Elizabeth Oldfield speaks to political commentator and news presenter Inaya Folarin Iman. 21/06/2023
Introduction
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about our deepest values, the people behind the positions that are shaping our common life, and how we can build more understanding and empathy across are very many differences. Every episode, I try and do a deep dive with someone who has some kind of public voice or public position. I’m trying to understand the principles that are driving them to get a handle on their worldview, really. My theory is that in the age of tighter and tighter filter bubbles, listening to a range of voices from wildly different tribes and perspectives is important for us to grow as citizens, and frankly, just to grow up as people. Before that sounds too earnest, I should also say, as well as it being a good and important thing to do, it seems to make the world just a lot more interesting.
In this episode, I spoke to Inaya Folarin Iman. Inaya has been a host on GB News, which is a television channel in the UK, a candidate for the Brexit party, she’s written for Spiked online, and she is now the founder of the Equiano project, which describes itself as a debate, discussion, and ideas forum that focuses on race, culture and politics. We spoke about her childhood as the daughter of a Nigerian immigrant single mom, who was unusually an atheist, about coming to different conclusions to her student friends at university about race, and why she thinks people really need a sense of agency. I hope you enjoy listening.
What is sacred to you? Inaya Folarin Iman’s answer
Elizabeth
Inaya it is a really big question to start someone off with, it’s not a very good warm up question. What is sacred to you? So maybe I’ll give you just a minute to get your brain into it by asking how did you feel about the word? Did it feel comfortable and attractive? Or unusual, spiky? What was your reaction to it?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Hmm, yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I’m quite warm to that word. You know, I actually wish that it was talked about more in public life. But I think oftentimes, anytime someone talks about the notion of the ‘sacred’ or what is sacred, I think oftentimes people feel queasy. They might think it’s a bit hippie, a bit New Age, or from a time that is no longer rational, and reasoned. And so in public life, I think it’s not one that I hear often, but I wish it wasn’t that way. So when I got that question, when the word ‘sacred’ was presented to me, I was really excited. I was surprised and excited.
Elizabeth
Good. And having had a bit of time to sit with it, this very big question about what’s sacred to you: what bubbled up?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Yeah, so it took me a while to think about it, for the reasons that I just alluded to. And what I thought was sacred to me, was the notion of home. I think that’s different to just family. Home to me, is a place of security, stability, a foundation, a place that you put roots down, a place that you go back to, and feel a sense of recognition and familiarity with the objects and the way that it looks and the way that it smells. And that has increasingly become a very, very important idea for me. I moved around a lot growing up. So, I was born in London, in Streatham in southwest London, and then moved to southeast London, and then moved to Cannes, and then went to boarding school in Hertfordshire, and then went to university in Leeds. And so I ended up going to six different schools: three primary schools and three secondary schools. And I came from a broken home. And so, home to me has increasingly meant all of the things that were fractured and unattainable for me for much of my youth. And it was only something that I’ve realised, because I was so used to not having a secure rooted sense of home in place, I forged a sense of self that was all about independence and travelling, and, creating your own identity and reinventing the world, creating your own values. And so I was quite resistant and suspicious of people that had the same friends their whole life and never left their home and community. But I think as I’m in my mid–20s, somewhat past my mid–20s, I realised actually, the relationships, the meaning, the rootedness, the sense of satisfaction, and stability and security that I’ve not had and wanted, and now I’m very driven to attain. So, home to me is something that I hold very dearly and see as sacred and intrinsic to lots of other aspects of my life, and my sense of fulfilment and meaning.
Elizabeth
Yeah, it’s beautiful. Where is your home now? Where are you managing to put those roots down?
Inaya Folarin Iman
So it’s still somewhat not decided. So my mum, after living in Kent, she now lives in Brighton, and she’s lived there for a long time now, but I never lived there. She moved once I had went to university. So it’s strange to call it home, when I’ve never actually lived there permanently. But somewhere that your mother lives should always be home. So I would say partly that, and London. I would just say London is probably my home now. I was born there, as I mentioned. I’ve lived there since leaving university. And I think it’s a place that I’m going to live for a long time. So there’s something… What I like about London – and it’s got his criticisms, and it’s got its clichés – but there is something still very true about its diversity, its multiculturalism. It’s both transient, but also consistent in the fact that there are people that have lived here their whole life, but people that have found home here. So for people that never really had that sense of place that was consistent, I think London is a great place to find that, because there’s many other people in a similar boat to you, but still call it home, despite not having been here for a long time or being born in different parts of the world. And it has all of those things, whether that’s the city or the suburbs, rich and poor, and all different kinds of social classes and cultural values. So I think that allows me to claim London as my home.
Nigerian heritage: resilience, cultural identity, atheism and a conservatist philosophy
Elizabeth
Amen, yes. I’m also a London lover. I’d love to hear more of the big ideas in your childhood. And it’s so helpful that that sense of transience has been formative in different ways, at different times in your life. But maybe we could just start with your mom? You said this beautiful thing about “a home will always partly be where your mother lives”, which made me a bit teary. But could you just paint a little picture? Could you tell us a little bit about her story?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Yeah, so my mom, she went to school in the UK, but she was born in Nigeria and then went to university in Nigeria and then kind of came back in her early 20s. And it’s interesting: similar on that kind of home theme, her mother was not the first wife. She was part of the polygamous household. And so again, home, in the context of many generations before mine was not a traditional construct as we kind of generally understand it. And then she left her home to come to the UK, practically on her own. And she had my sister, then she had me. And she did it almost exclusively simply by herself. And she was someone that was raised in quite a middle class Nigerian household, but what is a familiar story to many children of immigrants, or immigrants themselves, is that when you come to, often, a Western society, Britain, you often start at the bottom of society. You have to work your way up, and they’re faced with a whole new set of challenges, whether that’s immigration status, certain values and ideals. And this was something that she had to negotiate very much by herself. And unlike many West African immigrants in the UK, what’s quite unique about my mom is that she’s an atheist. She’s not actually a kind of Evangelical Christian or a Muslim, and the overwhelming majority of Nigerian people are. So she’s someone that raised two children on her own, was an immigrant to the UK, but had very strong values from Nigeria and a thought for herself, and didn’t necessarily believe some of the ideals and values in the society that she lived in. So she’s always been a very independent–minded, very strong–willed and passionate woman. That definitely influenced me.
Elizabeth
I’m so sorry to interrupt. Do you mind me asking. Do you know how she became an atheist? Had she been brought up in a faith that she then rejected? And if so not why, or had she been brought up not religious?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Yeah, so it’s a really interesting one with Nigeria, because of late, it has been associated with various religious conflicts, particularly in the north of Nigeria, around radical Islam. But actually, Christians and Muslims have lived very well together in Nigeria for several decades, if not hundreds of years. And the family on my mother’s side, some of them were Muslim, some of them were Christian. And it was all kind of a bit of a mix of faiths, to be honest. So she was broadly raised as a Christian, but there were influences of other religious practices and ideas mixed in there as well. And so it was always quite loose. But she ultimately came to reject it. You know, when I was younger.
Elizabeth
Do you remember it?
Inaya Folarin Iman
I do remember it. So, it was the household that I grew up in, which was British–Nigerian. And so as I was raised also in Kent, it was a majority white British kind of environment in schools and so on. But many of the friends that my mother had made were people that had a similar story to her, which were immigrants from Nigeria. So the majority of them were Evangelical Christians. And I think, the reason that she rejected it… There was a small point when I was younger, where she really did try and adopt all of the attitudes, the beliefs, that are associated with Pentecostal Christians. And but this was at a particular time in her life where she was going through economic challenges and issues around migration status. But she ultimately felt that what she was doing, that it wasn’t working. That the prayer, and all of the things, going to church and giving tithe, and the people around, were not actually improving her life. And so she left because she felt that that it wasn’t giving the things that she felt that it promised.
Elizabeth
And were there other big ideas around in your childhood? Was there a kind of political sensibility, either from her, or that you developed early?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Yeah. So I think a conservatism has always won through my family. And it is very interesting, when we hear in political and social discourse, a particular attitude. But the ethnic minority people are only really, from one particular political camp. But conservatism, as a philosophy, was very strong in my family and my upbringing. And it wasn’t a systematic kind of political philosophy, in terms of reading the thinkers and so on, but it was just a kind of general orientation, a general outline. And that sense of personal responsibility, that’s one. And I think that that is true for a lot of immigrant families, not least, because it takes a lot of “get up and go” and personal responsibility to leave the community and family that you are raised in that you’ve only known to start out a life in another country, and try and do everything you can to give your children the best opportunities. There’s something about that sense of hard working, go–getting immigrant optimism, as Tony Saul describes it. So that kind of sense of personal responsibility, hard work, a very strong focus, a very strong sense of discipline, a strong educational ethos, and general traditional values: responsibility, family, duty, mutual obligation. These things that have, I think, increasingly been disregarded or marginalised as values that are no longer fashionable, or representative of a modern cosmopolitan women, or modern cosmopolitan person, are things that were a given, are given to me, and continued to be. And that, I think, was very influential for the Nigerian aspect of my upbringing: the kind of strong figures in my life, like my mother, my grandmother, and my aunties, and uncles. So I would say, a kind of general conservative outlook has always been an undercurrent of my thinking and broader positioning.
Passion and curiosity: embracing debate as a means to negotiate differences
Elizabeth
Let’s take a little snapshot: imagine yourself now age 13. I’d love to just get a sense of what you were like. What three words might your friends have used to describe you age 13?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Gosh, that’s tough. I think ‘passionate’? You know, I was very surprised… I mean, I was a bit younger, but I was very surprised to see a video of me when it was my fifth birthday. And I had lots of my school friends from primary school round, and we were all doing karaoke. And I was very surprised to find that, on many occasions, I attempted to take the mic off of other people when it was their turn, said “I want to speak”. And I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “Wow, I have not changed for 20 years”. I’ve always been very passionate, and very strong minded. Open and curious, but also had a sense of conviction, and was unafraid to express myself. So that’s one. I think, ‘curious’ as well. And a very strange thing for someone in their preteens: I grew up on a programme called The Big Questions and I was very sad when they stopped the show. It was a Sunday religious and ethics and politics show on the BBC. And I would wake up every Sunday to watch these The show was about religion and ideas and these big debates, and I’ve always been so curious about the way that different people think. And that’s one of the reasons why I studied Arabic and politics. And I’ve always studied languages, since I was very young. So, a curiosity about the world. Not least, I went to a state school, I went to a private school, I went to grammar school; I went to different schools. And so I was always very interested in how different social values and attitudes create different conditions for different types of people. So, ‘passionate’ and ‘curious’.
Elizabeth
You’re someone who comes across as very comfortable with debate. Have you always found that kind of argumentation energising rather than threatening, which some people do?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Oh, I find it so exciting, so interesting that we all… I mean, it’s a truism, but the fact that we all have our own mind and think differently, and all of our experiences inform our perspective, and how we negotiate those differences in a society that kind of prides itself on being liberal and open. And so to me, debate has always been intrinsic to negotiating differences and building some kind of consensus, not least because the alternative is imposition. And when we do that, that obviously has its other unintended consequences. But on top of that, living in a society like Britain, which has such a rich and fascinating paths, and has positioned itself historically, and continues to do in many ways, as this kind of beacon of particular ideals, and trying to shape the world and move the world forward. It has had to engage with, and draw upon, cultures and religious attitudes and values from across the world. And being able to pull onto that and bring that together, and inform a much more interesting, and deeper, and culturally exciting society; to me, it just seems so obvious that that’s what we should do. And so, debate, I’ve always found it very exhilarating. And I’ve never felt that there was any subject – whether that is race, or being a woman or whatever that might be – that I’ve found is off limits. And on top of that, even if in the mainstream, that some people are not willing to debate something, it will be debated in some form or another. So I’d prefer it to be out in the open.
Experiences of prejudice and the complex notion of childhood racism
Elizabeth
One last question kind of about your childhood, and I want to ask it carefully, partly because I think it can get a bit boring for people of colour to be asked this, but it’s important, because of what we’ll talk about shortly in terms of race and identity. How much was your identity as someone with Nigerian heritage important to you, central to your sense of self? And did it cause problems? Did you experience prejudice or racism as you were growing up?
Inaya Folarin Iman
So, it’s really difficult. These things are always difficult to think about and discuss when you get older. I will answer your question more directly, but I think understanding what goes on amongst what children who are influenced by so many different things, and understanding that as racism, to me, is very different. It’s kind of difficult to understand these things as racism. Because to me, I understand racism as discrimination and prejudice against people of real or perceived different races, but not just that. On top of that, when that’s given kind of moral and cultural authority by institutions, we people can say something or be prejudiced or what have you, we all have the capacity to do that. But to me, racism, as a something that kind of organises a society is much more about power and institutions. And so, to think about when people ask me about whether or not I’ve experienced racism as a child, I think it’s very difficult to think of childhood experiences in that way, because I think is a very adult political question. But did I experience people picking on me because of my skin colour? Yes. Was it something that was an everyday occurrence? No. Was it something that affected me on a on a deep personal level? The answer that the answer is no. And in all honesty, I haven’t experienced any direct in–person prejudice pretty much for like 5/6/7 years. I can count on both hands just about, how many direct racist statements have been made to me about me. So, in that sense, it wasn’t something that was a very big experience, or a big part of me growing up. And I’m very grateful for that. I count that lucky because other people say things quite different to me in that respect. But I, it wasn’t something that was a big feature of my childhood.
Challenging dominant narratives: navigating free speech and censorship at university
Elizabeth
And you’ve spoken a little bit about being at university and a growing sense of your political philosophy emerging, and finding that often at odds with other students of colour and the way they were thinking about their own identity and their emerging political philosophy. Could you just say a bit more about that?
Inaya Folarin Iman
So, as I’ve said that from very young, I’ve been very curious about ideas. I’ve been very curious about debating and discussing all of the big issues that shaped society, politically and socially. And I was very excited to go to university and to do that in a much more academically and intellectually rigorous way. I mean, that’s what I understood was the purpose of university: to train the next generation of leaders to think critically and to think out loud about issues that they will go on to have responsibility for in their respective fields, and contribute new knowledge and new ideas in particular subjects. And I started university, I think, pretty much at the height of the… I think it was the kind of 2014 to 2020, the peak of the campus “free speech culture wars”. Just the year after my first year of university, we voted for Brexit, we had Trump. So it was it was a very tumultuous time, politically. And actually, whilst I had a great time at university – I learnt some amazing things, and it defined me in many ways – what I was very sad about was the fact that when it came to many of these big debates in society around populism, around race and identity, there was one view that was promoted. There was one view that was legitimised as morally right and good. And that was not up for debate. And actually, there was a movement that was endorsed by my student union at the time called “Why is my curriculum white?”, and as a curious open, young person who wants to hear about the kinds of ideas that are being championed by the university, I was very open to being convinced, of course. And attending many of those events, I would argue it promoted a very narrow one–sided view of British society, and its relationship with its former colonial countries. So, I often talk about a particular example of an event that I went to on so–called “decolonising gender”, and it essentially argued that there was no sex difference or recognised gender difference in pre–colonial Africa, and that actually, it was a kind of Western imperialist endeavour in order to organise people in particular societies around labour and reproduction. And to me, this seemed purely conjecture, and one of the evidence that was presented was the fact that, in the Yoruba language, many terms are not gendered. So as you have with Spanish or French, there’s a feminine and a masculine way of saying things, but for Yoruba, there isn’t apparently the same thing. And that’s a huge statement to make about precolonial social organisation based off of that. And it became increasingly clear to me that people were working backwards from a preconceived idea that Western society was intrinsically racist, misogynistic, and dominating. And that non–Western societies are essentially primarily kind of children and victims of and lack agency, and are solely just the subject of this all–encompassing, dominating white Western force. And that was not the experiences from my family. And it was one that I think robbed African people of their own perspectives, their own stories, their own relationships, their own histories of triumph or domination also. So it was really through many of these experiences around undermining freedom of expression and free speech and decolonizing the curriculum and issues related to that, that really made me develop a much more intellectually rooted view of human agency about human freedom, and universalistic politics.
Elizabeth
This is pure conjecture, so feel free to push back, but I imagine it must have been emotionally quite fraught: as a person of colour to be coming to different conclusions than the kind of dominant intellectual temperature of the time. Did you lose friends? Did it feel difficult at times?
Inaya Folarin Iman
You know, I lost many friends. And it was very interesting. It was such a strange experience. Another example that I refer to often is, I was editing a section of the student newspaper, and I wanted to commission an article on decolonising the curriculum, “Why is my curriculum white?” I mean, as a student, this is a particular movement that is shaping campus discussions. Surely, we should want to ensure that we represent a range of different views. And when I tried to do that, I had a flood of emails from a minority of students – because I don’t think this is representative of most; I don’t think most students care, to be honest. But two students who accused me of platforming white supremacy, and things of that nature. And, you know, it only emboldened me. I said, “I’m gonna host a free speech event on campus”. And the university, they tried to push back. They wanted the speakers to have a code of conduct signed form, and all sorts of things. It ultimately did take place. And, it’s just happened that I’m somebody that doesn’t like to be censored. But it’s sad when you start to think differently in a way that actually alienates you from people that you would have thought were the kinds of people that would be your great friends. And I think it is sad, because we do live in a time where thinking politically or socially different to other people is often a deal–breaker in terms of friendships and relationships. And I don’t think it has to be that way. I love the stories during Christmas, the aunties and uncles around, and your uncle is saying the most cringeworthy things, and someone else is saying something else. But at the end of the day, you all love each other. You’re all a family, it’s fine. But I think we increasingly lost that sense that behind someone’s kind of political views, is a genuine person that is worthy of dignity and respect. But not just that: that actually people come to their political views for a whole host of reasons and that they may know something or experience something that you haven’t that has informed their perspective. And we need to understand that, we need to discuss that, we need to talk about that. And so, it is sad to me that, for a lot of young people, what I found was that that was a dealbreaker in terms of being a friend, my friend. But I don’t think it should be that way at all.
Recognising progress, challenging structural racism, and distinguishing the UK from the US
Elizabeth
I’d love you to spell out – and perhaps you can do it by talking about the Equiano Project, which is this organisation that you founded since graduating. Could you just summarise for lay people like me what your position is on how we navigate differences like race in society? And what is it that you see – I’m not going to use the word problematic – challenging about some of the identitarian narratives?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Now, there’s a few things. So one of the things is the question of progress. And I’ve been reading a lot of thinkers that have been writing critical things about the notion of progress. But in order to have a sensible discussion about racism in contemporary Britain, I think we have to have a much more realistic discussion about how far we’ve come. And I think it should be obvious for many people that we no longer live in a society that is supportive and sanctioning of slavery and colonial impositions. I think that’s a very important thing to recognise, even though it’s quite obvious. But let’s even take history much more recent. When I speak to people that I know of older generations that are now 60s, 70s and 80s, they talk about the fact that their parents would be horrified at the idea of them being with someone of a different ethnicity, or even living next to someone of a different ethnicity. They can talk about experiences of having horrible things thrown through their windows and living under conditions of fear, as recently as perhaps even the 1980s. And we no longer do. I think it’s really important to recognise we no longer live in a society like that. Social Attitudes surveys in the UK have consistently demonstrated that racism in the form of ‘not being okay with your child dating someone of a different race’ or ‘living next to someone of a different race’ is an is a long term decline. And on top of that, that people no longer think that Britishness must mean that your white. And in 50 years, if that meant less than that, we have fundamentally transformed when it comes to your attitude about different racial groups. So I think that is really important to, in my view to contextualise the discussion about whether or not we should be kind of optimistic or pessimistic about how we treat each other when it comes to our attitudes to race.But I think one thing about the discussion in society is, it seeks to downplay progress, and often says that racism hasn’t actually been in decline. That it’s only transformed. That actually, the problem now is more about unconscious bias or covert racism. And that’s the real problem, this kind of psychological prejudice that we don’t even know ourselves. And I think that that’s really harmful, when there are huge material and lived experience as evidence that racism has got much better when it comes to the proportion of people’s attitudes. Secondly, on that same point, it’s deeply pessimistic. So this idea that society is structurally racist, or institutionally racist, and it doesn’t even matter if individuals within that particular organisation or institution are racist themselves, but the society has attitudes or cultures that are just intrinsically racist: I think is deeply pessimistic. Because I think that for most people in society, we are all negotiating with one another, treating people as best as we can, being kind and just trying to get on. I think, when you reimagine normal human relationships and the imperfections of society as being embedded in racism, I think that you kind of foster a sense of mutual distrust and resentment. And we see that in attitudes and around discussions about institutional racism in the police or healthcare. Actually, what often happens is that you then corrode people’s trust in those institutionsand therefore they’re less likely to participate in them as citizens. So for example, the way that ethnic minority people for a long time were more likely to have levels of vaccine scepticism, but also in the discussions around stop–and–search and policing. When you embed a particular narrative that our society is structured in a particular way, against people, by virtue of their race, then you foster a sense of suspicion and pessimism, which can actually disempower individuals from participating as equal citizens within society. So to me, recognising progress is a really important issue. Actually being much more optimistic, and more trusting about our fellow citizen and how far we’ve come. And then the third thing for me is that how essentialist is ethnic minority people. Now, we see this discussions all the time, whether that’s conservative political figures and others, who perhaps have conservative views about immigration, or that they happen to be of the minority people also, or Brexit, or these other issues; that somehow their authenticity, as an ethnic minority person is delegitimised and questioned. And it is to suggest that actually, to be an ethnic minority person is only a very specific thing. And to me, that is essentially repackaging old ideas, which argued that your racial identity said something about your moral and social characteristics. And so I think that’s a really dangerous, slippery slope to go down. And there are many other things that I have a problem with: the hostility towards freedom of speech and discussion, the way in which we accept America’s very particular issues around police brutality and slavery as our own. Even though they’re related, they’re definitely, fundamentally different. So those are some of the issues that I think the contemporary narrative, deeply, deeply gets wrong.
On cultivating a hyper–sensitive Black identity and racial equality in Britain
Elizabeth
And what I always like to kind of bring different points, kind of at their strongest into conversation with each other – and I’m kind of thinking through: what do you think that movement gets right? And I am thinking in particular about the kind of long tail of unjust structures, because I know from reading your work, that it’s not that you don’t think racism exists at all, or that you think slavery and colonialism, isn’t a problem. Broadly, slavery very much a bad thing; colonialism, many harms. But one of the things that’s come out of the movement, I think, is how long it can take, both just within individuals whose ancestors experienced really significant trauma through kind of epigenetic transfer that those experiences do change us over generations. But we’re not quite sure how and, you know, question mark? But also in terms of the way wealth is passed down. Is it possible that one of the things that this moment is doing is making more visible the long tail of some of those situations? And is it that you would dispute all that, or that you would say, “Yes, I can see that, but it’s not actually helpful for people of colour to focus on it”, because you want to work out what’s helpful and hopeful in this moment?
Inaya Folarin Iman
Yeah, I think it’s a bit of both. So I would challenge so many of the assumptions that are of the temporary discussion about race and racism. Particularly this idea, that, yes, 2020, the Black Lives Matter protests were a defining moment, but not for the reasons I think, as discussed, oftentimes. It’s framed almost as the first time, not exactly, but oftentimes, almost the first time that we’ve had a kind of racial awakening, which I think would surprise the many people that I know, who were at the forefront of anti–racist protests during the 80s. There’s actually been very long discussions that have happened, about colonialism, about the way that we teach the British Empire. I was taught about the British Empire in school. And actually history, for example, is not a compulsory subject anyway. So, whether kids are getting history lessons is up for debate, let alone talking specifically or learning specifically about the British Empire. So I think a lot of the discussions that are being had don’t actually step up to the reality about the kinds of conversations and the kinds of policies that have been implemented over the last few decades in order to improve racial equality. The Equality Act and various other anti–discrimination legislation have existed in this country for a very long time. It is illegal to discriminate against somebody on the grounds of race. Actually, the history curriculum is very diverse: you do learn about many of the rights and the wrongs of British history. And actually, even the history of the other ethnic minority people in Britain is very heterogeneous. So many of the immigrants that are Black in the mid–20th century in the UK were of Caribbean heritage, primarily. But now the majority of people that are Black Britons are children of people that actually came from waves of immigration much later: West African immigrants in the 80s and 90s. And so, for many of them, their history is not necessarily tied to the transatlantic slave trade in the same way that you might find for African–Americans or Caribbean Americans. And actually, for example, Caribbean men, for example, are more likely to marry a white woman than they are a Caribbean woman. So actually, there’s a lot of mixing and integration and relationships that are happening. And so, the kind of picture that is broadly painted, I wouldn’t actually say that is accurate about the way that society is, and the extent to which we have been interested in discussions about racism. So, I don’t really think it is true. And I think actually, what a lot of the time when these discussions are had about problems in Britain, I do worry. And I think it is a difficult argument to make, but I do think that there is a danger in kind of cultivating a sense of a kind of Black identity that is placed in opposition to society, and one that is almost hypersensitive to racism, or hypersensitive to slights and disagreements, and perceiving them as racism. Because the truth of the matter is, I don’t think most people in society think about people that much. I don’t think people think about other races in that way. So I would question some of the assumptions, as well as argue that it’s not helpful to cultivating hope, and citizenship, and mutual understanding.
Personal responsibility, existentialism, and feeling the pull of Postliberalism
Elizabeth
It fascinated me to hear, in another interview, your kind of love of existentialist philosophers. And I don’t know if that’s still kind of live for you, but I’m always really interested in the kind of intellectual archaeology of people, and what are our influences. Could you say a little bit more about what you’re drawn to in Sartre, and Camus, and Nietzsche? What are the ideas that spark for you? Or if you’ve changed your mind, what happened?
Inaya Folarin Iman
I think it was a few years ago, in particular, going off of that same idea that I talked earlier about: personal responsibility and human agency. And also the sense that one came from a broken home, I think I found a lot of meaning and clarity in the idea that we are ultimately responsible for where we are in life, and what we do. And actually, it relates very much actually to the discussion about race for me: that we overstate other constraining factors, and because we were fearful, oftentimes are scared of the idea that we are actually free, that we can orient ourselves in the world and kind of create our world. And so to me, that made a lot of sense to me, at a very particular time in my life. And when I think that there was a lot of prevailing narratives about human fragility, and human vulnerability, and harm, and the kind of way in which particularly perceived ‘marginalised groups’ did not have freedom. And the Equiano project is named after Olaudah Equiano. He was an 18th century writer and abolitionist. And to me, his story really drew me because, even somebody that experienced slavery – which really is one of the ultimate forms of subjection and subjugation – was able to recognise his intrinsic dignity and humanity, and challenge, and transform his circumstances by buying his own freedom, and actually using his voice in order to argue against the wicked practice of the slave trade. Now, of course, not everybody can do those things, and not every slave had the ability to do that. But I was always drawn by people like him, or Frederick Douglass, who, even despite every message within society saying to you that that you are effectively nothing, that you’re worthless, you’re no more than a slave – to be able to believe in freedom and freedom of speech as he did, to me, says something remarkably profound about human consciousness or the human. And therefore, existentialism, which along those same lines talks about human responsibility in our human freedom, and resonated with me very strongly at that time. And so, I mean, now, I don’t read as much existentialist work as I did several years ago.
Elizabeth
Most students don’t after they graduate.
Inaya Folarin Iman
Yeah, that’s probably true. So I don’t read as much now, but at that time, it was very meaningful to me. And I don’t know if it’s just getting older – I don’t know – but I am increasingly… While freedom, and freedom of speech, and all of those things, were a big motivating factor for my political activism, I am increasingly interested in the things that constrain freedom, like morality.
Elizabeth
I want to hear more about that.
Inaya Folarin Iman
Yeah, so, it’s something I’m still working through, I’m still thinking about, and actually I’ve not been as vocal in public life in recent months, because I’m thinking through a lot of ideas. But related questions around sexual morality, questions about… “are there things that are more important than freedom, such as relationships of mutual obligation, such as duty, such as honour, such as family values”. And I don’t think I’ve haven’t come to a definitive conclusion, but I think that there is a danger of creating a society where freedom effectively becomes licence, where work becomes a kind of shallow self, creating your own moral values, that is detached from society and detached from social relations, and a kind of hollow self–actualisation that is without roots. And I think that there’s a lot of issues in our society around gender, around the questions that we’ve just discussed. And I think a lot of people say, “Well, it’s my freedom to do so”. And I think, “Yes, perhaps it is your freedom, but, is that right? Is that good?” And how do we talk about, and can we even talk, in a kind of secular liberal modern society, about a notion of what is good? And how do we transmit a notion of the good collectively, rather than it just being everybody inventing their own idea of the good? So that’s kind of where I’m at, and I’m still working through that, but I’m increasingly interested in the relationship between freedom and actually what’s good and what is right.
Elizabeth
It sounds like you are feeling the pull of post–liberalism.
Inaya Folarin Iman
Maybe, maybe.
Elizabeth
Yeah, I can hook you up with someone, but yeah, it’s well–trodden. And I think there’s dignity and honour in it, right? Starting with freedom as a sacred value, you know, as a really fundamental baseline for things. And then, as we come to see that free individuals are a bit of a fiction, and we are irreconcilably interdependent, and we do owe things to each other – that nuancing of freedom as the ultimate end is so good and important.
Inaya Folarin Iman
Yeah, I agree. And maybe that is just in your youth. And in a way, I love the idea of young people experimenting, and exploring, and feeling, and pursuing a sense of freedom. And maybe it’s just that natural arc, that actually, as you gain responsibility, as you gain a stake within society, as you learn some lessons the hard way, that, that you start to question that, and you start to want to mitigate against the sharp end of things, and you want to protect the things that you value that you’ve created. And so, yeah, I’m not I’m not too worried about the arc, but maybe I am slowly going in that direction.
Elizabeth
Maybe I can talk to you again in five years, Inaya Folarin Iman. Thank you so much for speaking to me on The Sacred.
Inaya Folarin Iman
Thank you.
Reflection and outro
Elizabeth
So, Inaya. I wonder if you had the same reaction to me when you heard her biography: Brexit party, Spiked, GB News… If you’re outside the UK, you might not know that particularly GB news and Spiked are media outlets that are seen as being quite new – Spiked is going back a while, actually, but GB News was explicitly set up to provide a kind of Fox News for the UK. And Spiked news: it’s hard to sort of peg it politically, really, but it’s sort of self–consciously controversial. Very much, whatever it seems, like the consensus is Spiked: “we’ll commission a piece with someone arguing the exact opposite”. And so these things on Inaya’s CV made me expect someone much, much… just much scrappier, much more of a cultural warrior, really, than the woman that I met. I was expecting someone much more adversarial, maybe less nuanced than came across. And this project repeatedly forces me to notice and then move past my prejudices, because as you will have heard, Inaya is, as we all are, just much more three–dimensional than any box we could put anybody in.
And so, her sacred value was home. She had this beautiful sense of wanting to put down roots, of having moved a lot as a child and then being drawn to put down roots. And so central in her story is this figure of her mum. This, what she calls a kind of self–confident woman who brought up children on her own, who left her faith community when it felt like it wasn’t a fit for her anymore. And you can really hear that kind of powerful self–confidence, I guess, and self–belief passed down to the daughter. It’s always a lovely thing when you can hear the roots of the parenting that’s created someone. And then I also talked about something that’s come up with other people about working class conservatism. And people from immigrant communities often complicate the narrative of who sits on the Left and who sits on the Right, and what people of colour can be expected to believe or align politically. I think it’s never been as simple as it’s sometimes made out to be, and it certainly will only get more complex. But yeah, this sense of personal responsibility, duty, moral obligation, to make good use of your life – and it came through with Katherine Birbalsingh as well, although she’s moved to that position.
I love this picture of Inaya watching The Big Questions on television, as a sort of beautifully nerdy teenager desperate to get involved in the in the big questions, in these ideas of how do we live together, what is a good live, what should politics look like… She talked about it very calmly, but maybe I was imagining or projecting how difficult it must be to be at university and be coming to different conclusions to your peers, about how to navigate questions of race, about how to act or speak as a Black woman. And often, when we’re thinking about divides and tribes, this thing comes up again: that sometimes, when you move tribes or you reveal yourself to hold a position, or not be part, of a tribe that people expect you to be in, or hold of you that people expect you to hold, how difficult that can be relationally. Paul Kingsnorth talked about it with vaccines, it’s come up around race… it’s come up around a lot of things, actually: changing our views on sexuality, changing your religion. And it is the sort of sad thing, isn’t it, that we should be able to be in deep relationships of loving friendship with people who really, really disagree on things with us. But in practice, that can really press on something quite deep. And we know that if we aren’t intentional about it, our friendship groups can end up being all people like us, socio–economically, politically, religiously. It speaks to this thing that I think about a lot, about a sort of unstable self, a self that is always looking out to the world, to those around us to say “Who am I?” And when someone around us changes, we can feel very destabilised. And it is really a challenge to me and a call to me to let my friends change tribes, to let my friends change political beliefs, to let them hold beliefs or values that are directly opposite to what I do – and still love them. Because that should be possible. And it is the only way, I think, we stay open to the world, open–hearted, open–minded in any real way.
It’s really interesting listening to her perspective on where we are with the race conversation, and this sense that comes through of wanting to have – I think that’s what’s I’m hearing from her – to both be able to say, “Yes, people of colour still have many more hurdles to clear than white people. There is still racism to navigate”. And also, “There are far fewer hurdles and far less racism to navigate than there used to be.” To kind of be able to celebrate where we’ve come from, and in that, to maintain a sense of optimism. I think I hear from her a sense of progress, a sense that actually, we can live together better with our differences, we can we can move forward, we can build trust, and that something about the way we’re talking about it at the moment is making that more difficult. And I really heard from her this sense that it might just be temperamental, of wanting a sense of agency herself. And she used this phrase “coming from a broken home”, which I haven’t heard anyone use in a while, and particularly not someone use it about themselves, but relates to her love of existentialism. This sense of agency–building: “I don’t want to tell a story about myself that I’m crushed under the system of a racist society. I want to have agency, I want to be able to make my own way in the world.” And connected to that – wouldn’t get into an in depth – but is this sense of universalism, the sense of wanting to focus on what we have in common, rather than the ways that are different. It was really thought–provoking, and I’m going to be sitting with it for a while.
And then we landed at the end. I love getting to talk to people of all different life stages, in their 20s like Inaya, in the 60s and 70s, and the journey that they’ve got gone on, and the way we change over time. You know, we think something strongly, we believe something strongly, and the freedom to change our minds to feel our way, to lift and listen to different people seems really important to me. And you can just hear her doing that. Freedom has been such a strong value to her, and now she’s beginning to be interested in, “What might limit for freedom? What might a kind of morality, in her words, and were should that be allowed to limit it?” And I really, genuinely am interested in where Inaya’s thought goes next.
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