Hello and welcome two ways to change the world. I'm Christian Gary Murphy and this is the

podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas and their lives and

the events that have helped shape them. My guest this week is the journalist, writer and

professor of sociology at Manchester, Gary Young, named after the Barbados cricket legends,

Gary Sobers, his mother came to Britain in the 60s and raised him and his brothers in Stevenage.

Gary was, like the song says, young, gifted and black and he quickly became a star writer at the

Guardian. His latest book, Dispatches from the diaspora, spans a 30-year career based in Britain

and America that goes from Mandela to Obama from Stormsy to Black Lives Matter. Gary, welcome.

Thanks for having me. Now you've been a columnist and a correspondent. I mean not specifically a

a black writer, but this is very much your black writing. Why have you framed it like that?

It's funny how quite often people want to run away from their category, you know. I'm a writer

that happens to be black. I'm not a black writer and I'm really happy to embrace it. I did my

second book was a collection of work about America and nobody ever asked me like, why would you

kind of collect your work about America? And here we are and there is a theme or there are themes

that run through this. It's not like one looks at Nelson Mandela or Mugabe or Obama or Stormsy

and things. Well, what are they going to comment? So this was something that it's never been an issue

for me. The issue for me is if people can only see that. If they can only see me as a black writer

and they can't see beyond that, but I am that and I don't think it's in the words of Tony Morrison,

it's not a narrowing category for me. It's a very rich category that involves some of the best

literature, some of the best music, some of the most amazing politics and wonderful culture in

the world. Why would I not want to be associated with it? Have you always had that as you do as a

journalist? I mean that you know you didn't because a lot of people in journalism obviously want to

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