on al-jazeera. holding the phone to account as we examine the u.s. its role in the war on al jazeera. mclaughlin the whole the top stories here on al-jazeera 19 vaccinations are under way in russia despite questions about safety teachers doctors and social workers will be the 1st in line to get the domestically produced sputnik but it's under god for has more from moscow on the vaccination process. we are in one of the vaccinations centers in the south of moscow in moscow cleaning that opened today there is in total they say 70 of such centers in which patients after they signed for it online now these are very specific categories that get the priority that is people working in health care education in social services they have to be younger

than 60 and they have to be of generally good health because people with chronic diseases are not liable to get this vaccine yet so the procedure is that after they signed in they get their time and date and there was 1st people coming in here they 1st get a general checkup then there is a procedure to defrost the vaccine that has to be kept in the temperatures below minus 18 celsius and then after the shot so they're left to rest for like 30 minutes to see if there is any reaction to this now the massive x. nation started in moscow today by the end of next week it should spread to the rest of the russia and i have to say that actually quietly had already started in previous weeks where the some hospitals being offered to get the shots so not as a part of a clinical trial but to get vaccinated also army started vaccinating its personnel and the minister of defense of russia says they are doing it by temple $500.00 people people per day so russia was the 1st to register the vaccine and is the 1st

to start a massive vaccination. iran's supreme national security council has approved a motion to stop inspections by the u.n. nuclear watchdog and increase its enrichment of uranium the plan is expected to be in place in 2 months time it will then be signed into law by president hassan rouhani ethiopia says it's captured or killed most of the leaders of the embattled 2 gray region as it tries to bring an end to the month long conflict the e.u. says a deal to open access to humanitarian aid does not go far enough polls of a pretty cute parliamentary elections a record number of women are among the more than 300 candidates it comes as it's called to me is reeling from fully oil prices and the coronavirus and then it. is monitoring the election from here in doha. first and foremost is the impact that kobe 1000 has had on the election season in the past you would see

a lavish bank banquets being held you would see a huge dinner is being held as campaign events where people would meet face to face and candidates could talk about their platforms obviously with the restrictions in place in kuwait a country where there was a months long lockdown earlier this year that wasn't possible in this election season instead what you had is a lot of candidates migrating online especially younger candidates and female candidates trying to have those debates in a virtual space trying to connect with potential voters online and that's something that really has changed the dynamic of this political season in one of the things that's been very interesting to see is that kuwait a country where women were only allowed to vote starting in 2005 this year you have a record number of women as candidates you have 29 women so it'll be interesting to see how they perform once the results are coming in but as far as any potential shift politically analysts have said that in kuwait the opposition has really been weakened in the past few years and so they're not expecting any huge major political shifts as the outcome of this election this year u.s.

president donald trump is pulling nearly all american troops out of somalia in the next few months there is $700.00 american soldiers are training and advising somali forces in the fight against al shabaab has already ordered troop drawdowns enough going to stand and in iraq. farmers in india are meeting government officials as they continue to push to overturn laws which they say will damage the livelihoods of tens of thousands of protesters who have been rallying at entry points to the capital for more than a week the prime minister told us with his top ministers that was earlier on saturday in a bid to try and break the impasse. stay with headline scott more news coming up here analogies are right off the studio b. unscripted from.

when you play for england i was never really going to be as accepted as my. name was and why race is not an opinion when racism is an ideology that's fundamentally olds without democratic values you know if you're not upsetting people you don't seem to. want to know. my name is any honor and you care. i'm the sporting director of aston villa women football club i used to be a striker at one time well the shots. and i'm also a media commentator. i have worked in human rights and development i've worked as a barrister a journalist an academic and a writer if always hardest to diagnose racism in polite circles in britain because

we covered it my name is a for her. i grew up in london but my mother's family is originally from ghana i was born in nigeria but came to the u.k. as a baby and grew up in birmingham i've read any memoir about her passion for football since she was a young girl. she was at the top of her career as a successful striker when she was dropped from the england national team after speaking out against racism. into a man play we don't $102.00 comes from their country after 11 years of playing i didn't think it would it takes a lot of courage and determination to do that i know that africa has struggled with her through an identity because she's of mixed. it is i spent my whole life wondering if this is really my country she's even moved to africa twice to connect with our culture she's also written amazing book about it so i'm curious to compare

our personal experiences and our sense of belonging to. africa is a part of both and me but we also british and black women so we have more than a few things in common but we're actually quite different. any other there were so many things in your book which i very personally related oh i'm so happy i loved it i love the i thought it was so on earth and so revealing because i followed your career in real time and i thought i knew the story of what happened but actually i discovered there was so much that i didn't know him but the

1st thing i wanted to ask you about was the way you talk about identity and you use the phrase hyphenated identities to talk about your british nigerian background how you reconcile that relationship now because it's obviously 2 very different lives that you've lived one in nigeria and one in burning away grow up obviously writing the book is quite a reflective process so i really started to think about what how did i feel about myself when i was younger i was a popular kid you know i played football the boys loved me because i was running rings around them but actually it was a girl i was trying to be a boy the whole time there is the photo of you in your book with him that you know he was quite young like so happy to be i really think i wanted the boy i was like that was just the biggest tomboy but actually really break that down i asked the boys to call me eddie i didn't want them to call me any which is my nigerian name and i actually love my nigerian name i love my name and you know but put all of that i shut out for

a long time and didn't actually want to explore and then there's all that stuff about actually when you play for england you're supposed to be as english as they come you know you where in the batch literally bar my name's in outer luko so i was never really going to be as accepted as my striker counterpart whose name was and why. and now i'm very much somebody that loves being a nigerian woman so the concept of hyphenated identity in my head was all about this constant balancing act that we have to do i love rich tea biscuits and lots of british stuff but i also love to draw for us. so we shouldn't read it we should embrace it or i've heard black british people doing such creative things with hyphens you know with but we often call ourselves black british british nigerian british command i've even heard someone refer to themselves as a 1st saxon which i thought were ok i like their creative but there's always this question should we need to hyphenate you know we've spent all our lives in britain

you were playing for england and i think if you ask a lot of english people what is the ultimate representation or symbol of englishness many of them would point to the football team i mean for me for me growing up that was an image of englishness and for me at the time in the england team was very white and england fans were very white and it was one of those things that made me feel excluded from the idea that i could be english and i think it's no coincidence we often call ourselves british or black british if they were very rare to hear a person color say in describing themselves as english did you feel that this team has often represented quite a white idea of englishness was no longer going to be so much and because you were there and other but i am remember when you're playing football you know that's the beauty of football it's kind of if you're talented you're in. and you don't think about you don't have to think about identity until you get

a bit older and you realise if you're playing badly that's when media starts saying on nigerian born and they start becoming the other so when you do well you're britain where when you die you're the nigerian you love and they're not doing so well you're kind of and that's the kind of dark side of sport and it's not just exclusive to me it's meant to in a measure ozo fastens famously stuck speaking about it you know. and he said when i'm winning world cup some german when we lose and we do very badly i'm turkish reading your book i felt as if you really went on a journey where you started questioning things along the way but you were always very reserved in judgment and gave give people the benefit of the doubt yeah the way you describe things i think that speaks to my desperation in a way to just be accepted as thing as footballers you just want to play football and that becomes a culture of just play football you know and so i used to dumb down my intelligence a lot and the questions that pop up obliged to ask or just put the ball in the back

of the net you know and it dates back to you know what i was saying earlier about just wanting to be one of the boys are you speak about it in your book you know at one point you wanted people to call you caroline but it my middle name is caroline and i remember very clearly when i was 6 and i change schools in my i'm 6 year old mind i said to my friends this is a chance for a new start i am no longer going to start again we're going to get a simple i'm carol i am you know i was literally trying to rebrand myself but why was that. i think that partly it's an inherent issue if you don't look like either of your parents so my mother came to the tape from ghana when she was 12 and she's a black woman from majority black country and i don't think she had a particularly racialized identity as you'll know if your african from an african country race is not your primary identify it's your region or your religion or your ethnic group we're language everyone's blacks not a thing and my father is why it's but i think as

a small child you notice that you don't look like either of your parents and that's not necessarily a bad thing but it is just a thing and then in my case it was compounded by the fact that there weren't any other people around the who looked like me and i remember told a story that parents when my sister was born she's 5 years younger than me the 1st thing i said when i saw who is that she looked like me. and that was the 1st time my parents realized that i wasn't expecting to ever see someone who was i thought that no one else did look like me because that was the environment i grew up in my father also has this immigration story his father was a jewish child refugee from germany but within a generation he dissimulated into britishness you know he married an english lady my grandmother i don't think anyone ever asked my father or their siblings his siblings growing up about you know his immigration status or what the impact of their immigration had been in britain or where he was really from but my mother because of my mother's heritage that people ask those very questions about me it's that visible blackness that makes you really british you must have another story

right and my logic was well if it's because of my mother that people treat me differently then if i go to my mother's country then i'll i'll solve all my problems just go to garner and be going to and i live happily ever after and so it's a little bit of a shock to the system well the 1st thing that happened when i went and i thought i was going suddenly thin is that gun in school me which means white person in nigeria or you will i think all that to that interior. and i was horrified i really don't understand in britain they said i'm black. now i'm hurt and i don't know me why that's not there's nothing you can do about that and i've spent lots more timing and i understand you know to a good man i represent. a european upbringing it's not even so much about my mixed race heritage it's more about my social conditioning and i have to acknowledge that and also there's a level of color privilege that comes out of a history of colonialism that there is privilege that people of european heritage

get in african countries so not to acknowledge that would be to benefit from that privilege or understanding what it means and the damage it still does but the other thing is that because in school i used to you know i went to prominently white school and the girls that picked on me were actually black tobin and they used to say you know african butu in the state make up my big lips and pull my hair in and one of them is mixed race for pretty girl i used to think you know sometimes used to think life would be so much easier if i was mixed i don't want to be that and i don't want to be that just want to be in the middle you know and so there is that there is that sense of you know colorism and and you know we have it in other races too is a big emphasis on the color you know the actual color and the shades and where that ranks and i think there is still often a tendency to if there's an advertising campaign use a mixed race model someone of jewel heritage with lighter skin and curly hair and

it is almost the acceptable face of blackness but the 1st time i had to go on are just going back to that story the other thing that happened to me was that i said to my mother. i was black and i remember exactly what i meant because the immigration officials obviously were black there's a framed photo of the president on the wall he was black the police were black the army officers were black the pilots were black and my mother also said that was the 1st 5 time she'd realized that i did not live in a world. where black people wore suits were in power were at the top on the bottom and i hadn't i didn't know i was missing that until i saw it you don't even realize how much you internalize the idea of what power looks like it's still on usual to see somebody who is black in a position of real power i mean look we've never had a black prime minister we've never had a black judge in the supreme court there's only one black person in the c. 100 as a c.e.o. there has been so little progress compared to what i think many people expected but

. it you know this is there's all these buzzwords about diversity inclusion but do you feel like diversity and inclusion have just become that deliberate attempts to try and please rather than actually it changing what we see in terms of power i do worry about that when you have one or 2 black people or people of color in the room but that hasn't been the cultural change that allows their voices to really be heard or they're in such minority or or not a position of enough power to really challenge the status quo then it doesn't change the output it doesn't change the culture doesn't change the decision making and then to add insult to injury that person to be wheeled out if something goes wrong having one person in the room who maybe put appreciates that nuance is not enough you need to have what would you know then is is the way to change it i think we need to be more radical in our approach and often i've seen this generation who

are absolutely no nonsense i have to say and a lot more unapologetic in their approach just. taking a different route starting up their own organizations and their own movements and really creating that critical mass of this generation they hold internet press conferences not just you know it is a dozen advantage of social media and global networks to organize to mobilize and really create campaigns that make change and i for 1 am so impressed by that and energized by yeah i mean it's fun thank you rene let's find out what you guys yes any questions so my question relates to the scandal and to the caribbean people that have been deported and denied citizenship despite having lived in britain all of their lives but also to the conservative cabinet and in particular to the ethnic minority members who've done absolutely nothing to help so i just want

to know is there a case for arguing that racism. and systemic disadvantage can't be much dismantled without 1st addressing issues of class i agree i think classes is a separate conversation from race i've been in situations where i've been the 1st to do it to do it and that is pressure in itself but then you get the expectation of all well what about us is that will give me a chance to you know figure out how going to change this 1st so it's not easy but the agenda should always be to think about how you can open the door for others that look like you i don't think the wind rushing could have happened to people who were not both black and working class you know there are middle class people who could have been affected but they had the ability to hire lawyers or get professional advice to prevent them from being deported and this was really systematically targeted people who were excluded from those systems of power

because of race and class but i think that the last concern. the government was particularly hostile as we've seen read to me there is nothing more profound than rounding up and deporting british people if you have told me that would have happened 10 years ago i don't know the code of believed it it's just type in but i also think that black people we need to vote. we need to vote if we all voted it would be a lot harder for politicians to get away with this kind of behavior because we don't hold them to account where an expendable community to them we also have to take responsibility as well i have a wide range of friends and you know when you ask them a why did you vote a certain way or because storms he said of boris. that's not that's not enough for you to like educate yourself understand how is the effect if i vote this way you know because there's also pressure to vote how your parents or

grandparents voted no so i also think that there's a lot of conditioning in ethnic minority communities where it's like we have to think this way we all of the this way no we're much more powerful than that both of you guys within your own regard are considered to be role models to a lot of different people so how are you using both of your platforms to legitimize . you know the things that are sort of under represented by society in you know whether it be sport or whether it be race i take that responsibility so seriously i feel really strongly that it's important to show a younger generation not just that you can get in the room but that you can get in the room and be authentic because i don't think there's any point in us getting in the room if we're not going to be authentic when not going to be pushing for change and i often put myself in quite uncomfortable spaces where i'm saying things that the people around me don't want to hear and the reason i'm doing that is for my own the self or is for younger people looking at me because i know that we don't get

change by doing the same things we have to be honest and we have to be honest even when everything is conspired to silence us but i also think we need to be strategic and we have to think what is power who actually is in power what are the avenues of control and authority influence and how can we start to shape our own destiny but it is a big responsibility and if you feel so visible as well. because there are fewer of us and the higher you go there are fewer of us and people do to look at you and i remember the people i looked up to when i was young the huge influence they had to me and there were so few people to look up to which meant they meant the more to me you know one of things i really admire about is is what you just said the uncomfortable spaces that you put yourself in throughout my career i've had the opportunity to be the 1st a lot and i could have been like no like i just had to stay in my lane you know 4 walls and kick goals like i like i do stay in my comfort zone but nothing really

changes need to inspire people if you do that you might do but not really. so i've been really inspired by the opportunity to be the 1st. because i think it's only then that you can really open the door. and i take it very seriously you know when i am the 1st i have to be the most person here and as a woman the reality is you probably have to work doubly as hard as if you make a mistake the margin for error is very very particular in football where it's can you're competing with men where it's like why did i get that you know that that opportunity any say that you know i go into unconscious will spaces but one of the things i took most from your book you know it really touched me was the story where any playing football and she's the only girl and she's winning as you always seem to do just scoring go off to go off to go and the dads the supporter of dads you

have the boys on your own team for whom you are winning started being hostile and saying why she here get her off because they felt so threatened that you were beating their sons how hard must it be to continue to excel in the face of that kind of hostility instead of rewarding you for your talent actually punishing you about it very hard it was really hard because. as a kid you just want to be clapped up for doing well like you know for scoring goals then. but then i started to realize that human beings are very jealous or they want you to shine but not too much don't shine as much as my son. and to be honest i i went back home and i was i don't play football anymore it's too stressful so for like a year i was like i want to play tennis and i play tennis and i started when the b.'s like the williams sisters them because you know because they were like black women and it was like ok it's easier to be them rather than be different all the

time so it was hard because i didn't understand it i didn't get it what did i do wrong. i'm a good footballer and i. but you know that's i think now i look back on that. success comes with opposition you know if you're not upsetting people you're not saying anything you know. oh i like the other day i went on an hour and a show as a football show called the debate and i made a mistake and there was so many people on social media law our market she doesn't know what she's talking about she just said mine united rather man city and no matter how well you do there will always be people that are like she doesn't have to be there she made a mistake just waiting to pounce. but they won't be talking about you if you weren't there 1st the way i kind of try and look at it. stronger. now

a lot of international charities have come under a lot of criticism for harvey we present africans in their fund raising complains what is your view about what they can do to me to gape this and what is the role of black people globally to own their own narrative that's a really great question. because actually one of the things i've tried to do through social media my own social media when i travel to africa is to show sides of africa that are just not represented in mainstream the beautiful sides. i was recently in in ghana in the qur'an i was a slag this is such an amazing place and i was shown the art galleries the music scene in the colonies see. but of course there are you know there are sort of extreme poverty as well you know it's about i think showing a whole list moralistic side of both of africa and again africa can be broken down into so many different compartments as well i work with

a charitable charity water and they actually deliberately don't show you know the images of poor african kids with flies around their faces this is they show economic empowerment in african villages they show strong women pairing the water but i think one of global scale actually africa to the world is becoming a bit more of a positive conversation i think there's poverty everywhere and i don't think we should ever try and sanitize it you know there is poverty anyway it's not our job to try and remember size it or hide it we should be very honest about the problems of poverty we face my issue with the narrative around british charity it is of different elements on the one hand i think there's a context that is almost never present so for example britain draws outs in untaxed profits more multiple times as much every year as it gets through international aid and charity so we talk about this continent. continent is

a place of need and suffering and we don't talk about the extent to which it still makes british people rich every day and i feel that if you really care about suffering on the african continent then why are we not redistributing the wealth from these huge profits that keep the top one percent rich and that is something that i feel responsible charity should be addressing poverty while also putting it in its proper context i mean that context has a history the history is empire where we betrayed africans as savage you know as as dehumanised and so when i see charities depicting african children without the same dignity as they depict british children i immediately see the weight of that history of children everywhere deserve their dignity to be protected so i'm not saying people shouldn't support african charities i think we should support african charities we should do it on the standing that the agents of change in africa always been africans africans have been building africa they continue to build africa in the face of adversity in the face of continued economic exploitation by

countries like britain so it's just about putting some honesty back into that narrative thank you for those questions. if you raise fact facts about the empire people become hysterical they say you hate britain if you like don't like it here leave one of my frustrations right now with football is that i feel that we're talking too much about race and nothing's actually happening. in 2008 rocky traveled across the united states discovering what it was like to be both a patriotic american and a devout muslim can he be muslim and american you know how to be an american tourist i didn't have much appreciation for why it would be a big deal that a muslim to be elected to the united states congress want has changed rewind islam in america on al-jazeera. we understand the differences and

similarities the cultures across the world so much of what we've been using kind of for that matter. who know you're. the top stories here on al-jazeera and covert 19 vaccinations are underway in russia despite questions about safety teachers doctors and social workers will be the 1st in line to get the domestically produced sputnik. they sauntered off for as more from moscow. we are in the center of moscow in front of the cleaning company behind me is one of the vaccination centers that opened today there is in total 70 of them in all suppose started working at this morning and it is receiving patients who had previously scheduled their appointment afford this vaccination we're talking about people who work in healthcare system education or in social security

systems and they have to be younger than 60 and they have to be basically healthy soul suffering from no serious chronic disease iran's supreme national security council has approved a motion to stop inspections by the u.n. nuclear watchdog and increases in richmond of uranium the plan is expected to be in place in 2 months time it will then be signed into law by president hassan rouhani . ethiopia says it's captured or killed most of the leaders of the embattled to te grey region as it tries to bring an end to the month long conflict the european union says a deal to open access to humanitarian aid does not go far enough. polls have opened in parliamentary elections a record number of women are among the more than 300 candidates this comes as its economy is reeling from fully oil prices and the coronavirus pandemic.

us president donald trump is pulling nearly all american troops out of somalia in the next few months nearly 700 american soldiers are training in and advising somali forces in the fight against al shabaab translates this order follows a series of announcements post-election to withdraw forces from missions abroad before he leaves office he's already ordered troop drawdowns in afghanistan and in iraq farmers in india are meeting government officials as they continue to push to overturn laws which they say will damage their livelihoods tens of thousands of protesters have been rallying at entry points to the capital for more than a week the prime minister held talks with his top ministers on saturday to try and break the impasse. there's adeline's got more news after we return to studio b. unscripted so you live. so after an area got

a little in common in terms of our legal background. i really wanted to ask you about going into the barrister world when i look at who i am and who i was when i was younger i was always that person that was good at speaking was kind of disturbed by injustice to kill a mockingbird was a book that i reading gauged with and the whole idea of like speaking up for the voiceless and so i think i always had a lawyer in me this phenomenal for how long you pursued both you continue to play sport at the highest level when you pull a fight and practiced as a lawyer as well yeah well i thought once i graduated i was like i'm on the path now my eyes will finish. and as you do all the playing things. i think like you i was influenced by books that show i also loved to watch and i i had a strong sense of injustice and i was not afraid of an argument. from quite a young age i have to admit my curiosity for people i mean everything i've done has

been driven by the fact that i'm interested in people and curious about them and i do try to help people wherever i can and did you feel once you got into that world embarrass the world and you talk about in your book did you feel like oh my gosh this is so non divests like where's the other women was the a bit i mean that's what i mean and then there's but you know at that stage of my life i was getting frustrated because i'd grown up in wimbledon thinking as soon as i leave school i'm going to choose a very different environment right and then i went through oxford and i thought it was i did also i'm going to be in a very different environment and then i went to the bar and i was like this isn't happening for me. the bar is very unreconstructed reacting missions that you shouldn't write i mean we were white horse hair wigs in court right now i'm not really quick badge or anything yeah you know i actually well i get that but i like this. a wig do you know why because when i wasn't wearing it my clients mistook me for a codefendant i mean people thought and so did all the lawyers or they thought i was

worse because at least from a defendant i'm doing something worse they thought i was the girlfriend of the defendant she said like at least going to be a criminal act of one. that was frustrated when i put on the wig everybody knew who i was if you're young and black and female that can be helpful you need props one of my frustrations right now with football is that i feel like we're talking too much about race and nothing's actually happening and i know you've said that you don't feel like we talk enough about race so i feel like we have a different viewpoint on that because 10 years ago race in football was a sort of elephant in the room no one to talk about it no one said the r. word now i almost feel like i'm called up every week to talk to need to rent a quote a quote from a new lead and i'm actually like why aren't you calling you a for like why aren't you calling for an association decision makers about like why this is not being punished more so i just feel like we have this conversation that's a click bait that makes people click on and click on twitter and kind of brings

this level of divisiveness versus actual action i think my analysis is that we're talking about race but we're not having a high quality conversation and i think the conversation that we're having is incredibly basic i mean i'm in a slightly different position because i'm not talking about race in the sporting world. i think the world i'm in still denies that racism exists so i mean we've seen recently this whole spectacle of her and megan leaving britain and absolutely real experience of high profile broadcasters. claiming that racism doesn't exist while actively being racist it's a very bizarre i've had phone calls from wreckage on the saying i don't understand this is like the conversation we're having in the 1960 s. i'm i'm missing something and i just say no you don't missing anything this is the conversation in britain i think that people don't know what racism ists so race is

people think that racism is having personal vitriol towards black people or people of color in that if you feel you can personally absolve yourself from having what they imagine a racist thoughts or doing racist things then there's nothing to see here and there's no understanding of what systemic racism is of structural racism of how race can operate and i think you do a really good job of explaining this new book how race can operate in subtle ways a lot of times and sometimes it can be patterns of behavior sometimes it can be treating people differently rather than saying anything that's openly coded as racist and i think that because we don't understand a history of empire as well or white supremacy we don't understand the legacies of that you know these whole ideas about angry black women or about. black people being associated with crime you know the way that we criminalize crime if there is a paedophile who is of asian heritage it's an asian grooming gangs and will the

moat vast majority of paedophilic crimes in britain are carried out by white people we don't call it white paedophiles or white crime it creates myself like a small thing but i think a lot of people now believe that only asian people can be paedophiles you know and given that this is already a minority about him so much bigger insists that is a highly toxic and dangerous tripe and i press promote it i mean this isn't the right wing fringe this is the mainstream press on the front page day off today so you know my grandfather was a jewish refugee from nazi germany and he is no longer alive but his brother is he was kinda transport and i'm so fascinated by that period in his. how people can go from having so many jewish people who are considered german or who consider themselves german to going to the other extreme and i think people forget that didn't happen overnight how it started was with top white headlines and with truth and with narratives that conflated the identities and the history of jewish people

with certain negative hate filled stereotypes and that's why i think i'm so sensitive to those narratives that people might say you know it's an overreaction to conflate this to nazi germany and the reason to compare is to understand how it starts and to prevent ever becoming that extreme we haven't approached that extreme nowhere near it yet but we have seen an increase in hate crime we have seen unprecedented levels of anxiety unfair among many of our ethnic minority communities people saying they don't feel safe in space as they used to feel say do you want to do you have conversations with your fellow journalists about the responsibility that we have to make sure that in not perpetuating some of this stuff because i feel like whenever i speak to. other journalists they try and pretend as if i don't write the headlines but it's like when i'm writing a column every single word it matters so i don't i just i just feel like the media i used to think of journalists like you know like lawyers and i think the media

these things have just become so desperate and so kind of base in the profession that we're now perpetuating a lot of you know the problem there are also i think kind of structural factors so for example i think there's a lot of false equivalence and what i mean by that is this idea that if you have somebody like me who talks back and see racism about how to combat and fight racism there's this idea that you need to balance me out with a racist race that's not an opinion racism is an ideology that's fundamentally at odds with our democratic values but i fear it's becoming normalized by ignorance at best and at worst a kind of. attempts to really debase the narrative to get more views more clicks and i really think it's crucial to call this out and i don't think this can be left to journalists i think we all need to call this out i actually think this is a loser and i have got to get a question time anywhere. on your point about journalism and how the media is in

a way complicit in continue racist narrative so i would like to get into the meat industry would advise could you both give to me to try to in some way combat those narrative swaps i'm in the room because it can be quite challenging or i'm a bit ignorant to the actual process of like what happens in a news room we have recent examples where like you know kobe bryant sadie passes away and his is mistaken for le bron james that to me that's bonkers and that that's happened of quite a few times i think having a more diverse newsroom will help that but then i don't know whether actually practically speaking you would have a say in changing. what you know is a racist headline i think there is no substitute for diversity so on that basis i think it's important that young journalists from all backgrounds go into journalism that's what they want to do but you need to be prepared for the fact that it's not a straight path and what i did which worked really well for me was actually to do

something else 1st to build up my knowledge my expertise my credibility so that when i went in a i had the confidence to speak and challenge and be i had to be listened to because i was someone who had the credentials that may be difficult to ignore in a way i'm kind of losing interest in asking me to organizations to take us seriously to pay us equally to listen because a serious we have to keep all seem to that's like we've already lost why are we asking to be paid the same as our white similarly educated similarly qualified counterparts and i think that sometimes we have to vote with our feet and there are lots of very inspiring examples of people who've started their own media organizations and who understand how to reach audiences like them and are actually changing the way the whole media works by their example so i think we need we need to be represented in big mainstream media organizations that's there's no substitute for that but it's not the only way

a lot of times frustration with the system pushes you to do. an amazing thing that you would never have done if you were in the sort of majorities so sometimes it's about saying well ok well i can't get in that way i'm going to get in this way and do it myself and my last piece of ice is find allies you know there are allies everywhere you just have to find them and don't assume that black people your allies also don't assume all white people are not your allies their allies and you've got to find them work with them and create those networks and i found that incredibly powerful in my career i've had white men who've been huge allies i've had black women who've supported me i've had people from all different backgrounds who i've worked 1 with so i think find your allies know who they are work with them for a change both of you have roots in former british colonies can you talk about your experience of learning about colonialism and compared with what you learned to school and the impact you think the lack of colonial education in this country has

on people on how brits see race and their own identity as well my colonial education was nonexistent i'm actually still learning now. it's non-existent enough as book actually how. i look back at my secondary school education and i learned more about martin luther king was a parks america african-american civil war history than i did about colonialism why because we don't want to touch on the things that we did in britain it's easier to talk about that you know so that disappoints me. i guess it's never too late to learn and i think now with rex and the kind of those feelings and sentiments there's a lot more focus on britain. now but also like where is it all coming from where is this sort of nationalist sentiment coming from so i think now people are delving

more into those questions. and i think there's a push back a little bit from africa you know if you speak to people in business in africa it's like it's almost like we don't want the kind of 100 outselling we want to do ourselves and i think that comes from a post-colonialism mentality that shift in so yeah i didn't have. yes i didn't have a. little education in history which i loved with love history went from henry the 8th to the 2nd world war i'm not exaggerating and when you actually analyze what was left or how it just happens to be the entire period of empire building and unfortunately i have a daughter who's a turning 9 and very little has changed that actually being educated to believe something that's not true which is that britain existed in isolation and i think that's incredibly dangerous you know i think that ignorance about the british empire which is by far the most important period in british history in the last

1000 years you cannot understand our position in the world the reason we're a multicultural society our relationship with europe you cannot understand our industry you can't understand our regions none of it there is not a family in britain i believe that has not been touched by empire either because someone in that family worked for the empire empire was a huge source of employment and sociability for working class white boys historically so many people who couldn't find opportunity in england scotland and wales went to the empire where they were able to move off in society it's a complicated history and i think it's also important to say that there was not really one empire there were multiple empires you know britain in west africa was very different from the raj in india to the caribbean to hong kong or southeast asia and i think we know almost nothing about this it's completely invisible and not only has it been a raise from the school curriculum but it's there is no national museum of empire in britain well i was going to touch on that because i think it is

a very deliberate a mission you know i love berlin for example and when i get to believe in i'm so impressed by just the level of just kind of. openness and honesty that they that the germans confront with the history there is not a street league can't go to a museum and learn about the holocaust and you know i would add to that army was forced to reconcile its nestles by the allies having been defeated in the war i think a lot of this stems from britain's victory in the 2nd world war that after the 2nd world war britain felt morally victorious rightly having to lead to the nazis and remade itself having been forced to lose its empire remade itself 1 as this benevolent nation on the right side of history and any aspect of our history that was not compatible with that was quietly swear because history is written by the winners and now we are in a situation rice i believe that has created an incredibly dangerous for gelati when i say fragility i mean if you raise fact historically great facts about the empire

in the public discourse people become hysterical they say you hate britain if you like don't like it here leave yeah and what kind of way is that to respond to historically facts about our recent history and i really think that if we can't understand how we've become this nation the reason we look like this that we occupy the position that we do culturally so much of our culture comes from the imperial period and we're totally clueless about it and i think that we've been failed actually by generations of leaders who have continued that in public and there's nothing to see here so i feel very strongly about this and i don't think this is our job as people who have stories that come from colonies in africa or asia i think this is all of our job as british people to stop being curious and honest about this history i do think the what's what's great at the moment is i'm seeing lots more authors african authors you know i think now there's a demand rather than going on netflix in and just watching something that you know

. is sort of people want to learn like people want to watch documentaries that speak of this stuff so i think in terms of the entertainment world. i personally feel like there's a lot more out there that we can kind of tap into and and learn that i didn't have growing up or at least didn't see as visible as we do now. 21000 was termed the year of return in ghana and for those of us who were part of the guardian diaspora it was such a warm welcome and an exciting prospect the question i wanted to ask you is how do we find balance and practical who practicality in the idea of going back home and building a gen-u. ine and practical relationship with the motherland i was so excited to see the groundswell of love a movement towards gone out of there but i also think part of

a person experience it's important to have realistic expectations you know if ghana and see me as different that's completely justified i've had a different life but i want to contribute to ghana i want to go on as economy thrive i want see other african countries rise i want to see the continent become unified again to see trade within africa not always extracted to europe and america i want to see some of those colonial borders that divided us through language and national boundaries become useful trading cultural exchanges as they were before the imperial period so i think it's about how can we contribute to that movement and i i am fascinated by the pan-african this period you know those intellectuals who actually created the independence of soviet sovereign african nations who managed to end colonial era and their philosophy was one of building up the african continent that there could be no future where black people can live anywhere while the african continent is oppressed and still controlled by foreign financial

interests so i think that's a project which anyone who cares about this can contribute and it's just a question of finding your place in that project i actually went to a panel on that question when i was in the car and it was very much about ok this time we've had lots of parties you know i think 1000000 visas were given out like it was a success. but how do we continue this and so one of my friends is on the board of the tourism board and she was talking about beyond return you know the whole idea that actually the dyess board coming back to. have to also have a practical mentality you know just little things like going into a restaurant and expecting service that you would get in central london is not going to be the same you know and just understand in the culturally we have to adjust to as die a sport that we have to be patient to is not always about them receiving asked because there is differences so i think people are just more conscious about it and everybody's having

a better conversation around how do we as diaspora help but also how do we similar ourselves into a culture that is is becoming self-sufficient is becoming successful. so it's really exciting to see i think it's a real accent and i had an amazing time garner to make too much of a good time and going. to what extent can we really produce new knowledge within the system that's already been new knowledge on africa new knowledge on what would be considered the east when so much of what already exist is framed through the white i when are basis is already flawed i think you're right about the basis being floored i sometimes think about for example oxford if you study latin greek it's called classics and just the name it legitimizes one history of ancient civilization as superior to other ancient civilisations. we study. study the industrial revolution as completely separate from any history around the

transatlantic slave trade these things are kind of conceptually separated and even the language we use in everyday life you know we talk about b i mean people start that mean anything it's everyone who's not white 3 in together in a big lump so here you go from here is a name for you all. i am really excited as a cultural creator about the opportunity is now to speak into. you get it so i'm not really speaking to the academy i'm not speaking to people who aren't interested in breaking down those conceptual bars i'm speaking to people who are hungry for knowledge and who are curious and now you have global streaming services that reach people on the african continent that might reach african-americans that mean i don't have to go to the same gatekeepers who will say we did a series on africa last year so the commune the thing i'll say about africa you know oh if you pitch a series afterall we did music we did after music last year so. this is i mean after half a point we are we living in such a creative time and you know

a lot of us all of us are many journalists in a way but actually there's real amazing people that create so i think we're living in the time when we can definitely create new information and new perceptions to the point earlier. because this is so many platforms to do it and whoever wants to see it will see it and whoever doesn't well you're losing are and i don't want to let the gatekeepers off the hook but we live in a global capitalist society money talks and what we're seeing actually is that the platforms that do get it making the money i follow consumers are more i mean the word is work but i feel like people are much more inquisitive about ok well if i buy nike or like where they're actually coming from or if i watch this on this broadcast or that broadcast is linked to that and so i do think

people you know as you said are more conscious of the content that we're consuming and what we are learning and the and because of that we you know creators have to really be very responsible about like we pumping out the same narrative is a different narrative and i think that's really exciting because we're learning. we're feeding ourselves with new information because that's the demand that's what's been demanded so what do you see for the future for the well for me i've just retired. from the story on the phone for. it's almost like life starts again for me in a way you know i've just accepted a role sporting director of aston villa football club probably i get to kind of make decisions now and i guess that i was kind of always that player that sort of prodded it decision makers that why we're doing this and why are we doing that and now i am in it and it's kind of scary but exciting at the same time if i see him

you know what's i working on writing projects. which i'm really excited by and i think it just speaks to everything we've been talking about how do you reach people i am i'm an optimistic person yes i think that most people are decent and want to know and. experience new things and so a good journalist a good writer a good creator finds ways of reaching people and about the big challenge that i'm excited to take up i'll be looking out for it and everyone would have to thank you so. you can really make a record for something as monumentally horrific as slavery i think under of natural and we connect on our collective under a lot of the time what it poetry do for you is just rock.

well the weather settled down knowledge and tina now as been a vivid suddenly breeze just recently so the sunnies id's cool on the coast nostromo today as well the big showers on the south east of brazil and briefly in power grow as well they also extend up into central brazil and a good part of peru now that's probably welcome rain i have to say staggered away

from the north of the constant indeed for costa rica and panama the showers aren't so intense the next couple days nice light showers the small islands in the caribbean and that cold bit of push down through the gulf of mexico probably enhanced the right again in southern and eastern mexico and yucatan peninsula that winter certainly has taken hold in the u.s. and count as a big dip here particularly cold air pushing against a storm that's rolling up the east coast these 2 will combine to give what is known as a nor'easter which gives effectively a good dump of snow just inland from the cards for new england that's the position on saturday for cross for boston could well end up with something like 15 centimeters of snow on the ground and it cools down comes quiete for sunday as it is for most of the rest of the u.s. .

this underwater treasure is a risk of disappearing coral bleaching caused by rising temperatures when we think about the great bear it gives a strain the area its cultural heritage its iconic literature is an industry based bands this we will lose instantly if we have another bleaching event of these magnitude if this continues they just will not be the opportunity for the currents to recover in between those magic. scientists a calling for strong climate policy from the government to reduce emissions without serious the situation will finally get worse. american people have finally spoken of america as i see it when america is off balance the world becomes more dangerous the world is looking fantastic for the next year of sanusi. with the election behind us will the republican party dump truck to the fuel weekly take on us politics and society that's the bottom line. play an important role protecting.

ringback face. this is al jazeera. i live there mccloud this is a news live from doha coming up in the next 60 minutes coded 19 vaccinations begin in russia despite questions about the safety will be live at a vaccination center in moscow. iran takes another step toward a towards banning the u.n. nuclear watchdog from entering the country. with a deadline looming boris johnson in the head of the european union tried to break the deadlock on the trade deal.