Akala: race and class in the ruins of empire

Unfiltered with Oli Dugmore

Unfiltered with Oli Dugmore || JOE Media

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2018

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

Rapper, poet and scholar Akala joins James O’Brien for a scintillating interview, in which they discuss two issues that run to the heart of modern Britain: race and class.In a breakneck hour of conversation, Akala picks apart many of the modern myths around gangs, street violence and black youth, looking at the ways these are perpetuated in the media and who benefits from perpetuating them, as well as looking back to the Windrush generation and the institutionalised injustices that led to the recent crisis. It’s an education.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Unfiltered with James James O'Brien. I am about to interview
0:15.6	Akala who will be known to you for well anyone of a variety of strings to his
0:20.4	bow. He came to prominence as a musician of course, but he has become a thinker and an educator, particularly on issues of race.
0:28.0	And here's the thing. This could be a bit different, this unfiltered, because the book that he's written,
0:33.4	natives, race and class, in the ruins of empire, which I've only just got my hands on.
0:38.1	That phrase there, race and class in the ruins of empire, seems to me to speak to precisely what I am currently
0:45.3	confused and frightened by. Natives is out now and his short film The Ruins of
0:51.1	Empire is on I-player until the 28th of May.
0:54.8	Two things in the last 12 months, speaking as a journalist and a radio phone in-host who thought
1:00.6	that he was in touch with society and injustice and changes.
1:04.6	The Windrush scandal that we've seen break over the last few weeks and the Grenfell Tower
1:08.7	tragedy that will very soon be one year away made me realize that I don't really get race and class, I don't
1:16.0	really understand the hierarchies that are in place and if anyone can help me, I think it might
1:21.1	be him. It seems to me, and I am a fully paid up member of the Metropolitan Liberal Elite and I'm a white bloke that went to public school
1:34.9	but everything at the moment seems to be revolving around race and class possibly in the
1:39.4	ruins of empire but but certainly in the in the context of where we are.
1:43.0	Yeah I mean I don't know if necessarily in the ruins it depends how nostalgic we are about
1:47.3	Empire. The fact of the matter is in the scheme of the world Britain is still a
1:50.8	fairly decent country to live in.
1:52.8	Yes.
1:53.8	And so it's ironic.
1:54.8	Don't have wrong there are tremendous problems in Britain, of course.
	...

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