The 1990s are remembered for Britpop and New Labour. But it was also a time of inequality and racism. In this sixth episode of With Reason, we talk to Jason Arday about his new book Cool Britannia and Multi-Ethnic Britain: Uncorking the Champagne Supernova. As a sociologist and long-term Oasis fan, Arday draws on his South London teenage years to interrogate the period from an ethnic minority perspective that has for too long been neglected.

A discussion about music and identity, inclusion and exclusion, racism and resistance. For readers of Reni Eddo-Lodge, Robin DiAngelo - and Oasis fans, too.

Host: Alice Bloch
Co-host: Samira Shackle
Producer: Alice Bloch
Music: Danosongs

Podcast listeners can get a year's subscription to New Humanist magazine for just £13.50. Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON

Transcript:

Alice Bloch:

Hello and welcome to with reason with me Alice Bloch -

Samira Shackle:

-and me Samira Shackle. This is the podcast brought to you by New Humanist magazine and the Rationalist Association. It's a place where you can find bright new thinking and insight from writers and researchers whose ideas deserve to be heard, but which aren't, of course exempt from being challenged. A place to find intelligent thinking in turbulent, ever-questioning times, exploring matters of reason, unreason, and more.

AB:

Yep, in this series, we've talked about everything from sex robots to virtue signalling, Protestantism to post-work utopias. We've met people like the anthropologist Joe Webster, who has talked to us about his research on faith, hatred and fraternity. We've heard from people like Mariele Pfannebecker, casting a critical eye on the subject of work, labour and desire in late capitalism. There was the feminist, journalist and author Minna Salami, shaking up stubborn ideas of knowledge, and Kate Devlin, an expert in social and cultural intelligence, scoping out the possible future of sex, tech and intimacy. But today, a turn to music, identity and politics.

SS:

Yes, our guest today is Jason Arday, a sociologist who is in no way stuck in the ivory tower. He actually does a lot of work on race and racism and diversity in higher education. And alongside that, he's also the author of Cool Britannia and Multi-Ethnic Britain: Uncorking the Champagne Supernova, which is a really interesting book that challenges the rose-tinted idea of the ‘90s. That's this sort of idea of, obviously, as in the title ‘Cool Britannia’, that the ‘90s was this period of utopia and inclusion, and everything was great and rosy and brilliant. So Alice, you and I, like Jason, would have been kids in the mid ‘90s, when that period was underway, Jason reminds us that it wasn't a straightforward story of Britpop, New Labour and football coming home. Before we bring you the main interview with him, here he is talking about that period.

JA:

In terms of, I guess, the Cool Britannia years, one of the things that's kind of really interesting is how people kind of look back on a period of time, I think for a lot of people who kind of grew up during that period it’s quite a kaleidoscopic, colourful period, intertwined with kind of, I guess, fantastic culture, fantastic subculture. And the dawn of New Labour also represented something really new or really powerful for a new generation coming through. But I guess the counter-narrative to that is the experience for ethnic minorities. And at that time, it was a particularly hostile environment for black and ethnic minority people within the UK. And you had the Metropolitan Police Service kind of being declared as institutionally racist. And you had basically football hooliganism, in terms of racism, really facilitating these ideas, these kind of abhorrent xenophobia ideas, which were quite divisive, and obviously made it quite a toxic environment for ethnic minorities to live in at the time. And I guess, the hallmark moment, in that kind of encasement of inequality and societal discrimination and racial discrimination, was really, the most seminal moment, was the death of Stephen Lawrence. It was very symbolic of what black people had been facing in the UK 20, 30 years prior to that. It's just I guess, this is the only one that caught fire.

SS:

So in order to study this time, Jason used a method called auto-ethnography. We asked him to explain what that actually is.

JA:

For the actual book, I was very fortunate to interview just over 80 people to get their understanding of the time – obviously, because at the time I was, I myself was still a child. So it was a case of making sense of that time through people's lived experiences, but in a generational way. I interviewed people who at the time would have been, you know, 50, 40, 30, 20. And then we kind of got into adolescence, which is where I was at the time. And for me, the auto-ethnography is just basically a storytelling tool. So if you're an ethnographic researcher, you normally tell the story within. So you might be doing research where you might examine a group of people, and you may immerse yourself within that group of people. And basically, the idea or the aim is to tell that story as accurately, and where possible, as poignantly as possible, and give those individuals a space or a platform to engage or discuss their lived experiences. And so an auto-ethnography, the auto aspect is probably more centered on my own experiences in that time.

SS:

And how old were you in the period that the book talks about?

JA:

So at the end of ‘90s, I was 15. So I was 15, in 2000. So at the beginning of ‘90s, I was five.

SS:

So we'll come back later to talk about some of the really big events that happened in the Cool Britannia era. But first, maybe you could tell us about how you experienced those years as a child and a young adolescent – so, where you were born, where you grew up, how you got into music, what kind of music you liked, and so on.

JA:

I'm from Clapham, South London, that's where I was born, and I grew up on a council estate, in relative poverty. But I think the beauty of growing up in that kind of environment was that my parents were fantastic, you know, I never really knew I was poor, until really, I got to university. I had a really nice childhood. I'm autistic. And I have Asperger's and global development delay, so it’s a hybrid of autism. And I basically didn't learn to speak until I was 11. And I didn't learn to read and write until I was 18. So one of the things that was kind of really useful, my mum used music as a mechanism to get me to understand the world around me. And it was fantastic, because I was able to learn instruments, or an instrument in terms of playing guitar. And then I was able to just make sense of the world through music. And that's actually apart from having speech therapists. And people on hand helped me a lot – one of the reasons I was able to come out of signing was just, I was able to make a synergy between music and life. And it made a lot of sense to me in a way that textbooks or more conventional ways of learning didn't make sense. And I guess my kind of association affiliation with the Cool Britannia period is that – you know, I've got brothers, and they had different interests – but obviously, I think it wasn't so much that I was a novelty, but I recognise that as a black male, it may have seemed peculiar to people, or strange that here's this black male from South London, who has like, an obsessive interest with four guys from working class Manchester.

AB:

And Jason, when you say that, you're referring to Oasis?

JA:

Oasis. Yeah.

AB:

Tell me a bit about, about why you were so into them, or kind of how you were into them, I suppose. So I think you write about hearing that album Definitely Maybe in 1994? Why did that resonate with you?

JA:

You know I came, I come from a really kind of politically and socially aware family. And a lot of my childhood was actually spent on picket lines and protests with my mum. So I had to, you know, I had as far as a child can have, a good understanding of what kind of class and social mobility meant at that time, and I've been able to take this from kind of songs – listening to kind of different types of music and stuff, and socialist movements. So stuff around, you know, in terms of when Bob Marley talks about particular types of movements, or particular types of socialism, you know, to a point – The Jam, those types of things – I had an okay idea that I was able to relate to the music I’d listen to. And basically, I just remember hearing, like I said, the opening chords to ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, and I was just completely blown away. You know, once I began to learn a bit more about this story, it was the idea of (as I've kind of said in the book) of four kind of working-class people, that have come from nothing, taking on the world and winning. And there was something about that message that just really resonated with me, because I just looked at my surroundings and thought, well, I could do that. I think I could do that. But I guess what you don't factor in are the intersectional inequalities that may prohibit someone from doing that, or that may, you know, the things that might paralyse that ambition. But whilst I was still green, and young, you know, the idea of that was really seductive to me.

SS:

You said there, the “intersections” of different factors and obstacles that are in place to following that path. What were those?

JA:

Well, I think I think the most obvious one would be my race. So, like, and it's one of those things, that's quite an interesting thing, because my little boy is five, and my daughter's 13. And when I was six years older than Noah is, so 11, my Dad had a conversation with me about kind of being stopped, you know: ‘potentially you will be stopped by police’, he had the conversation with me and my brothers. And at the time, I didn't really heed it, I didn't really take it on board, you know, I probably didn't understand what he meant, as well. And then three years later, it actually happened. That was the first time I did get stopped by police. It's one of those things where you try and make sense of that experience, and try and kind of understand why that's happening. And then you recognise that actually, this kind of utopian bubble that you've been living in where you, you know, you kind of entertain the idea of meritocracy for a bit. And you kind of think, ‘No, all things are fair, you know, we're all part of this together’. And then you realise you're not, you realise that actually, society works through a kind of a social stratification and within our intersections, and if you're, I guess, unfortunate to tick all of those intersectional boxes in terms of inequality, then things can be quite difficult for you in a really pernicious, violent, structural and systemic way.

AB:

And Jason, you say also that, you know, about loving Oasis, you say you were continually reminded that as a person from your ethnic background, you shouldn't really be into this type of thing. How did that reminding work? Who did it come from? And if I can ask the kind of third question, what did that feel like to value something, to be into it, and to also be told ‘Hey, this isn't really, this isn't really for you’.

JA:

Yeah, I felt it was pretty, pretty restrictive. I don't know why, specifically, but I knew from a very early age that the interests I had weren’t of people that were born in 1985, if that makes sense. So I was obsessed with ‘60s mod culture, in particular, the styling and the clothing. And I just knew that people didn't have that as a particular interest, for no other reason than people just interested in what they're interested in. So I just felt like if I was interested in that, why should it be anyone's problem, but I guess there are kind of restricted binaries, that regardless of race, we all put one another into. So we all kind of make assumptions and assertions on where people should fit, how they should kind of behave, what they should be into. And I just remember, you know, being right in the middle of that kind of construct. So you had kind of white people who would say, ‘oh, wow, like, why aren’t you into rap’? And then you'd have black people say, ‘why are you into rock'n'roll, that's not black music’. So the irony is, is that rock'n'roll derives from black heritage and black music, and the idea of rap – it depends what kind of what we're talking about, because if we're talking about rap that kind of denigrates other women of colour. I'm not really into that. But if we're talking about more progressive acts, who talk about black people in a more positive way, so I don't know De La Soul, Arrested Development, Public Enemy, then that's, that's a different type of narrative we're talking about.

SS:

Yeah, one of the things that you say in your book is that you loved Oasis, but you also felt the music didn't speak to your racialised experiences. And could you explain a bit more about what you meant by that?

JA:

Yeah. So what I thought the music spoke to was, you know, more of a class narrative. I guess that was kind of really exacerbated and jumped up, like sexualising the news, because you had the class war between, you know, Blur (who was seen as, these are students who had gone to Goldsmith’s from middle-class dwellings. And then kind of these almost ruffian Mancunians who'd kind of, you know – Noel Gallagher famously said, you know, ‘Does, you know, the fact that I've worked on a building site, does that make my soul more pure than Damon Albarn’s’? and his answer was like, ‘Yes, it does’. And those type of things. It was that whole idea, you know: ‘I'm really working-class’. I guess one of the things that's kind of really interesting is that the music itself, it was almost like – for want of a better term – it was it was, it was an act of resistance. I was about to say a rude word. It was an act of resistance to, you know, the kind of oppressive structures that had really been enshrined in, in kind of legislation and law through kind of oppressive Conservative rule. And then kind of what you had was effectively, you know, a rebuttal to that. And yes, there was a glorification of kind of sex, drugs and rock‘n’roll. But it was almost in a way where I was like, that's all we've got, you know, and we want to talk about it in this really kind of visceral, kind of raw way. And subsequently, as I got older, you recognise that these kinds of movements reinvent themselves – so I guess, you know, the reiteration before that was kind of punk. And then the kind of reiteration before that was kind of rock ‘n’ roll, but before that was rock ‘n’ roll taken from blacks and resold to whites, type thing. So you kind of recognise that these kind of have several different reincarnations. And, you know, for me, it was something about that, but I guess you recognise the racial dissonance aspect, that that aspect comes because your reality isn't theirs, really.

SS:

But when something happens to you, like getting stopped and searched as a teenager, which you described as kind of moment of awakening, does that change your relationship to the music? Obviously it changes your outlook, perhaps. But does your relationship to that music that's spoken to you so much on all these certain levels, if not others, does that shift at all?

JA:

It doesn't, it shifts because it becomes, it goes from a moment of inclusion to exclusion very quickly and in a very raw way. And what you don't realise is that kind of that early experience is ‘finishing school’ for what you encounter as an adult. And it's a difficult thing to comprehend. When you were 14, you know, you were with two white people, you get stopped by police. The police ask you ‘where have you been?’ And the two white people you're with ask you ‘what did you do?’ Because, you know, part of their conditioning is that, you know, black people do engage in criminal activity. And I guess what you end up preparing for is a lifetime of this, which … when it happened at 15 you know, I consciously thought this could be like this for the rest of my life. And actually, up until this point, I've been stopped every year by police since I was 14. So you know, and sometimes it can be 345 times a year. This year has been once but. you know, I thought because of lockdown. I might get away from that. But it happened. So, it doesn't change the relationship with the music per se. You just become more cognisant of what speaks to your lived reality and what doesn't. In terms of a momentary type of escape for 90 odd minutes, I can listen to that album, and I'm taken back to when I first heard it. But actually, if I listen to an album like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which I think is, you know, top three Greatest Albums of All Time, that album speaks to a lived reality of a lot of one young black women and to young black people full stop, trying to find a place in a very divisive, racialised and discriminatory world. And that is powerful. There’s music speaks to you on one level, and there's music that speaks to your lived experience. And that's, I guess, the emotive part of it.

AB:

I guess what we're talking about here is quite a complicated idea of what music should really be to a person and how you should relate to it. And I guess kind of lurking underneath, for me, there's quite a quite a sad question, or suggestion, that the music you listen to or enjoy should kind of correspond with your own identity or experience – that the lyrics should kind of match your life, or that the person performing should look like you, or should have the same background as you. What do you think to that? That's surely something we should resist? Because I know that's not, at least consciously, that's not how I choose the music I listen to, or maybe I do and I'm not aware of it.

JA:

Yeah, no, I definitely think it's something we should resist against, because I think music’s there to be enjoyed. I think once you start placing labels and binaries on it, I think it becomes difficult. You know, admittedly, what I would say is, having someone that does look like you is impactful. So you know Deborah Anne Dyer, aka Skin from Skunk Anansie, seeing, you know, this beautiful, androgynous, queer black woman occupying a space that has kind of inherently been held by, you know, white men, that is a powerful thing. You know, when you see kind of iterations of that, you know, when you see kind of, you know, someone like a Lenny Kravitz, those types of people that they are like, are inspiring because they're doing something that is perceived to be white actually – it isn't why, I mean, rock ‘n’ roll's origins are from 1930s Black America. It's kind of a segue, but I remember kind of going into the early noughties and I remember going to a pub in Deptford in 2000, or 2001. And I went in there and there was this band, they were like a punk act. I saw that the front man was, like, well, thought it was the sound man. So you know, even kind of adding to my own potential ignorance. The black sound man. It wasn't a sound man. He was the frontman of the band. And that frontman turned out to be Kele Okereke, who's the front man of Bloc Party. And when he played the opening chords to ‘Helicopter’, which was the first time I'd heard it, then I couldn't believe that I was seeing this black man fronting up basically a punk rock band, or a band that had taken their origins from … and it just kind of made me, you know, it was a powerful thing to see that. So I think it's important that we don't we look at those two things as separate things. You know, Morrissey is a prat. But you know, does that take away from the fantastic music he put together with the Smiths? I would argue not.

AB:

You're listening to With Reason with me, Alice Bloch -

SS:

and me Samira Shackle.

AB:

And today we're with Jason Arday. He's talking to us about his book Cool Britannia and Multi-Ethnic Britain. If you're interested in music and politics, why not subscribe to the New Humanist magazine, where you'll also be able to access our digital archive. Like With Reason, New Humanist is published by the Rationalist Association – and Samira, who can vouch for it because she's the Editor. If you head to newhumanist.org.uk/withreason, you will also find reading lists and transcripts linked to each episode of this podcast.

SS:

So far today, we've heard about Jason's experience of using music as a way of understanding the world around him growing up with autism, and how his love of Oasis offered him a way of thinking about class and social mobility. But he also came to experience what he calls racial dissonance to contemplate questions of inclusion and exclusion, including when he was stopped and searched by police as a teenager.

AB:

Now, as Jason's book makes clear, the ‘90s was a time of inequality and racism in the UK: two things that have hardly disappeared. He writes about the murder of Steven Lawrence, a black teenager from South London killed in a racist attack in 1993. That led eventually to the McPherson report, which came out in 1999, and accused the Metropolitan Police of institutional racism, making recommendations aimed at ensuring zero tolerance for racism, both in the police and other bodies. We asked Jason what significance the murder and the reports had for discussions about racism in the UK, all unfolding at the same time as so-called ‘Cool Britannia.’

JA:

I think for British society, while it may have been a seminal moment for British society, generally speaking there was no seminal aspect for black and minority ethnic people. They'd been experiencing that you know, from the earliest iterations of the Windrush generation. And prior to that. So it wasn't a surprise, you know, I think the fact that it was, you know, it took the murder of a teenager, to go from being a peripheral subject and a peripheral issue, residing on the margins, to then occupying a political centre. Because at the time, you know, the New Labour government, and particularly Jack Straw who commissioned that report, I don't think it told, you know, black people, ethnic minorities, anything they didn't already know.

AB:

But am I right, that you, you also talk about how the Macpherson report at least spoke of institutional racism, and that this was potentially a time – and I hope I'm not misunderstanding, the point that you make – where we saw more of an understanding of racism as a collective issue that needed in practice, hopefully, but at least in theory needed to be collectively addressed.

JA:

Yeah, I think the commissioning of the report by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw, it was a seminal moment in British history, because it gave us a framework to engage in race equality, intervention, and work, and think about how, as a British society, we might dismantle this generational legacy of racism. And the promise of the report and the recommendations preferred, really gave us a catalyst and a framework for us to work through or work with, as a society. I guess, the sad thing is, is that tracing the contours of racism, or keeping ahead of the contours of racism, in itself is quite a difficult act, because it's able to reinvent itself all the time. And where I guess people become, you know, racially, you know, battle fatigued, it's very difficult to kind of stay agile, of that ever-changing kind of pernicious face. So it's difficult, you know, you can have different types of race legislation. But actually, you know, racism is becoming more covert, more intelligent, it's really, you know, reinvents itself in a very insidious, intelligent way. And that is actually quite a hard thing to keep abreast of. So the recommendations for that report, in many respects, whilst they are a useful framework for us to frame our understandings around racial discrimination, and institutional racism, actually, are they relevant? Are they specific to, you know, are they effective, you know, do they remain functional to the racism that we encounter now, but I could probably make an argument that they don't just because racism has become so much more intelligent. And actually, it's not the overt examples that one should gravitate towards anymore. It's the more covert subtle forms of racism, that kind of keep people of colour on the periphery of, you know, Britain's major institutions.

SS:

So your point in the book, and from what you're saying, your point seems to be that we need to be more honest in squaring two narratives, one being the sort of dominant discourse that frames the ‘90s as a time that was very tolerant and inclusive. And to square that with the reality which you describe in the book as the eternal struggle for racial equality, which as you've just said, is, you know, something that's very much ongoing, and to kind of square that framing against the backdrop of the Steven Lawrence murder? So do you think that's right? Do you want to square those two narratives, the dominant discourse of ‘the ‘90s is inclusive’ with this whole backdrop of the Steven Lawrence murder? And what that tells us about racial inequality and kind of addressing this amnesia?

JA:

I think so, because I think the selective amnesia is a problem. I think when people talk about the 1990s, they do talk about it from a very, you know, euphoric, and colourful point of view, you know, and, and for people of colour, it really wasn't, you know, for black and ethnic minority individuals in Britain, it wasn't that and I do think it's important when we're talking about it, you know, if we reside in a multicultural society, then we can't be selective with the types of histories we engage with. And if we think about that particular time, that was a horrible time for black people. There is no getting away from that. And I think that, um, the fact that we don't ever talk about what the ‘90s may have been like for black people, you know, after Stephen Lawrence, those actually, those natural increases in race related crimes, you know, racist kind of savagery towards people of colour.

AB:

Jason, you, you dedicate your book to Stephen Lawrence's parents, and you describe them as unrelenting in their pursuit for racial equality in Britain. As we've been discussing, that's a struggle that's obviously far from over. How do you see things changing, if at all, as we look into the 2020s towards post-Brexit Britain. Incidentally, actually, I guess a lot of the ‘Leave’ imagery around Brexit was quite Cool Britannia. But maybe that's an observation for another day. But yeah, how are things? How are things changing? What are your hopes?

JA:

I think it's better to reside in hope. And it's difficult to say things are changing. And I think that we, sadly, we have a government that doesn't particularly endorse, you know, diversification or inclusivity, or, you know, multicultural kind of cohesion. So it's very hard to take any kind of direction from those types of individuals that occupy the Premiership and governance, but what I would say is, I think what is emerging is a consciousness around kind of racism, and how people can engage in anti-racist endeavour, and actually just generally speaking, intersectional endeavour in terms of dismantling intersectional inequality. And I think, I think if there was a time for collectivity, I think this is it, I think, you know, sometimes it feels were like, twitching fingers, absent purpose, when really what we need is a fist, you know, a fist of solidarity in terms of charging at this omnipresent, sustained, structural problem that is just kind of racial inequality. And I think the capacity of human beings to do good, can never be underestimated, against a torrent of inequality, just generally speaking.

SS:

Okay, so last question, Jason. Do you still love Oasis and do your children love Oasis?

JA:

My little boy knows Oasis songs. My daughter's had no choice but to listen to Oasis songs, you probably won't meet someone who wants them to get back together more than me. But I don't think they will. Because they keep going ‘no’, so it just won't happen. But I've probably listened to ‘Definitely Maybe’ every day since I was 14. I listen to it every morning when I when I get up. So it still has a huge impact on me. And I think everything I do is because of the line of work I do is through a critical lens. And actually it’s one of few things I try not to do that with, because as problematic as those individuals may be, in terms of general intersectional equality, I separate that from the music. If I had to, you know, if I had to align a moral compass to all of the music I listen to, then I'm not really sure what else I could listen to. I'm not really sure what music anyone could listen to. So yeah, I do still listen to Oasis, because it is still, I think, one of the, in my 35 years of existence, I still think it is one of the best stories ever told, you know – that, for me, was a huge, huge point of inspiration that helped me throughout my teens and helped me to make sense of the world I lived in. And it's definitely had, well, I ended up being fortunate to write about that time because of their albums. So, yeah, it's huge.

AB:

So Jason, before you go, this is where we take a bit of time to look into the New Humanist archive, for a piece that you might want to reflect on or maybe rewrite entirely. And you've been looking at something from last year, which is David Wearing's review of Decolonising the University, a collection of essays prompted in part by the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at the University of Cape Town. You've written a lot on race and racism in higher education, and done a lot of activism around that also. And David's review notes that unexamined ideas about the history of Empire, and its supposed kind of benefits, remain a profound force in our society, not least in the place where they originated: the elite intellectual culture, I guess, pointing at universities. Would you agree with that statement?

JA:

Yes, I would agree with that. And I think that the premise for the ivory tower still stands upon the beams of imperialism and the Empire. And I think the problem with that is that it's what it occupies, it's kind of what it symbolises: so the canons of knowledge we engage with, the gatekeepers to knowledge, the people who are seen as the facilitators of knowledge. And in itself, it has created or it sustains, you know, that legacy has sustained an exclusive space that marginalises you know, black, and, you know, different types of indigenous individuals from the Global Academy. And in particular, you know, the British Academy, and that is a difficult thing. But what I do think is, is that actually, again, similar to, you know, a lot of discussions around race, it's resided on the margins. And this is maybe the first time really, it's gone from the margins to the centre of kind of dominant discourse. And that is a symbol for hope that is really important, because now we're beginning to think about how we challenge these structures, how we dismantle this colonial hangover and legacy to create something that is more egalitarian and more reflective of our lived histories, our lived experiences and also the contribution of black people to the British Empire, because without that contribution, you don't have an empire. And that is a really central thing, that black people contributed more to the British Empire. Then beyond slavery, I think slavery is a really reductionist and lazy way of engaging with the contribution of black people to British culture and British history. It's a really, it's a really lazy way. It doesn't, you know, speak to the black suffragette movement, it doesn't speak to black activism, it doesn't speak to black philanthropy, doesn't speak to black enterprise, there are so many things it doesn't speak to that had those interventions not happened, you know, the British economy system, as we know, it wouldn't be where it is now.

SS:

In terms of decolonising the curriculum, thinking about your field, sociology, what text would you want to see students reading more of and what might you want to remove?

JA:

I won't say anything about what I'd want to remove purely because I think all types of knowledge are important. What I would say is, I would like to see a decentering of white knowledge as the central knowledge canon, in favour of something that was more representative and reflective of all types of knowledge from all different types of ethnicities and backgrounds. That being said, I guess the kind of literature I'd like people to engage with more is, you know, the work of people like Kimberlé Crenshaw, who does a lot of work around intersectionality, you know, aspects around black feminism in particular, which I've always found very interesting and liberating. So people like Professor Heidi Mirza, or bell hooks, the work of people such as Gus John, I think are really important in terms of understanding historical movements, around education society, generally speaking. And I think most importantly, there's a fantastic generation of academics coming up who are really talking about these intersectional issues. And what I would like to see is that kind of diversification of, you know, the canon.

SS:

Okay, well, that's a great reading list to be getting on with. And Jason Arday, thank you very much.

AB:

Jason Arday, author of Cool Britannia and Multi-Ethnic Britain: Uncorking the Champagne Supernova. Samira, it's a tough thing that Jason seems to be doing here. He's kind of interweaving broader sociological claims with his own very personal story. And that's a story that kind of includes this long-standing relationship with a band Oasis that is part of a culture that he's, at points, been caused to question. It's interesting also, to hear his thoughts, I suppose on what the education sector could do to improve the state of things now, here in the UK. What strikes you most anyway, from today?

SS:

Firstly, I think the fact that he's listened to Definitely Maybe every day since he was 14, which is quite an incredible dedication to a band. And also I think as a broader point, this idea of how we relate to music. And what it does for us, I think, is a really fascinating one. So Jason spoke about his own personal perspective of coming to music as a way to relate to the world. And obviously that's hugely informed his criticism, having this kind of unusual entry point to music in a way. But I think it's something we can all think about, that we all get different things from different music, and by extension, different kinds of art at different points. And I think this, this kind of conversation about representation, and, you know, having more artists from ethnic minorities, for instance, whether that's musicians or whatever, I think that that conversation can often get quite caricatured. But there is a much more kind of nuanced point there about why it's important to see yourself reflected in art forms.

AB:

Yeah, I think that stuff on musical taste was so interesting. I think we could have talked a lot longer about that, definitely. I mean, there's this question of how there can be a kind of dissonance between what you listen to, and then what you feel the culture that you're actually part of kind of actually entitles you to listen to, what culture kind of welcomes you and what doesn't, and it's okay to listen to something that you kind of enjoy aesthetically, instinctively, but that maybe you feel to be part of a broader cultural moment, that isn't somehow meant for you. There's also this question of kind of whether it's, I suppose, necessary for music to actually speak to you, in a literal sense. As I said, in the interview: I find that kind of a slightly challenging idea, I suppose, that really we should maybe want to sometimes listen to things where the lyrics speak very literally and directly to us, or where the performer, the singer, looks like us. I don't think that's kind of the only way in which we should enjoy culture. But obviously, it's also a necessary one at points. And I think that was a really interesting thing that we could have drawn out with Jason there, much, much more. Finally, I suppose there's the more political question of whether it's okay to like music by people whose politics you reject. That's quite a kind of hot topic for debate, I'm sure. I mean, we have Jason there saying ‘Morrissey is a prat’, to quote him, but that doesn't detract from the quality of the music he created with the Smiths necessarily. I get the feeling that's something that could be discussed for a really, really long time, but I guess, music aside, there's also the much more serious discussion that we had with Jason there about identity, race and racism in the UK over these past 20, 30 years that he's discussing.

SS:

Yeah, what really struck me there was this idea of racism being a collective problem for all of us in society, rather than exclusively being a problem for people from ethnic minority communities. I think that that is still really prescient, it's very much a work in progress, this idea that it's not only people who suffer at the hands of racism who should be worried about racism, and that actually, if we want to live in a kind of healthy and equitable society, that's something that we should all be concerned about. Because change only comes when it's something that everyone is engaged in.

AB:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I guess in a way that maybe relates back to the interview we did with Minna Salami the other day, about kind of protest in progress, and kind of holistic approaches to knowledge and to change. So I guess that's worth listening to as well, I suppose separately. Jason also was talking very much about nostalgia during that interview – albeit a rose-tinted kind of nostalgia for the ‘90s. And it made me wonder really, whether we could be nostalgic in the same way today, or whether actually maybe the ‘90s is the last period for which we can have a kind of collective kind of simplified nostalgia. I really wish I'd asked Jason about whether, you know, he thinks maybe kind of the rise and rise and rise of the internet, to put it very simply, has meant that we're more likely to have a kind of plurality of narratives and histories out there, around say, what the 2000s were, what the 2010s have been, what the 2020s will be. I feel like maybe the internet has made it much easier to create our own individual stories and histories and memories.

SS:

Yeah, I think that's interesting. You see these things sort of proliferate about nostalgia for the ‘90s. I mean, I feel like every few weeks, I see some kind of listicle being shared around this, that's like, ‘you'll remember these things if you were a kid in the ‘90s’. And it's like, pictures of game-boys or whatever. And people really kind of lap that up. And I've always kind of assumed that that's more to do with, just generally people like to see things that were familiar from their childhood reflected back to them. But I do wonder if that's something that will shift as maybe we have, as you say, with the internet and so on, a bigger divergence around what the kind of dominant cultural symbols are. I don't know if we have them in the same way or not.

AB:

Yeah, well, who knows what the 2020s will hold in store. Hopefully more episodes of With Reason. That is all for now. And if you have enjoyed this series, don't forget to recommend it to a friend to tweet about it. Or of course, you can leave us a review on iTunes. And if you want to help us make more series in the future, you can help by joining the Rationalist Association or subscribing to New Humanist magazine, a quarterly journal of ideas, science and culture. Details on both are at newhumanist.org.uk/supportus and if you've got feedback or ideas for guests you'd like to hear in the future, you can tweet us at New Humanist or email editor@newhumanist.org.uk. This episode of With Reason was produced and presented by me, Alice Bloch and by Samira Shackle. And of course you'll have heard New Humanist deputy editor Niki Seth-Smith throughout other episodes in this series. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

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