Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number
Joanne Lockwood: of amazing people and simply had a conversation about the subject of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a
Joanne Lockwood: better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the
Joanne Lockwood: future, then please do drop me a line to Joe dot Lockwood at
Joanne Lockwood: seechangehappen.co.uk that's SEE Change Happen dot
Joanne Lockwood: co dot uk. You can catch up with
Joanne Lockwood: all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places.
Joanne Lockwood: So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf
Joanne Lockwood: and let's get going. Today
Joanne Lockwood: is Episode 79 with the title
Joanne Lockwood: Humanising Arabs and Muslims, and
Joanne Lockwood: I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Evelyn Alsultany.
Joanne Lockwood: Evelyn describes herself as a professor, author
Joanne Lockwood: and leading expert on the history of representations of
Joanne Lockwood: Arabs Muslims in the US media. When
Joanne Lockwood: I asked Evelyn to describe her superpower, she said that she has a warm
Joanne Lockwood: personality and see makes others feel included.
Joanne Lockwood: Hello, Evelyn, welcome to the show.
Evelyn Alsultany: Hi, Joanne. Thanks so much for having me.
Joanne Lockwood: Pleasure. So, Evelyn, we were chatting in the green room before we
Joanne Lockwood: gone live, the title Humanising
Joanne Lockwood: Arabs and Muslims. Tell me more about that.
Evelyn Alsultany: So, Joanne, when you asked me what my superpower was, I was stumped on
Evelyn Alsultany: that question and I reached out to two friends and one of them
Evelyn Alsultany: said, your superpower is Humanising, Arabs and Muslims.
Evelyn Alsultany: And the unfortunate part of
Evelyn Alsultany: this equation is that humanising is necessary
Evelyn Alsultany: because Arabs and Muslims have been dehumanised
Evelyn Alsultany: for so long in media representations,
Evelyn Alsultany: in government policies, in politician speeches.
Evelyn Alsultany: Many people think it started around 911, it intensified after
Evelyn Alsultany: 911, but
Evelyn Alsultany: at least in the US, it's been part of
Evelyn Alsultany: US media representations for over 100 years.
Evelyn Alsultany: And so part of my mission is to
Evelyn Alsultany: both Humanise Arabs and Muslims, but also to study the
Evelyn Alsultany: processes of dehumanisation. How does that even happen?
Evelyn Alsultany: And it happens to so many different communities in different ways.
Evelyn Alsultany: So, in my case, I have been studying Arabs
Evelyn Alsultany: and Muslims for over 20 years. Have they been represented in the media? Have
Evelyn Alsultany: they been dehumanised? What are processes through which they can be
Evelyn Alsultany: included? What are efforts out there that seek to
Evelyn Alsultany: create more diverse and inclusive possibilities
Evelyn Alsultany: for Arabs and Muslims? So you use the word
Joanne Lockwood: dehumanise a couple of times and
Joanne Lockwood: we look at examples throughout history. As soon as we
Joanne Lockwood: remove the humanity, as soon as we remove someone's
Joanne Lockwood: identity like that, we treat them as
Joanne Lockwood: subhuman, not human I e dehumanise, then
Joanne Lockwood: it gives us permission to treat people
Joanne Lockwood: without without any respect. And that's what we're talking about here, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? That's exactly what we're talking about. When we
Evelyn Alsultany: dehumanise people, it allows us to justify
Evelyn Alsultany: not giving those people rights, not treating them with respect
Evelyn Alsultany: and dignity. In the case of Arabs and Muslims, it includes
Evelyn Alsultany: justifying going to war in Muslim majority countries
Evelyn Alsultany: after 911 that included Afghanistan and Iraq.
Evelyn Alsultany: And Iraq actually had nothing to do with 911,
Evelyn Alsultany: but it led to over 150,000 Iraqi civilians
Evelyn Alsultany: being killed. So I often think what made that possible
Evelyn Alsultany: for the United States to go to war with a
Evelyn Alsultany: country on the guise of 911 when there was
Evelyn Alsultany: no connection to that, and to lead to such
Evelyn Alsultany: devastating outcomes that have such tremendous
Evelyn Alsultany: impact on human life? So dehumanisation is
Evelyn Alsultany: necessary. And it's not to say that the whole American public was
Evelyn Alsultany: in favour of it. It was a very contentious moment. Some were in favour,
Evelyn Alsultany: some weren't. But dehumanising is
Evelyn Alsultany: necessary to construct an enemy or to construct groups of
Evelyn Alsultany: people as not worthy of the same
Evelyn Alsultany: rights as the dominant group.
Joanne Lockwood: I suppose it's the same logic as when we think about animal welfare,
Joanne Lockwood: because they're not humans, we have permission to eat them, to kill them,
Joanne Lockwood: to not care about them. And
Joanne Lockwood: dehumanisation is effectively treating people as
Joanne Lockwood: animals or not having the same sentient
Joanne Lockwood: rights. I run unconscious bias
Joanne Lockwood: privileged workshops. I hate the word unconscious bias. It doesn't work for me.
Joanne Lockwood: But that's what people tend to refer it to as. And one of the
Joanne Lockwood: examples I use is I ask people to come up with words and phrases
Joanne Lockwood: that you hear in the media, in the ether, that you're kind of pervasive
Joanne Lockwood: about different people. And one of the questions I asked to come up with
Joanne Lockwood: words associated with Muslims, and
Joanne Lockwood: not one of them has ever come back and said, the
Joanne Lockwood: person next door not my friend.
Joanne Lockwood: They always create this picture of someone
Joanne Lockwood: firing a semiautomatic machine gun in the air,
Joanne Lockwood: firing bullets, chanting, wearing
Joanne Lockwood: a turban or a hat, living in the desert in a tent. These are the
Joanne Lockwood: words they come out with. Not once if someone said,
Joanne Lockwood: the person next door or anybody
Joanne Lockwood: that you know, or my friend in the room here.
Joanne Lockwood: So that's what's? That we've been bombarded with that stuff all the time,
Joanne Lockwood: aren't we? We have been bombarded. There is
Evelyn Alsultany: a book by the late scholar Jack Shaheen
Evelyn Alsultany: about representations of Arabs in the history of Hollywood,
Evelyn Alsultany: and Arabs and Muslim identities have been coproduced as one and the same. And
Evelyn Alsultany: right now we're finally in the process of disentangling and trying to explain
Evelyn Alsultany: to the public that Muslims, that is a religious identity, it
Evelyn Alsultany: is a very diverse group of people, and approximately 15 or
Evelyn Alsultany: 20% of Muslims are actually Arab. But we have this Arab, Middle Eastern
Evelyn Alsultany: Muslim construction that has come out of a history
Evelyn Alsultany: of filmmaking. So Jackson, he wrote a book called Real Bad Arabs how
Evelyn Alsultany: Hollywood Vilifies a People. And he looked at 100 years of filmmaking
Evelyn Alsultany: starting in the early 19 hundreds. He looks at almost
Evelyn Alsultany: a thousand movies and he said, out of the thousand movies that represent Arabs,
Evelyn Alsultany: 52 are even handed and twelve are positive.
Evelyn Alsultany: So by the time we get to 911, we've been consuming Hollywood
Evelyn Alsultany: movies that have been demonising Arabs for a very,
Evelyn Alsultany: very long time. And in terms of the exercise that you do in
Evelyn Alsultany: your trainings, arab, Muslim, Middle
Evelyn Alsultany: Eastern, this identity category has been constructed as a threat to
Evelyn Alsultany: national security. They're unamerican. They are a
Evelyn Alsultany: threat to us. They're fanatics, they're anti
Evelyn Alsultany: Semitic, they oppress their women. So
Evelyn Alsultany: we have this picture of who Muslims are.
Evelyn Alsultany: They're almost 2 billion Muslims in the world. And according to this
Evelyn Alsultany: logic, 2 billion Muslims means that
Evelyn Alsultany: 25% of the world's population is Muslim. So that means
Evelyn Alsultany: that 25% of the world's population would fall under this kind of
Evelyn Alsultany: descriptor. And some studies of the
Evelyn Alsultany: news news reporting have shown there was
Evelyn Alsultany: one study about the New York Times and how Muslims
Evelyn Alsultany: were reported in the New York Times in the in the early
Evelyn Alsultany: 2000s that showed that whenever there was a terrorist attack committed by
Evelyn Alsultany: a Muslim that it was described in a way in which
Evelyn Alsultany: all Muslims bear collective responsibility. So we are all
Evelyn Alsultany: responsible for an individual's
Evelyn Alsultany: action. There's another study that
Evelyn Alsultany: showed the more media that we consume that show
Evelyn Alsultany: Muslims enacting violence, the more likely we are to support
Evelyn Alsultany: war in Muslim majority countries and policies that restrict Muslim
Evelyn Alsultany: civil liberties. So a lot of my work has been on the media
Evelyn Alsultany: to try to understand how this
Evelyn Alsultany: institution that's so powerful, even though it's not making
Evelyn Alsultany: policies, can be so influential in terms
Evelyn Alsultany: of, well, what do we see about Muslims in the media? What do we know
Evelyn Alsultany: about them? If we have this era of Muslim Middle Eastern conflation, what
Evelyn Alsultany: do we know about the Middle East? What are the stories we're getting? And a
Evelyn Alsultany: lot of the stories are about have been historically about
Evelyn Alsultany: terrorism, about rich oil chic's are going to threaten the
Evelyn Alsultany: economy, about Oppressed veiled women.
Evelyn Alsultany: And so we have a very limited number of stories
Evelyn Alsultany: that we have been consuming repeatedly for a very long
Evelyn Alsultany: time.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm not intending to take the spotlight off of wisdoms and
Joanne Lockwood: Arabs here, but we look at the media.
Joanne Lockwood: It wants to create good and bad, doesn't it? That's what sells clicks,
Joanne Lockwood: polarisation. Since the early movies, we've had a good person and
Joanne Lockwood: a bad person having a fight. And you look at
Joanne Lockwood: early, okay, some of it was Charlie Chaplin. Some of that was kind of
Joanne Lockwood: fairly sort of innocence, but it quickly moved on to
Joanne Lockwood: Westerns cowboys and Indians.
Joanne Lockwood: White is good, native, indigenous
Joanne Lockwood: American people, bad, savages,
Joanne Lockwood: decency, all those sort of then that played out in the
Joanne Lockwood: Allies and Nazis, the kind of Tommy's and
Joanne Lockwood: Jerry's, east and West, Cold
Joanne Lockwood: War, Soviets versus America. We
Joanne Lockwood: had good and bad, didn't we? And
Joanne Lockwood: Muslims and Arabs are fitting into that same narrative. Good and
Joanne Lockwood: bad, white is good, everybody else is bad.
Joanne Lockwood: Dehumanised, as you say, savages painted,
Joanne Lockwood: painted in a bad light. And that's not just in the US. It's
Joanne Lockwood: across certainly the English speaking Western world and probably
Joanne Lockwood: throughout Europe as well. Yes, the good
Evelyn Alsultany: guy and the bad guy. It is a very
Evelyn Alsultany: common theme. What's interesting
Evelyn Alsultany: recently is that Hollywood has started creating
Evelyn Alsultany: more complex portrayals. And
Evelyn Alsultany: so after 911, when it came to
Evelyn Alsultany: Arabs and Muslims, we start seeing terrorist
Evelyn Alsultany: storylines that instead of this one dimensional terrorist bad
Evelyn Alsultany: guy, where I think about movies like True
Evelyn Alsultany: Lies that Arnold Schwarzenegger was in in the 1990s,
Evelyn Alsultany: or the siege with Denzel Washington
Evelyn Alsultany: that portray Arab Muslims as terrorists, when the bad guy dies,
Evelyn Alsultany: you celebrate in the audience. You're applauding. It's a good thing. Yeah, I get
Evelyn Alsultany: to get the bad guy. Get the bad arab. But more
Evelyn Alsultany: recently, writers and producers have been trying to
Evelyn Alsultany: create more complicated characters. So we have Arab
Evelyn Alsultany: Muslim characters who are terrorists, who are given an elaborate
Evelyn Alsultany: backstory, as if it's supposed to
Evelyn Alsultany: compensate for this long history. So one example that comes
Evelyn Alsultany: to my mind is Jack Ryan on Amazon
Evelyn Alsultany: Prime during season one, there was an Arab Muslim bad
Evelyn Alsultany: guy. And we learned that when he was a child in an
Evelyn Alsultany: Arab country, I think it was in Syria that the US. Sent drone
Evelyn Alsultany: strikes and killed his family. So he grew up without his family.
Evelyn Alsultany: That did not make him a terrorist. He moved to France and he was very
Evelyn Alsultany: educated and smart, and he couldn't get a job because of anti Arab and
Evelyn Alsultany: antimuslim racism. And that didn't turn him into a terrorist. But then he
Evelyn Alsultany: ended up going to jail. And while he was in jail, he converted to Islam
Evelyn Alsultany: and became actually he was Muslim, but he reconnected to his
Evelyn Alsultany: Muslim identity in a whole new way. Exactly.
Evelyn Alsultany: He became radicalised. So we have these complicated
Evelyn Alsultany: backstories, and then the question is, is this helping? Okay,
Evelyn Alsultany: it's better than the one dimensional. You're getting some kind of backstory,
Evelyn Alsultany: but you're still having a story about Arabs and Muslims as
Evelyn Alsultany: terrorists. And the other development after 911 was the
Evelyn Alsultany: patriotic Arab or Muslim Americans, which would be a
Evelyn Alsultany: character who works for the CIA or the FBI, who's helping the United
Evelyn Alsultany: States fight against terrorism. And in this Jack Ryan episode,
Evelyn Alsultany: there is a black Muslim CIA agent
Evelyn Alsultany: who's he's part of the CIA team, and he is
Evelyn Alsultany: there to counteract the Muslim
Evelyn Alsultany: terrorists to show that there are patriotic ones, too. And in my
Evelyn Alsultany: research, what I found is that even though it seems positive
Evelyn Alsultany: and yes, it's better that it's still a very limited
Evelyn Alsultany: imagining of who Muslims can be. So you can be
Evelyn Alsultany: good in the context of terrorism if you are pro
Evelyn Alsultany: US policies, if you work for government agencies,
Evelyn Alsultany: but then what if you're just a person?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, the news the other week about
Joanne Lockwood: there were a number of people executed in Saudi
Joanne Lockwood: in one day or something, and there was a big story.
Joanne Lockwood: But it's not the same story when the
Joanne Lockwood: US. Are executing people in prisons day in, day out.
Joanne Lockwood: Well, that's all right. They're bad people.
Joanne Lockwood: Again, it's that dual standard that dual narrative, isn't it?
Evelyn Alsultany: It really is. I think that's a great example
Evelyn Alsultany: that we have the best death penalty in the US,
Evelyn Alsultany: but it's not headline news around the world. Look at these barbaric Americans
Evelyn Alsultany: killing people. But in other countries, that practise the death
Evelyn Alsultany: penalty. It's a symbol. It symbolises how barbaric they
Evelyn Alsultany: are, how undemocratic they are. Guantanamo
Joanne Lockwood: Bay was a travesty.
Joanne Lockwood: It's such a travesty. It had to be offshored into a different country
Joanne Lockwood: to make it palatable, to protect
Joanne Lockwood: the world from terrorists. And
Joanne Lockwood: yet my understanding is that many, many people who are
Joanne Lockwood: held there have been released after many years with no evidence,
Joanne Lockwood: no change, no trial, no nothing, just for
Joanne Lockwood: maybe being Arab or Muslim in the wrong place.
Evelyn Alsultany: Exactly. Held for years, bites destroyed, no
Evelyn Alsultany: charges. And then the question is, what makes that possible? How is it
Evelyn Alsultany: possible? So it's all of this messaging, all of the
Evelyn Alsultany: dehumanisation, because the idea is, well, they're Muslim
Evelyn Alsultany: men, so if they're not guilty of terrorism, they must be guilty of something else.
Evelyn Alsultany: Whether it's oppressing women or being anti American or anti Semitic, they
Evelyn Alsultany: must be guilty of something, even if it's not
Evelyn Alsultany: what they are purportedly being held for.
Joanne Lockwood: I was reading something the other day, I think it was
Joanne Lockwood: no, it was on the radio. It was George Takai
Joanne Lockwood: of Star Trek Fame. Sulu and Star
Joanne Lockwood: Trek. He was talking about how he was a
Joanne Lockwood: young American at the time of
Joanne Lockwood: Pearl Harbour, and his entire communities
Joanne Lockwood: around him were rounded up because they had
Joanne Lockwood: Japanese descent. And again, they were dehumanised. So
Joanne Lockwood: they were shipped off to concentration camps, effectively within the US
Joanne Lockwood: and just purely because they had Japanese heritage.
Joanne Lockwood: And the white people got scared.
Joanne Lockwood: It's very similar. Kind of rounding up. Yes. After
Evelyn Alsultany: 911, many people said, we're at this new moment, we're not
Evelyn Alsultany: rounding up all Arabs and Muslims like we did with Japanese Americans.
Evelyn Alsultany: We're enlightened, we've change. But it seemed
Evelyn Alsultany: that the technology had change because you could surveil people
Evelyn Alsultany: more easily. And then there were instances like the
Evelyn Alsultany: Guantanamo Bay one that you mentioned, where
Evelyn Alsultany: people were picked up and locked up
Evelyn Alsultany: indefinitely for years and years. So it wasn't
Evelyn Alsultany: everybody in the way that it was for Japanese Americans during World War
Evelyn Alsultany: II, but the idea that we had
Evelyn Alsultany: evolved and we weren't doing that anymore because we were a better
Evelyn Alsultany: country,
Evelyn Alsultany: I'm not buying that. With Abu Grey prison
Evelyn Alsultany: and the USA Patriot Act and these wars that have killed
Evelyn Alsultany: countless numbers of people, so much death, so much
Evelyn Alsultany: destruction, but a lot of it
Evelyn Alsultany: was made possible through some quote
Evelyn Alsultany: unquote positive images of Arabs and Muslims. There were a lot
Evelyn Alsultany: of TV shows after 911 that had the feeling of
Evelyn Alsultany: remorse. We're so sorry that we have
Evelyn Alsultany: to discriminate, we're against racial profiling, but given
Evelyn Alsultany: the emergency we're in, given the national security crisis, we
Evelyn Alsultany: don't want to racially profile, but we have to. So there were
Evelyn Alsultany: narratives like, we are against torture. We're the United States. We're against
Evelyn Alsultany: torture. But because of the state of national security
Evelyn Alsultany: that we're in, we have no choice. So there was a particular kind of
Evelyn Alsultany: logic that was saying, that's not us, but we have no
Evelyn Alsultany: choice. We're going to enact
Evelyn Alsultany: racist, violent policies
Evelyn Alsultany: because it has to be justified under the emergency situation that we're
Evelyn Alsultany: in.
Joanne Lockwood: A couple of years ago. So, 2020, we had the murder of
Joanne Lockwood: George Floyd and the big Black Lives Matter
Joanne Lockwood: movement. Lots of
Joanne Lockwood: outcry, lots of public trial, the
Joanne Lockwood: police officer that murdered him, lots of
Joanne Lockwood: shakara shows that it still ingrained
Joanne Lockwood: racism in much of the US and in many states. It hasn't changed much
Joanne Lockwood: since the 50s or 40s. Has
Joanne Lockwood: the Muslim Arab community benefited at
Joanne Lockwood: all from this? Or is it Black
Joanne Lockwood: Lives Matter, but not Brown Lives? I do
Evelyn Alsultany: think Muslims have benefited. So
Evelyn Alsultany: I've written a book called Broken the Failed Promise of Muslim
Evelyn Alsultany: Inclusion that looks at how Muslims have come to be included
Evelyn Alsultany: in diversity politics. And one of the ways
Evelyn Alsultany: that it has become possible is through a recognition of
Evelyn Alsultany: Islamophobia as a problem. So even though Islamophobia is old,
Evelyn Alsultany: very old, so in the UK, apparently
Evelyn Alsultany: it was recognised in the late 1990s because the running Mead
Evelyn Alsultany: Trust wrote a report on Islamophobia. And then
Evelyn Alsultany: this idea of Islamophobia became part of the lexicon in the UK. From
Evelyn Alsultany: my understanding in the US, we didn't start using Islamophobia till around 2010.
Evelyn Alsultany: And it's around that time
Evelyn Alsultany: that diversity, equity, inclusion language is on the
Evelyn Alsultany: rise. George Floyd from a few years ago.
Evelyn Alsultany: Oscar so white controversy. And
Evelyn Alsultany: I think Donald Trump's presidency
Evelyn Alsultany: led to a reaction from people that was
Evelyn Alsultany: unprecedented that people saw. It
Evelyn Alsultany: seems to me that people don't act unless discrimination is explicit
Evelyn Alsultany: and in your face. So even though we know that we
Evelyn Alsultany: are in a society that has been constructed to
Evelyn Alsultany: privilege white, male, cisgender,
Evelyn Alsultany: heterosexual, able bodied, neurotypical, et
Evelyn Alsultany: cetera, we only act when we see something
Evelyn Alsultany: horrific happen. And so I think I've been thinking
Evelyn Alsultany: about George Floyd. Like, George Floyd led to
Evelyn Alsultany: some changes. Like, finally, I don't have to see Aunt Jemima in the grocery store
Evelyn Alsultany: or Uncle Ben. Finally, the
Evelyn Alsultany: Washington Redskins changed their name, even though it was decades
Evelyn Alsultany: of people protesting it. So I've had moments like, why now? What change?
Evelyn Alsultany: We've seen many black people be killed on television,
Evelyn Alsultany: recorded. But it was this that led to
Evelyn Alsultany: unprecedented response and change. And I think it's because of Donald
Evelyn Alsultany: Trump that he represented this explicit,
Evelyn Alsultany: in your face discrimination, and it led people to
Evelyn Alsultany: want to do something about it. So Muslims have benefited from a
Evelyn Alsultany: whirlwind of different events coming together, from recognising
Evelyn Alsultany: Islamophobia to George Floyd to Donald Trump saying, Muslim
Evelyn Alsultany: ban. Oscar So White the rise
Evelyn Alsultany: of diversity, which I see also as the
Evelyn Alsultany: fall of affirmative action and diversity, inclusion, equity,
Evelyn Alsultany: inclusion, coming to replace that. And I think diversity,
Evelyn Alsultany: equity, inclusion, on the one hand, allows for groups
Evelyn Alsultany: who are not part of affirmative action to be included, whether
Evelyn Alsultany: it's Muslim, LGBTQ, people who are
Evelyn Alsultany: disabled, so it widens the
Evelyn Alsultany: possibilities of inclusion, but at the same time, it
Evelyn Alsultany: could also be further divorced from
Evelyn Alsultany: a social justice or restorative justice
Evelyn Alsultany: objective. So a lot of what I've been thinking
Evelyn Alsultany: about is what are the limits and possibilities of the diversity
Evelyn Alsultany: work that we are doing today?
Joanne Lockwood: I agree that Trump certainly catalysed
Joanne Lockwood: not only his supporters, but also his anti supporters, the people
Joanne Lockwood: who are seeing what's going on. But
Joanne Lockwood: that era of Trump spread across Europe, it spread into the UK. We
Joanne Lockwood: ended up with our government being a bit more,
Joanne Lockwood: a lot more right wing. We've seen that rise of that right wing
Joanne Lockwood: anti wokeness all the way across Europe and other parts of the country,
Joanne Lockwood: brazil and lots of other countries. It's rising up.
Joanne Lockwood: Trumpism hasn't gone away, has it? It's still there. I
Joanne Lockwood: mean, Bites didn't win a landslide.
Joanne Lockwood: It was fighting to the last couple of states. And was
Joanne Lockwood: it the Florida governor? Is it DeSantos? Correct.
Joanne Lockwood: He's talking about banning EDI
Joanne Lockwood: training in all government institutions, defunding it, basically, to try and
Joanne Lockwood: stamp it out.
Joanne Lockwood: Critical race theory is what he calls it, isn't it? Trying to stamp out critical
Joanne Lockwood: race theory, ban the word intersectionality, this kind
Joanne Lockwood: of phraseology. So the world's not safe yet, is it?
Joanne Lockwood: We haven't woken up and gone, we've escaped, we're still right in
Joanne Lockwood: it. Yeah, we are not. No, we are not
Evelyn Alsultany: safe. I do think we're in a different moment than we have
Evelyn Alsultany: ever been in terms of
Evelyn Alsultany: inclusion, and I think that's been made possible through these moments of
Evelyn Alsultany: crisis where people respond. In my book, I call it
Evelyn Alsultany: crisis diversity, where there's an event, let's say Muslim ban.
Evelyn Alsultany: And again, what's interesting to me is we had the USA
Evelyn Alsultany: Patriot Act, we had special registration war in Iraq, war
Evelyn Alsultany: in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay prison. But Muslim
Evelyn Alsultany: ban led to an unprecedented response. It's not to say that people
Evelyn Alsultany: didn't react, respond, protest, those other things, but it was in a
Evelyn Alsultany: level that I've never witnessed before, and I do think it was because of
Evelyn Alsultany: Donald Trump, but it led to corporations
Evelyn Alsultany: issuing statements, universities, including Muslims, and
Evelyn Alsultany: diversity plans. All of us who do work, and I actually wanted to ask you
Evelyn Alsultany: about this around crisis diversity, that something happens and then
Evelyn Alsultany: those of us who do work in the area we're called upon, we have to
Evelyn Alsultany: give lectures and we're happy to do it, but it's exhausting. All of a sudden,
Evelyn Alsultany: there's interest in this thing that we've been working on for a very long time.
Evelyn Alsultany: The crisis passes and then things get quiet and
Evelyn Alsultany: then the next crisis comes along and then
Evelyn Alsultany: your phone's ringing off the hook again. And I was wondering if you experience that
Evelyn Alsultany: as well. If there's like, an event, for sure.
Joanne Lockwood: There'S a term that we would often use in the DNI space around
Joanne Lockwood: performative. So, as you say,
Joanne Lockwood: this crisis diversity, this reaction, the Black Lives Matter,
Joanne Lockwood: we had the rape, murder and kidnapping and rape,
Joanne Lockwood: murder and kidnap of a young woman in this country by a police officer.
Joanne Lockwood: So we had a lot of pushback. It was kind of a me too, violence
Joanne Lockwood: against women and girls. We did a lot of talking about this. We raised the
Joanne Lockwood: issues. We'd start to talk about it. Trans rights, LGBT
Joanne Lockwood: rights. Again, classic examples. Everyone loves to paint,
Joanne Lockwood: change their logo once a year. They love to say what they're doing. They're a
Joanne Lockwood: Black History Month for us. It's in October for us.
Joanne Lockwood: It's Black History Month now, in February for you right now, october for us. This
Joanne Lockwood: is our LGBT history month now. So
Joanne Lockwood: everyone wants to do the right thing, and everyone can latch onto
Joanne Lockwood: hashtags to do stuff, but how do
Joanne Lockwood: we make it sticky? How do we make it a habit and
Joanne Lockwood: embedded? And there seems to be a lack
Joanne Lockwood: of the trouble sometimes is we
Joanne Lockwood: end up in an echo chamber. We're corralled as a
Joanne Lockwood: minority candidate, characteristic, a marginalised group or voiceless group,
Joanne Lockwood: whatever it may be, and we're fed this kind of,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, it's going to go away, it's going to be nice, we're going to sort
Joanne Lockwood: stuff out. Then they just shut the door on us, and they carry on doing
Joanne Lockwood: their own thing. And we're left there talking amongst each other, thinking, yes, we're
Joanne Lockwood: making change, but the only people actually hearing that is
Joanne Lockwood: our own community. We're not getting the white people in the room, not getting the
Joanne Lockwood: men in the room, not getting the able bodied. You mentioned
Joanne Lockwood: earlier about the neurotypical, and I think hang on a minute. I'm sure some of
Joanne Lockwood: the people who are having these troubles are not neurotypical.
Joanne Lockwood: There's a whole spectrum of diversity going on. There's some people here,
Joanne Lockwood: but we've got to get the people who can bring change into the room.
Joanne Lockwood: That's the politicians, that's the people in power, that's the allies. We got
Joanne Lockwood: to get in there, not just have conversations, our communities, because the trans community can
Joanne Lockwood: go and have a conversation. The queer community can. The Muslim community can.
Evelyn Alsultany: Yes. Black community, yes. But unless it breaks
Joanne Lockwood: out into the mainstream, we're just talking to ourselves. I
Evelyn Alsultany: agree. This is one of my big concerns around
Evelyn Alsultany: crisis diversity, that they are opportunities, because
Evelyn Alsultany: during this period after 911 that I described where
Evelyn Alsultany: we had this sorrowful messaging, people were under the impression that
Evelyn Alsultany: we were in a quote unquote post race era. We were on the
Evelyn Alsultany: cusp of electing a black man to be president, and finally we did.
Evelyn Alsultany: So I don't think that George Floyd would have been possible under
Evelyn Alsultany: Obama or even Biden because it gives certain people
Evelyn Alsultany: a sense of security and peacefulness,
Evelyn Alsultany: and it did take someone like Trump to
Evelyn Alsultany: galvanise people into unprecedented action. But
Evelyn Alsultany: I do think that this cycle of
Evelyn Alsultany: we see the problem because there's a crisis, the crisis is a
Evelyn Alsultany: historical one, it's a momentary crisis, just clues us in and
Evelyn Alsultany: reminds us that it's there. So, in terms of long term solution,
Evelyn Alsultany: I mean, I'm not saying anything new here, but we need to look at the
Evelyn Alsultany: root causes. And a lot of the root causes are around
Evelyn Alsultany: centuries of creating a society with this normative identity
Evelyn Alsultany: where whoever's not in that normative identity is on the margins, meant to
Evelyn Alsultany: feel bad. You're from the over the hill. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: You're a danger. That bias, that protections. We
Joanne Lockwood: have anyone who's different to us is a threat. Exactly.
Joanne Lockwood: Certainly the British and half the Europeans before America was even
Joanne Lockwood: thought about were going to the Holy
Joanne Lockwood: Land of the Holy Wars. And
Joanne Lockwood: they were probably half French, half German mongrel Saxons
Joanne Lockwood: at the time, not British as such. They were just the mongrels of
Joanne Lockwood: Europe going to the Holy Land to sort of to fight for Christianity
Joanne Lockwood: and the righteous. And that was setting the
Joanne Lockwood: Muslims and Arabs as heathens, wasn't it, at that time there. And that's
Joanne Lockwood: Richard the Lionheart, was that 1400 something, 1300 something?
Joanne Lockwood: It's been going back way before then, hasn't it? That kind of the Moors
Joanne Lockwood: and that kind of the black people
Joanne Lockwood: who are Muslim or from that part of Africa,
Joanne Lockwood: murdered Christ or something, got the blame for that.
Joanne Lockwood: That's what we're building on. And this is centuries and centuries,
Joanne Lockwood: even almost 1000 years of this going on. Exactly.
Evelyn Alsultany: Very long history. And so I think about Hollywood, and
Evelyn Alsultany: Hollywood responded to the Muslim ban and created Muslim characters outside of the
Evelyn Alsultany: context of terrorism. Many and it was been
Evelyn Alsultany: amazing to see some are better than others. But there was a
Evelyn Alsultany: concerted effort and we finally have characters
Evelyn Alsultany: in TV shows. There's a show called 911
Evelyn Alsultany: Lone Star and there's a female firefighter. She wears a hijab,
Evelyn Alsultany: she's a firefighter. Part of the team. Amazing
Evelyn Alsultany: character. Orange Is The New Black
Evelyn Alsultany: included a prison inmate. Alison Abdullah loved it.
Evelyn Alsultany: So we have a black Muslim prison. Inmate, trans characters, we have brown characters, we
Joanne Lockwood: had lesbian characters, we had straight characters, old characters, young characters.
Evelyn Alsultany: Yes. Yeah. We had a whole heap of different
Joanne Lockwood: characters in that. I thought it was an amazing series. I think in
Evelyn Alsultany: Hollywood we are at a diversifying moment and they're also
Evelyn Alsultany: noticing with Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, that you can even make
Evelyn Alsultany: money doing that being more inclusive and diverse.
Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Wakanda. Yes. And crazy, rich,
Joanne Lockwood: Asians. I watched that on Teller the other night. That's a fantastic film as well.
Evelyn Alsultany: Yeah. There's a Canadian TV show called sort
Evelyn Alsultany: of about a Pakistani Muslim transgender person
Evelyn Alsultany: in Canada. It's an amazing it's about a person.
Evelyn Alsultany: We are lady parts out of the UK. It's my favourite,
Evelyn Alsultany: about five Muslim women joining a punk rock band. So we're
Evelyn Alsultany: seeing some productions that are actually written by Muslims
Evelyn Alsultany: and makes all the difference when you actually have people of the identity telling their
Evelyn Alsultany: own stories. So I think we're at an important opening
Evelyn Alsultany: point. It's just hard to I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know
Evelyn Alsultany: where it's going. But I feel nervous about
Evelyn Alsultany: our tendency to be open to change or enact
Evelyn Alsultany: change only when there's an explicit and evident
Evelyn Alsultany: crisis. Are white men under
Joanne Lockwood: threat? They think they are. Yeah, they
Joanne Lockwood: do, don't they? If we look at the birth rates are
Joanne Lockwood: going down in most of the world that can be put
Joanne Lockwood: down to impair women. Women not wanting to be
Joanne Lockwood: a person's property or just a baby machine. They want to have their family.
Joanne Lockwood: Later. We see the rise of something called the incel movement. I don't
Joanne Lockwood: know if you have that in the US. This is the enforced
Joanne Lockwood: celibacy. It's men believing that women are the problem, which is why they're not having
Joanne Lockwood: sex, having babies. Women are denying them access to their
Joanne Lockwood: rights to have sex whenever they want it. We also
Joanne Lockwood: see people talking about people use the phrase global
Joanne Lockwood: majority. So white people globally in a minority compared with others. We
Joanne Lockwood: see Islam being one of the fastest growing religions in the
Joanne Lockwood: world. Okay? We got China, we got India with massive
Joanne Lockwood: populations. Most of the world isn't white.
Joanne Lockwood: And are people feeling threatened? So the men are feeling threatened by the rise
Joanne Lockwood: of female empowerment, rise of LGBT. So straight men are getting
Joanne Lockwood: even more squeezed and then white men are thinking, Hang on a minute.
Joanne Lockwood: Brown, black, brown. People of colour are getting all this
Joanne Lockwood: assistance, all this motion. What about me? What
Joanne Lockwood: about my lives matter? Is that what we're saying? We're seeing this
Joanne Lockwood: pushback. I think that
Evelyn Alsultany: the way you described it. It just makes me think that it's more
Evelyn Alsultany: about power than identity. Right. Because diversity, equity
Evelyn Alsultany: and inclusion. Yes. We're trying to right historical wrongs and
Evelyn Alsultany: trying to include people who have been marginalised. But it doesn't mean that white people
Evelyn Alsultany: aren't included. White people have always been included. They will continue to be
Evelyn Alsultany: included. But it's about power
Evelyn Alsultany: and anxiety around losing being the
Evelyn Alsultany: normative. I guess if you're used to that for so long,
Evelyn Alsultany: how do you give it up? There's a great quote, and I don't know who
Joanne Lockwood: said it, but it's something like online,
Joanne Lockwood: when you're used to privilege equality, feels like oppression.
Evelyn Alsultany: Yes. So it's almost this feeling that I'm giving
Joanne Lockwood: something up to allow you in. When
Joanne Lockwood: I apply for a job and there are more people who aren't like me, they're
Joanne Lockwood: only there to make up the numbers and I should be getting the job. I
Joanne Lockwood: now have to share it with a black person or a woman or a gay
Joanne Lockwood: person. Whereas normally white straight men used to get these jobs and
Joanne Lockwood: now you're denying me, making it harder for me. That's kind of the perception sometimes,
Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? Yeah. I love. That quote. It's a great
Evelyn Alsultany: quote. Very wellbeing. It says a lot about what
Evelyn Alsultany: white privilege is. You don't see it.
Evelyn Alsultany: It's so normalised that you don't see it. But the
Joanne Lockwood: pushback is often that they've had a tough life, as well
Joanne Lockwood: as many white people who live in trailer parks, who
Joanne Lockwood: have low income, no income,
Joanne Lockwood: unemployable, for whatever reason. So they think, Hang on a minute, what
Joanne Lockwood: about me? I've got nothing as well. I'm not privileged.
Joanne Lockwood: But there's a lack of concept between
Joanne Lockwood: because their lack of their lack of privilege has got nothing to do with their
Joanne Lockwood: skin colour. Their lack of privilege is for other socioeconomic reasons,
Joanne Lockwood: whereas what we're talking about here is because of your skin colour, because of your
Joanne Lockwood: faith, which is something you're born into.
Evelyn Alsultany: Yes. And equality doesn't mean that we're out to marginalise
Evelyn Alsultany: white people or saying that all white people have great lives
Evelyn Alsultany: just because they're white. We're human. We all struggle. We all struggle
Joanne Lockwood: with something. We've all got something in our past, something in our current,
Joanne Lockwood: something in our future that means we're going to struggle. It doesn't mean to
Joanne Lockwood: say we still have our base privilege that we fall back on.
Evelyn Alsultany: Yeah, you can't get through life without struggle. It's not
Evelyn Alsultany: life. So we are where we are.
Joanne Lockwood: It's not fair, it's not right, as you say, the dehumanisation,
Joanne Lockwood: as you say, there's a level of awareness and
Joanne Lockwood: improvement, post George
Joanne Lockwood: Floyd, post COVID.
Joanne Lockwood: But as I often say on this infinite journey,
Joanne Lockwood: we may have come a long way, but there's still a long way to go.
Evelyn Alsultany: Yeah, I agree. Right now, in terms of humanising
Evelyn Alsultany: Muslims, there are five shows that come to mind, two of them that I just
Evelyn Alsultany: mentioned. We are lady parts and sort of we have Rami on
Evelyn Alsultany: Hulu, Mo on Netflix and Ms. Marvel, which is
Evelyn Alsultany: about Disney Plus. Yeah. Disney
Evelyn Alsultany: plus. And those shows, for me, show the way.
Evelyn Alsultany: And I think for many other communities, there are a handful of shows that
Evelyn Alsultany: are like, finally we see ourselves represented in some way and
Evelyn Alsultany: it's so important. But as you mentioned, there is a very
Evelyn Alsultany: powerful opposition out there, so it's not a smooth
Evelyn Alsultany: sailing situation. I feel like those who are on the left who care about
Evelyn Alsultany: diversity tend to respond to crisis and then let the ball
Evelyn Alsultany: drop, and then we have those on the right, like DeSantis, who
Evelyn Alsultany: are trying to prevent it. And what I find particularly
Evelyn Alsultany: interesting is that diversity is on the rise
Evelyn Alsultany: because people hate affirmative action. In the United States,
Evelyn Alsultany: it's on the decline. But it was created in the 1960s as
Evelyn Alsultany: acknowledgment. Yes, we've had policies for
Evelyn Alsultany: centuries that have privileged white people, so we're going to institute
Evelyn Alsultany: affirmative action to try to get more
Evelyn Alsultany: marginalised groups, particularly black and Native
Evelyn Alsultany: American, Latino and Asian, have more
Evelyn Alsultany: opportunities. From the very beginning, there was
Evelyn Alsultany: opposition, and right now it's on the
Evelyn Alsultany: decline. And I think people who care about diversity have embraced diversity.
Evelyn Alsultany: And there's a scholar in England called Sarah Ahmed who says
Evelyn Alsultany: that diversity is a feel good solution. Affirmative action doesn't
Evelyn Alsultany: sound good, people don't like it, but diversity feels good. We're diverse, we're inclusive, we
Evelyn Alsultany: like it, everyone's included. But what I've been noticing is
Evelyn Alsultany: that in the process of diversity, even though
Evelyn Alsultany: more groups can be included, who should be included? That
Evelyn Alsultany: there is an easy watering down that takes place to make it
Evelyn Alsultany: palatable. So you've heard this many
Evelyn Alsultany: times. Diversity is good for education, which great. It is.
Evelyn Alsultany: Diversity is good for business. Okay, that's great too.
Evelyn Alsultany: And we're doing that to say to people, even if you don't like it, you
Evelyn Alsultany: should like it because you might profit or it might enhance your education, it might
Evelyn Alsultany: make you more profitable in the global marketplace. But when
Evelyn Alsultany: we start doing that, the restorative justice piece
Evelyn Alsultany: falls out of the conversation. And so are we doing
Evelyn Alsultany: diversity to make money? Are we doing
Evelyn Alsultany: diversity to feel good? Or are we doing
Evelyn Alsultany: it to actually acknowledge a history that's
Evelyn Alsultany: been damaging, exclusive, oppressive
Evelyn Alsultany: to many different groups of people? And is that our project or is
Evelyn Alsultany: our project to be palatable and
Evelyn Alsultany: fell? Diversity. I always
Joanne Lockwood: come from the start that there are different sorts of people in this
Joanne Lockwood: world that resonate with different messages.
Joanne Lockwood: And that's the diversity of people's thinking and true. I
Joanne Lockwood: always harp back to I think it's Greek philosophy or
Joanne Lockwood: Aristotle, the Lagos Ethos and
Joanne Lockwood: pathos, the logic, the emotion, and the
Joanne Lockwood: compliance, if you like. So we got to comply with the law. We got laws,
Joanne Lockwood: we got to treat people fairly because the law says so. And there's
Joanne Lockwood: a business case, there's a logic. It makes great sense to do this because
Joanne Lockwood: it's but then you've got the human factor. This is the right thing to do.
Joanne Lockwood: I want to be treated right. We want to be treated fairly.
Joanne Lockwood: Hopefully, most of us are born and work as good
Joanne Lockwood: people. We are inherently good people. We don't wake up to be
Joanne Lockwood: nasty specifically. So we want to be treated right. We really
Joanne Lockwood: inherently want to treat others right. But what happens is we don't, for
Joanne Lockwood: whatever reason, we have a bad hair day, we kick the cat, we get cut
Joanne Lockwood: up at the light, suddenly our personality changes. But I always maintain that if we
Joanne Lockwood: can get the human side right, get the inclusion right, get the culture
Joanne Lockwood: right, make the world of work a better place for everybody, where people can
Joanne Lockwood: thrive, out of that comes the business case. Out of that
Joanne Lockwood: comes the compliance, rather than the compliance and the business case being the lead.
Joanne Lockwood: They're fantastic byproducts of just being decent human
Joanne Lockwood: beings, those things happen. You represent your customers, you
Joanne Lockwood: represent society, you represent each other. People come to
Joanne Lockwood: high levels of psychological safety. All of that happens. And
Joanne Lockwood: then your bottom line will go up because you're a decent company employing
Joanne Lockwood: with decent culture. So I was sort of saying, well, yeah, let's
Joanne Lockwood: look at those three pillars, but recognise that the human factor has to be the
Joanne Lockwood: lead. Everything else happens because of that.
Evelyn Alsultany: I like what you said about diversity of thinking. So, in a sense, whatever it
Evelyn Alsultany: takes to reach you. And what's interesting is that even
Evelyn Alsultany: with the diverse pitches to get people on board, that even
Evelyn Alsultany: with all of that, there is still fierce opposition. Even
Evelyn Alsultany: though diversity is more palatable, there is still fierce opposition.
Joanne Lockwood: Bites work. Monoculture has worked for centuries. It's
Joanne Lockwood: like white people in charge. It was always good. Now we got brown
Joanne Lockwood: and black and people of colour involved. It's not so good,
Joanne Lockwood: it's not so white. So it's almost like the status
Joanne Lockwood: quo seems to work. When men are in charge, it
Joanne Lockwood: works. If we get women involved, it gets all emotional and complicated,
Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? I mean, this is kind of what's happening. We're disrupting people's
Joanne Lockwood: thinking. It's like so much easier when we just got to think about one thing
Joanne Lockwood: white men. It's easy. Yeah, it was easier when we had these
Evelyn Alsultany: categories. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
Joanne Lockwood: demonising men or white men, because we need every
Joanne Lockwood: voice in the conversation. It's just the stereotype of
Joanne Lockwood: that personal privilege. Maybe we're using. And I don't want to be accused
Joanne Lockwood: of demonising another group of people, because I'm not.
Evelyn Alsultany: Yes, me too.
Joanne Lockwood: We're on this journey. So how do we persuade
Joanne Lockwood: good people, good organisations,
Joanne Lockwood: to make a difference? What can we do? In terms of
Joanne Lockwood: talk specifically about the Arab Muslim communities, what can we
Joanne Lockwood: do? And I think you quoted five TV programmes
Joanne Lockwood: that's out of many thousand, they're great.
Joanne Lockwood: That's not a great ratio, really, is it? No, it's got
Evelyn Alsultany: it's really not.
Evelyn Alsultany: A lot of my work is on the media, so when I think about the
Evelyn Alsultany: impact of media in terms of how important it is for us to see
Evelyn Alsultany: ourselves, it matters so much. And for
Evelyn Alsultany: many years, I've heard executives in Hollywood say, oh, it's just
Evelyn Alsultany: entertainment, it's not policy, but it's
Evelyn Alsultany: so powerful. So one of the
Evelyn Alsultany: visions is that we just need more stories. So if we
Evelyn Alsultany: have this terrorism story that we've seen repeated over
Evelyn Alsultany: and over again, then in terms of humanising Muslims, we
Evelyn Alsultany: need many, many stories of Muslims. There are 2 billion in the world,
Evelyn Alsultany: so five stories doesn't represent the whole Muslim community. And
Evelyn Alsultany: there's also a lot of pressure on those five film
Evelyn Alsultany: TV makers. That doesn't represent me, that represents you. That doesn't represent
Evelyn Alsultany: me. So there's so much pressure to represent everyone and it's not
Evelyn Alsultany: possible. So my vision is that we need so many stories that the
Evelyn Alsultany: terror story is one story. Just one story. I
Evelyn Alsultany: mean, when we see a white
Evelyn Alsultany: serial killer represented, we don't think white people need to
Evelyn Alsultany: take collective responsibility for this one person. It's one story. We have so
Evelyn Alsultany: many stories about white people as heroes, as villains, that it
Evelyn Alsultany: doesn't change how we understand that white
Evelyn Alsultany: people are a very diverse group of people, but with Muslims oh,
Evelyn Alsultany: yeah, terrorist fanatic, it sticks. And
Evelyn Alsultany: so, regarding the world of the media,
Evelyn Alsultany: I think stories are so powerful, so we need more and more stories,
Evelyn Alsultany: ideally written by when you said that.
Joanne Lockwood: When we tell stories about Muslim Arab people,
Joanne Lockwood: it sticks. I think the issue is it's already in the
Joanne Lockwood: person's mind. It's not like a new thought that's sticking, it's
Joanne Lockwood: an old thought that's being reinforced and layered upon and layered upon.
Joanne Lockwood: So that's the trouble. It's how do we get down that stack and
Joanne Lockwood: take out that original thought
Joanne Lockwood: they've had about the association? That heavy
Joanne Lockwood: bias that's the change we've got is making. We're probably not
Joanne Lockwood: going to solve the problem with people over the age of 40 or
Joanne Lockwood: 50. How do we stop that occurring
Joanne Lockwood: in our new generations, our children? I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's where the hard work has to be done in our children emerging
Joanne Lockwood: teaching. I agree with you. Maybe the parent age
Joanne Lockwood: group, because if you're a parent, you're bringing the education. So if you can get
Joanne Lockwood: to the people now having children, 25 to 30 year
Joanne Lockwood: olds, if we can hit that generation, make sure that
Joanne Lockwood: generation is educating their children, we can start changing the
Joanne Lockwood: narrative in schools, in kindergartens. Is
Joanne Lockwood: that something that's going to we got to write ourselves off and say, it's never
Joanne Lockwood: going to be fixed in my generation. How do we fix it for
Joanne Lockwood: next? Yes, because I agree. The problem is not one
Evelyn Alsultany: TV show, it's the repetition, it's the confirmation, oh, I already know
Evelyn Alsultany: this about these people and that confirmed it. And it's the repetition that's so
Evelyn Alsultany: dangerous. And I do think there is hope. There is
Evelyn Alsultany: generational hope. There is hope that the next generation.
Evelyn Alsultany: Someone was telling me recently that their kid is used to seeing
Evelyn Alsultany: diverse people on television and that he's
Evelyn Alsultany: still in a situation where if he sees a non white character on TV,
Evelyn Alsultany: he's like, come in the room and look at what's on television. And his kids
Evelyn Alsultany: are like, yeah, whatever. So he was making the case that for his
Evelyn Alsultany: kids, diversity is normal and it's
Evelyn Alsultany: hard for foreign to me. So maybe with the next
Evelyn Alsultany: generation, we. Might they talk about their gender, they talk about their
Joanne Lockwood: sexuality, they talk about each other's culture. They're just friends or
Evelyn Alsultany: pronouns is every day. No big deal. So that's
Joanne Lockwood: where I see the hope. And we all want change.
Joanne Lockwood: I think the last World Economic Forum was talking about, before
Joanne Lockwood: we can get gender equality, they talk about they were talking about
Joanne Lockwood: 2075. I think they was talking about
Joanne Lockwood: that's, what, 60 years or something like that? You think, well, hang on a minute,
Joanne Lockwood: gender equality is going to take 60 or 70 years. Even if we half
Joanne Lockwood: that, it's going to take till 2040 something. You think, Hang on, a
Joanne Lockwood: minute, I'll be 90, then maybe I'm a bit older,
Joanne Lockwood: but you think, Hang on a minute. I don't want to wait 20,
Joanne Lockwood: 30, 40 years for a leverage gender equality. And that's just gender.
Joanne Lockwood: We intersect that with faith or religion or ethnicity.
Joanne Lockwood: We intersect that with queer, we intersect that with disability, we
Joanne Lockwood: insert with anything else. And we know the
Joanne Lockwood: experience of a black woman or a brown woman or person of
Joanne Lockwood: colour is far less than
Joanne Lockwood: a white woman, for example, or a straight white woman. So
Joanne Lockwood: that's the frustration. This cycle of
Joanne Lockwood: change is glassially slow
Joanne Lockwood: because it's got to hang in there, cling on and keep the momentum.
Evelyn Alsultany: I'm okay with it taking that long. Yeah. The
Evelyn Alsultany: reason that I'm okay with it is that it seems,
Evelyn Alsultany: if I think in the US in 1790, all men are created equal,
Evelyn Alsultany: it was a false claim. And it took
Evelyn Alsultany: two centuries later to even try to create
Evelyn Alsultany: policies that prevented discrimination or would punish for
Evelyn Alsultany: discrimination. So if it took 300, 400
Evelyn Alsultany: years to establish and reconfirm
Evelyn Alsultany: whiteness as the centre of everything, it
Evelyn Alsultany: might take 200 years to get somewhere else. It is
Evelyn Alsultany: hopeful now because I'm seeing change that I didn't expect.
Evelyn Alsultany: As a professor who teaches the history of
Evelyn Alsultany: racism, 20 years ago, it was very niche to say
Evelyn Alsultany: intersectionality. You would use that in your classroom, and now you turn
Evelyn Alsultany: on the news and people are saying intersectionality.
Evelyn Alsultany: 15 years ago, you didn't see conversations about racism on the news every
Evelyn Alsultany: day. And now racism is part of the national conversation. I have, like,
Evelyn Alsultany: a VHS tape in my closet where one day I
Evelyn Alsultany: turned on MTV in the they were having a forum on race and I couldn't
Evelyn Alsultany: believe it. They're talking about racism on
Evelyn Alsultany: TV. And I put the VHS in and recorded what I
Evelyn Alsultany: could catch. And so now this is part of
Evelyn Alsultany: our everyday conversation. So
Evelyn Alsultany: I think there's some hope in that. Despite all the opposition,
Evelyn Alsultany: despite the struggle, despite how difficult it is, despite how long it's
Evelyn Alsultany: going to take, I feel like the one nice thing
Evelyn Alsultany: about getting older is being able to think about what was it like
Evelyn Alsultany: 2030 years ago? What is it like now? Oh, wow, I've seen
Evelyn Alsultany: gay marriage, I've seen transgender
Evelyn Alsultany: issues on the agenda. That was not
Evelyn Alsultany: I'm sorry, 2.8 years ago? No.
Joanne Lockwood: Rosa Parks. Was that fifty s? Nineteen fifty s, yes.
Joanne Lockwood: Again, a lot's changed, but a lot hasn't changed. So where we are
Joanne Lockwood: now, George Floyd, in 50 years time, we'll be probably
Joanne Lockwood: where we were 50 years after Rosa Parks, maybe, or
Joanne Lockwood: these big shifts, the Martin Luther King, all those kind of
Joanne Lockwood: big moments. Nelson Mandela, South Africa,
Joanne Lockwood: all these kind of big gravitational shift moments in the world.
Joanne Lockwood: For me, I think it's important that we have to
Joanne Lockwood: create representation wherever we can I agree.
Joanne Lockwood: And embed diversity in every sphere,
Joanne Lockwood: so that's whether in academia so
Joanne Lockwood: we're educating children with more bottles of all
Joanne Lockwood: backgrounds. We've got to get our politicians, we've got to get our news
Joanne Lockwood: readers, our anchors, we've got to get our films, we've got to get our media
Joanne Lockwood: representation, we've got to get people who drive the bus, people who open the
Joanne Lockwood: doors, people who serve in the restaurants, not just the low paid workers, but the
Joanne Lockwood: high paid workers. We need to make sure we get
Joanne Lockwood: representation in society, because that's
Joanne Lockwood: how we will win, by believing in ourselves.
Joanne Lockwood: Because when we don't see ourselves represented, we have less faith,
Joanne Lockwood: we have less trust. So it's about building trust, isn't it? It
Evelyn Alsultany: is. I think that in most
Evelyn Alsultany: institutional arenas, people
Evelyn Alsultany: can do everything they can to make change. The one
Evelyn Alsultany: arena that I'm most concerned with that I think has so much
Evelyn Alsultany: influence is the policy level. And so when I think
Evelyn Alsultany: about how do you combat Islamophobia? Okay, more
Evelyn Alsultany: stories, that's great. More inclusion in the workplace and in
Evelyn Alsultany: universities, okay, but you can do all that
Evelyn Alsultany: and you can still have policies that convey to you that Muslims
Evelyn Alsultany: are a threat to national security. So
Evelyn Alsultany: part of me feels that there's a lot of great work being done,
Evelyn Alsultany: but as long as there's this American
Evelyn Alsultany: government machine that is
Evelyn Alsultany: conveying that message, it'll be very hard to actually
Evelyn Alsultany: really shift the problem. And
Joanne Lockwood: you see exactly the same dehumanisation playing out with trans
Joanne Lockwood: people. Black, brown, people of colour. We
Joanne Lockwood: see women being described as
Joanne Lockwood: less than a man, more emotional. How
Joanne Lockwood: can they expect to have equality when they take ten years out of their jobs
Joanne Lockwood: to have children, et cetera, et cetera? Or women who
Evelyn Alsultany: can't have access to abortions anymore in the US,
Evelyn Alsultany: transgender bathroom bills that make it an
Evelyn Alsultany: impossibility. These kinds of policies are incredibly
Evelyn Alsultany: damaging. And it's not just the US,
Joanne Lockwood: unfortunately, the US has a kind of a bleeding
Joanne Lockwood: influence through the English speaking world,
Joanne Lockwood: the UK, where transgender people are
Joanne Lockwood: accused of everything these days, we even the root cause
Joanne Lockwood: of Scottish independence. And our
Joanne Lockwood: politicians get elected on who's the most transphobic, which is no different to some of
Joanne Lockwood: the Trump type views, where
Joanne Lockwood: you're trying to mobilise your masses by appealing to
Joanne Lockwood: each different person individually to hear their pain,
Joanne Lockwood: and then they forget that they've got nothing in common. They just hear their pain
Joanne Lockwood: and think they've been spoken to. So it's happening in the world over, and I
Joanne Lockwood: think it's incumbent on all of us
Joanne Lockwood: who are currently voiceless, unheard, marginalised,
Joanne Lockwood: minoritized, to mobilise our allies, the people who have the
Joanne Lockwood: privilege, and get them to hear our stories. I think that's what we can do.
Joanne Lockwood: And keep pushing. I agree.
Joanne Lockwood: Evelyn, it's been absolutely amazing. I could chat to you all
Joanne Lockwood: day and have another cup of Teacap with you.
Joanne Lockwood: Tell us more about how people can get in contact with you. I want to
Joanne Lockwood: hear more about your book. Tell us more about your book and the work you
Joanne Lockwood: do. Thank you, Joanne. So I just published a book called
Evelyn Alsultany: Broken the Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion, which looks
Evelyn Alsultany: at the process through which Muslims have come to be included in
Evelyn Alsultany: Hollywood corporations, universities and law
Evelyn Alsultany: enforcement, the promises and pitfalls of diversity
Evelyn Alsultany: inclusion. My book can be purchased
Evelyn Alsultany: at amazon.com NYU Press, which is the publisher, or
Evelyn Alsultany: wherever you buy your book. And I'd also
Evelyn Alsultany: like to mention that I co
Evelyn Alsultany: created a test to help Hollywood
Evelyn Alsultany: improve representations of Muslims. It's called the Obati al
Evelyn Alsultany: Sultani test. I created it with Sue Obati, who is
Evelyn Alsultany: the director of the Hollywood Bureau at the Muslim Public Affairs
Evelyn Alsultany: Council, and it offers some guidance on
Evelyn Alsultany: how to better diversify representations of
Evelyn Alsultany: Muslims. And your listeners can learn more about me at my
Evelyn Alsultany: website, EvelynAlsultany.com, and
Evelyn Alsultany: I'm also on Twitter and Instagram a little bit, not too much,
Evelyn Alsultany: and you can find me there at Evelyn Alsultany. Thank you so much,
Evelyn Alsultany: Joanne. Pleasure. So that's Evelyn
Joanne Lockwood: E-V-E-L-Y-N Alsultany.
Joanne Lockwood: A-L-S-U-L-T-A-N-Y. That's how
Joanne Lockwood: you spell your name. Brilliant. Thank you. So I think we've
Joanne Lockwood: got that. Well, it's been amazing talking to you, as I've said, and
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, your stories and what, the work
Joanne Lockwood: you're doing is incredible. Even if we're only moving that needle a
Joanne Lockwood: couple of degrees, we're still moving that needle. We're not going back
Joanne Lockwood: because we're holding that strength. So I think really important.
Joanne Lockwood: So thank you very much and also a huge thank you to you, the listener,
Joanne Lockwood: for staying with us to get to the end. I really appreciate
Joanne Lockwood: this. If you're not already, please subscribe. To
Joanne Lockwood: keep updated on future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast. It's
Joanne Lockwood: B-I-T-E-S. Please share this episode. Please
Joanne Lockwood: share all the episodes. Tell your friends, tell your colleagues to subscribe.
Joanne Lockwood: We would love your support. And of course, I've got a number of other guests
Joanne Lockwood: lined up over the next few weeks and months. If you'd like to be a
Joanne Lockwood: guest, I'd love to have you on the show. All you need to do is
Joanne Lockwood: drop me an email to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. Tell me you'd like to
Joanne Lockwood: appear. We can sort that out. Tell me how we can improve if you think
Joanne Lockwood: we can. So, finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood.
Joanne Lockwood: It's been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. I
Joanne Lockwood: look forward to catching up with you next time. Bye.