[Intro Music]
00:00:08:27 – 00:01:01:05
Hannah
Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated in every classroom in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates its successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series two of the Diverse Educators podcast, we have ten episodes. In each episode, our co-hosts, Mahlon Evans-Sinclair and Jess Boyd, will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they have found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them as an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey, and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:09:04 – 00:01:21:15
Mahlon
So hello and welcome to series two of #DiverseEd podcast. My name is Mahlon Evans-Sinclair, and I’m the founder of Educating While Black podcast and the director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at St Clements school in Toronto.

00:01:22:20 – 00:01:39:26
Jess
And I’m Jess Boyd. I’m a former head of music. I’m currently writing my PhD in culturally relevant pedagogy. I work in initial teacher training and I also run an open access community music project. In this episode, we are joined by Abena Akuffo Kelly and we will be talking about the Intersectionality chapter.

00:01:40:05 – 00:01:57:22
Mahlon
So, Abena, as an introduction, please tell us a bit about yourself. Go for one sentence, but go for more if you need more, I’d love for people to get a sense of who you are and you know, let’s be real, this is an essay in the chapter about intersectionality. There’s probably going to be a lot to cover so feel free.

00:01:58:15 – 00:02:28:07
Abena
There is indeed. So I generally sort of describe myself as a general busybody that likes to inject myself into absolutely everything. I believe in intersectionality. The point that I’m constantly telling people, it is my middle name and I just want to inject intersectionality into every single aspect of my life and my existence and things that I’m involved in, and I’m unapologetically, I tell people that every single way, everywhere I go.

00:02:28:28 – 00:02:30:22
Mahlon
Love this, love this, love this.

00:02:31:07 – 00:02:42:03
Jess
I love that you put that as your middle name. It’s quite funny, and especially as it’s a term that many people don’t always understand. It gives you an opportunity to talk about it a bit more.

00:02:42:04 – 00:05:04:17
Abena
In fact, yesterday I was at a members event that I set up for my CLP, so my constituency Labour Party, and I started talking about that because I was talking to somebody who said that they’re neurodiverse, I said I’m neurodiverse as well. And then I started talking to them about intersectionality and they said, oh I’ve never heard that before. And so one of the things that I do is one of the many things, I’ll go through some of them in a minute, but is actually as part of the NEU, National Education Union, I do lots of workshops on intersectionality, unconscious bias and so on. And I really don’t want people, because you know, people have this thing about wokeness and whatever, and they think that it’s an opportunity for oppressed groups to beat them over the head. And, you know, we in education, we talk about the carrot and the stick. And I think it’s really important to, for people to understand that when we talk about intersectionality, we’re not talking about an opportunity where we’re going to beat people and say look at all the privileges that you have, I don’t have privileges. We need to beat you down so that we can feel up. No. What I talk about is the fact that intersectionality is not just about these protected characteristics. It’s not just about race. It’s not just about gender or LGBT, but it’s things like, for example, age, and age is on a continuum, it’s on a spectrum. So, you know, when I was talking to those two people yesterday, we were talking about how actually age does sort of it’s sort of like a code, isn’t it? Because you start off when you’re quite young, when you’re a baby, you’re quite dependent on other people. When you’re, before you become of age again, you’re quite dependent. You have to wait for people to give you permission to do all sorts of things. But then it gets to a certain age where you are the epitome of the level of privilege in regards to age, because, you know, everybody wants to stay looking like you, you know, twenties. I think that’s that’s the epitome. And then it starts sliding. And so you get to a certain age and actually age as a characteristic becomes something which is a sense of oppression, rather than something which is a sense of dominance. So it’s not something which is, it’s not completely linear either. It does change. But that’s why I talk about intersectionality and I talk about height as well, and about weight. So somebody like me is somebody who’s slightly bigger boned. No, I say fat and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m calling myself.

00:05:04:18 – 00:05:06:03
Mahlon
Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Yeah.

00:05:07:19 – 00:05:30:15
Abena
If you, you know, one of the examples I gave is if you go to an interview and you’ll see your, you know, against somebody who’s slim and you both have the same skills, you both have the same competencies and qualifications, you perform just as well as them. The person who’s slim is more likely to get the job because there’s that assumption that fat people are lazy and that they’re fat because they’re lazy, they can’t be bothered and slovenly.

00:05:31:08 – 00:05:49:14
Jess
I love that, yeah, illustration. If you then, so let’s not assume our listeners know what intersectionality is. Could you give us a definition of intersectionality and share with us the intersections of your identity that have inspired you to contribute to Diverse Educators?

00:05:49:17 – 00:08:04:06
Abena
Yes, definitely. So the way I like to explain intersectionality is it’s basically you are a sum of all of your different identities, of your different parts, and you can not separate yourself from those parts. The way that it’s described is that it’s sort of that balance between dominance and oppression. So, for example, I’m a woman, as you might have assumed from the sound of my voice, but you could have been wrong. So I identify and I’m a cis woman, I identify as a cis woman. And so there are certain levels of oppression that affect me as a cis woman, but I’m also a black cis woman. So when we talk about misogynoir and that sort of culmination of the double threat of being black and also being a woman. So you’re subject to misogyny, but you’re also subject to anti-blackness, you’re also subject to racism. But I’m also a mother, so as a mother, obviously I love being a mother and I’m very proud to be a mother, and I think it’s a wonderful thing. But in society as a mother, if, for example, I want to get ahead in my career, I’m oppressed in that sense because women are less likely to make money. And if we’re talking about teaching in general until the age of 32, there’s parity between the wages of men and women and then 32 is round about the time that women start having children and might start going part time. Might start to go on maternity. They lose out on that pay progression. And then they start actually they on average they start earning less than men. Because I’m fat people have certain ideas about who I am as well. Because I’m short also people have different ideas about who I am. So intersectionality is about the fact that we are not one dimensional. All of us are multidimensional, and all of those different aspects of our identities play together in one in making any decision, having any interaction, in having any experience. I can’t divorce the fact that I’m black from the fact that I’m a woman. I can’t divorce the fact that I’m a woman for the fact that I’m LGBT. All of them play a part in how I interact and I navigate this world.

00:08:05:01 – 00:10:47:24
Mahlon
Everything that you’ve said, like I’m really hoping that people go back and just play that part, just that segment again and again and again a few times. Because I think one of the things that typically happens with intersectionality is that it gets conflated with identity. And the idea that my identity, the shopping list of, as you just said, the sum of who I am, it equals the same thing. And actually what we’re trying to say is it is relative to the space and the place that you’re in determines how those intersections that you have, those identity markers that you have are either advantaged or disadvantaged, sometimes situationally, sometimes structurally, sometimes globally. So the idea that, for example, all three of us on this call or in this episode, I guess we’re all people of the global majority, but even that term global majority only means something, right, when we’re in the space of majority of similar skin tone or similar understanding, similar culture. So in another term you know, the term BAME or Bipoc or whatever you want to use that intersectionality itself, those identity markers of being nonwhite means that our experiences would be similar to each other or being in spaces where that white majority exists. And, you know, the whole global aspect of it is you can both be in the UK, which is where you both are right now. And I could be in Canada where I am right now, and the experiences of how our skin tone shows up in the workplace in society would be very similar, even though we’re thousands of miles apart. Because when we talk about intersectionality and structural advantage or disadvantage based on identity markers, that’s what we’re trying to get a hold on and in that, in saying all of that, what I really, really like is your chapter as a comprisement, kind of was asked to do something slightly different than what the rest of our chapters did. So our chapters looked at one aspect of the protected characteristics. Yours were asked to look at, you know, multiple and having an understanding of what does that mean when we are not of single identities, don’t live single identity or single struggle lives we live multiple lives. And, you know, you did a great job of pulling quotes from Audre Lorde and other great scholars in this field. And I guess my question is kind of thinking about what did you want specifically to add to that conversation? I know that it’s about the quiet revolution, which I think sometimes also gets overlooked. What did you want? Like the I guess maybe put it this way, who was your intended reader for your essay? Who did you really want to feel galvanised by reading your words and feeling some kind of way as a result of their insight?

00:10:48:07 – 00:14:27:06
Abena
You know, I wanted anybody to feel empowered. And, you know, when I do my sessions on unconscious bias, people, one thing that people always say to me, and it’s really funny because, you know, when you, you know, if you have the experience of going to university or just being at school and a teacher gives you a really good lecture or a really good lesson, at the end of the lesson, everybody wants to say, thank you so much. That was really good. I would have people lining up to say thank you so much. That actually empowered me and I wasn’t expecting a session of unconscious bias to inspire me and, you know, empower me because what I focused on is that we all have privileges. We all are oppressed in some way. But there was, you know, because of the our different identities, in certain circumstances, you can have more privilege than somebody else. Please make sure as an ally that you use that privilege when you can. So I did my unconscious bias training and spoke about intersectionality at a black educators conference. And at the end people are saying, yes, I understand, I do actually have privilege as a black educator it’s not the case because I’m a black educator I have no privilege. The privilege I have is that I can impart knowledge onto these students. I can be a role model to show them that black people are, you know, just a diverse group of people. They are not a monolith, you know, which is what so many people think. And, you know, one of the things that is so important to understand about intersectionality is that, as you said, in different spaces, something which would be something which oppresses you actually will be something which makes you somebody who has more power. So, for example, we all have accents which are, you know, seen as being more affluent. The assumption that’s made by quite a lot of people when they hear my voice is that I’m rather intelligent, I’m eloquent, I’m, you know, I’m quite accomplished. I hope I am. I think I am. But the assumption is because of this voice, people actually sit up. So I’ve actually had a situation, and this explains intersectionality so well, and that’s why I want to include this. I’ve had a situation where I was doing some supply. I went into a school and I did my normal thing because, you know, when it comes to behaviour management, I’m very good. And I just told the students, be silent and they were silent because they knew we don’t, we just don’t mess with this woman. Just look at her. You don’t mess with her. And so every single lesson, they worked silently. They got on with it. And then I went into a break room and I was sitting with some technicians. I’m not going to give too much detail, so you can see who it is. But I was sitting with technicians and they were saying, oh, we really like you. You’re not like the other people that we’ve had because we couldn’t understand their accents. We can understand you. We’d love to have you back. That is intersectionality. I’m black. You can see it. Obviously you can’t, you can’t see it. But the people who I’m sitting with right now can see it, you know, sometimes you can hear it in my voice. Some people say they can’t hear it my voice, but you can hear it in my voice. I am black. But because of this accent, because of this privileged accent, there are certain spaces where before I speak, people see me as, oh, some black person and I literally see people, their faces changing when I start speaking. That is intersectionality.

00:14:27:26 – 00:15:14:17
Jess
It’s wild. I think I play it, well I, I’m mixed race and I play on my intersectionality all the time. And I think the more confident I’ve got, we’ll get to this because you talk to a lot about the confidence and the power that intersectionality brings us. The confidence that I now being able to be comfortable and happy with my identity as I often when I’m giving training, my thick East London accent comes out strong and I’m like, yes it’s Jess I’m writing a PhD and what, like and I love playing with people’s minds. I think accents is such a funny one, isn’t it? And so, so in your chapter then, can you try and summarise what you wanted anybody to take away from diving into your way of life?

00:15:14:28 – 00:18:24:21
Abena
What I want to take away, and that’s me answering your question properly Mahlon as well. So I notice Jess you’re bringing me back to the question. So thank you for that. So basically I wanted people to take away the fact that we’re all intersectional. It’s not just about oppressed groups, it’s not just about black people or gay people, LGBTQI+* people, but everyone is intersectional. And if you can actually take people at face value, allow them to be that multi dimensional person, you will actually get so much more out of people if you stop seeing people as identikit. All right, So that’s that’s a black person. So my shortcut for black people is not very intelligent and, you know, ghetto, you know, instead of seeing that and actually seeing the person or allowing yourself to see the person by actually asking them about themselves, you’re going to just have such a better experience with people and with students as well. Because, you know, that’s one of the things that I point to about how students sometimes, especially if you’re a black boy, one of the examples I think I use in the chapter, but I can’t remember is, you know, you’re being told off by a teacher and may be traditionally what you’re supposed to do when you’re being told off by an elder is you’re supposed to look down. You’re not supposed to look them straight in the face because that’s rude, that’s confrontational. So you look down out of respect. The teacher thinks that you are actually being rude because you’re not looking them in the eye and then you actually suffer a detrimental effect because you’re, culturally you are actually being respectful, but you are seen as being disrespectful. But the other thing that I wanted to bring out of that chapter is that because we’re intersectional, that is actually a USP. That’s our unique selling point. That is powerful and you have, you are actually a specialist already. You know, when you go to a space and they’re talking about women or they’re talking about black people or they’re talking about LGBT people, or they’re talking about all sorts of different intersects, and you have lived experience and that lived experience means that you are an expert. So when you go into a space and maybe you’re you know, most of the demographics are not the same as you, you realise that you are adding value. You know, I don’t want this deficit model that, you know, oh, thank you so much for allowing me into the space. No, you’re lucky I’m in this space because by me being in this space I’m adding value to this conversation. If I wasn’t here you would compute all sorts of different nuances because you have no lived experience. Your lived experience is powerful and you should use that. And you shouldn’t stay quiet and say, oh, well, I don’t know some of the technical language. No. It’s not technical language. It’s your life and your understanding of your life and how things have affected you that actually makes you a powerful person in these spaces. So enjoy and see your power and use it. That’s what that was about.

00:18:25:05 – 00:19:30:16
Jess
Oh, just. Just that. That’s what it was about. Mahlon, I’m going to jump in with just a follow up question. I like, um, like you talk about power and brightness and that intrinsic like knowing your identity so articulately, but what’s the journey? What was the journey to that for folks, right? Because I’m looking at the parts of your chapter that I’ve highlighted. You know, our intersectionality can be an instrument of power. And then you talk about it really once you realise the internalised manifestation of colonialism, come on. And then you said you just stressing the power in our intersectional identities and how once we know our intersectional identities, we then become specialists in that area. But tell me about the the journey to realising that or knowing that and being able to bring that to the surface of our work, because I think we know our identities at varying degrees of consciousness, right? And whether we bring that to our workspaces or not is a journey for all of us. I’m just curious how you’re so boldly intersectional in everything you do and how you got there.

00:19:31:00 – 00:22:15:08
Abena
Yes. So yeah, I wasn’t always like this. And you know, we’ve spoken about age as an intersect, but I think I’m glad that I am here, but I think I could have got there a little bit earlier. But I, I did stop myself for a very long time. I did sit on my power and I remember it was because I did experience some really horrific sort of racism in some of my schools. And there was one particular school. I was in a meeting. This was when I was a younger teacher. I was in in a meeting the previous meeting, I said to a teacher that perhaps she didn’t follow the standards that she was supposed to follow and, you know, could she just make sure that she did something a certain way? The next meeting, it seemed like a group of people had decided that they were going to attack me in retaliation for how I treated her. I’ve got inverted commas. You can’t see it. But inverted commas how I treated her by saying something. So I had a group of about five teachers in my department who basically attacked me and told me that I was an awful teacher and, you know, I deserved to have the worst behaved children in my department because I’m that sort of person. And I actually remember I kept it together, but I ran to the bathroom after the meeting and I cried and I cried because I literally had been attacked on all corners. It wasn’t just one person. It was five different people attacking me. And I knew that they’d done that on purpose because when we had inset days, they would purposely have this thing where they’ll bring food in and they will all sit in a room. And I knew I wasn’t invited because they didn’t invite me and they would sit in the room and eat together and I was not invited and I would actually walk past the room, see them laughing and talking together. I was not allowed into that room. And I think back to that and I want to cry for myself because if I am, I was the person who I am now. I would have given them so much fire. They would have been too scared to even dare do that to me. But I was scared. I thought, you know, I don’t want to ruin my career by being, you know, somebody who’s constantly moaning about bad treatment. Because then when I go to my next school, you know, or they won’t let me into my next school because they’ll say that I’m a troublemaker and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t respect myself enough. I didn’t know my power enough to be able to say, no, this is out and out racism and I’m not going to take it. So, I mean, there was another incident in that school where they actually asked me to bring my passport in because I had a foreign sounding name and they hadn’t done their checks.

00:22:15:08 – 00:22:15:28
Jess
They what?

00:22:15:28 – 00:22:34:07
Abena
Yes, this is true. And again, if it had been me now, I mean, I did actually do something about it. So they said, oh, we realised that we hadn’t done our checks when we were recruiting. We hadn’t done them properly. So we are just going through and finding all the people that have foreign sounding names and asking them to bring their passports.

00:22:34:07 – 00:22:44:20
Mahlon
They are brazen, to actually even say it as that. Are you bringing in Siobhan? Are you bringing in Aoife? Are you bringing in Peter like are you bringing in the locals?

00:22:46:00 – 00:25:08:11
Abena
I actually said to them, I said, right, okay, so you’re, right, I said, until you send an email out asking everybody, not just me, everybody to bring in their paperwork, I will not be bringing it in. She left. The next thing I saw was an email asking everybody. I was like, no. So because I have a foreign sounding name. How dare you. That assumption that I am other because of my name, but that was the same school and yeah that’s what my experience and then I think it’s, I started on a journey when I divorced my ex husband and then I came out and then I then started to go into politics. So in the lead up to my 40th birthday as a present to myself, this is a sort of the person I am, as a present to myself, I said, I’m going to actually get more involved in activism. I’m talking, I want to do, and I remember one of my friends saying to me, one person can’t make a difference. I said, If everybody said that nothing would happen. And I remember. So I joined my daughter was about six or seven at that time. I was like, my daughter is a privilege to have. My daughter is somebody who has brought so much joy and so much abundance in my life. She is not somebody who is taking away from my power. I will be going to meetings and I’ll go with her. So we went to meetings together. People knew it was me and my daughter. We were always together. It’s got to the point now where she’s our mini councillor. She takes pictures and everybody knows her. And so I went to meetings and within a couple of months an election came up. Everyone said, Abena do you want to go for selection? I said, Yeah, okay. I went and I became a councillor. It was just like that. It was like the universe was like, you are ready go and do it. And I remember one of my friends, acquaintances actually, acquaintances, said to me, oh, it’s not. It’s a white area. Nobody’s going to vote for you because you’re black. I said, okay. And she said, well, if you are voted in I’ll eat my hat. I was like, okay, cool. When I was voted in, she was like, I was wrong. I said, oh, sorry, I don’t have a hat for you to eat, but never mind.

00:25:08:18 – 00:25:09:24
Mahlon
I would have brought one.

00:25:10:05 – 00:25:11:11
Jess
I would have Amazoned her one.

00:25:11:13 – 00:25:14:15
Mahlon
I would have brought a hat.

00:25:14:18 – 00:25:16:04
Jess
I would have just left it on their desk.

00:25:16:19 – 00:25:18:14
Mahlon
Honestly, I would have brought a hat.

00:25:18:16 – 00:27:01:20
Abena
The main thing that happened to me was that Labour does this thing called Jo Cox Women in Leadership Program. So I. Do you all know about Jo Cox, the woman who was murdered by an extremist. And so in memory of her, we have the leadership program. And it’s, I didn’t realise how amazing it was because when I first joined Labour, there was somebody who came to one of our meetings and she said, oh, you can apply to the Jo Cox program, but it’s really competitive. I’ve applied several times, I haven’t got on. So I was like, oh my God, I can’t do that. I can’t try that. But then, you know, last year I was like I will try that. I applied. I got on first time and I remember when we had our first meeting, but now I’m going to actually say it publicly. Maybe some of them won’t listen anyway. So when we had our first meeting, it was like, oh my God, I applied three times before I got into this program. I applied, this is my, this is my third time. And I was, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t tell anyone that it was my first time. There were 2000 women who applied and I was one of 60 who got onto that program. And when I got into that program and through the sisters and we called each other sisters in the political arena. So my, my sisters, my fellow sisters that I met and just the things that I learned, I realised actually, do you know what Abena, you have a lot of power. People listen to you. You inspire people. I would just get up to say something, to me I’m just talking. And people are like, but I was just talking. And then I realised it got more and more and more. I would just literally I would just stand up and say, blah, blah, blah. And I think I’m saying something mundane and people are like, wow.

00:27:02:16 – 00:27:37:21
Mahlon
That’s like, there’s power in, just to jump in, I feel like there’s a couple of connections that I want to make. I want to start at that end one just real quick. I think this is where a lot of people sleep on teachers. If we can engage a room of kids on a subject, you know, the start of the morning, they’re not even knowing what they’re about to learn. And, you know, we’ve got an hour with them to get them from point A to point B. It’s no wonder that a roomful of adults are like, oh, I’m making connections, pennies are dropping, like everything that you’re saying is coming out with conviction. Too many people sleep on teachers. So I’m just going to start there.

00:27:37:23 – 00:27:45:28
Abena
You are so right. Because people go like, oh, how come you’re so good at public speaking? I’ve been doing this honestly, like, for 16 years.

00:27:46:01 – 00:27:50:06
Mahlon
I’ve had worse hecklers than this. These kids are worse hecklers than some of you.

00:27:50:06 – 00:27:52:25
Jess
Have you had a chair thrown at you?

00:27:54:01 – 00:31:58:22
Mahlon
But then there’s another thing that I want to also speak about, like you mentioned earlier, around the idea of walking in your identity, because that the idea that, like an organisation will sometimes overlook that which you bring. And so knowing in yourself that that is something that you bring to the table. Someone once said it to me, and I’ve never not seen it, it’s like the sort of yellow car situation. They were talking about HSBC Bank as an example, and it was banks was the main thing but HSBC, the great example of this. HSBC’s whole purpose for being, yeah it’s a bank, you know, it’s a bank that you can store your money in and whatever else. But part of it is investments. Part of it is, is getting into markets. Part of it is getting into markets where it can make money for being in that market. So HSBC is going to find the locals of said markets that it currently doesn’t have a foothold in to find a way to find itself in said market because it knows that the only way to continue adding value to its business is to keep expanding the markets that is in. So if there’s a if there’s a market that takes place at night time in Saharan Africa or North Africa, Saharan Africa, North Africa area, HSBC is going to find a way to connect with the local community there to find itself in that market, so that market’s finance can be part of HSBC’s market and finances if that analogy and all that makes sense. So when people suggest that you know it’s too difficult or it’s too hard or, you know, you should align or conform to what already exists within the ecosystem, why should I? If the aim of the game is to make more profit. And in education, the profit is students. Students are profit, right? Students’ well-being, students’ output. All of that stuff is our profit. Why am I being asked to conform to what already exists versus the school considering you know, what is the benefit of us encapsulating these other identities into our own space that we can benefit and have a greater bounty of profit. So that just one thing that kind of came out of my mind when you were saying the idea about, you know, organisations and spaces, often giving people that binary dichotomy of you’re either with us by shaving parts of yourself off or you constantly just kind of sit on the edge of where the power play takes place, which I guess to come to your part of your, your essay there is a question I’m coming to, but these are great observations, and Jess and I were really looking forward to speaking to you in this episode. One of the things that you mentioned was the idea of knowing. So it’s the idea of like our lack of membership in a dominant culture means that we’re often at the boundaries of the most important conversations about things in education, but every single one of these conversations affects us. And I feel like that is something that is so salient that needs to really just be read out and understood so that people can sit with that. So to recognise that, you know, as you just mentioned in another setting, that team that decided to ostracise you from their, you know, their party, they sit down and have their conversations or whatever else in that room knowing that in some spaces that is senior leadership. In another space, that it’s the senior leadership team that is ostracising certain identities from the school space that it doesn’t want in senior leadership. So the idea of knowing that and as you said, the you who is now, so having reckoned with your identity, you probably would have knocked on that door. And been like, oh, we’re having a meeting. I didn’t get the invite and just sit down because now you’re going to have to speak about whatever you going to speak about with me in the room because it concerns me. But I do agree that there’s, there are times where perhaps we have been browbeaten into believing that we shouldn’t go into spaces that, you know, our intersectionality or identities will cause hostility to the rest of the people in that space. So we should sit on the sidelines or continue to sit on the sidelines with the identities versus walk in the space with all of the identities, because there’s something about your identity that adds value to what’s already taking space in there. So it’s, I don’t know if that was the question in there [laughs]

00:31:58:24 – 00:32:24:24
Jess
I can do it. With all of that said as a last kind of response in this conversation. One, if you could change, it’s a two part question. One, if you could change the education system to see intersectionality better, what would that look like? And what would you say to us all to bring our identities to those spaces fully?

00:32:25:12 – 00:34:31:14
Abena
Yeah, you know, I’ve spoken a little bit about the fact that if you don’t bring your identity to that space, then they’re actually missing out on a lot. They’re missing out on your expertise as this intersectional person. And, you know, I, the reason why I go into those spaces is because if I don’t, who will? And think of it that way. Yes, I completely understand. And I put this in my essay. I completely understand black trauma. I understand the trauma of being in spaces where you are the only black person or you are the only person of a particular demographic. And having to explain yourself. Because you do have to explain yourself and people expect you to justify why you deserve to be in that space. Sometimes after a while they stop doing that. But actually you are, as I’ve said before, you are doing them a service. I have you know, I have in my career at the moment, I am doing so many different things. I’m part of Fabian Women’s Network, which actually is a group of women who is a left leaning think tank that works with the Labour Party writing policies and so on. So we are specifically working on women’s policies and trying to make sure that they’re thinking about that intersectionality. But within that space, our new chair is a black woman, so we’re making sure that we are actually including people from, you know, black women. And we’re talking about health, black health, and we’re talking about neurodiversity because I’m neurodiverse. We’ve got people who are LGBT, myself and another lady who’s LGBT. So because we have those intersectional identities, we are making sure that we include that. When we come to panels where, you know, what do they call it? When it’s just a group of white men, it’s a particular term that we’ve given that when it’s just a group of white men on a panel with talking about politics.

00:34:31:15 – 00:34:32:22
Mahlon
Manel?

00:34:32:24 – 00:36:13:03
Abena
Yeah, a manel or something like that. Yeah, a manel. And we are purposely scrutinizing the panels before they’re released for the public and say, why don’t you have a black person, why don’t you have a woman, why don’t you have an LGBT person, why is it just white men. There are other people who have the opportunity to speak about this. So when you have that intersectionality, you make sure that you’re in that central space, which is what I was talking about in the chapter. It’s all well and good being in different groups, a groups of black people, a group for women, a group for LGBT people, a group neurodiverse people. It’s wonderful actually being in those groups because you feel safe. Yeah. You know that you’re home, you know people understand you, but we can’t live in an echo chamber because that echo chamber is not going to make any change. So. Okay. Yeah. In our echo chamber we feel safe and then we have to go out into the real world, because the real world is the one that we have to actually live in most of the time. And because we spend all our time in the echo chamber, the real world hasn’t changed. The real world is still oppressing us. We need to be in the real world making that change. So when I join groups, I go to groups knowing that, yes, I might experience some trauma, I might bring some ostracisation, I might experience, you know, people trying to undermine me. But I know that if I’m not in those groups, there won’t be anybody else speaking for us. There won’t be. And that’s what you need to remember. You are, what you have to say is so important and so needed. You need to make yourself available to be in those spaces so that people can hear what you’ve got to say.

00:36:14:04 – 00:36:29:16
Jess
Oh, what an ending. Make yourself available. All right, deal, I’ll try my best. Thank you so much Abena for sharing and giving us all of your wisdom and energy. Not just in this conversation, but also in the chapter, it’s a brilliant chapter. So thank you so much for everything you’re giving out to the world.

00:36:30:04 – 00:36:33:07
Abena
Okay, excellent. Thank you so much for inviting me.

00:36:33:10 – 00:36:54:03
Mahlon
No, thank you again. And I, you know, I implore everyone to go and read your essay. I really, really do. As Jess said there gems upon gems upon gems. And with that, just want to say we’ve been Mahlon Evans-Sinclair, Jess Boyd and Abena Akuffo Kelly and we are the co-hosts and the guest of season two of Diverse Ed podcast. See you soon.

00:36:54:03 – 00:36:54:08
Jess
Bye.

00:36:54:11 – 00:37:12:14
Hannah
[Intro Music] Thank you for joining us for this episode of Diverse Ed podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think, so do leave us a review. We’ll be back soon with another author from our book Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.