Episode 96: Emma Dabiri
Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Kat Rulach
4.8 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2023
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emma Dabiri is an Irish writer, academic and broadcaster - and an expert on race. Born to a Nigerian dad and an Irish mum, Emma experienced extremely different environments growing up: first in a predominantly black area of America and then moving to Southern Ireland where she found herself in the opposite - a very white and racist society.
She remembered how a bookshop in Dublin was her sanctuary and saviour as a child. It turned out it was a radical bookshop - and we agreed that books can provide a quiet rebellion when you're growing up.
Emma has two little boys and currently lives in Margate where she takes advantage of regular sea swimming.
She has written two books 'Don't Touch My Hair' and 'What White People Should Do Next', with her third book just about to be published when we chatted. Emma's writing looks at the concept of race and how the concept of black and white has been constructed in fairly recent history, plus she sometimes shares her own experiences of racism.
We also talked about the Black Lives Matter campaign and assessed how much has changed since the death of George Floyd.
Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Sophia Lusbexter and welcome to spinning plates, the podcast where I speak to |
| 0:10.5 | to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've |
| 0:16.3 | released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. |
| 0:22.6 | Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. |
| 0:28.6 | I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. |
| 0:32.6 | Welcome to spinning plates. |
| 0:39.2 | Hey, hey, or should I say, |
| 0:43.0 | Bonjour, because I'm in France. |
| 0:48.3 | Yep, I'm in Cannes, actually, for just for the evening. |
| 0:49.8 | I've got a little gig here tonight. |
| 0:56.2 | I was in Mexico on Monday, and then I got home on Tuesday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, I went to Thursday, and back home tomorrow and then I've got |
| 1:01.1 | another gig tomorrow afternoon in London and I'm going to take the kids to that because it'd be really |
| 1:05.5 | cute. I'm doing a festival called Foodies Festival which I do a a lot of in the summer. So that'd be nice. |
| 1:12.8 | And this is, yeah, a little slice of glamour. |
| 1:17.3 | It's actually really ridiculous in Cannes. |
| 1:19.5 | I don't know much about the whole festival that goes on here. |
| 1:23.3 | Can film festival, but I know it's been really busy here. |
| 1:27.3 | Loads people descended on Cannes Film Festival, but I know it's been really busy here. Loads people descended on Cannes. |
| 1:30.3 | And our hotel seems to be sort of in the centre of everything. |
| 1:33.3 | So when we got here, there was like red carpet and paparazzi and all this. |
| 1:37.3 | Not interested in us, obviously. |
| 1:39.3 | But it was all like one of those situations, be walking, you think, |
... |
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