Black All Year - Unpacking Power and Privilege

This week we share the keys to understanding power and privilege in our latest episode of Black All Year, featuring the insightful Ngozi Lyn Cole, one of our most popular topics and guests from Season 1. Together, we uncover how power often operates unseen among dominant groups and the systemic advantages this creates. We discuss how privilege manifests on multiple levels—personal, interpersonal, institutional, and systemic—and how these unearned benefits favour white individuals over non-white individuals. Our conversation highlights the complex layers of intersectionality, where race intersects with gender, age, and sexual orientation, to influence experiences of discrimination.

Ever wonder how you can use your inherent power and privilege to fight racism? Ngozi stresses the importance of active and intentional efforts to dismantle systemic racism and combate personal biases. We discuss educational resources like "How to Be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi and tools such as the Harvard Implicit Association Test that can help you uncover and address your own biases. The necessity of continuous, proactive work in challenging the status quo is emphasized, ensuring the burden of education does not fall solely on marginalised communities.

We reinforce the importance of seeking guidance from individuals with lived experiences of racism and compensating them fairly.

Explore actionable strategies for challenging racism within organisations, even those without Black employees.
Learn the significance of thorough preparation, conducting audits, and creating detailed plans to foster inclusivity.

Ngozi Lyn Cole LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ngozi-lyn-cole-she-her-9232135/

Ngozi Lyn Cole: https://www.lyncole.org.uk/

Steph Edusei LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph-edusei/
Steph Edusei Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stephedusei/

Original music by Wayne C McDonald, #ActorSlashDJ
www.facebook.com/waynecmcdonald
www.mixcloud.com/waynecmcdonald
...

Chapters

• 0:08 Understanding Power, Privilege, and Pressure
• 10:59 Using Power and Privilege Against Racism
• 24:42 Challenging Racism in Society
• 34:19 Building Relationships Through Conversations

Transcript

[Steph Edusei]

Hi everyone and welcome to Black All Year. I'm Steph Edusei and this week I'm delighted to welcome back self-employed coach and leadership catalyst Ngozi Linh-Cole. As well as running her own business, Ngozi holds a number of non-executive posts including chair of the North East Justice Together initiative and vice chair of the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust.

She spent 18 years at the National Lottery Community Fund, holding several roles including England director. Prior to this she worked in community development, education, urban regeneration and housing. Ngozi has worked with funders and a wide range of organisations across the voluntary, private and public sectors on their leadership, their strategy and EDI journeys including anti-racism.

In 2016 Ngozi was named one of the New View 50 list of most influential Black, Asian and minority ethnic people working in the public sector. In 2020 as one of Lloyd's Banking Group's Kindness and Leadership 50 leading lines and in 2021 was recognised as a Northern Health Science Alliance North Innovation Woman. Ngozi believes that everyone has the passion and potential to achieve their ambition and sees her why as a supporting individuals and organisations to do just that.

Hi Ngozi, it's really lovely to have you here and you may not know this but actually the last time you were on, the video and the podcast from that are some of our, if not the most reviewed, the second most reviewed of all the ones we've got, really really popular. So, I had to back on to talk about the same topic but in a different way. Welcome back.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Thank you for having me back and thank you for that feedback as well. It's really good that people are interested in this particular subject because I think it can make so much difference to kind of all things inclusion, especially when you look at it through the lens of race. So, thank you for doing this.

[Steph Edusei]

No problem and I think probably what's what's captured people so much is that word privilege in particular. I was just using it earlier today in relation to myself and the privilege that I have but let's talk a little bit about privilege and power.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Okay so a little bit of a recap. It was in 2022 we had our first conversation so this must be two years ago really and we talked about power didn't we. So as a reminder power is the capacity to exercise control over others.

Now many people who hold power don't see that they hold power because they kind of don't notice it because you have it and when you look at institutional power in particular that creates a system where the dominant group, if we're talking about race people who are not Black, are the ones that kind of hold the power. They're the ones that have things designed around them. They're the ones for whom life is generally easier even though it might not always feel like that.

But that means that the less dominant groups then suffer from things like racism. But if you look through intersectional lens also sexism, ableism, classism. And then privilege for me is about how power is distributed and how that status quo is maintained.

So, we'll operate on a personal level, on an interpersonal level, institutional and definitely systemic. And it's all about giving unearned advantage, favours and other benefits to people as opposed to people who are not in that dominant group. So, if we think about that privilege wheel that we talked about, if you're male, if you're white, if you're able-bodied, if you're Christian, if you're heterosexual, if you're younger, you kind of sit in the middle of that wheel.

And everybody else who's not sits some distance away from that wheel. So, all of that power and privilege combine when we think about race to make sure that people who are non-white are kept away from the top of the privilege tree, discriminated against and do not necessarily enjoy the benefits that others do. Now there are notable exceptions, you can't always generalise, but you find that as a whole society does seem to work better for people who are white than those who are not white.

[Steph Edusei]

Yeah. And I think this is the thing that people struggle with a lot of the time is that they can always point to those exceptions, can't they? But also, there are times when I probably hold more privilege than anybody else in the room, particularly if I think about at work, I'm the boss, and therefore that quite often affords me a level of power and a level of privilege that others don't have.

I can then be exactly the same person, so in the same role in a different room, and all of a sudden all of the other societal factors that kick in around ethnicity and gender and things like that, they then come to play. So, I'm still Steph, the Chief Executive, but I'm Steph, the Chief Executive in a different context, and therefore that power is diminished because of the people that are around me.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

So, there are a couple of different things there. One, even in that position as Chief Executive, you're a Black woman, so you don't get a pass out of being discriminated against. And we have lots of examples where people who occupy lower positions have actually combined to kind of bully people out of roles.

So, there's all of that happening. And then you sit on top of your tree in terms of being Chief Executive. I know that's not your style, so it doesn't work that way, but let's exaggerate for impact.

But then you walk out of there and you're still a Black woman, and the discrimination that faces every other non-Chief Exec walking down the street also impacts you. So, it's kind of so complex. And when you start thinking you're a female Chief Executive, that also brings another dimension to it.

People who are older, people who are gay, kind of all of that combines with being Black to make the experience even more adverse than it needs to be, which is a real shame.

[Steph Edusei]

And I suppose some of the ways in which that could manifest is actually, I can't just be an average Chief Executive. I have to be a very good Chief Executive to make me equal to a white male Chief Executive. It's all of that that comes into play there.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Yes, you're held to far higher standards. I mean, the Harvard Business Review has done lots of research around this. Black people are held to far higher standards.

Something goes wrong, you are immediately put through some kind of disciplinary process that might not have been the case if you were Black. When it comes to promotion, you are sidelined. All of those standards apply.

And I have to say, sometimes we do it to ourselves. So certainly, in the senior roles I've held, I've been mindful of the privilege I hold sitting in those roles. I need to be good, I need to this, I need to that, because I don't want the next person who looks like me coming through the door to have the door slammed in her face because I haven't performed to a particular level.

So you can imagine how all of this combined kind of puts you under tremendous pressure, or even trauma, I would call it, that has led to people crashing and burning in the senior roles they hold because of all of this pressure you might put on yourself, but definitely pressure that society places on you.

[Steph Edusei]

Yeah. And I suppose with that, actually, there's the, again, that internal external sense of duty that I that I described, but actually expectation that externally of things like I will represent and I will challenge and I will. So, I will be an advocate for women and for people who are Black, because of the privilege that I hold in lots of different versions, but also my, my profile and my role gives me that level of visibility that others might not have.

So, there's that internal sense of duty that I have that I have to use that for something. But also there's that, that external expectation that I will do it. And I am, you know, people say, so what do you think you're Black?

What do you think of this? If you're the voice of all Black people? All Black people.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Totally. I mean, you and I have daughters, I've got two sons as well, but I can't even speak for my daughter, I'm pretty sure you can't speak for yours, because your life experiences, the way you think all of it is very, very different. So, kind of expecting somebody to speak for others is kind of really unfair, totally unnecessary, and doesn't help in my view, actually, because you don't get that rounded view.

I mean, you and I have talked about the pressure of being the only, you know, the only chief executive of colour, the only non-executive director of colour, the only senior leader of colour, all of those combined to significant pressure for you to do well to kind of fly the flag to make sure that space is created for others, but also to be the voice that people will approach you, they will absolutely be drawn to you because they can see themselves in you.

And wanting to do that and do it well, in addition to holding down a full time busy workload, just compounds the sheer exhaustion that people might feel.

[Steph Edusei]

Yeah. So, we've got this situation where we have varying degrees of privilege in a whole host of different areas. And obviously, you've mentioned things like ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation.

There's also things like education, income, accent, yeah, all kinds of different areas in which, to a greater or lesser extent, we will either have privilege or be disadvantaged and marginalized. And then overlaid with that is then the power that you can wield, depending on whether you have privilege in that circumstance. Yes.

So that's the kind of context that we're living in. It'd be interesting, living and working, it'd be interesting to kind of talk a little bit more about. So, in the context of ethnicity and racism, what does that then, how does that then play out across all different levels of our society?

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Indeed. So, I suppose first thing is that we all hold a degree of power and privilege when we live in the West. You know, we have running water when we turn the taps on, we have electricity at the flick of a switch.

We've got all of these privileges that we hold. But the trick is how do you use your power and privilege for good? How does it manifest when it's not being used for good?

And how can we all think about how we use this power for good? So, I suppose I was thinking of looking at it through those four different lenses, personal, interpersonal, institutional and systemic. So, kind of power and privilege combine to kind of keep racism as the status quo when it comes to race.

And if we don't intentionally push at it and actually try to break the status quo, we don't achieve anything because it is so strong, the way it's maintained, that nothing but active, intentional, deliberate action will stop it. So, if we look at personal, how do we see racism as a result of in power balances? So, some people have been brought up to believe that one race is superior to the other.

If you're a white person, you're superior to a Black person. We saw it in slavery, we saw it in colonialism, we continue to see it today. And I didn't just mean white people, I mean Black people as well.

We're all conditioned to think one race is kind of more superior to the other. You only have to look at the doll tests by Drs Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Have you come across it?

[Steph Edusei]

I may have done, explain it.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Right. So, it's an experiment where they're showing kids, really young kids, Black dolls and white dolls, and they're asking them, which is the good doll, which is the bad doll, etc. And these kids are consistently, the kids are Black, kind of of African and Asian heritage, and they're consistently picking the white doll over the Black doll when it kind of puts good attributes to that.

And at the end, the question is, which one looks more like you? And you can just see these kids fold into themselves when they realise, they have to point to the doll that they have said is bad across all of these questions to see it looks like them. So, it starts at a very young age, you know, the media prefer to aid say politics, prefer to aid say education, prefer to aid say other things happen.

So, you can carry all of that within yourself. They don't make you good or bad. I honestly don't see racism as a good or bad thing.

It's a system that we need to actively dismantle. So, you might have heard stories about things that happened, even George Floyd, the George Floyd murder, there were all sorts of comments on social media about what a bad person he was. Why did he just do what the police said?

Why was he shoplifting in the first place? All of this nonsense that forget that this was an actual human being that was being murdered. We see it in football.

So, I'm really watching Euro 2024 because we all know what happened in Euro 2020 and the coverage of those Black boys who missed penalties. So, all of these things are kind of what you see at a personal level when you have people who believe one race is superior to the other. So, what can you do?

I think it's about educating yourself and it's not the job of Black people to educate you. And by Black people, I mean people who are not white, people who are generally of the African and Asian diaspora. So how do you educate yourself?

If people want to speak to you, fine, but you can't expect people to come and educate you. There are lots of books that have been written already. There is How to be Antiracist by Abraham X.

Kendi. There are things like Black British Lives Matter by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder. There are books like The Good Ally by Nova Reid.

Books like This is Why I Resist by Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu. So, there are lots of books that people can use to test themselves. And then there are tests, there are psychological tests out there like the Harvard Implicit Association test by Banerjee and Greenwald, where you can look to kind of see what biases you do hold that might lead you at a personal level to have this sense of superiority or inferiority.

But left unchecked, those things then translate beyond the personal into areas that might cause harm.

[Steph Edusei]

Yeah. And the Harvard test is the one where you can actually test against a number of different.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

You can, yes. Fascinating. I've clicked on a UK version if you go on the site and it kind of then roots it into our own experience.

I mean, it's not perfect, but it kind of gives people an indication of the biases they might hold, which means that on a personal level, if you don't use your privilege there, you might continue to perpetuate the status quo of racism.

[Steph Edusei]

And I think with a couple of things that you said there that were really interesting in chime with some of the things that I've heard recently about when when people say and do something racist or are called racist, there's a real reaction in people. And actually, there's something about we are we are living in a racist society, arguably world. And therefore, it's not it.

It's not a personal accusation that you are being racist or that you are racist. There is something you can do about it, and therefore you are at fault. So, I'm not trying to excuse that.

But actually, it's almost like it's no wonder, because the system and our society is feeding that to us all all the time. So, you have to, as you say, actively work against that. And I loved what you said about it's not our responsibility to educate.

We may choose to. And I do that a lot. But sometimes I just can't be bothered.

I've had enough. And it's kind of go off and do your own work. Totally.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

And why should you be expected to be the one, especially when you get into instances where people go, how do you know that was racist? How do you know that was racist? Explain it to me.

And people should really look after themselves. I kind of think that because it's so, so, so difficult to go through this day in, day out. So, when the point comes where you've just had enough, switch off the social media thing.

Give yourself a break. Shut down in the conversations. Just rest and recuperate.

Because studies are showing this is harmful. The trauma people are carrying is translating into several elements of their own health. And we really can't be laissez-faire about people just not looking after themselves.

[Steph Edusei]

So that was the personal. And then we have interpersonal.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Yes. OK. So, when that personal comes out then and it passes from one person to the other, that's when you get the interpersonal areas where power and privilege work together to keep racism alive.

And that point you just made about the status quo is that. So, if you look at our ancestors living in tribes and communities, we needed to, for our own safety, only play nicely with people who are of our own tribe, because the other tribe might be hostile, might kill you. So, we're all conditioned to kind of fear what is different, which is why the status quo is being maintained.

So, on an interpersonal level, you see things like racist abuse that happens. So, kind of I try to avoid calling people racist because there's something about labelling that shuts down. So, if you tell me I'm homophobic, I immediately go, what do you mean?

Of course, I'm not. Defensive, defensive, defensive. I'm not hearing anything else that you talk about.

But if we talk about racist behaviour, racist language and all of that, sometimes it's softer. I'm not saying we all have to do it, but sometimes it's softer. And one of those things, the things that we know as microaggressions, I really don't like that term at all.

I came across a term called exclusionary practices that I think is much better because it's all those, oh, you're so articulate. I don't see colour. Why are you so angry and aggressive?

All of those things. I don't know if you saw American Airlines had removed eight Black men from a flight recently. Yes.

Yes. Because someone complained about body odour and somebody thought, ah, I will remove all of the Black men because that will solve the problem. Thankfully, three of them have seen American Airlines now.

So, let's see what happens. So, all of this passing between people, abuse, violence, spitting, all of this, even murder, all of that is very much interpersonal. So, it can operate in that way.

So, what are the things that we can do? It's about calling out that behaviour, but only when you have the strength and the power to do it. You don't always have the strength and power, in which case it's all right to look down on your shoes, but calling things out when you see it, not waiting for somebody else to speak and definitely not going back to the person hours later to go, oh, I thought it was terrible what that person said.

What's the point of that? So, we need to be calling it out. But we can also call in, which is that, oh, hang on, hang on a minute and say, why did you use that language?

What did you mean by that? What was going on for you there? I've read something that leads me to think that's not acceptable, et cetera, et cetera.

It's also about allyship. How can we be authentic allies, not the performative allies on social media, posting squares and all sorts of things that look at me, aren't I a good person? Authentic allyship, which is about creating space, creating voice, making sure that people can absolutely interact with what's going on.

So, I suppose using those tools mean on an interpersonal level, you can then be mindful of what you're going to say before you actually say it. And if you get it wrong, of course, we all get it wrong. Check in yourself.

I'm so sorry. This is not what I intended to say. I will do better, et cetera, et cetera.

[Steph Edusei]

Yeah. Yeah. And I think sometimes just that on that last point, just saying I didn't realize that that was offensive, racist or whatever.

I do now. And I'm sorry. That goes a long way.

And it's the you know, I love that my Angelo quote, do the best that you can until you know better.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

And when you know, love it. And it doesn't it can be six months later. It doesn't have to be overnight.

It kind of really does help when people do that.

[Steph Edusei]

Great. So, what's the next level after the interpersonal?

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

So institutional. So clearly, we're funnelling up me as a person, me interacting with other people. And then we as individuals make up institutions, our charities, our schools, the NHS, the police and all of that.

So, all organizations, I was going to say most organizations, but it's not. It's all organizations, I believe, can have a dominant culture that favours some people over others. And if you look at our public institutions in the UK in particular, you can see in terms of representation that Black people are not holding positions of power in the way white people are.

So, kind of when people go, it's not a problem in our organization, not in my backyard. I will listen to that after you have asked the marginalized people in your organization what they think and got that positively. I'm not asking them for a position of power, really wanting to listen to what people are saying.

So, if we look at the NHS, the NHS mentions the workforce race equality standards, absolutely amazing. And it's given seriously powerful data. White applicants significantly more likely to be invited to interviews, to be appointed from shortlisting.

Black people more likely to experience bullying, harassment and abuse from colleagues, but also from the general public. More likely to be in the disciplinary process and all of these things. I just heard on the news earlier that policemen that have been implicated in terms of investigating the Stephen Lawrence murder really badly.

What was this? This was over 30 years ago now. They're not going to be prosecuted.

And I'm thinking, what a surprise. We all thought they were going to be immediately prosecuted and kind of put in jail. Of course, that's not happening.

So, all of those are really institutional racist behaviour that can happen. So, what can we do? What can we do to use our power and privilege there?

Ask your organization where their anti-racism strategy is. Some organizations will say we have an EDS strategy. I get that.

I'm absolutely fine. But underneath it, what are you doing about anti-racism? And often we know the what about.

So, if you start talking about race, you go, well, what about disability? What about this? What about that?

Yes, you should do something about all of that. But that question is often used to silence you to stop talking about race. So, what's the strategy?

The strategy should be a meaningful strategy, not something that one or two of us have written in an office and sent out to the world. So, I came up with a little model that is called PAPER. So, you prepare, prepare for your strategy, prepare for what it's going to look like, get the defensiveness out on the table, be serious about this.

So, you prepare. Then you do an audit. Let's find out how we're doing now.

So, it's not about good or bad. Where are we now? Where are we in terms of people feeling included?

Where are we in terms of people experiencing racism, etc.? So that's the audit. And then let's have a plan, a clear plan with objectives, with action points, with clear rules and responsibilities, with targets, with an understanding of what success looks like.

And then let's do it. Let's execute. Let's get on with it, not waiting to make it all shiny and working perfectly straight away.

Let's just get on with it. But let's have a review element. So, there are several reviews.

Let's have a look at it in six months, quarterly, whenever, and see how we do and see whether we need to ramp up or ramp down. So, asking organizations those meaningful things, pushing leaders. And if you're in a leadership position, what are you doing?

What conversations are you having? What questions are you asking? What sort of things are you seeing that enable you to think, well, let's create an organization that is inclusive for everybody, not just for some people?

[Steph Edusei]

I think that's a really interesting approach. And what I wonder is, if you are an organization that currently doesn't have any Black employees, should you be doing this?

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

You absolutely should be doing this. And we hear this all the time. There are no Black people there.

It's not just about the organization. It's about where you live as well. So, we don't have any Black people here.

We don't have a problem. What then happens if one Black person shows up the next day? So, for me, all organizations should be doing it.

So, if you don't have any Black people working with you, chances are you will not be able to do this alone because you do not have that lived experience. So, you need to go and find people with lived experience to help you to develop this strategy. And please don't go and find them and expect them to work for you for free or expect them to work for you at a very ridiculous amount of money.

Actually make it worth their while to give you that experience and knowledge that enables you to prepare for that person coming in. And also ask yourself why you don't have any Black people working for you if you kind of think of the biases that we talked about that are not about good or bad. But is there something good in it that means you're only employing people like you?

Are you advertising only where people like you sit and live? Or are you actually being intentional about attracting people? So yes, I would say it applies to all organizations.

[Steph Edusei]

Right. So, we've got that, that was the institutional and then next is systemic.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Finally, the systemic. So, racism is pervasive, it's embedded in our society. We can't help it.

It's just there. And sadly, it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Study after study has shown that this continues to be a problem.

So, research just last year, 2023, by a group called the Black Equity Organization. So, they did a report called Being Black in Britain. And it showed things like 65% of Black people have been discriminated against in healthcare.

Over 50% say someone close to them has experienced stop and search, wrongful arrest. My son lives in London and is frequently stopped and searched. Black women and girls experience adultification with child Q, where people in her school thought it was acceptable to subject a child to that behavior.

Black women, four times more likely to die in childbirth. Black people, 3% of the population, 12% of the prison population. So, all of this is everywhere.

The list goes on and on and on. So, all of those institutions are funnelling up to hold a system that kind of gives power to others, gives power and privilege to people who are not Black and makes life difficult for others. And we saw it really so well in an election year and stuff.

Thank you for the campaign in terms of people registering to vote. And I do not want to name this person, so I will not name him. But during the debate, one of the politicians was asked a question on how to combat knife crime.

And he said, well, it's about stop and search. So, he said a couple of things. He said, we need to stop and search.

He said, they might call us racist if we do it in areas of a high proportion of minority ethnic communities. This is a quote. And he said, we have to completely forget the colour of people's skins and treat everybody equally.

And the audience applauded. And I thought, oh my goodness, it's 2024. This is still happening.

And even gov.uk says 27.2 of every 1,000 Black people are stopped and searched, 27.2. Guess what that number is for white people? 5.6. Nearly five times. And you're telling me this is not racist practice? And somebody in 2024 is sitting on a stage and spouting all of this and people are applauding.

[Steph Edusei]

But even when you know, even if you move away from criminalised behaviour to and you will have experienced this as well, we are angry and aggressive, aren't we? Because we talk about stuff and we won't sit and accept things that are unjust and therefore we're aggressive.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

We're aggressive, Steph, especially if you're female. So, if you hear the word aggressive black, there's a woman coming next after it and then accused of playing the race card. It's like, really Every example we've talked about is to do with race, but when you open your mouth to challenge it, you are the one playing the race card. Meanwhile the race card is probably on the table and disadvantaging people. So, I suppose all of those things combined to have leads to systems where harm is being done all the time. It's affecting people's health, it's affecting people's mental well-being, it's affecting people's confidence and capability and capacity. All of this stuff is going on to really make sure that the system maintains the status quo and people who hold the privilege continue to hold more and more privilege to the detriment of others. So, for me I mean we're in an election year, both here in the United States as well we need to use our votes. Operation Black Vote talks about this and is running a campaign. People like you are running campaigns as well, Steph and, I liked what you were saying in your podcast, which is actually our voice is important, and if we don't use it, people will feel it's unimportant. 

And then we hear about immigration, which, like Brexit is good for kind of racist and racism, because the immigrants we want are not people from Africa and Asia, thank you very much. 

So, we need to be thinking who do we want in power? How do we make ourselves relevant by registering to vote, by using our votes? How can we constantly think what is this system doing? How can we dismantle it? Which MP am I writing, writing to? What voice am I using wherever I have it to kind of go? Oh, I have a question about xyz that just lead us to pick at this system that we have around us and look at how we can consciously use the voice, the power and privilege we hold, however small it is, to at least ask a question that hopefully will stick in somebody's head and I think that is a a message and a responsibility for everybody, regardless of your ethnicity.

[Steph Edusei]

It's not something that Black, it should fall only to Black people we need, we need white allies to be active allies and doing that on our behalf, because that privilege and that power means that that will sometimes be far more significant than if we're doing it.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Absolutely. I've just finished reading a book by Robin DiAngelo, who wrote White Privilege. This one is called Nice Racism and she talks about white liberals her words, not mine racism and she talks about white liberals her words, not mine and how their racism is nicer. But it's just as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan type racism of the you know pillowcases with eyes cut out. I'm thinking of being aware of the things we are doing that are keeping this system upheld, and she shares her own experience of behaviours that she has displayed, where she's either been called out and she's thought oh my goodness, what was I thinking then?

So, the job is for us all. Whatever power and privilege we have, how do we use it for good? And being silent, doing nothing, is a choice. You can decide to be non-racist; I'm not going to say anything, I'm not going to do anything racist. I'm not going to say anything, I'm not going to do anything racist, but I'm not prepared to call anybody out. You're making a choice there, and the choice you're making is keeping the status quo alive and well. So, you're contributing to that system, whether you like it or not. So, I suppose inaction is not an option. So, whoever we are, whatever colour we are. How are we using our power and privilege for the good of the wider society?

[Steph Edusei]

What a great place to finish. Thank you so much, Ngozi. I'm sure I will ask you back in future but thank you for sharing your thoughts and wisdom. Once again, your thought and wisdom.

[Ngozi Lyn Cole]

Once again, always a pleasure, Steph, always a pleasure. I really enjoy shooting the breeze with you, so let's absolutely do it again. Thank you.

[Steph Edusei]

I hope you've enjoyed that episode of Black All Year. It would be great if you could subscribe and review, because not only will it make sure that you get the content, but it'll help other people to find it too. Take care.