, one of the world's most prominent evolutionary biologists. We've had a bunch of them on the show.

Are we ever going to live in a society where, I mean, we evolved to live in hierarchies, right? That's what we evolved to be. So are we ever going to get to a point when there aren't a lot of people, a small number of people at the top who control most of what happened? I doubt it, not in our lifetime. Because there are people who are always going to be willing to work harder than others, and therefore they should be rewarded. But at this moment in time, it is unrealistic in terms of the people we think are more deserving because of what we've been conditioned to think.

And going back for 300 years, once we were then told that to legitimize slavery and colonialism, particularly, forget slavery, colonialism, that these group of people are inferior to us. So therefore there are some people who we have now been conditioned to think are inferior to us. There's a nice group we can then discriminate against without it necessarily bothering everyone else because we know that they're inferior.

And we know women are inferior. We wrongly know that. So therefore if you condition our minds whereby the reality of who is inferior and who is not is just about your own individual quality, then you'll see lots of black people, lots of women, lots of gay people, lots of northerners being in these positions because they're willing to work hard. And you'll still have the same amount of people being discriminated against, but then it'll be more, it'll be fairer in terms of the people who will discriminate against. And I'm not saying they deserve to be discriminated against because they have to look at different issues

regarding geography and where you're born and when you're born as to who is going to be descriptive. Because if the Greeks had lost that war all those years ago against the Persians, you know, Europeans would have been the ones who would be the black people, if you like. So, and it's quite a complex way of looking at it, but that is what we have to do because the way that we were convinced in terms of racial hierarchy and sexual hierarchy was a very complex way. It's not stupid people. Lenius blooming back, the most intelligent minds, soulless this lie about characteristics, mental characteristics, moral characteristics of different groups of people,

which was a lie, which have now been debunked. So even the idea of race doesn't exist. There's no race. UNESCO passed a statement in 55 that race biologically and genetically doesn't exist. Unfortunately, we're too far now to start that conversation because it's become a reality on our own mind. But what we have to do is now change the perception of the intellectual and moral characteristics that were put on the races.

So that being the case, number one, how do you do that? And number two, do you agree with quotas? Do you agree with that kind of system? No, we deconstruct what we've learned. That's how we do that. We deconstruct what we've learned. So why do we feel that white people are superior? No, we don't.

Yes, we do. Because of what every single day? What does the media say every single day? What does the media say about Jamaican yardis, Nigerian drug dealers, Nigerian conmen, Muslim terrorists. So that gives us a negative perception of terrorists, drug dealers and groomers, but also Muslims, Nigerians and Jamaicans. This is how we have become conditioned

to think. I'd push back against that, John, because after Brexit, we were conditioned to think the white working class was stupid, racist and whatever else for voted for voting. Not after Brexit, they always thought that. Yeah, yeah. It's true. They always thought that. And, and, and, and, and, not only did they always think that. Yeah. What they did after Brexit is they then said, like they said to the white working class is, the reason for your discontent, Mr. White working class man, is because these foreigners are coming here and they're taking your benefits and they're taking your council houses, your shittic benefits on shitty council houses, and working class people went, yeah, we don't want to come over. Instead of thinking, we don't want more, we don't want them.

We want more for ourselves. So the reason for our discontent is them. So we hate you. Then we're saying to the, to the black people and other people, the reason for your discontent is those white working class football fans and Eastern European fans, of course, they just put us against each other. Like, for example, women and black people, black life matter. So what did we have in the newspaper? 10 years for throwing a statue in the river, but two years for rape. What are women supposed to think then? What are the media trying to do?

Women are going to go, Black Lives Matter, Flipanella always getting everything they want, and it's only two years for rape, they're putting us against each other. And they've always done that, divide and conquer. That's why the groups should be together are disenfranchised groups.

And even when you talk about the, you speak to football fans, and he say to them, you know, why are you against taking the knee? Marxism. Marxism. I don't know if they know much about Marxism. saying they're stupid, but I don't know enough about Marxism to know that, but of course, I don't know if they know that white working class people should be Marxist,

because Marxism is about protecting them and they're right and giving them more equality. Defunding the police. I'm talking about the essence of what it was. Of course it can be, but everything can be changed. Everything can be changed. Look at the Labour Party on the, it's now changing. Yeah, I suppose it was. So, so I'm talking about the essence of it.

So defunding the police. Marx is not about defunding police. Marx is about getting rid of poverty. If you get rid of a poverty, there's less crime. Less crime. You don't need as much police. And the funds can use for something else to help working class people.

But of course, once you just talk about, it's about these funding police, which it isn't. So it's quite nuanced. And if people don't understand that, they just go along with what they hear. So I suppose that is where you look at it from an elite and a non-elite point of view. I think the elite point of view is interesting.

I mean, I take issue with the Marxism stuff because, first of all, there's a reason I said it used to be. I mean, it never worked on the first place. It could never work because a man. individual greed. So I understand that. I'm talking about the philosophy behind it. You make the point in the book about greed. I don't know. I agree with that either. I think, well, as I say, I think we evolved to live in hierarchy, and it's the nature, especially for males, but for everybody to seek status in society and to seek to advance their own law.

And so we'll always be, we'll always be striving. When you were on the football field, you wanted to win. Right? And everybody wants to win at life. Everybody wants to move up in the world. And that's why socialism doesn't work. It depends what you mean. I agree with you, but it depends what you mean by evolution. Evolution is very natural. The idea of wanting more is not natural. That is not naturally in us. Because if it was naturally in us,

do you want more than your son or your children? Would you want more food than your children? They have my genes, and the point of my life is to pass my genes on to them so that they can pass their genes on. So using my children, it's different. Do I want more than you, yes. Yes, of course. But if it was natural for us to want more than everybody else,

you would want more than your children or your cousins or whatever. Richard Dawkins talks about this in the selfish gene, the purpose of our life, the way we're driven by our genes to reproduce our genes. It's not about John Barnes or Constantine Kisson or Francis Foster. It's the genes that you carry wanting to replicate themselves. So that's why you don't want more than your son. But I think what I'm saying is it's very natural for us to want more, to want as high as status as possible, especially for males, and to have as much resources as possible.

Why especially for males? Because males have a much more status-driven instinct than women do. It's just the nature of it. That's how we have become. That's what you think is just naturally in us. It's how we evolved. You think so? Yeah, I do.

I mean, look, we've had a lot of evolutionary biologists and psychologists on the show. Do you believe in race? That is something I haven't thought, I don't know enough about. The evolutionary stuff, I feel pretty well-schooled on. I don't understand what you mean when you say, when you say race isn't a thing. But I'm open to hearing our argument on it. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you read a lot of geneticists, they'll tell you, why does the race?

because there are some white northern Europeans who are genetically closer to black West Africans than a Black West African to a Black East African. Not the gene that makes them black, but other genes in terms of our genetic makeup. So why aren't they the same race? Because the gene that makes us black is the same other gene that makes someone

have blue eyes and brown eyes. So why aren't the people who have blue eyes are different race that people have brown eyes? Why aren't they not a different race? But genetics is, sorry, just on this very point, genetics is a complicated one because we judge race on phenotype. Yeah.

On how we look. That's why people would say you're one race and I'm another race. Yeah, but a blue eyes is different to a brown eyes. They look differently. So why is it just the color of the skin? It's a good point. It is a good point. And that's why geneticists and biologists have always said race does not exist as we know it.

Because race before that was always cultural. Because you had people of, as long as you buy into the political, like if you go back to the Greeks, you buy into the political ideology, then you can be the same race as them. Well, that's what I've always said about this country. That's what I love about Britain, which is the idea. And in some ways, America obviously hasn't lived up to this ideal in every way. But the idea is, if you come to America and you integrate and you become part of that society, you are an American, it doesn't matter where you come from, doesn't matter what you are.

Now, that's the ideal. We haven't lived up to that, admittedly. And the same with Britain. As a foreigner who came here, like you, at the age of 13 or 12 or whatever it was, I feel like we can all be British. As long as we stop looking each other through race. The Montreal espouses that narrative more than anyone is France, not Britain. Because Britain says you can hold on to your identity. You don't have to be British.

I resist that. You can hold on to your identity. I resist that. Yeah, but that's what Britain says. I know. I know. Britain says that. France doesn't.

And I wish they would stop. Because there is no official consensus of how many black people are in France because they're none because they're all French or Muslims because they're all French. So the ideology after the French Revolution was that you're all friends, but the reality is the same. It's different. Whereas in England, we don't do that. As much as you would like that and you think that, that is not the case here. Because here in England, we say, hold on to your identity.

and in many respects, you know why? Because you'll never be British. You hold on to your identity. So think about that when you think how together it is. And in America, black American, I said, why do you talk about black Americans or Native Americans? Because the idea of greatness is to be American.

Right. Yeah? They don't say European American, do they? Because they consider themselves to be American. And that is what we all want to be. So why does a black American, who is obvious, you're black? So therefore, we know where your forefathers would have come from. So why can't you just say I'm an American?

Or a Native American. In fact, Native Americans are the Americans. They are the Americans. The European Americans are European Americans are Black Americans are Black Americans. So in many respects, from an American perspective, it's not even a question of black or native. It's about or black or any other color or any other race. It is being an American. And if you look at Black Americans, their Americanness comes out when they're with other black people.

Because, of course, if all black people are in a room and they're from Africa and Jamaica and when you're a black American, you want them to know you are an American. Because an American is superior to other people. So that is when you become American. But when you're in America, you become black American. It's a very interesting way of looking at it. It just seems to me that we're having a very reductive conversation about race.

Because so racist, complex and it's nuanced. Right. So the point I'm making is that no point talking about whether race exists or not. Because as far as we concerned, it does. So while this is a very nuanced and complex way of thinking and this is the right way of thinking if you really want to deconstruct the whole idea that racism doesn't exist, but we've gone too far

to even tell black people that you're not black or white people whatever. So the whole point about my book and this whole discussion for me is yes, let's accept that race exists. As much as it does, let's accept it does. However, what we have to fight against are the characteristics labeled to certain races which were lies and they're not real. And you use that example in the book with calling a black player

powerful and then using the example of Adama Trieri or someone like Didier Drugba. And that is a perfect way to describe them. They're powerful players. Now, I understand. People go, you know, because black people have been called lazy and be called just their strength. So, you know, as if I saw and I've listened to commentators talk and you can see them, you know, pushing back and they go, they recognize that they've talked about. They said, that's a very powerful run by unintelligent as well. You know what I mean?

But I've got to put it in. And they have to put it in and we've heard it all the time. And listen, it's just like, look, we know what's going on. So why do we have to do that? Because I know, I know the historic perception of black people, slaves, whatever you want to talk about. We have to change that perception. And changing the perception isn't elevating black people out of that negative space because some black men, and in fact, quite a lot of, lots of black men are jet black with big lips and a round head. So are we now trying to say that's not what black people are like?

Because when we see that figure, we go, you know, not all black people are like that, why are they showing that? But if they show up an image of John Barnes, light skin, thin a lips, no one will go, not all black men are like that. Some of them have got big lips of black skin. We won't do that because we are ashamed of that image. And that's what we have to do as black people, get away from that image. I mean, I've got in the book, and we call it in Jamaica right in the emancipation park where I have Pinnish Park. There's a statue of the slaves who came to Jamaica. Now, if you look at Apollo Belvedere, and you look at the Greek statues of a thousand years ago,

and it is about their beauty, and it is about their intelligence. So while they're sculptured and never mind what they look like, you can see that this is about, because they make them with obviously very little, you know, or sometimes they have none because that's not what's important. The importance, their beauty, their, their, their intelligence, that's what this is about. In Piny's Park, the big black slave, they've made him with a, that big. Which people are like, why do we have to then show that, you know, okay, we have got bigger dicks than everybody else for our masculinity? Because this is how we have been conditioned to think. we have been dehumanized to then be reduced to just being seen as a physical specimen.

And that's what we have to get away from ourselves before white people can get away from seeing us in that way. We have to get away from seeing us that way ourselves. So when we see a caricature, if it's a caricature, and a caricature is a black man with big lips and a black face, why is that racist? Because some black men have bigness and black faces. And I know the history of slavery and colonialism

when the black man was dehumanized to look, whatever. But we ourselves have to get away from it. John, do you think this is something that worries me quite a lot? And I think, I don't know whether you'd agree with me, but I feel like you're talking about the same thing. I feel like, you know, when I was growing up, my parents brought me up to treat everybody the same way. And my greatest hero when I was a kid was Michael Jordan. Like, I was a huge fan of his. I played basketball, not very well, but I did. I loved Michael Jordan. He was an inspirational man. He was an inspirational play. He was brilliant in every way. It never occurred to me that he was, quote, unquote,

a different race. It never occurred to me. And I worry that the way we're having these conversations now, my children, they might look up and see a LeBron James or whoever the current superstars and Janice Ante Tocumpur, whoever it is. I don't think they'll be able to notice, Yanis Ante Tocompo. Thank you. Yeah. Because I always tried to say second name. I just wanted to make make you said it right. Yeah, I'm a big basketball fan. I just go Yannis Ante Tata. Antitacumba. But I don't know that my children will be able to have that pure experience of admiring another man without thinking that they've noticed what you've said doesn't exist, which is his race. Yeah. Do you worry about that? No, what I worry about is when people may convince themselves in terms of, you know, not seeing color, not seeing race and they just look at, and we're having it now in football.

whereby what we've actually said, and I think the European Championship proved that, that when Garrow Southgate talks about this new, diverse England football team, and I remember in 1984 playing in a game with their five black players on the pitch, and since then we've had five and six and seven black players playing for England. So why now all of a sudden it's the new diverse England football team, as if black players hadn't played before. And before they missed those penalties, everything was okay. And as soon as they missed penalties,

so what you're actually saying is, and the people you admire, obviously, are successful black people. that's not what we have to do. We don't have to look at successful black people and convince ourselves that, you know, we're either not racially biased because we love these successful black people. What about if they're not successful?

What happens then? Because, of course, we love Sterling and Rashford and everybody before the municipalities. As soon as the misrepancies, you see what society thinks of them. A section of society thinks of them. And that's what we have to change. Stop looking for brilliant black people to say,

things are changing because we're looking up to these brilliant black people. We have to change the perception of the average black person down below. That's when we really get rid of racial bias. Because it's very easy. Margaret That's the first. female prime minister. Has things changed for women? No. Cress in the dick. Now she's having a hard time after the Sarah Eiffrod problem because she's a woman. She can't change anything within that system.

Because just putting elite people in power or loving elite people, Michael Jordan, you have to look at the average black person. Because when they look at the average or the black failure and they say, you know, can black people be good enough because they failed at that? How many white failures have there been? But no one thinks that white people generally will fail because their individual has failed. But we do that with blackness. So when I see people who love brilliant black people, I'm not talking about me, man. I'm not talking about Justin Trude. I'm not talking about him.

But this is how we have to recondition our mind. Look at the average black person walking down the street, smoking a splitz, and he's got his jeans around his office, dreadlocks and say, yes, I see him as equal. Because, you know, when you talk about even white people who say they don't see some white people, I have to stop saying white people. Some white people like some black people

who say they don't see everyone, we see everyone as equal. Yeah, we see everyone as an equal. There's only two possibilities of how they see people as equal, because we all see ourselves in a particular space in the world. Up there, Donald Trump promises you some of them people, wherever we see ourselves. And we see, so we see black people as equal. When we say we see black people as equal,

not a black person, black people. We see ourselves in a particular space. We either, because we know where the perception of black people are, which is generally down below white people, we either bring them up to our level to see them as equal, if some white people, or we bring ourselves down to their level to see them as equal. and which one do you think it normally is?

It normally is elevating them to a level where you see them as equal. So why do you have to elevate them to see them as equal? Where is your unconscious perception of them to begin with? So I'll even talk about we see them as equal. It's really rising them up above to where the general perception of the... John, let me disagree with you since you alluded to it

to me saying I was inspired with Michael John. I didn't say that my parents brought me up to see everybody's equal. My parents brought me up to treat everybody as if they're my equal. There's a difference. I'm not claiming that I see a guy with his pants down smoking a spliff as my equal, whatever their skin color. To me, that's a different issue entirely.

If someone is smoking a spliff in the middle of the street and they've got their pants around the ankles, it doesn't really matter to me what the race is. That's a different issue. But my point is I was brought up to treat everybody equally, and now I feel like the conversation has moved away from that, and we're having a different conversation. And what I was getting at is, do you think that's constructive? Well, the narrative from a lot of black people,

black elite, is that I don't care how you see me, I care how you treat me. Now, you've just said you've been brought up to treat everybody as equal. If you don't see everybody as equal, you're not going to treat them as equal. It's impossible for you to treat them as equal if you don't see them as equal. You may be forced to in your job or in situations, but if you don't see them as equal, they're always going to be ways to make you not treat them equally after a while.

So if we turn it around and say, we care how we see people, and as long as we then see them as equal there'll be no reason for us to treat them unequally. So the whole idea which we've been doing for years and years. After the American Civil War, we had black senators, black people got the vote, mainly because white Northern America is wanting to disenfranchise southern Americans

and got more votes to disenfranchise. But then after 20 years, they realized they're going to have to deal with these white southerners and we have to be on an equal level because we saw them as equal. So then the Jim Crow Lords came in and we've been trying to treat black people as equal rather than seeing them as equal. And that has never worked. Never worked. We have to change our perceptions.

it around to seeing people as equal. So this whole thing about let's treat people as equal. For example, at football matches, you used to be able to go, ooh, ooh, ooh, now you can't do that anymore, can you? You can't do that anymore. But if a black player came to take a throw and I scratch my armpit, you know what I'm doing, don't you? But you call the referee or the police and I say to him, I'm scratching my armpit, Mr. Policeman. Is it illegal to scratch your armpit? Let's make armpit scratch an illegal. Okay, we'll boo. Can we boo every time a black player gets the ball? Yes, we can. We know what you're doing. You're not making a monkey noise. let's make booing illegal. We'll clap.

There's always going to be a way around. So we have to stop thinking about treating people as equal. First, we have to see them as equal. Then there'll be no laws necessary to treat them as equal. And how do you see people as equal? Surely that is something that happens. How we see people as equal is we have to say, why do we see them as unequal to begin with?

And how we see them as equal to begin with, because the way we have been conditioned to think about them. And that's what we have to deconstruct. Because it's not natural. To wake up and think, I'm better than a woman. Of course, if it's going to be a physical confrontation, fine. but in terms of managing a Fortune 500 company or a black person's ability to think.

Or let's go to war. Who would I rather go to war with? A gay guy or a skinned with tattoos because have we been conditioned to think? So this is that... And unfortunately, the solution is not to put black people into positions of power necessarily because that's what we say as black people

because we have to make decisions. So what will happen is that Dr. Tony Seale will be put in a position of power to talk about the racial disparities within the system. And he's come back and said there's no systemic racism. Now, if a white man said that, we'd go, oh, no, because white people, but we wanted a black man up there. And he said the same thing. So what are we going to do? We can't complain, can we?

Well, talking about Tony, we've had him on the show. Twice. We've had Tony on the show twice. And did you talk about this with him? Yeah, yeah, we talked about the ratio. And he said there's no systemic racism. No, he didn't actually. He said that the report didn't say there was no systemic racism. The report pointed out areas where there needs more investigation. Right. Now, so the report may not have said that that was reported.

What he actually said in the report is that there are incidents of racism, not systemic racism. Yeah. And what have I said? Incidents of racism in football matches. So that's not systemic racism in football matches where someone throws a banana on the field because that does not affect that footballers life generally. It affects him for 90 minutes if he feels disenfranchised. Yeah. So by then saying there are incidents of racism, who is he supporting?

Black footballers, elite. Black actors, can't get Oscars, elite. Now, systemic racism, who does that affect? Black people in the cities. They've got no voice. They've got no control. They've got no power. So therefore, if he was going to attack the system, of which he's a part of, maybe

wouldn't be where he is. Well, hold on. You're being unfair to Tony. So I'm going to defend them. Or Francis, you can defend them if you want. One of us. Right. So when he was talking about that, he was also talking about things that affected black people

and talked about it in a very honest way. For instance, a statistic that I found shocking. and horrifying is the fact that a black man is 24 times more likely to be murdered than a white man. And to me, the fact that we're not talking about that is an example for me of racism because what that is saying is, oh, they're not worthy to be discussed. Then we're not discussing this statistic. That's not a footballer though, is it? No, no, no, no.

But he also talked about class a lot. But who is talking about the word? I don't see any of that out in the, out for discussion. He's talking about that here on this program. Why wasn't that in the report? It wasn't the report. It wasn't the report. It wasn't the report.

Yeah, yeah. That was a big part of the report. So isn't that part of systemic racism? Well, his argument is, you talked about culture before, right? It's partly culture. It's partly, I'm sure, would, in fact, I remember him saying, it was partly to do with the legacy of people who came here and were disenfranchised when they did.

So there's a distrust of police. There's a distrust of the authorities, which contributes to a lack of fathers in the home, in particular communities. That's a big part of it. And the main point, this is why I think you and Tony would actually get on. he talked about the class issue there's a big class dimension to this

and that's his argument but there still is systemic racism which report says there is not well I'd love you to have that conversation you would get on with Tony a lot better than you think I'm sure I would no no no I'm sure I would but did he say there's no systemic racism so why was that in the report

because well you know the media John come on there you go so I can only go from what I see in the media so he would say there's systemic racism so why do you need to come out and receive that he would not say there is or isn't systemic racism. Their conclusion was they didn't find evidence of there being systemic racism, but they did find a lot of areas where there was disenfranchisedment. Disenfranchisement for individuals, right? They're not systemic. But, but that's the problem. This is the biggest problem. Okay. Because once again, you can, what racism can improve?

The manana coming on the field. The overt racist. That's not what stopping people. They talked about disparities in education, disparities in health. Why hasn't anything been done about that? I mean, they have... That's not up to Tony. No, no, no, no, it's not up to Tony. But the point I'm making is that... Because you can arrest not white working class football fans

or do whatever, stop them going in. The racism, the sexism, the homophobia, you can't prove. Why don't women report lots of rapes and sexual abuse? Because the system is designed to protect men. That's why. Women will tell you that. We're men. We're going to go, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, aren't me?

Because that's what men do. So the system discriminates against women when it comes to sexual abuse. the system discriminates against black people. It does. Some black people, well, black people generally, not the ones who can get themselves out of it or the elite black people. So that's the point I'm making. What that report says, if you can point the finger at inconsequential people, the sex issue shouts an abuse or the rapist or the man who kills a woman,

but the system still discriminate against them. And that is why you cannot change things from within. You cannot be part of the system and change it. And the biggest example of that, and it's in the book, the ESL, European Super League. Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona, all of these top clubs, they are the most powerful clubs in UEFA. Why do, so why don't they change it?

Because they know we can't change things for ourselves within that existing system, so we have to leave it. That's how the Premier League started. Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton, when they were a big club. Can you believe that? Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton. Hall, Anton. Man United.

Mancite and Chelsea weren't there. They wanted more for themselves. And they knew they had to leave the football league controlled it. So that's why you can't change formula system. So why do we believe that 3% black people, 3% that we can get a few of us into the system and it'll change for everybody else?

We can't do it. We can't do it. But I do want to go back to that point about, and I want to get your take on it, because to me, I found that very upsetting. I was a teacher and I used to work down the road in Eweham, and I used to see kids getting involved in gangs. There was one boy who, when he left my primary school,

he came back to see me, and we were talking, and I was saying, how are you doing? It affects white working class kids as well as a white, not just a racing. Yeah, absolutely. But that statistic is that statistic, John. It's horrifying. Why are we not having an honest conversation about it? Because the conversation we're having is about Eastern European fans.

That's the problem with racism. Right. And people on Twitter abusing football players for missing penalties. That's why we're not doing anything about it. And that's why I say, if the elite black people like footballers and Mark... What did Marcus Rastford do to change that? Imagine if more footballers were to talk about, yes, it's bad in Eastern Europe, whatever. But the most important...

going to have to do, he's changed what's going on in the city because Marcus Fathford wasn't a racial thing. It was on a privilege. So if you imagine more footballers with a platform and the clown, because he knows that politicians be afraid to go against footballers, particularly when they're doing one, that's what we should do as black players. Wait till he score a hat trick, then come out and say something, because if you miss a penalty, you've got no cloud then. So

that's what they should do. Use their voice to talk about people less fortunate than themselves. And we started a conversation talking about me as a 17-year-old, and I noticed the inequality, not for me, because I lived in Highgate and Mayfrey and my dad was a diplomat. And I got bananas on the field. But I noticed the fact that what black people were going through back then and nobody spoke for them.

And now we're having, and nobody could. I couldn't because then people go just get on with it, you're playing the race, whatever. Whereas now we have an opportunity to really make a tangible difference. The tangible difference isn't banning Hungary from UEFA. The tangible difference is what Marcus Rathford did for what's going on in our inner cities. And that's what we have to do. And you think more people need to stand up and more people need to speak about this. But isn't it the problem, John, where if you see people getting cancelled,

If you see people, you know, getting dragged over the coals for using the word colored instead of... Absolutely. We're never going to be anywhere. Now, of course, that's a different subject in terms of, from a wide perspective, being able to have the honest conversation about how we truly feel. Even if we talk about the perception that we have and the illusion we have that our black players can really make a difference. They're taking a knee for racial discrimination. I haven't heard, Sky, BT, any black player having a meaningful discussion as to why there are very few black managers. once again,

you have to be careful who you criticize. It's okay to criticize Eastern Europe. Why are they no black managers? And it's because of the unconscious spies. I had a conversation with a female journalist, funny enough, and she says, why do they know black managers?

I said, there are only two reasons. One, because black players who want to be managers are mainly unconsciously discriminated against. If a black man gets a job with any club, everyone at that club wanting to do well. Every fan, because you love your club. You love your club.

That's how beautiful football is. You want to do well. But when he will be given less time to fail than a white manager, because if he loses a few matches, put it this way. If it was Arteta, I said the same thing about clot for the first three years and I talk about it. And it's not personal to Klop or Arteta. If a black man was in that job, they'd lose their job quicker

because of the perception we have of their work to begin with. So I'm not accusing any fans of being racist. You know, it's unconscious bias. So I said either because there's an unconscious bias towards your ability before you see them perform. And if they perform and they don't win all the games and they lose a few games, white managers are going to get the sack 100%,

but they'll be given longer, or they're not good enough because of the color of their skin. So when anyone asks a question, can black men make good managers? That is a racist question, because it presupposes that he can't be a manager because of the color of his skin. Is that a possibility?

So she said, no, there's another possibility. I said, what is that? He goes, well, maybe they don't want to be managers. She's a female sports journalist. I said, you could be right. Just like women don't want to be sports journalists, do they? Because that's what they say to women, and that women say, of course we do.

Why are you saying that? So why aren't we having this discussion? And I'll tell you, because it's, and I tell you why it's so obvious it's because of the perception we have of black people generally in terms of their ability to think. Because no matter how good you are as a footballer, once you finish playing football,

then you become a black person and what do we feel about your intellectual and moral capabilities, and that's what management is in terms of your intellect. So they're not many black managers. So another group of discriminated against managers are white English managers, not in the law divisions

and the bottom 14 teams in the Premier League, asked Liverpool Manor United Chelsea, they'll lose their job tomorrow. There's not one white English manager is going to get that job. Because the perception is foreign managers are better. So when a foreign manager gets a job and no one's ever heard of him, no one bats an eyelid. Give Eddie Hal the job at Man United.

Give him three games to lose and see what actually happens. So we understand that this perception of even white and white is supposed to be superior, but because they're English and it's a negative perception of English managers, If that's very obvious, why is it so hard to even believe that, I would know the history of the perception of black people, that black managers aren't being given jobs because of their colour. Now, after all of that, why aren't they talking about that?

Black players. One black player spoke about it, got ostracized, Danny Rose. So why all these take in the knee, talk about Eastern Europeans? Why aren't we having this conversation? Is this the elephant in the room? 30% black players and the black managers, once again, these are the nuances around discrimination and how we've been conditioned to think.

The black managers are given jobs. are foreign black managers. Patrick Vieira, Nune Espirita, in the Premier League of the clubs, because we have a perception that, oh, they're foreign. Oh, no, they're black, but not the black English ones.

They're more, they speak three languages. They're from Europe. They're more intelligent. Why? Because of the perception we have of them. Eric Cantanar, trawlers and seagulls. Philosopher. Philosopher.

Let Paul Merson say that and see what we think about his caught in the accent. Now that is funny. But, John, let me ask you this, because, you've been very honest about how you feel about these things and I'll be honest with you about how I think a lot of white people feel about this as well you talk about Marcus Rashford I would argue that one of the reasons his campaign has been so

successful is that he hasn't made a racial and so it makes it a lot easier for white people to go well I'll support that because it's not racial that that's my point but some things are racial yeah I have to pick and choose what's racial and what's not absolutely agreed but I guess what I'm saying is, do you not think that for issues where race may be a factor, but it's not necessarily the main factor, in issues which are much more to do with people's socioeconomic. Like, you know, we're about to move out of the studio, but people who I know this, but outside, there's a council estate, right? And I walk through this council estate. If I spent 10 minutes in that environment, I can feel the ambition draining out of me.

I've seen any new offices in Mayfair, so I'm defending now. I wish, but you know what I mean, right? Completely. Completely. So what I'm saying is, do you not think that it's much more effective on issues that are about socioeconomic to bring everybody together and to say, this ain't about your skin color? This is about the fact that you're poor, that you don't have a dad in the house, that you've got terrible teachers, school, et cetera. So this is what has been happening. Because, of course, if you want allies, if you want allies, yeah, and it has to be white allies, you can't get allies by claiming everything is racist. And of course, the system is quite happy for you to do that

because the system doesn't want to change. So therefore, when you then label everything as racial, when things are racial, people go, oh, there they go again. And you go, well, hang on a second. This one is, oh, you've said that before, you cry wolves too often. I don't give you lots of examples. So when Pierce Morgan and GMB comes out and he says, and it's in the press that, oh, look at it now,

they're talking about his race is because the white chess piece moves first before the black one. Anybody who would be our ally and going, oh, there they go again. And of course, the system is quite happy for that to happen. When you have a situation, and of course, you then have white, black militants who are quite happy to go along with that, which turns the majority of good people, although they may have a shallow understanding, but there's still good people against it. I have a situation whereby, and it's in the book, and about a professor in Ivy League American school, having a class, a debate on pause sounds in between language. Paul sounds in between language, as we're talking now, we go, those sounds that we make in between language.

And in Mandarin, it's nega, NEI-G, it sounds like, we know what it sounds like. And my son, who's a doctor, he has a doctor-colleg which he's from China, and she's speaking to her parents, and he hears her saying it. She's speaking Mandarin, every now and she goes, nega, nega, nega, nega. And then he goes, what are you saying? It's a pause, it's a pause sound, right? So, so it sounds funny. Now, this has probably been going off for thousands of year in China,

because they spoke before we could even speak over here. But anyway, so this is a sound they made. And in the class about Paul's sounds in between, he says in Mandarin, they have this sound. Five black students get up and walk out and he gets suspended because it sounds like that. So of course, people are going to go, here we go. The same thing with Liam Neeson.

The same thing with the fourth official from Romania who says, Alan Negru, the black guy. There's nothing wrong with saying the black guy. So the point is, is that when he's really serious, but then all of a sudden, you play all of those cards, it then waters it down and people go. There they go playing the race card again. And that is why, as I said,

I get so much stick from a lot of some black people who say you're saying nothing is racist and some white people saying everything is racist. But the problem is, is the examples that you've just used, they're just very superficial. It's saying a word that sounds like another word. But actually, having the discussion where you have to dig deep and you have to share and you have to think and it has nuance and there aren't easy answers, people don't want to do that because it's difficult and it's hard and it takes time and there's no easy answers to it. And the system is quite happy for those conversations, not to be.

to be heard because then we'll actually end up pointing the finger at the real problem why people, be they black, be they women, be they gay or disenfranchised, rather than just focus on footballers and actors and rappers. And then talk about Eastern European and communists and white working class people. John, I so hear you because we get this and we criticize a lot of this stuff on our show, the superficiality, the, oh, here's the black chess piece or whatever. To me, that's just bullshit and it's a waste of everybody's time. but at the same time, there are legitimate issues with all these different groups.

Absolutely. And I notice what you're talking about, which is when they're brought up, everybody, not everybody, but some people just, they just switch off and they go, oh, well, it's the same thing as that. Well, actually, no. I mean, if black kids are stabbing each other to death at a rate 24 times as white kids, that needs to be dealt with. And it's not because they're black. It's to do with the situation in found sense very much like in poverty ridden.

Why are there in these poverty-ridden areas to begin with? So that kind of situation, yeah. But people like Pierce Morgan will come back. Not only when they switch off, he'll come back and he'll go, yeah, but you see, that's black kids. Yeah, when you see, that's black kids, I'm in black kids. And I said, well, when it was in Glasgow with all white kids, no one said it was a white problem.

Yeah, exactly. But no one wants to push that. So that's something that needs to be investigated, while all the superficial stuff just needs to not be talked about so that we can focus on the things that matter. Yeah. And what I'm hearing from you is you feel that you've used the term several times, is the system.

Do you mean the media? Do you mean the government? Who do you mean when you talk about the system? Well, I mean, is it the firm that Megan talks about? So if you want to talk the people who make the decisions and the policy makers, whoever they are, because when you talk about even black role models, for example, and black footballers,

you know, if you go to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Harrow School, I don't think that, and these other people are going to rule the world. I don't think they're, they're, their role models are Harry Kane and Paul Gascoigne for some reason. Probably not. Whereas we're telling our black kids that your own models has to be John Barton and Mike Tyson and the boxes and the sportsmen and stuff like that.

So I'm just talking about the people who rule the world. I mean, you know, I don't know who they are, but we know who they are. Yeah, exactly, the Illuminati. There you go. Yeah, the Rothschild. The Rothschild. And not the ones, not the ones from Iraq. You've got to choose in Iraq, not those ones. The blonde-haired Jews. John, it's been a pleasure.

It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We're going to do some questions for our locals, which is just our supporters. Before we do that, if people want to find you online and everything else, where's the best place? Well, they should buy the book.

They should buy the book, number one. I can just about send a text, so I don't know how they're going to find me online. You go to a phone box for 50p, and I think give them a number, because this social media thing, I can just about do Twitter, and I'm messing up on Twitter

because I'm pressing the wrong button anyway. So when you talk about Instagram, Facebook, I have not got a clue. So unfortunately, you know, I suppose the book, you can find the book somewhere. But if you want to find me, I live on the world coming up a cup of tea. Okay, fantastic. And the last question we always finish with is, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?

Just what we've been talking about today. Perfect. In the way we've been talking about it. Fantastic, John, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure. Guys, if you've enjoyed this episode, our episodes always go out Wednesday, Sunday, 7 p.m. UK time, 2 p.m. Eastern Standard. We also have raw shows as well, the exact same.

time and if you like your trigonometry on the go it's also available as a podcast take care and see you soon we hope you've enjoyed this incredible interview remember to subscribe and hit the bell button so that you never miss another fantastic episode and if you believe that the work we do here at trigonometry is important support us by joining our locals community using the link below