Black Liberation
Why we all need to be leaders with Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu
In a societal sense I believe there’s an obligation for all of us to do the work. For all of us to be leaders. So, leadership for me has nothing to do with your job title or where you sit in the hierarchy of an organisation. It’s about those of us, of you, that have the moral courage to keep putting your head above the parapet and speaking truth to power, even though we live in a society that does not value our voice. This is why I invited Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu to speak with us today. She too does not play or as I would say she don’t ramp. Deadly serious about calling out what needs to be called out and inspirational in the fact that she keeps going.
I find her personally inspiring. And every time I think about ‘woe is me’ because I’m being trolled I flip over and see what she’s up to and I’m like ‘listen, I can keep going because I don’t get half of that!’. And I wanted somebody who would centre Black people. Who wasn’t going to send to whiteness, or try and appeal to the goodwill of white people.
I know we’ve got to do that in an organisational sense, but in real life, for those of us who are impacted by racism, there are things we need and think to do differently because we can also impact change. Even though we don’t have the job title. Even though we don’t have the power. Even though we don’t have the rank. Even though we don’t have the privilege. So Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu is a lawyer, an activist and an author. And she’s going to take us to her version of church for the next 25 minutes.
Authenticity
When I think about speaking truth to power, particularly when everyone’s trying to keep us quiet the word that comes to mind is authenticity. I find with many Black people, when we go out into the world, you know into our workplace or our businesses, we often have to adapt to how the world expects to see us. But the one thing we can never and should never change is what keeps us grounded. And that’s our authenticity.
And when I say authenticity, I mean that if you know who you are, right now, nobody can give you a new definition.
Irrespective of what circumstances you find yourself. The workplace, as an example, can be (not always) a place for Black identity mischaracterisation. And it is difficult when you have ambition, you want to grow in your career and you’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, what do I do now? I just heard this. I just saw that! What do I do?’ Brothers and sisters, I need you to remember who you are in every circumstance.
I need you to remember that there’s power in who you are, in every circumstance.
There’s power in every personality that the good Lord gave you, in every circumstance. You have to be able to determine for yourself that the issue you’ve just witnessed, or the thing that has happened to you or somebody else, what you feel about it. What you’re not happy about. If you want to use it as a teachable moment to correct a situation so that it does not repeat itself. Please in the name of all those who do something about it.
I’ll give an example.
I remember a senior stakeholder meeting, where I was sitting with the different heads of business, and one of them was talking about bringing a particular client on board. And the phrase ‘deep dark Africa’ was repeatedly used and so I said, ‘Deep, Dark, Africa?’ You know Nigerians, we use our whole bodies as a language of expression. There’ was nothing else that that needs to be said. I actually did not say anything else. But it was clear in that moment, that nobody expected me to respond in this manner, to an expression they were so used to using.
And before the day was out the man himself apologised. The head of business apologised. And my boss, who wasn’t at the meeting, spoke to the head of business and she came over to me saying, ‘Oh, sure. I heard so and so happened, and I assured him that you are not like that!’. And I replied, “Hold on a second. Deep, dark Africa? I’ll have you know that we have a whole lot more sun in Africa than here. So what exactly is dark about Africa that we have to use such language?’. Now she wasn’t expecting that from me.
So I want to say to all of us that we do come across circumstances that stump us, because we’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, that’s my manager!’, ’This is awkward!’, ‘This is social gathering!’ or, ‘I don’t want to be seen as difficult because you know, those racial stereotypes!’.
I do not want you to give a rat’s arse what people think.
Don’t give a flying flamingo. Because this is all part of learning.
Even if you don’t feel you can say something in that moment, say something to somebody, whether it’s someone senior to you, or if you can approach the particular person, by all means engage, always use the opportunity.
I don’t know about you, but I decided a whole long time ago. A long time ago! About those conversations in your head, that you have when you’re younger, about things you wished you’d said in the moment. I got to a point in my life that I said, ‘I would prefer not to go to bed wishing I’d said that. I want to go to bed knowing I said everything that is my heart’.
And everything does not need to be confrontational. You need to pick your battles. But understand that the issue of race, racism and race inclusion is a hard conversation. There is no easy way to have them.
You can’t run away from confronting what is actually confronting you.
There is violence in racial stereotypes, there’s violence in microaggressions and there is violence in a work environment that pulls you down rather than pulls you up. So you have to be able to choose and determine for yourself when the pinch in the shoe really hurts.. You don’t need to be loud. You don’t need to be the most vocal person. Your personality is perfect for whatever you need to do. Just take action. Don’t be silent.
Educating the present for the future
We need to educate both the adults of today and of tomorrow. It’s not either or. We are a generation where our parents passed on their knowledge but clearly something was amiss somewhere. White people were not progressing. Here we are, you know, passing down knowledge that we need to be careful, ‘If you see a police officer behave this way’, ‘When you go to work just put your head down’. But our generation was like, ‘You know what I’m done. I’m done with having to be told to wait my turn, and the turn for Black and brown people seems to be like forever’. So I say we need to do both. We need to educate and support our community while we build change during our time. Don’t get me wrong.
I’m very much for building a better society for my children to live in. But hey, I would like to live in a better society today.
I don’t have 100 years to wait. This is not like women’s rights when it took them 100 years to get the right to vote. Shola does’t have 100 years. I would like some change to be happening right now. Which is why the work you’re doing Shereen is very important, which is why our individual responsibility, especially with our own individual spaces, is absolutely important. So for instance if you have work colleagues who are displaying prejudice, racial prejudice, I would say that’s an opportunity for you to correct them and say, ‘Hey, I’m your Black friend, or I am that Black colleague. Let me tell you why what you’re saying is wrong’. I’m always hoping that by doing these corrections, by having those conversations, we’re helping to build better knowledge now to have a better society. Heck yes we must work on our children. Heck yes we must work on our communities. Heck yes we must continue to support each other. And yes we must call out those of our brothers and sisters that are ready to throw us under the bus because they are part of the barrier, they are not part of the solution.
Change takes time, but…
I accept change takes time. I don’t think there is anything about what we do that remotely suggests we don’t know it’s going to take time. But people have to understand that if the mentality of ‘change takes time’ means that you should do nothing, my response is that’s total BS and I don’t have time for it. The thing is, am I expecting total change in equity today? Oh God, I would love that, but no, it’s not happening today. Do I expect the total eradication of white supremacy tomorrow, or by next Friday? I would love that too, but I know it’s not going to happen because it takes time.
But let me tell you the difference here. My parents, their parents and their parents parents all went through the world with the understanding that change takes time, and everybody was biding their time, minding their ‘p’s and q’s’. Well I don’t have time for that. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve made an individual decision that I will not tolerate inequality and injustice in my lifetime. This is not debatable. If you do not like what I have to say, and you do not like the manner in which I say it, people there’s a queue go join it! I don’t have time for such nonsense.
I know for a fact that me calling out what needs to be called out surely cannot be the problem, because the problem is the issue that’s happening. The lives of those who want to keep the status quo is predicated on denying equal life and liberty to Black people, to brown people. You see what I mean? And I always say to people as well, this is not about you choosing to be quiet. No, it should be about what triggers you, right here in your heart, into action whether that’s in your workplace, your high street or in your home. What triggers you to action? Do it. We are all influencers in our own right. I always say, you don’t need LinkedIn to call you an influencer before you’re an influencer.
You don’t need anybody to put a label on you to call you a leader before you’re a leader.
Come on. When the good Lord made you it was not an accident, you have purpose and you have destiny. You need to walk in that. So when I’m hearing, ‘change takes time’, I know change takes time, we are part of that process in bringing about change. And it will take longer if the Shereen’s and the Shola of this world did nada! we do not do the work. Yes. It will take longer. So in the name of all that is good, let me do what I was called to do when I came out to my mother’s poonani! Let me follow my hearts desire!
I am satisfied, even if the change doesn’t come right now, that I’m using every breath the good Lord gave me to do what I’m called to do. So the day that I finally meet my maker I know we did good. There are few regrets, and I’m good to go. And it means that many of us need to do the work, whichever way we work, whether we are visible or not. When I say visible I mean in terms of media but people don’t understand that a whole lot more work is being done behind the scenes. There are powerful, incredible people who are making incredible changes in our communities behind the scenes, those who don’t get to go on TV, who are not quoted in newspapers, and all of their work is absolutely critical to this change that is going to take time. But if they were not doing the work that change would take longer. So please, let’s do what we are called to do. Let’s not worry.
Picking our battles
And let’s pick our battles. Self care is something I would never have given much credence too if you’d asked me two years ago, but the pandemic forced us to sit our butts down and there’s no way to run from ourselves. You had no choice but to sit down in your own space. Right. And so I was forced to understand that taking care of myself – my mental health, my physical health – is really important. It wasn’t until I wrote my book, writing the third chapter I had to take breaks because it was first time in my life I realised that even with all my ‘visibleness’ I’ve internalised so much. I did not realise how much. And I had to take breaks to allow it to come out. And I’m not the only one because one of the ways we survive as a people is not to think too much about all of the things that we’re going through.
Imagine if we had to stew in it all, we wouldn’t be able to function. So what we do is we take the experience, we park it to one side, put it in another compartment so we can keep moving. It’s part of our strength but we are not helping ourselves mentally if we don’t break things down, analyse and build stronger off the back of it. So I would say it’s not about fighting, but it is about fighting. It is about demanding that change must come. Yes, we should demand change but we do understand it takes time. Time is not a reason or excuse to do things slower because if you do things slower then change will take longer.
Self care
I am a woman of faith. My faith in God is what I’m grounded in. First and foremost. It is why certain things don’t shake me.
Some of the haters they look for you, and there was, for example, a message sent to my YouTube channel a while ago saying, ‘She’s so ugly…she looks like a monkey’. And what was interesting was, as I was reading that statement my faith was rejecting it and responding back with the word of God saying, ‘I am fearfully and wonderfully made’. And, when Jesus is Lord, this person doesn’t know a fine thing. I am fine.
I think sometimes it is so important for us to stay grounded. You need to know who you are. Doesn’t matter what people say about you. It shouldn’t shake you. It doesn’t mean that you’re not hurt. It doesn’t mean you will not feel sad that people can be so unreasonable. But if you continually work on remembering who you are and why you do what you are doing I think that keeps you in a much more stable place
I remember my, now 12- year old, asking me this question. She said, ‘Mummy, how do you go out there and just speak to people you don’t know? Aren’t you nervous?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am after all I don’t know them and they don’t know me’. Then she said, ‘What do you do if they don’t like you?’, and I replied, ‘This is what I do. First of all I pray and then I go and be me. Because I can’t be anybody else. And those who are called to like me, will like me and those who don’t want to like me there’s a queue go and join it!’.
So I think it’s really important for us to understand and I think this comes with maturity and also as we evolve. And we all evolve differently. Some people evolve much younger, some people older, I’m definitely the latter. It’s only as I got older, and my husband’s like, ‘Oh Shola, not everything you have to respond to!’. And it took me a while to figure that out. But what I’m saying is this, especially as Black women, our personalities are set in a defined Black identity. That has nothing to do with us. We contributed nothing to the identity of being angry Black women, or strong Black women, which we know is not a compliment, because that is usually used to pile on more oppression and loss because after all, she can take it. It’s one of the reasons why we have higher Black maternity deaths. Think about it.
Defined Black women’s identity
It is time to break down the miseducation of the Black woman’s identity and it can be deconstructed with a few home truths. There are three things. Don’t you dare call me an angry Black woman because I am passionate, justifiably angry, biologically female and of African descent. Don’t you dare call me an aggressive, dominant bully because I am visible and have conviction of my cause. That I’m unapologetically vocal and can assertively defend my opinions. And thirdly, don’t you dare undermine my excellence and brilliance because of your irrational fear and unfathomable inferiority complex of your false security.
The reason why I break this down is, and I hope a lot of you watching will resonate with this, is the visibility for us Black women is not about whether or not we’re on TV. It’s when you open this god given mouth of yours, immediately they go, ‘That’s a troublemaker! She’s being difficult.’ The moment, and let’s be clear this is not all white people this is just some but this is how the system works. When Black people, and particularly Black women, demonstrate excellence or brilliance it’s threatening. When we demonstrate a difference of opinion, we are bullies.
And all of these things are set out to silence us, to silence our authenticity and our voice. This is why I say we have to shrug these things off. You have to recognise it for what it is. And for some of us, it might take time to grow the confidence, to say, ‘I don’t like this I’m going to say something’ and that’s okay. Don’t think you have to turn overnight to be somebody you’re not yet ready for.
The only thing you can
defend is what you believe.
So when you open your mouth to say something. And when you take action on something, it means you’re ready to defend it. And this is where confidence comes in. People think that confidence is an emotion. Confidence is not an emotion in my own experience. Confidence is just action. The emotion comes right after it. A lot of what I do is not because I’m feeling confident. It’s because I’m passionate about and something needs to be done about it. It’s only afterwards that I thinking, ‘Oh, did I say that? Oh did I do that?’. Because in the moment I’m like, ‘What did I say!’ It’s only afterwards, or a few moments with my husband when he’s like, ‘Oh Shola.’ But in the moment, I’m like, ‘Let’s go!’.
But everybody is different. And that’s what I’m saying, you need to work. You need to work with your own strength, with your own personality, whatever situation you may be in.
The way you have been made is perfect for
what you have to do.
So confidence is action people, it is simply taking a step especially when you’re scared out of your mind of what to do. And for those who think, ‘Yeah Shola just goes on TV or writes…there are many times I’ve got butterflies in my belly!’.
But the first thing I always do is pray. And then I go out and be me, hopefully people see the glory of the Lord above us. I’m just trying to encourage all of us to fight for equality, to fight for racial justice, to be seen for who we are. I mean, just accept me as I am. As accept you as you are. If I engage in a debate with you, it doesn’t mean I’m angry with you. Yeah, I probably strongly disagree with you. But I can shake your hands right afterwards. As a lawyer by training let me tell you we disagree. That’s the nature of our work. Doctors have differences of opinions all the time. Imagine that they all just got into fights that doesn’t make sense.
But imagine also, that this is going to affect your quality of life and choice. And that’s what it boils down to when we when we talk about race, racism and race inclusion. It directly impacts the quality of life and choice for Black people, brown people, and we need to work together. Start with individual choices and that comes together to merge with collective choices. This makes a big impact.
Visible Black voices
They’re more visible Black voices in the world than mine, but the attacks we get and the threats we receive are no joke. And they’re there to try and belittle us. To try to make us feel that what we’re working for is not achievable. That it’s impossible. But then when I hear the good feedback, when I remember those who came before us, when I think about our children, the next thing I always think is that it is so much better to to speak.
Speak through your own truth. Always. Don’t worry about what the person to your left or right is thinking about you. And I know this is hard. I get it. I really really do get it. But I think that we have to be much more active. It is so much more important. You know when we get our white brothers and sisters saying things like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a Black friend, a Black husband, Black children’, all of that I think there’s a responsibility that arises to engage with our white siblings. And it doesn’t always have to be affable.
Engagement could be, you know, we’re pushing each other, with each other to truth. So I always say to people, find somebody you’re safe with. So a white sibling, your Black or brown friend. Find someone and have a conversation and expect that conversation to get hard. And I always say as well that we should not feel we need to dilute the message. Why are you diluting something that hurts you? It’s not diluted when it hits you. So why in Gods name are you diluting it to make somebody else feel comfortable? Are you kidding me there’s nothing comfortable about racism?
The experience of others
There are people who will say, ‘Well, that’s not really my experience’. By using their words, these people are actually legitimising and giving credit to the dehumanisation of their brothers and sisters that look like them. Let me just put it this way.
I don’t need to experience what you have experienced in your journey. It is bad enough that you experienced it. For all I know I could be next or I might never experience it but if it’s wrong is wrong. People say things like, ‘It’s not so bad in the UK compared to the US.’ Are you out of your godforsaken mind? It is the same thing. We don’t need to police to have guns for us to know that there have been cases of Black people dying in police custody, just by the baton or by hands or beaten to a pulp. So people I always say look, it’s so important for us to engage in a way that is authentic.
When it comes to racism, Black people are not a single monolith of thought and we should not be.
Because we are rich in opinion, because we are rich in our diverse ways of trying to sort things out and because we are also rich in our personalities, it means that sometimes we see things differently. But I think we have a responsibility not to downplay somebody else’s experience because it’s not ours.
Racial gatekeepers
And then when we come to things like racial gatekeepers, people have said to me, ‘Oh Shola why are you being so hard? Just because she doesn’t agree with you.’ Understand there’s a difference between a difference of opinion and racial gatekeeping and we have way racial gatekeepers in the workplace. People who rise up the ranks or who want to rise up the ranks and will tolerate what they shouldn’t be tolerating, which is then used as a test case and applied to everybody else. Even when they get into a certain position. It’s like okay, look, I’ve got here now, I need to go higher. So I need to act like these other people and forget others that looked like me.
We shouldn’t we shouldn’t be doing that. We need to take responsibility for actions. Nobody’s saying you should not progress your career, please, brothers and sisters progress, but your progress should not come at the cost of somebody else’s quality of life and choice, or even the bigger picture. The point of me rising, as a woman of faith, I believe that I’m blessed so I can be a blessing. So the point of me rising is that those coming behind me, I can open up the floodgates for.
So I’m one of those people that if I get a position and opportunity I’m not going to ask why did they give that to me?
Is it because I’m a Black woman? Am I a tick box exercise?
I could not give a rat’s ass. What I’m going to do with it is what matters to me because maybe somebody made a mistake. You know like, ‘Let’s give it to Shola you know, she’ll do whatever we want her to.’
But I will get in there and more Sholas will come in, more Shereens will come in. And this is exactly what we ought to be doing. And this is why it is important that we keep on this conversation and that of those around us regardless of their race, their faith, their sex. Understand that you are always authentic and true to yourself. And can I just say authenticity also means recognising that you can get things wrong. Yes. And then learning where you get things wrong, because I get things wrong. And I have to learn when I get things wrong. I cannot possibly have all the answers. There’s certain things that I instinctively respond to because I know I I’ve already gone through that thought process. So I know where to start. But there are some things I’ve not had the opportunity to process. I don’t have the narrative or the content to speak on it. It means I am still learning and I’m not ashamed to say, ‘I don’t have a comment on that’ or, ‘I don’t have an informed opinion on it yet’, or I’ll make it clear that I’m not well versed on this, but this is what I think. There is no shame in it. I didn’t tell anybody I’m an expert on anything. All I’ve said is Shola is my name, you will hear what I think and I am authentic in my thinking.
Making mistakes
I think that growth and evolution means us recognising that we can, and we will, make mistakes along the way. It’s not about falling and never coming back. No. When you make a mistake, as many of us know, if it doesn’t kill you, it’s there to build you right. It’s not there to break you. We have to learn from it. And I think that one of the things I talk about a lot as well is privilege.
We talk a lot about white privilege, right? And how this is used in our society to dehumanise Black people, right. It gives them an advantage. And then we have this whole conversation where people go, ‘Well what white privilege are you taking about? I ended up council flat. I work 70 hours. I do this etc etc.’ And I’m like, ‘That has jack-all to do with anything!’ We spend time speaking to our white brothers and sisters about what their privilege is and what it does.
You know how it impacts everybody else and how they have a responsibility to use that privilege to step into the gap. But they can only use that privilege if they continually educate themselves in understanding, ‘Ah, okay, this is wrong!’ And I get it, racism is not their lived experience. You’re like me standing with a white friend in a store and we experience covert racism. I can’t blame my white friend who does not recognise what covert or what that particular covert racism is. Right? Unless we tell them and then they understand because the next time they know what to do.
Privilege
However, when we talk about privileges, my brothers and sisters, remember that we all have some form of privilege. So the same way I say white brothers and sisters, I need you to use your privilege. I ask my Black brothers and sisters we have privilege that comes from how the society caters to white, male, heterosexual, Christian and able bodied. You and I will never ever experienced white privilege that’s not for us because we are not white, right? I will never benefit from or have male privilege because I am not male. But for instance, those of us that are able bodied you know that this society caters to be able bodied first of all, and those with disabilities are an afterthought and for me that privilege means that we have a responsibility to ensure that our brothers and sisters with disabilities are not denied an equal value of life and liberty. Do you see? What about those of us who are transexuals. We know we live in a society that caters to heterosexuality, treated as though its the preferred sex, the primary sex and you know with this privilege comes a responsibility to ensure that our LGBTQIA brothers and sisters are not denied an equal value of life and liberty because of a society that denies it to them and shows preference to another. Some of us are Christians and we live in a society that treats our Muslim brothers and sisters like lepers.Treats Islam like its the false religion. You don’t need to be Muslim to know that that is wrong. And I’m saying we live in a society where as Christians, we have a privilege and with that privilege comes the responsibility for ensuring that our Muslim brothers and sisters are not denied equal value of life and liberty. Privilege cuts both ways. And I’m saying just as we expect of our white brothers and sisters, for us to build our own better community we need to stand in the gap for each other as well. And recognise all of these, you know, not just the inequalities, but the characteristics that we all bear that intersect. That is really important for us to be able to grow stronger.
Centring whiteness
Absolutely. So when they talk about centring whiteness, it’s not because we centre whiteness, it is because whiteness is default in our society. So take for example, the plaster you put on your skin, which doesn’t even match your skin colour, most times; what you watch on TV like adverts; how you are expected to dress for work and how you are expected to dress your hair. The very definition of professionalism and a professional look is defined by and centred in whiteness, and that’s white supremacy. And we need to dismantle everyday white supremacy. That’s exactly what I’m talking about in my book where I gave examples of what centring whiteness looks like.
So when I talk, for instance, about you and I going to work, right. There’s a certain way we’re meant to dress. Even down to the material you should use for your skirt or your top. Do you know how long it took for it to be acceptable for women to wear trouser suits! Now imagine even more so. If we were to use colour in our suits, you know we like colour right! Colourful fabric in our work clothes. How would we be perceived? And imagine for a lot of us when we go to work that we put on weave or wear wigs because we have to look a certain way which is more palatable. Why is that?
Our braids are beautiful, our ethnic hairstyles are brilliant, but because whiteness is centred with how people are expected to look. It denies us our very heritage, even some of our children are denied entry into school because they’ve got dreads or because of their braids. How does that make any sense? I’m trying to encourage people to think about how, personally, individually we’ve embodied the sense of whiteness without even knowing.
It wasn’t until I was doing so research that it hit me that all my life the plasters I’ve used on my skin were all beige or a totally different colour. It never occurred to me that I could have plasters matched by skin colour. I mean, just think about how that works deep inside your brain. It’s what you see all the time. And imagine what we are sold and how we are sold stuff through adverts. Right! Anytime, for the longest time, you see Black people in some way there’s always something derogatory associated with us. The parts we get to play in the media and in films. How they use us or how they fail to use us. They fail to show that diverse representation. There’s a reason for it.
I ‘ve had people argue that, ‘If I want to see more Black people on TV, go back to Nigeria’. What! This is my country. And with all due respect there is no British without the British Africa, without the British Asia. There is no British without us. Why can’t we see ourselves on TV? Why is it when it comes to what they like about Blackness. The moment they catch on to what they like about Blackness they take so much from it, but when we do it it’s ‘too ghetto’. It’s not right.
All of these things. They also play out in the workplace. Think about how some people are selected for a particular presentation, or selected to go represent the company. You could be the best person with all the know how, you’ve got your attitude. And your attitude is your confident, that’s you’re brilliant, but it’s not on demand because of your braids.
I think you get to a place in your life when you understand it is not your hair that defines you. You define your hair. People don’t understand or they choose not understand and that is their problem. Brothers and sisters, I get that we need to eat and we need to earn and this is why we need to keep doing this work. Because it’s only the last two, three years that I’ve seen, especially after George Floyd’s murder and the global Black Lives Matter protests that we have seen a dent, a dent, just a crack in the way some organisations are now dealing with Black issues with racism, and race inclusion because they know it’s going to affect their bottom line. Right? If it’s going to affect their bottom line, they sit up and listen. This is all part of why we keep talking so much. Centring whiteness, so I’m going to give you all some homework! Think about something, maybe not right now but tomorrow or next week, something you enjoy doing but is centring whiteness.
Why isn’t there more room for more things that represent people like us. Why are we an afterthought?
How many times can we keep having this conversation?
And this is why this is one of the things I always say. When we pick our battles we need to understand who you’re talking to and you need to understand why you’re having the conversation. I am unapologetic in saying there are some people I am not going to waste my energy on. I can smell you from afar that you want to waste my energy. All you want to do is have a conversation to deny what is blatantly obvious and I am the wrong Black activist to be talking to. Maybe there’s somebody else that has the patience. But for me I will verbally bury you.
There’s a fight. There’s a war at the front. I need to be there. I cannot afford for my energy to be zapped. I am only human. So I will have time for it. And people go well, ‘Doesn’t that mean you stop the conversation?’ No. It means that I know my strengths. And I know where I’m better placed. So, you know sometimes you see some of these public debates that I engage in. And some people, some Black voices who will not enter that public debate. And I respect their choices. I can do some public debates because I know our voice is needed in there. Because I know it is better for us to give a different opinion. Because the mainstream is already thinking a particular way. Some people go on big channels and they spout out their ignorance deliberately to mislead, to paint us as people who we are not. And sometimes we need to get into that boxing ring and it comes at a cost. It does come at a cost. It comes at a cost of your self care. It comes out possibly with some of your own people going, ‘Why does she have to talk like that? And why she always shouting and shouting’. So I’m like, ‘When they were shouting at me, or they have an issue ,you want to be lady like!’. Well this is my definition of lady life. I just take my invisible Nigerian rapper and attach it around my waist and say, ‘Let’s go!’.