EP. 206 — Brave Expression with Africa Brooke

Jameela Intro Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. I’m speaking like this because I’m anxious to see what you’re going to say about today’s episode. I want to hear what you think, even if you’re mad at me, almost especially if you’re mad at me. I want to know what you think. I want to know how it makes you feel. Did it challenge you in any way? Did it open your mind? Did it piss you off? I’m open to it. That’s the whole fucking point of conversation. The foundation of democracy is disagreement, and so I’m open to whatever comes from having this chat. This shouldn’t be a controversial subject, but it has become a controversial subject because the world of social justice is so controlling. And I know that most of you think it is so, because I read all of your letters and your private DMs where you tell me in despair that you no longer believe in the movement, or you feel afraid within the movement, or you’ve been losing friends because of the movement. You’re lonely within the movement. You don’t know what to think anymore. You feel controlled. You want to leave. You want to tap out altogether, which is understandable, but we can’t lose anyone right now because we are about to see some of the biggest and most important elections in history all take place in the same year, all around the world. And so we really need everyone engaged. We really need everyone to sharpen up their communication skills and learn how to listen to each other, how to understand each other and come to compromises on agreements like fucking adults because what is currently happening is just pushing everyone away, pushing everyone further apart, and creating a much more fraught and lonely and disturbing society for all of us. And so it’s because of the amount of letters you guys have been sending me because I’ve been sort of gently touching on the subject for a few years now, and you feel an affinity with me when I do. It’s because of all of your letters of support and all of your letters of despair that I wanted to make sure I had this conversation. My guest is Africa Brooke, and she’s a fantastic speaker and thinker and voice, and a credentialed life coach and a strategist and an author of one of, I think, the most important books that is out at the moment. It’s called The Third Perspective: Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance. And it is challenging the way that so many of us have learned to communicate or not communicate with each other. In the world of social justice and in politics and generally society at large because it’s kind of seeped into every part of our culture. Africa is not someone who most people would affiliate me with, and vice versa, because we occupy very different spaces on the internet, but we found during this conversation that we had more in common than we anticipated. We’re very candid with one another, but what I think is so beautiful about this conversation is that we’re both clearly giving each other the benefit of the doubt. We are, we are trying our best to understand one another, rather than to misunderstand one another, rather than to to, seek offense in what the other person’s saying. It is a very candid chat between two women who have both existed in the trenches of the social justice movement, and seen what’s glorious and hopeful about it, and and explored the best of our intentions and everyone’s intentions. But we’ve also seen the dark side and the problems within all these different communities that are just leading to a complete breakdown in solidarity and communication. I’m not going to rab it on too much about the episode because it’s so good. You should just hear the words directly from Africa herself. Follow her online. Buy this book. I think she is really hitting the nail on the head right now of the problems within our culture, and I think many of you will find this to be a relief of an episode. And for those of you who don’t, I, I welcome your opinion. And and that is kind of the entire point of this episode, which is that to, to listen to someone else’s perspective is not to endorse them. It is not to say that you agree. We just have to listen so we don’t listen, we’re not going to understand. And if we don’t understand, we cannot challenge or change fucking anything, so I’m going to shut up now and let Africa do the talking. She’s just so fantastic. And I’m so excited to have stumbled across her work in the last few months, as I myself have been on a journey of self rediscovery. This is the fantastic Africa Brooke.

Jameela Africa Brooke, welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Africa I’m so good. Jameela, I would have never fucking expected that you would be open to having this kind of conversation ever, ever. So the fact that you and I, I didn’t think I would ever be open to a conversation like this, you know.

Jameela Yeah, and I would like to invite you to explain to the audience why you would not have expected me to have this conversation with you. You can be as blunt as you like.

Africa Haha!

Jameela I’m very ready for it. But I would, I would, I would, I think that it’s an important thing to say.

Africa Yeah. I will, I definitely will. Because, like you, I think it’s important to just be as transparent as possible.

Jameela Yeah.

Africa To me, you were one of the people that were, especially at a certain point in time, I would say maybe 2019 especially, I would say you were one of the people that was kind of spearheading call out culture in a lot of ways, among many, many other people that were activists and advocating, people that are still doing brilliant work to this day. And I count myself as one of those people. I had, without even realizing, I’d kind of appointed myself as the person that needs to always be on the lookout for not just injustice, that actually sounds too simplistic in what I’m trying to say, but I think I self-righteously gave myself this role where I think I get to look for malice, and then I get to point it out, and then I get to deliver it to my audience to say, “I have noticed this thing that is absolutely not right, and we have to do something about it. I have seen someone who is speaking in a way that doesn’t align with X, Y, Z,” especially with certain values and ways of being that are very left, which is, I’ve never over identified with any sort of political leaning. But if you look at my values, the way that I live, the way that I think, it would be seen as left, you know, but I had become very, very good at only seeing the wrong, only seeing where other people are not quite aligning to this sort of perfect, moral perfection. And there were many other people that were doing similar things, you know, and then to me, it sort of started to fall apart in 2020, which is when my own awakening happened. But to me, you were definitely one of the people that was sort of leading that charge, but yeah, one of the big names that was willing, especially in the industry that you’re in, which is what I really commended. There were not many people that were willing to take on that kind of activist role, and I don’t know if you even applied that label to yourself. But then it did start to take a turn where it started to feed into what I call collective sabotage, cancel culture, where it’s this thing of sort of calling out people, but then it just turns into this high level intolerance when nothing will ever be right, you know?

Jameela Yeah.

Africa So I think that’s that’s kind of like, what I can give right now in terms of what I mean, as in what, why I never would have expected that we would be having a conversation that could be remotely dissecting this culture, saying, “Hey, I think we’ve gone too far, you know?”

Jameela So, yeah, totally, so, okay, so I accept everything that you’ve said. And what I would what I’d like to do is offer some perspective on that. Not in any way to defend myself, but to explain and to explain how I’ve come to this point, right?

Africa Yeah.

Jameela So, I my whole life I’ve always just felt like if something fucked up, you should just be like, “this is a bit fucked up.” And I’d largely been ignored until post-MeToo, when suddenly we were interested in hearing what women had to say about something other than hair and nails and weight. And so all of a sudden, the same opinions I’ve been saying, very matter of fact, and always with like a little bit of tongue in cheek, but also like deep rage from having, you know, struggled with a lot of things since I was 12 and seeing those things perpetuated in my own industry and feeling like I wanted to distance myself from it. Suddenly, with the combination of MeToo and my success on The Good Place, everything I said started to be circulated much wider than other people, and I think it’s probably because of the color of my skin. It’s like a brown woman expressing herself. I also was incredibly callous in my language, you know, I would use language that wasn’t attempting to be shocking, but I can look back now and see why it was so shocking. I was just speaking as candidly as I had always been speaking. But, you know, back in the day, I’d come out as a kind of channel four presenter, which for anyone in the US, like T4, where I kind of first became known was like a very irreverent, very sort of rude and cheeky and very straightforward type of broadcasting. So I was just speaking the way I’d always spoken, but now it was being elevated and broadcast around the world. And so I think where I started within diet culture, I was very well equipped to be speaking about that. And I think I was right about everything I said. I think the way I delivered my message needed a significant amount of tweaking because I don’t think telling anyone to fuck off explicitly is is very helpful to our society. But I again, like I said, you know, I was just I wasn’t really trying to achieve anything. I just felt this kind of duty to my 12 year old self to, you know, I was so fucked up by this industry from looking at it from the outside, so now to be in the inside and know all the secrets and all the lies and all the bullshit, I was like, I have to whistle blow. It wasn’t really coming from a place of superiority because I didn’t really possess any superiority, purely because I’m just not very educated and I never have been. But anyway, that then led very quickly because I was one of the only, as you said, like voices in my industry that was willing to kind of rattle, you know, the cage, to people being like, well, if you care about that, why aren’t you speaking about this. Or you say you’re a feminist, why don’t you speak about this thing and that thing and this person’s doing that and you’re just letting it happen. And so what happened to me was rather than feeling like I was, I didn’t actually feel hypervigilant. I was being called into vigilance of other people from the outside. Now I’m an adult. I’m a grown adult. I’ve got pubes. I can, I should’ve, I had the agency to decide whether or not I should weigh in on a conversation and whether or not I am equipped, or even have the resources to be able to weigh in on a conversation. But I was so panicked, and so I do think there are two different types of people who engage in this sort of cancel culture. I think there are the people who are like, “I have a fear of losing tribalism. I have a fear of being ostracized. I have a need to to lead and educate,” and I can see the nobility in that and the problem with it. But then there is also a lot of us who are just sort of being told, “You’re a fucking terrible person if you do not weigh in on this.” And I actually fell into that. But because I with my voices being elevated alongside of pictures of me looking very bolshie and then a combination of my poor choice of words, it looked like I was like, “I think I am the moral superior,” whereas I wasn’t. I kept on calling myself a feminist in progress from 2018. I’ve been saying on Trevor Noah and everywhere I could, I was against cancel culture. I never wanted to cancel the Kardashians. I never wanted to cancel anyone.

Africa Right.

Jameela I just but I also felt like we shouldn’t be in a situation where we have deified public figures so much that we can’t criticize them. I wanted to be able to criticize, but I recognized by 2019 that if I were to criticize someone, then that would create a wave of other people deciding to shun that person, like out of our kind of stratosphere, you know, just push them out, take everything away from you.

Africa Yeah.

Jameela That wasn’t, that’s what I’ve been speaking against, since 2018, so

Africa Wow.

Jameela It’s sort of got kind of really, really carried away for me. And I recognize that there was a part of me that was losing my identity out of fear of letting anyone down and out of fear of, I really believed everyone when they said, “If you don’t weigh in on this subject, you are a bad person. You are fundamentally complicit.” And I do think that there is a balance there. I, I do think a certain amount of like turning the other way when something’s happening right in front of you can be a form of complicity, like I do believe that that makes you slightly complicit.

Africa Yes, I agree.

Jameela But not wholly complicit the way it is positioned by the left. And so for me, with 2020, you know, the conversations around Covid specifically for me, and I’m not sure if that’s specific for you, but the way we handled a pandemic, the tribalism that emerged, the division that emerged, the superiority that emerged, the the double standards of saying my body, my choice, but then putting people in a position where we were forcing them to take a vaccine that perhaps they weren’t yet ready to take emotionally or they didn’t feel safe taking. So there felt like an ultimate hypocrisy there that I felt would be part of an undoing. I’m not saying that’s why we’ve lost rights to abortion, but I’m staying that that’s not been helpful in our rhetoric to defend our bodily autonomy if we take away the bodily autonomy of other people. And so that was the first time where it was over mask over everything. And I’m an immunocompromised person. I can emotionally understand the fear and the panic, but I also, I would never have behaved toward someone else the way that I saw people that I supported behaved towards others, and the the callousness with which we spoke and the unkindness. And that was the first time I realized I was like, “Fuck, these people sound like I used to sound.” And I have a carbon footprint in this culture of of speaking to someone with absolutely no filter, which I used to really reward myself for. And now I look back and I’m like, I think I probably pushed as many people away, if not more so than I helped. I do think I’ve helped people with their body image and stuff and with feminism, but I also think I’ve really just, the people I most would seek to have a mutual understanding with have probably written me off forever, which has only stunted my ability to to connect with other people, and that to me is fucked up. So that’s just some context.

Africa Yeah.

Jameela For for you or for anyone else who, who, wonders that. And so when I started to recognize this, I was like, “This isn’t what I wanted, like, I didn’t want to destroy people’s lives. I didn’t want to destroy people’s careers. I don’t want to be part of this anymore.” And so I started pulling this podcast back about two and a half years ago and starting to invite people onto the podcast who I maybe wouldn’t align with, and started to challenge this and start referring to, especially the liberals, because I think liberals and left, there is a difference between the two, but

Africa What is the difference between the two? Just clarity on that.

Jameela Well, what I mean is that, so what I mean is that when I, when I refer to both, I get a lot of kind of hate and pushback where there are sort of left values, but leftists would consider themselves to be more anti-capitalism, I guess, and more towards Marxism or communism.

Africa Right.

Jameela And people who identify as liberals are more okay with capitalism, but more about people’s kind of emotional freedom, but there is like a complete ignorance around classism. That’s my understanding, I could be wrong.

Africa I see. I see.

Jameela But that’s why I separate the two, but I, what I find is that people on the internet who do skewer left let’s just say, I’m terrified of the way that we talk to each other, the way that we ostracize each other. And I am watching not only us alienate the people on the quote unquote opposition, but we’re also pushing away our own.

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela And I am stepping back. My values haven’t changed, but I’m stepping back from the movement. I have done so for the last two years because I’d like to find another way because this isn’t working. If this was working, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation, but it’s fucking not. Everyone’s miserable, terrified, and inauthentic. Yeah, I think it was just important for us to have that kind of context.

Africa The full context, right? I know I absolutely love everything you just shared, and I can just feel people’s shoulders sort of loosening and thinking, “Oh my goodness, we’re allowed to say things like this out loud?” Because that’s exactly what it is. It’s almost like if you change your mind and you no longer agree with certain things, even your own past behavior, it’s just supposed to happen in private. You don’t talk about it. You don’t take any actual accountability or responsibility for what was before. And there’s something that you said that I wrote down, which I really I really felt it the moment you said it about being called into vigilance because that’s exactly how I would describe my experience. I was never a hyper vigilant person. I was never someone that was constantly self-editing their thoughts or their speech or my words. I started sharing, why I always refer to Brave Expression, it didn’t just sort of come to me through the context of looking at everything that’s been happening in the past four years. So for the past nearly eight years, I mainly came online because I needed to get sober and I started writing. I started realizing the, just how insidious the alcohol industry was. I started to see how alcohol was marketed to women, how different it is from women to men, and for me to actually get and stay sober, I started an anonymous journal, which is the exact same Instagram page that I have today. So you can go back and you can see everything. And then my story and what I do was picked up by the UK media quite quickly. So this was in 2016, and immediately I was positioned because I guess they don’t know what else to kind of call me, especially at that time as an activist, as like an advocate, you know, sobriety activist, advocate. So once you have that name placed onto you, you’re suddenly aligned with anything else that falls under activism, which was absolutely fine for me at the time. But then other labels start to get placed on top of you. Now, I’m called a feminist sobriety activist, whatever the fuck. And I’m like, okay, that’s that’s fine. It’s not a big deal. But then now, exactly as you said, you start having more people saying, “Hey, Africa, why not talking about this other thing?” And at that time I was completely fine with it. And I just started a, this was 2017, a sexual wellness company called Cherry Revolution, which was about unraveling women’s sexual pleasure and removing shame from sexual pleasure because when I got sober, I realized just how much sexual shame that I had, and it was another taboo where you have to heal and deal with it, deal with it behind the scenes, right? So I was bringing a lot of things to the fore, especially at that time. It was not a sexy conversation in the way that it is now. So immediately I started to have people saying, “Hey, you should also talk about this.” But then Jamila, this was also when the language piece started to become interesting because I could only speak from my experience as a woman, as a woman that has always seen herself as a woman, a woman that was has always been female. I’ve never experienced any sort of questioning when it comes to my gender. It’s all I know, what people would cis-het woman. And I’m kind of doing air quotes on on the other side of this. But I started having people saying, when you write the word woman, you should put an X instead of an E, because that’s actually more inclusive. So this was 2017, and that was absolutely fine with me because I want everyone to be included. I want everyone to be part of the conversation. So I never felt this thing of, “Oh, I’m being policed. I’m being told no.” I actually really appreciated people telling me, “Hey, there’s another way that we can bring more people in.” And then I would do panels and interviews, and that’s when a lot of the conversations around gender and identity were happening. And people would say, “Hey, actually, you can’t say this.” I remember there was an entire thing about how I shouldn’t say “guys” because guys is transphobic because guys is whatever, it was a whole other thing. Again, I’m like, “Oh sure, I didn’t know, but okay.” And then it started to become this slow thing of just modifying my language because I want to include people. I never thought it was a problem at all. But then in the liberal leftist spaces, whatever you want to call it, that I was in, I started to notice something that I just hadn’t seen within myself before, where I would even in conversations, because it wasn’t just isolated to online anymore. Even in conversations, I would start to police my language and speak in a way that was not even natural to how I actually speak. So there was this constant sort of surveillance where we surveil each other, and it’s done through this really interesting way of, “Oh, by the way, you know, you shouldn’t say this.” It’s, I don’t quite know how to explain it, but maybe you know exactly what I mean. It’s

Jameela I do know exactlty what you mean.

Africa Like, I’m just looking out for you. I’m just looking out for you.

Jameela It’s sort of concern trolling is the way that I guess we would frame that.

Africa Oh my gosh, that’s exactly it.

Jameela I’m just, you know, worried for you.

Africa I’m- hahaha! I’m just worried for you.

Jameela I’m worried that people will think that you’re a hateful bigot if you make this mistake, and so I’m protecting it.

Africa That’s exactly it, which is why I understand. And I’m so empathetic to people that are still entrenched in it, or people that are trying to find their way out because it’s it’s people that just want to make sure that they are being the best that they can be. It’s people that truly care about being inclusive, but there’s also a lot of fear around it as well.

Jameela Which we can link back to tribalism, you know.

Africa Exactly, exactly.

Jameela It’s a lot of fear of if I don’t get this right. And if I’m not perfect and I, if I associate with people also or follow people who aren’t perfect, then I will be ostracized from the tribe and therefore I am more vulnerable on my own.

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela So it also means that they want to keep following you and they can’t keep following you if you don’t use the perfect rhetoric.

Africa Mhm.

Jameela So they’re asking you to be perfect so that they will have permission to continue following you, if that makes sense.

Africa Yes yes yes yes, that’s exactly it. So I for me, the years of 2017, 18 to 19 were very intense when it came to that. But again, I didn’t see I didn’t see anything sort of wrong really, but because I’ve been studying and researching self-sabotage for a while now, nearly eight years. What happens when our behavior is in direct conflict with what we say we actually want, right? It’s something that I’ve been looking at for a very long time. And then I started to look around and see what I, what is called cancel culture, but I refer to it as collective sabotage because I find that to be more accurate language to what I was trying to to figure out. And I realized the level of discomfort that I would feel when I just wanted to ask a question, when I wanted to point out contradictions, how I would watch myself in real time agree with things that I didn’t actually agree with, and not even because I’m feeling so afraid in that moment in time, but it’s because this is what I’m supposed to say. So I started to realize that there was a script that was kind of handed to all of us, and we just had to follow this script, and you will be fine. If you follow the script, then you get to have friendship, you get to have community. You get to be in proximity with people. I just started to notice something that to me felt so disturbing and so sinister because it was so subtle a lot of the time, and this was within myself first and foremost. And then when I started to look online and look at whether some of my behavior that fell into kind of call out culture, does this actually represent who I say I am? There was just a level of intolerance that was pretty fucking shocking to me because I’d never really seen it. And then I realized that I had created an audience that was extremely intolerant. I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what the specific thing that I said or did was, but I said something that was deemed very, very wrong or shared something by someone, who was deemed to be problematic. And the response that I got from my audience was kind of part of me starting to break out of this trance that I didn’t even realize that I was in. I had spent years at that point in time again creating an audience that was never going to allow me to change my mind. An audience that expected me to be so morally perfect, to not stray outside of what Africa is supposed to do as a good left leaning activist woman with armpit hair and a shaved head. This is how you should think and speak. These are your politics. I started to really see it, but again, I didn’t know what to do with the discomfort that I felt. But I’m a researcher. I’m a writer. I’m a developmental coach. I’ve been looking into shadow work for nearly a decade, so I understood that I’m working with the shadow right now. And then when we went into 2020, similar to you.

Jameela Sorry, just quickly, what is shadow work? I don’t know.

Africa Oh.

Jameela Sorry.

Africa Really? Haha! No, it’s good. It’s exciting. So, there was a Swiss psychologist called Carl Jung. Have you ever heard the name Carl Jung?

Jameela Yeah. No, no, I’m very familiar with Jung.

Africa Right.

Jameela But, yeah.

Africa So shadow work not to put it simply

Jameela But clearly not all of his teachings.

Africa I’ll send you something, I’ll send you something. There’s too many teachings.

Jameela This is why I told you I never came from a place of superiority beause I’m so fucking ignorant, but go on.

Africa Haha! I’ll try and put it as simple as I can, but shadow work is essentially the journey and the philosophy of working with the repressed parts of yourself that if you don’t accept the darkness within you, all the messy, gross, unacceptable things about you, the only thing you’re doing with them is putting them into a box, putting them into the shadows, just stuffing them into this box and hoping that no one will ever know that you’d think this way. No one will ever know that you did or do these things. Whatever, whatever your darkness is, and I’m sure everyone listening can maybe even think of something, you know. But eventually all of that has to come out to play at some point. And the thing is, it’s going to come out in very unexpected ways. So for a lot of people, their shadow really gets to dance online, you know? So you have maybe, you know, the, there was this thing, I’ll give you a quick little anecdote of something that happened in 2020. There was this woman who lives in the US. She’s a very well known blogger, like Mommy Blogger. And she, there were a few stories similar to this that happened in that same year. But she has her blonde husband and her blonde two little babies, very, very sweet. You see them baking and doing dance videos just like her American sweetheart, but she had a finsta. She had a private Instagram account, that’s what a finsta is. And one day she accidentally logged into her actual big account with 8 million followers, but she thought she was on her finsta and she was leaving the most racist, hateful comments to her colleagues, to people she’s worked with. But that’s her past time. That’s how she relaxed. That’s how her shadow came out to play. Because to the world she has to present this image of absolute moral perfection, you know? But we all have a shadow. It needs to be expressed in some way, and this was her way. For most people, especially people that are on that other court, other side of the coin when it comes to cancel culture, people that really feel this exhilaration when they see reputation destruction, it allows for them to express their envy. It allows for them because cancel culture is driven by envy quite a lot. It allows for them to be like, “Oh my God, finally someone has said this thing to Jameela. Now I get to come out and play.” So they get they get to do that. The shadow gets to do its thing. But shadow work is essentially I call it befriending the mob in your mind. Don’t worry about the fucking mob online. That’s a whole other thing. But what happens with that mob in your mind that is just making all the decisions for you? So yeah, I would advise anyone to just look up shadow work and see what it would be like for you to accept and to get to know those repressed parts of yourself because if you don’t, they are going to make themselves known regardless. So because I knew all of these things and I was curious about it, I started to see it in myself and I started to see it in most people around me. And then in 2020, I saw it in a way that was so frightening, and it was to do with Covid. It was to do with the conversations around race, which I think were very, very important conversations to have. But I found myself again behaving in a way that was just not, if I think of what makes me, me and what it feels like and looks like for me to be in integrity, that was so far removed from it. I had never found myself making a conscious decision to view everything through the lens of race. And I did it in that year, and it really wasn’t good for me because in the process, I dehumanized my friends. I dehumanized people that have loved me for most of my life, but they just inhabit a body that is a different color, a color that has been deemed, “You are the oppressor by default if you are,” there was just a way of thinking and even speaking, and it was a very short time for me, but it was intense enough for me to be like, I’m opting the fuck out. I’m not doing this. And it it started to bring to light everything I’d experienced from 2017, 18, 19 and the conversations around the vaccine. If you don’t, if you don’t get the vaccine, then you’re vermin, but just a week ago we were clapping for these people, but now, it was just it was insane. And I knew that I was willing to lose everything. Everything. And I actually wanted to lose a big part of my audience because I knew that I had put myself into a golden cage. I had created an audience that would never allow me to be human, ever. It was not going to happen. It was not going to happen.

Jameela And when you say human, what do you mean to me?

Africa You are afforded the right to be completely human. If people understand that you will fail, that you will get things wrong, that you are going to fuck up, that you will change your mind, that you get to say, “Hey, I’m actually confused. And this thing that I said last week, I don’t really agree with this thing anymore,” or this person that has been painted as evil, they’ve actually said this one thing that I actually find quite interesting, what do you think? I was I was never going to be able to do that ever, ever. So I’ll, I’ll, I’ll hand it over to you there, but that was kind of my big, true brutal awakening in 2020.

Jameela Specifically regarding race, I really want to talk to you about that because I feel as though I’m someone who has absolutely experienced racism. I’m someone who has had certain quite traumatic experiences as a child, especially related to racism, because it was hard to grow up in, you know, certain parts of London if you were one of the only brown people. But in my life, race has never been on my mind when I enter into any room. And that’s even post-2020, when race became such a giant conversation. It’s still just like when I’m auditioning for a role or when I’m walking into a room of predominantly white people, etc. I don’t, I don’t lead with a feeling of that being part of my identity, and I don’t know why that is. I’m, you know, I’m very well aware of of societal infrastructures around race, etc.. I definitely think, as you said, it’s a very valid conversation. But I find that people want me to like especially, I think, liberal white people, but also like, you know, a lot of other people who are melanated people, you know, who are brown or black want me to lead from a place of, race, want me to lead from a place of feeling like I am at a disadvantage, and I, I don’t think that’s ever been very good for me. I don’t think that’s good for anyone. I don’t think we need to completely gaslight ourselves and be like, “This is a completely even playing field.” But I also don’t think it’s helpful, for example, as a woman, to walk into a room like, of course I am at a disadvantage, but I never walk into an audition or a room or a job interview or anything going, “I am only a woman walking into this room.” So similarly I don’t, you know, it’s the same thing with I’m I’m a sick person. I have a collagen deficiency that impacts every part of my body. It means I’m in pain. My, I dislocate all the time. My health is completely fucked. I’m at a complete physical disadvantage compared to all of my peers. I don’t think about that when I walk into a room. So therefore, I don’t think that race is something helpful for me personally to walk in, I don’t think it’s ever helpful to think about your disadvantages. I think that’s only ever going to lessen your chances of success. And so whenever I’m invited to speak, you know, at universities and they want to focus specifically on my race according to my career. I just say no because I, it’s not, it’s not true to me. And when I say those sort of things, I’m treated as a race traitor by my own as if I am trying to, I guess, kind of gaslight them about their experience. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to strike a balance between this is a reality, but also how are we going to find our way out of that reality?

Africa Yes.

Jameela And and are we allowed to accept that reality is shifting and that things are getting better. And and if I even acknowledge that, then I am considered a race traitor. And I saw one looking back through some of your stuff that some people felt frustrated with your refusal tovlook at your skin color in the way that it was being prescribed online, so can you talk about the controversy from your own?

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela Because did you experience, would you say you felt the experience of people being disappointed in you?

Africa Yeah, and thank you for sharing that because again, I think the image that I’ve had  of you and the assumptions that I’ve had of you, just based on that sort of package of things that someone like you has probably stood up for, is supposed to stand up for, has probably spoken about to me, actually I would have thought that race would be one of those hills that you are willing to die on in terms of really making it a big part of it. So I find that so interesting again because it just shows you the assumptions we have of people in certain spaces where we expect for certain things to just be a priority for them, or you already think you know what their take on the race conversation might be.

Jameela But that’s that’s nobody’s fault because social media is designed to only and media is designed to only highlight the things that are divisive.

Africa Yes, yes.

Jameela So there have been times where I have weighed in on race because, for example, the way in which Meghan Markle was initially treated, I felt was hugely racially motivated by the British press.

Africa Yes.

Jameela So I came out talking about that and therefore I was now labeled as in the race conversation. But there were plenty of very reasonable things I said.

Africa Right.

Jameela But God forbid anything reasonable we say gets heavily circulated.

Africa Exactly.

Jameela In fact, I get less, make less headlines as of the last two years because I have become increasingly reasonable. And that is simply not what the algorithm is literally designed to stoke

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela Division and fear, so it would be completely reasonable for you to look at me in these very kind of polarized ways that the, the headlines have kind of shaped, which is by design because everything I’ve said that was in the gray area has been largely ignored.

Africa It’s ignored.

Jameela Yeah.

Africa Yeah, absolutely.

Jameela So talk to me about your experience.

Africa I wrote down the word victimhood as you were speaking because I quickly learned, and this is in the context of race, I quickly learned that the only way that I would be able to maintain intimacy with a big part of the audience that I’d created, especially from 2017 to 2020, and even some of the communities that I was a part of, activist communities and the offshoots of that was that I was only going to be able to maintain closeness if I decided that I was going to stay in the role of victim. And when it came to my race, that was a very big part because similar to you, and I think I credit my upbringing, so I’m an immigrant. I was born and raised in Zimbabwe and moved to the UK and my family, maybe because we’re Shona and because we’re immigrants, we just never really spoke about race in a in a way of having it highlighted to me ever. Not at all. And my mother and me and my siblings, all of us, experienced racism at different times. We were living in Kent in the early 2000s. There was no such thing as even the language of diversity. What the fuck is that? You know, people will say whatever they want to say. And it was mostly in school when I was much younger because I also don’t want to paint the stereotypical picture that everywhere in the UK is so racist. And it, because that was not my experience outside from school with very young children. When it, when it came to experiencing race in the context of activist spaces, leftist spaces, I could see that I was expected to be angry about a lot of things, or to view every experience that I had through the lens of race. Even interviews that I would do, and um I wonder if this happens to you, yhe question would always be set up, “Well, Africa, so as a black woman in blah blah blah, what are you?” And it’s again, it’s already assuming that I have some kind of gripe or some kind of victim experience. And maybe I do and maybe I do, but give me the opportunity to bring that up if it actually exists, not to position it as if because then you go into the mind of seeker. And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t fall into that trap many times earlier on because, again, that discomfort of being like, but now, now I do need to give them something. Especially at the time when I was speaking mostly about sobriety, the main thing I would highlight when that question was posed is that there aren’t many black people in recovery spaces, and that can feel a little bit lonely because I can’t, you know, share an experience with another African girl, another African woman, and to understand the nuances of our culture. And is that true? Sure. But there are many reasons as to why there aren’t many African people, black people in recovery spaces. And it’s not because of racism full stop. It’s because we are sent to church. You go to church or you recover in private. It’s just not a thought to go to rehab or to go to recovery cycles. But again, even the positioning of that question that I should find something wrong within the community that I’m in because of my race, I just it was not true to what I actually felt.

Jameela It didn’t sit right with you.

Africa But I found myself again, it didn’t sit right with me, but a few times I played that role until I started highlighting the positioning of that question. And then I turn it back on to the other person and they’re like, “Huh, I didn’t I didn’t even think of it that way.” So that’s the kind of thing that I started to do, but again, I’ve never seen I’ve never walked into a room and thought maybe a few, maybe a few times it’s happened where there’s something about the space that I’m in where I really notice my difference, my racial difference. Absolutely it has happened, but it doesn’t happen for me in the way where I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m the only black person.” It doesn’t happen in that way, ou know.

Jameela Is it the same as with me where it’s that it’s imposed upon me? It has to be imposed upon me for me to recognize that there is a difference, right?

Africa Yes, yes yes yes.

Jameela I don’t walk in with that. I’m not saying that that’s I’m impervious to it being imposed upon me. But it’s always, someone else has to make it my problem before I even remember that I look different from anyone else. Do you know what I mean?

Africa 100%. I do.

Jameela I’m almost like a baby in that way, you know, the way that we’re just not very self, we’re not self-aware in that way. Like, I’m not, I’m not thinking off of any of these things until I am reminded.

Africa Or maybe you’re so aware?

Jameela I don’t know, I think I think I’m blissfully unaware. I think I’m concentrating on other things, you know, I think that and not necessarily superior things, but I’m just concerned with other things. I’m distracted and thank God.

Africa Yeah.

Jameela Because it’s exhausting to live through that lens of who’s going to fuck me over now? Who’s going to fuck me over in this room? What does that person think of me? Do they think I’m less intelligent because of the color of my skin? Do they think I, you know, I exist within all these stereotypes? And as I said, as we’re both acknowledging those things do exist, but I do not wish

Africa Absolutely.

Africa To operate from that space. I think that there is, for me, a more helpful way to go about things, which is, you know, the more the more I allow myself to be pigeonholed, the more I pigeonhole myself, the more I enable other people to pigeonhole me, if that makes sense.

Africa For sure, for sure.

Jameela And so I choose not to pigeonhole myself as much as I can.

Africa I love that a lot. And again, it comes back to one of the sentences you said earlier. One of the things about being called into vigilance, being brought into other people’s projection, being brought into other, other people’s distrust. Because for me, a lot of this is about distrust. I really don’t want to walk through the world with a suspicious mind. I don’t want to walk through the world looking for malicious intent in everything because here’s the thing, I want to be able to know and discern when I’m in actual danger. I want to I want to be able to tell when I’m having an experience that is so, when I’m experiencing racism or whatever else it might be, I want to know, but if everything is racist, then nothing is racist. I really don’t want to, I don’t, that’s not the kind of life that I want to live. It just isn’t it. Not at all. Not at all. And that’s the rejection that I had to make. And that’s where the term for me that that perspective came in. It was through a conversation with a friend of mine. And that that perspective is the name of my book and the book that I’ve just finished writing. I realized that in every single moment, the mind is binary, whether we like it or not, and it serves us. It works for us, but sometimes it can also work against us. But when I talk about the level of intolerance that I had started to see and really got to see in 2020, I realized that I had bought into this false idea that there are only ever two options the oppressed and the oppressor. Left or right, you’re woke or anti-woke, you’re a sheep or you’re freethinker, you’re blah blah blah, this and that and to walk through the wall.

Jameela Just so ironic, by the way, given that we are also the ones who push for no binaries, you know.

Africa Right. I was saying that exact same thing with my sister. I was saying, I love that we are in a world where we can change the idea that we can only be one thing, only express one thing. The language of non binary is so beautiful, why the fuck do we not apply it to thinking? Why is non binary thinking such a threatening thing?

Jameela Well, we’re also against cops but we behave like cops.

Africa Yes. Yes.

Jameela We don’t believe in a kind of, and obviously there is a difference between literal incarceration and social incarceration.

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela But we do underestimate the impact on a human being or on a society of social incarceration.

Africa Yes.

Jameela Of emotional incarceration. And so it’s it’s it’s so ironic to me that we cannot see our own like rampant hypocrisies. And I’ve had to attack my own and see my own and like, and, you know, have that mirrored back to me. And because we have such a fear of failure in our society, and there’s such an elitism amongst us especially, I’d say, you know, on both sides, politically, there are different forms of elitism, but I think that a lot of people are so scared to admit to their own previous hypocrisies or current hypocrisies. And I think what you and I both are trying to hopefully put out into the world, is that it is okay to face your own failures, mistakes, hypocrisies, ugliness because if we don’t do that, we can never find the beauty. We can never find peace. We can never find authenticity. And I think what I love about your work is that it’s so rooted in permission. And this book, The Third Perspective, is also rooted in permission, which is something that we are largely denied. We fight for quote unquote, freedom, but we we don’t offer it in the process or on the journey to freedom.

Africa And we don’t give it to ourselves. I think that’s, Jameela, I think that’s what I think about all the time. All of these things can feel so big because they are in a lot of ways. That’s why I do my very best to not use the language of cancel culture in that way, unless I just need to describe what the fuck I’m describing. But it’s because if you won’t allow yourself permission to be free within, that I’m free to get it wrong. I’m free to share my thoughts without thinking that that means to be extreme because some people, the people that would push back on my work, so everyone should just say whatever the fuck they want. And I’m like, “Can we use our common sense?” Cause that’s the point that we’ve come to where we just think in extremes. What about, is that nothing in the middle? It’s insane. “Oh, so you want people to to be white supremacists? Racist?” No, I’m just saying that if you look at your real life right now, you probably have, especially if you’re an immigrant in the Western world, you probably have an aunt or an uncle or a cousin that you absolutely love, but sometimes they just say things that you’re like, “Oh my God, you know, you shouldn’t say that,” but a part of you kind of finds it funny and you love them and you go about your day and sometimes you will have a conversation. If we look at our actual lives, there are so many so-called problematic people that we’d love, even our own parents, because in their in the culture that they’re from, whatever they say is normal there. We don’t take context into account.

Jameela You’re a product of your environment. Yeah.

Africa Right.

Jameela And we don’t know how to separate ignorance from evil. And I think that’s something that I thankfully can say that I think I’ve always been fairly well rooted in because I’ve been such a problematic person.

Africa Mhm.

Jameela And not just problematic by liberal standards, like literally problematic like slut shaming and, and rude and

Africa Yes, yes.

Jameela And bad, like poorly behaved, in a way that is harmful to others, ao like, I can see that I’m still a good person. They were still a good person there.

Africa Yes.

Jameela Whoever you love or follow now, like the podcast that you choose to listen to. I was a real shithead. And like, there’s still shitheadery within me, you know, but that doesn’t take away

Africa Exactly.

Jameela The good ideas or the parts of me that can help you, or the parts of me that are growing and learning how to, like, unravel the shithead, you know, and and I’ve like my pinned tweet when I was being hailed as Gandhi, you know, who’s also very fucking problematic, by the way. Nancy. Nancy. Nancy. Nancy and selfish, but also did some great things. It’s like if we look at all the people we’ve elevated throughout time, the people whose music we love, like the people whose art we love, the people whose words, whose philosophies we love, like we forget that those people, there are so many things about them that we would

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela Wholly wholly disagree with, but because they’ve been turned into these sort of like beautiful artistic memes, you know, in quotes, we just look at that and we cherry pick and and yet we’ve lost the art of cherry picking. And actually cherry picking I think is fairly vital to be able to

Africa It has its uses, right.

Jameela Yeah, to be able to educate ourselves with various different perspectives. Now, there are obviously people who I just choose not to listen to because I think they’re fundamentally stupid, and I think there are some things they say that really just make it hard for me to respect them. But generally I do find myself occasionally being like, “I hate everything about you, but actually, you were right that one time,” and I have to have the integrity to be able to say that. I can still see that you’re right and like everything you say is not wrong just because you have this one policy that I disagree with.

Africa Yes, yes.

Jameela And and I don’t want to shut myself off to all new information and all new perspectives. It doesn’t mean that you like something you say in your work that I think is very important is that you talk about the fact that that understanding isn’t synonymous with acceptance. And I’d love to, like, delve into that with you, because I think that is the crux of the moral dilemma right, for everyone

Africa Yes, yes.

Jameela Is that they think that they are endorsing an opinion if they even listen to the opinion, right? If I platform someone, it’s even the fact that it’s called platforming, if I have a conversation with someone who my my audience disagrees with, they say they say I am platforming them, which is inherently is designed to position it as if I’m endorsing that person and I’m not.

Africa Yes.

Jameela I’m just hearing them.

Africa No.

Jameela But we’re not allowed to hear people, so can you elaborate on that?

Africa It’s such a point of relief, and I know that it is for a lot of people because where I got stuck, when I was trying to unravel from my own self-censorship, and I always do this, but I want to give a very clear definition of what self-censorship actually is. So it’s when you withhold your opinions, your ideas, your true, honest thoughts out of fear. So the fear piece is very important because what people will say is, “Well, isn’t it good to self-censor if I have nothing important to say or if it’s going to upset someone or whatever,” that’s not self-censoring, that’s called social filtering, and that’s a thinking skill that you use anyway, and you use it very automatically. But a lot of us, if you’re neurotypical, then it kind of works by itself pretty easily, but if you’re neurodivergent, then maybe you have to work a little harder at using your social filter. So this is where you look at, is there a time and a place? What is the context of the situation? Is it the right audience? Maybe this joke is not going to land so well with this person, but if I do it with this other friend, so we’re constantly doing it right, but self-censoring is driven by fear. And the way that I put it very simply, is that in whatever form it takes, you’re afraid that you’re going to be punished. If I say what I truly think, I am going to be punished for it, right? So for me, the reason why I was in the clutches of self-censorship for so long is because I thought that, for example, if I listen to this person, if I actually listen to what Candace Owens is saying, because I’ve been told that I should hate her, she’s absolutely fucking evil, and I did for a very long time. If I actually listen to her, and then she says something that I’m like, “Actually, I agree with that, you know.” Does that mean then I am cosigning and endorsing everything she has ever said and everything she’s ever going to say? Because that’s how big the commitment is. You’re made to feel as if you’re bound forever to this person and every opinion they’ve held before, and they’re going to. So for me, it was very freeing to understand that actually I’m an autonomous fucking adult. I can use and cultivate discernment skills where I say, “Actually, I agree with this, but I still just don’t take to you as a person. Your character just does not align with me. Your values just do not align with me. But you did say this thing that has made me think you’re a brilliant orator. Maybe I can admire that that person is actually a very good speaker. Don’t care for what they’re saying, but there’s something there, you know?” So for me, understanding is not synonymous with acceptance is just a mindset that you can maybe use from today on to allow yourself to be a little bit open and to realize that being open does not mean being boundaryless. That’s also important. You can have your convictions. You can have your boundaries. You have your discernment. You don’t have to let go of any of those things and you can still be open. Get curious about some of the people you’ve discarded along the way. This is something that I did. I started to get curious about some of the people that I had been told were wrong, were bad, you shouldn’t listen to them. And I started to get curious. I started to listen to interviews, started to read just so I can learn, so I can decide for myself, do I actually believe this? Or have I been told with by a very convicted person, maybe someone I’m I’m intimidated by, maybe someone I want friendship with? So I took whatever they’re telling me as absolute truth.

Jameela Or someone who’s threatening you.

Africa Or maybe a couple of hundred thousand of them, right? So when I realized that my mind had been hijacked, that time was very useful to be like, “Africa, you can understand this person and you don’t have to, you don’t have to accept everything they’re saying.” And I found Louis Theroux to be very useful because I love documentaries, and I think he’s great. And it made me think of what journalism used to look like, that a journalist can sit with someone. Louis Theroux in his documentaries. He’s with the most racist family in America, South Africa, and his humanizing them, but he’s not accepting what they’re doing. So there were so many things that I could look at, and I was like, “Oh my goodness, wow, I get to be curious. Isn’t that a fucking shocker?” I, I actually get to be curious. Yeah, so for me, that’s what that kind of means. You get to have your boundaries. You keep your convictions, but you want to make sure that your convictions are based in curiosity and discovery and then conclusion, not just being convicted because someone said, “Hey, this is an evil bigot, maybe you should unfollow them. I’m just checking in on you.” Yeah, that’s that’s useless. You will never be able to navigate the real world if we keep on thinking that we have to be so closed in to what we have been told is correct and true.

Jameela I also feel like I couldn’t have found my biases and my ugliness if I hadn’t allowed for them to, like, roam free. And then I was able to challenge them like I wouldn’t have been able to challenge them if I hadn’t been able to see them, if I’d been so caught up and just fixating on this perfect veneer of whatever the new, updated form of social progressiveness is. I would never have noticed the the things in me that that could do with shifting and and that speaks to our society at large. Like people are capable of redemption. We don’t believe in redemption anymore. We don’t believe in change. And what I’ve been saying for maybe six years now is that if we don’t believe in fundamental change, then what is the point of activism? What are we doing here if we don’t think people can change? If we don’t think systems can change? Like the the hopelessness and I said this years ago on the podcast, it was very controversial of me, but like there was a part to me that feels like the hopelessness is driven sometimes publicly by people who work within advocacy, who need to maintain their position within advocacy. Right?

Africa Oh, for sure.

Jameela They they for sure worried that if we are able to, not all people, just certain people who think that they will lose their position or their book deals or their platform as a big pundit, if we do actually start to resolve things. And I’m not going to name names but

Africa It’s a, it’s a big thing.

Jameela It’s a business, you know, and after 2015, it became a business.

Africa It’s huge, huge.

Jameela And it became the reason that even I sometimes got like a fucking clothing deal was because of the activism mixed with, you know, because my message mixed with that, you know, and I’ve been very careful to not align myself with many brands in that way because I don’t want to bastardize this

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela Too much.

Africa Yeah. That’s another, see we’re definitely going to have to have a part two because that’s a whole other thing.

Jameela Haha! It is, it is. It’s really tricky. And I’ll tell you, like there’s something I haven’t ever said publicly before, but I feel like this feels like the right time to do it. But in 2018, I was offered a $1.1 million book deal. And that is the most money I could ever imagine getting for any kind of a book. And I had to return the book deal because every time I would write, I would find myself writing so defensively and with so many fucking caveats and so unable to get to the fucking point because I was so aware that every single thing I said would be picked apart and like and and turned into think pieces. And so it was becoming like a 150,000 word, you know, page book, of me just trying to make

Africa Wow.

Jameela Sure that every single person from every single angle could understand where I was coming from and knew that I was always considering my privilege and always considering all the different angles of all the different people in the world. And I realized that I was like, “Oh my God, oh my God, this is so annoying to read.” But but there’s also no other way that I feel like I can engage and be understood because people seek to misunderstand me. So I just didn’t, I didn’t want to put out a defensive, caveat driven book. And so I gave the book deal back, even though I really fucking needed the money.

Africa Wow.

Jameela But because I just didn’t think that I should be complicit in that level of self-censorship. And it was a book that was about kind of me and my understandings and, and not like a biography, but just sort of like, you know, where I’m at with learning in life. But I didn’t feel like I could say anything.

Africa Wow.

Jameela I felt like there were just 15 guns to my head. And I’ve always sort of, I’ve sort of skirted around the subject, but I’ve never just explicitly said it. But I had to, I had to throw that opportunity away because I could recognize what was what had happened to me and to my brain.

Africa Wow.

Jameela And to us as a culture, and I just didn’t want to perpetuate it. So I handed that mother fucking money back. Haha!

Africa Wow.

Jameela It was a hard thing to do, but I’m really glad I did.

Africa Me too, me too.

Jameela And it has given me this permission now, you know, now I’m writing a very, very, you know, different thing that’s like, you know, based in something where I don’t have to defend myself and also just generally I have, you know, something that like I have enough faith in my fucking character and that I do not any longer feel like I have to caveat every single thing I say.

Africa Thank you. Thank you.

Jameela And this is something that you talk a lot about that really resonates with me. And I’m going to ask you to talk about it because you’re much more eloquent than I am, but we have lost faith in our own and each other’s character to the point where we feel the need for all these, you know, like at the end of drug adverts in America, there has to be this sort of like disclaimer.

Africa Yes.

Jameela Like we, we, we feel like we need to do that before every sentence and therefore

Africa Man.

Jameela We are in complete disorder and chaos and we get nothing done because we cannot tackle one issue at a time, right? Our rights get taken away one issue at a time, right? The people who seek to take our rights away are incredibly organized and incredibly well, like, it’s a very well-oiled machine. They go after one issue at a time precisely. And then we come back at that attack with without being able to single out that one issue. We have to bring everyone’s problems all in at the same time, and it creates a clusterfuck of confusion and oppression olympics that then means that we confuse the issue so much, but then it just sort of never gets resolved and then gets permanently taken away. And you can see that with LGBTQ rights, you can see that with abortion rights. You can see that with things to do with women. We cannot agree on anything. And so then

Africa No.

Jameela The precision strikes continue to just take away one after another after another of our rights. And and while that’s not our fault that our rights are being attacked, it is our responsibility to fucking learn how to get on the same page and organize

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela And learn how to prioritize in the moment. Prioritizing does not necessarily mean there is a hierarchy of whose problem is more important, but it just means in this exact moment, this point is more important than that point, just in this one context of one moment. And so that is something that I find that just incredibly important to keep focused on.

Africa Right. And this is where, again, it can easily start to feel so big because it’s like, how the fuck do we, how do we even begin to do that? And with the globalization of technology as well, the term context collapse is really important here because there was a time where you could share something to your audience and you could kind of be guaranteed that it’s only going to people that are in the UK, for example, and it’s even maybe an even smaller community in the UK on Facebook or something like that, or wherever you live in Kenya, whereever it might be. But the globalization means I could post something that is within the context of here, where I am in London, but it reaches someone on the other side of the world, but they don’t take into account that I might not be in their town. I am where I am, so we’re responding as if we’re all in the same place. That’s why you then have people saying, “Why are you not talking about this thing that is happening on my side of the world right now?” Other person says, “Well, why are you not talking about this thing that’s happening?” And we’re using American technology, so we mainly only really see what’s happening in the US, so I think I understand why it’s difficult to find the kind of streamlined way of doing things online. That’s why I always bring it back to the self. That’s where we need to begin because we’re all doing this collectively. The collective sabotage is already happening collectively. What would it happen if we do the individual self-reflection? What is actually my communication style? That’s something that I do with people a lot. Sounds so simple, but a lot of us don’t fucking know. We think we’re being assertive, but we’re being so aggressive and turning the right people away, right? A lot of us are so passive and cushioning every fucking sentence in a caveat before. So now, once you actually say something, you’ve already watered down your message. You’ve already lost the level of conviction. You’ve already projected a sense of distrust in yourself, and now there’s distrust in your audience, so I find it’s more useful to bring it back to the self. How am I currently communicating? Is it working for me or is working against me? And I think that when we do a lot more of that, is this the right platform to have this conversation? Do I need to have this conversation in a closed online community versus publicly?

Jameela And as you say, am I listening to understand or am I listening to be offended?

Africa There we go.

Jameela Yeah.

Africa And then turn that question back to yourself in this moment in time. I always say, get the fuck offline. Try practice in your interpersonal relationships. The next time you’re in conflict with your partner or something uncomfortable is happening, even if you use that question, in this moment, am I listening to understand or listening to be offended? Because some of us are analytical listeners. We’ll listen to kind of find the problem so we can solve it. So once you know how you are more of us start to do that, I think it then makes it easier to do some of what you’re talking about. I think it then makes it easier for us to practice discernment in a group when there are actually no borders, but I like to bring it back to the self because I know that it’s it’s so it’s so big and it’s not stopping anytime soon. It’s not. We just need more of us having these dialogs from a reality based place, I think.

Jameela But also there is no mob without individuals, right? So we can kind of just slowly pick off individuals to step away from the mob and learn how to act from a place of self-determination.

Africa Yeah. And it’s happening slowly. I will say that.

Jameela It is happening slowly, but that’s why I felt like I was such an important, and this sounds so self-important, but like it was important for me with the size of platform I have and with the way that I have been so heavily like caricatured in the media that if the ultimate snowflake, lefty liberal darling is the one who’s going, “Hang on, hanf on. This is a bit too far.”

Africa Exactly, haha!

Jameela That that would be helpful because I’m the last one, I’m the last person anyone sees coming.

Africa Right. That’s what I said to you.

Jameela I personally find that quite funny, which is why at the beginning of this, I started with like, tell me what you think of me. And that’s and I’m so open like to that because I, I’m so aware. You know, you were talking about, like, neuro being neurotypical, neurodivergent, I think also like

Africa Yes.

Jameela Without wanting to go into too much detail, like understanding my own neurodivergence has made me understand also like how easily I can take on the imprint of whoever I am around

Africa Yes. Yes.

Jameela And, and that’s, that’s a huge problem, and, and so, you know, understanding my neurodivergence in the last like kind of 4 or 5 years has helped me recognize when I am taking on a persona that is just in order for me to not, you know, stand out. And so that has also meant that I have to, like, always have like an extra filter on in my brain of when I say something, when I think something, when I’m being encouraged to speak on an issue, is it me or am I mirroring the people I am currently around? And therefore, do I need to step away from those people and be by myself, or be around a multitude of different perspectives so that I don’t have the opportunity to just imprint myself on someone or imprint someone else for me.

Africa Yes.

Jameela I have to, then I then I crosswise my brain in a way that everything becomes so scrambled. And then I have to be honest, and I have to be integral. And so, you know, if there is anyone out there who is neurodivergent who’s hearing about this and maybe resonates with that feeling of like, “God, sometimes I don’t even know who I am.” You know, I look back at some of the things I said or did in 2018 and 2019, in particular, before I really understood myself. I’m like, “What? Who even said that?” I look back at my own words and I don’t

Africa Right.

Jameela Remember feeling that way or thinking that way, and I’m sure I did. I’m not trying to take away accountability for it, but

Africa Of couse.

Jameela I’m like, “Where did that even come from? Who told me that? Why did I say that when I didn’t know what I was fucking talking about?” And it’s been just like, it’s just been a bakery of humble pie that I’ve had to eat. Haha! In the last few years, but, you know, thankfully, I love pie.

Africa Me too.

Jameela You know, so that’s hahaha!

Africa Haha! Me too, and it’s led us here. It’s led us to this conversation. And honestly, I mean it when I say that I was really looking forward to this conversation because of those worlds colliding because it adds to my hope, again, that there’s an openness. There was a time where I’m sure neither of us would have gone here, you know, especially publicly in this way. And people are yearning for this, but people are yearning for a lot of this in secret. I love when people that had initially unfollowed me, people that had had a knee jerk reaction to to my work back in 2021. Now they follow my work and they share it so proudly and we exchange, they tell me how they experience it. When teachers tell me they’ve added some of my work into their curriculum and I get messages from kids, I was in Zimbabwe last year back home. That’s where I’m from. And a local boy came to me and he thanked me for my conversation with Jordan Peterson. Do you know how insane that is? Obviously, Jordan Peterson is a figure that I so many people got backlash, “Why are you speaking to him?” He’s this, he’s that. Sure. And I, can you trust that I’m an autonomous being that gets to decide what I feel because I sit and have a conversation with him, does it mean that I’ve become this, what does that even mean that I’ve sat to have a conversation? Have you even listened to the conversation? Do you even know what I said? But to see the impact of the work that I’m doing, especially with other people who are racialized, other people who are left leaning, other people who have been told that because of their identity markers, they have to think, speak and behave in a very specific way, knowing that my work is reaching them really just it’s it’s the fuel that I need to really just continue doing this work because there is, there is a shift. There is a shift.

Jameela Yeah. That’s interesting that you say that. That that highlighted something that I don’t think I’ve been able to put my finger on until you just said it, which is that I think that must be the fear of when we talk to someone who we or other people may hugely disagree with. Is it this fear that, you know, like, are your audience afraid that he might change your mind about something, that you are so incredibly malleable? And I think being malleable is important in life, right? The flexibility of thought is vital for learning, but are they afraid that you’re going to turn to, quote unquote, the dark side, or are they afraid

Africa For sure.

Jameela To say something because they’re worried that they themselves could be turned to the dark side, that they themselves might agree with something, so it’s easier to shelter ourselves and each other from an, from a controversial opinion, because there’s there’s a tiny instinct that there’s a fragility to our belief. I don’t think

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela That there is entire fragility to my belief, so I’m not afraid of engaging with people I thoroughly disagree with.

Africa Yes, yes, yes.

Jameela I have a very strong sense of who I am and therefore it just doesn’t freak me out. And and if there is something that could challenge or could show my belief to be brittle, I would like to hear it.

Africa Thank you.

Jameela  I want to know that thing. I don’t want to not know that thing. I might be wrong.

Africa Yeah.

Jameela This idea that I might be wrong is something that we are so afraid of. We might be wrong about certain things.

Africa Absolutely.

Jameela Especially in an era of this much propaganda. And so, you know, I, I don’t feel at all afraid of speaking to people that I disagree with. Sometimes I just don’t fucking want to, but but now I don’t feel

Africa Exactly.

Jameela I don’t feel afraid of it.

Africa Yeah.

Jameela And I don’t fear people I love or respect engaging in those conversations, either because I have faith in that person.

Africa Right.

Jameela That fundamentally they will find the right and the wrong. It’s interesting. I want to talk to you for like 10,000 hours.

Africa Hahaha! Me too, me too. And that’s that’s the that’s the thing that I would want people just that last piece to take away too, in that a lot of the time we won’t engage with people that would disagree with or we’ve been told they’ew wrong, blah, blah, blah, because we’re afraid that our entire sense of self and the story that we’ve bought into is, is one question away from crumbling. That’s what it was for me. I couldn’t defend the ideas that I held so strongly I couldn’t. That’s why I had to surround myself consciously and unconsciously with people that already agreed. We don’t ask certain questions. We just don’t go to certain places intellectually. We don’t let any of this information comes in, and I can trust that, you know, because once someone is labeled bad, etc., whatever. But when I would go out into the wider world with my family, friends, strangers, sometimes people that I’ve just met, I would always, I’d be able to tell that I’m one question away from everything just fucking falling apart. Which is then where you get defensive, passive aggressive. Maybe that’s where you use your race. You use your identity markers to manipulate the situation so that people don’t ask you certain things. Right?

Jameela We call people bigots now to shut down entire conversations. We say that is Islamophobia. That’s antisemitism. That is transphobia, that is racist.

Africa Yeah.

Jameela Like we, we will use those terms now. We will weaponize them not to introduce a new subject, but to shut to not to like

Africa To shut it down.

Jameela Introduce a new facet of the conversation, but to shut the conversation down altogether. No. I’m really grateful. I have friends and flatmates, one flatmate in particular, like, who was always like kind of half devil’s advocate and half because he didn’t agree with me, always poking holes in my belief,

Africa Yeah.

Jameela You know, for the last decade, and it meant that I had to defend those beliefs. And sometimes I found that there was frailty to those beliefs. But sometimes his challenging them cemented my understanding of my beliefs.

Africa Exactly.

Jameela It cemented my belief, and that made me more confident. And so it is so important to be challenged, to challenge ourselves. And again, this comes back to, you know, I had a whole episode about two years ago on the on the, you know, cults and how there is a cult like element to like a literal cult like element to the sort of left hemisphere of the liberal hemisphere of politics. And you can see that if someone is trying to stop you from even being exposed to the outside world, that there is an element of brainwashing there that you should run from.

Africa Yeah.

Jameela It doesn’t mean you have to run from the values, but it means you should run from the people who tell you not to even look at what’s outside

Africa Yes.

Jameela Of your little world.  So what do you most hope for people to take away from your book?

Africa So my book is called The Third Perspective, and the name here is very important because it’s just an invitation to get curious about what’s outside of the binary. And it’s a way of thinking. It’s a framework, but it’s also a philosophy, but it’s a way of thinking that you can just reach to in any moment, when you can find that a part of you really wants to be over attached to the either or. Sometimes there’s something that you’re just not seeing. There’s a perspective that is so open to you. There’s a third option, there’s a different view, there’s a different way of appreciating what your partner is saying, instead of assuming that you already know what they’re saying. So for me, the third perspective is an invitation out of the binary. And the subtitle is Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance. I want us to again, when I bring up the thing about the Shadow, I want us to start getting curious about our own intolerance. I think it’s so easy to think, “Oh, she’s speaking about the intolerance of other people. Thank God someone is talking about,” No. This is about you. Where are you being more closed off than you can be? Where are you not allowing your voice to actually be heard? Not your curated voice, not your parroting voice, not your regurgitating voice. If you were to really own your true, honest thoughts and you were to take responsibility for them. What could your expression look like? I think that’s such an exciting thing. I think it’s an opportunity for us to zoom out of these, these big worldly concepts which are important, and to actually start bringing it back to the self because, as you said, through the challenging of the self, you get to trust your convictions, not for them to just be, this is just who I am. This is how I think. So it’s about brave expression, full stop. And it’s about bringing it back to the self, and I, I can’t wait to have it out in the world. I always say this book, I’ll be so willing to get canceled for it. So willing. So I’m I’m very excited to see that happen. Very.

Jameela It’s because the hell that you are looking to be buried on.

Africa Oh, fuck yes. Haha!

Jameela Yeah. Haha!  I think it’s very important work that you do. I really appreciate you, and I would love you to come back. And there’s a lot of other things that I think are so interesting about you that I would love to delve into another time, but this is one of the only times I haven’t had an opportunity to do a pre-interview, so this is literally the first time that you and I are like,

Africa Yes.

Jameela Conversing outside of four DMs. So I, really lovely to to feel this sort of, I don’t know if you’re feeling it, but I am feeling this sort of connection. It’s just very reassuring. It’s moments like this that make me feel less lonely in the world. And I think that the reason that we have a rising loneliness in this world is because we don’t only feel like we don’t know each other, but we no longer feel like we know ourselves. And to be able to say the truth to you, and for you to be able to say the truth to me and for us to give each other the benefit of the doubt, is how I think one of the main ways that we combat loneliness in this world.

Africa Yes, agreed, agreed.

Jameela So thank you for today and lots of love and good luck with the book. It’s out in May.

Africa Thank you. Yes.

Jameela Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chapellow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording, sharing what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now, we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners.

Listener I weigh my whole self. I weigh having survived 25 years of life. I weigh being a good daughter and always trying to be a good sister. I weigh getting to live life with the love of my life. I weigh the love of my dog who recently passed away. I weigh having lost a dad at 22. I weigh my friends who have become my family. I weigh my ideals and values. I weigh the love for my city. I weigh my loyalty, empathy, and patience. I weigh my intrusive thoughts and my organization skills. I weigh my queerness and womanhood. I weigh my many privileges and being aware of them. I weigh having found my passion for immigration law and my activism. I weigh being in recovery from an eating disorder. I weigh becoming the best version of myself and trying to make the world a better place. I weigh all of me.