and alongside poverty the coronavirus has shown inequality in health as well rather him has one of the highest death rates from covert in the whole of the u.k. one of the reasons for this is rather as manufacturing industries working from home isn't an option this firm like many others has been hit by coded despite strict procedures i'm relying on these guys to tell me if they feel safe enough to be able to work but how many i'm with doormen earn nothing. and if the choice was i don't owe money on a slow going to work. at the food bank susan bradley heads home with a week's worth of groceries she's always worked for a living and never thought she'd be reliant on charity to get by andrew simmons al-jazeera rather.

your child is there with me still wrong a reminder of our top stories flash floods and landslides and killed at least 90 people in indonesia and neighboring east timor trench will rain has destroyed roads and washed away homes and bridges rescue workers are struggling to reach remote areas jordan's of prince homs are has said that in a newly released voice recording but he did not obey orders by the army to stop communicating with the outside world after he was put under house arrest jordan's government says it's thwarted a malicious plot to destabilize the country prince hamza says he's been punished for speaking out against corruption. the situation is a little bit difficult all the guards have left and the chief of staff to threaten me on behalf of top agencies officials were recorded his words and send them to my family and those i know outside of country just in case something happened and now waiting for ericson i'm not going to escalate that i will not abide myself by their orders to stay at home not to use to eat or not to be in contact with people and

not to see my family but i've been told by the chief of staff is not acceptable under any circumstances so i'm still waiting for this matter to be sorted out india report stilly highs in covert 900 factions with more than 100000 reported in the past 24 hours some states have impose new restrictions to stop the spread of israeli prime minister binyamin netanyahu corruption trial lawyers resume 2 of the 1st witnesses due to start giving evidence that anyone who denies the allegations of bribery breach of trust and fraud at the same time israeli president of rubin evelyn is consulting with political parties about he who he should choose to form a government after last month's inconclusive election but a small photo is collided with another vote in bangladesh killing at least 27 people a police inspector says the ferry was rushing to leave after the government confirmed a new krona virus locked down those were the headlines to read will be here in less

than half an hour with the news are due stay with us. al jazeera is news night of the biggest stories of the week delivered to your inbox last analysis and opinions of the world. subscribe of the conversation. biology and anthropology in genetics is really founded in a racist ideology my name's adam rather said i'm a geneticist author and broadcaster. inevitably get loads of racism i'm being called a racist because i'm talking about race and i'm by 16 i'm an economist one time political candidate and activist. unfortunately cove it could just be a dress rehearsal for something much worse than the climate and potentially of the pandemics and things that can go wrong science is political and always has been

political and he say it's not you haven't been paying attention for the last 500 news. so i've been dying to ask you there in the specter of how to argue with a racist how do you argue with a racist and yeah. i sometimes worry that that title is a little bit for what the book actually sets out to do. and the point is if you structure your your arguments with with facts and with science and with history then these are tools which obviously clearly anti-racist in their in their nature nor a political and science isn't a moral it does inherently have a political stance because it's done by people and so you know i sometimes think that the conversation gets distracted by talking about white supremacists or active neo nazis and you know there's plenty of them around but in fact i'm more sort of

concerned with talking to people who say who effectively have racist views or say things which are effectively racist without really knowing it because it's built in race and racism is built into our society when i was writing a lot of the younger people were saying. to me. you know i wish i had this when i'm in the pub when i'm sitting around the dinner table the thanksgiving table and talking point does my uncle or or someone who says something which is why you know won't black people better at sprinting or well you know on jewish people more intelligence and that's what i wanted to do is to say well these stereotypes correct what is the data where are you getting that information from and be at how does those those stereotypes relate to how we understand history and how we understand you know historical persecutions or historical racisms and in almost all cases what turns out to be the case is one the data is probably not true and to the

stereotypes the rooted in in history and says you know that you know you've got a better argument i'm going to disagree with you to some extent because while i find no pixie for helpful when i was campaigning and knocking on thousands of doors actually facts don't seem to work that well when you have conversations with people or. because people always seem to find another 5 told they all you know they just won't necessarily believe you what did weigh was emotions animation and connection and then bringing in some facts i went gungho like you know i've been doing stats for many years as you know whether it be some of the stuff i did b.b.c. looking into whether we'd have a prime minister and finding that in a black kids you have to work 12 times as hogged then and why stay educated and 90 times as hard as the why privately educated to become prime minister you know but

for the most part people too many take the aim what they did take in was stories of you know my great grandmother being part of the british working costs or oh yeah i went to that school too and having a connection with a teacher. and then building the foundation of can they. action and then trying to bring in like maybe some more scientific arguments did you learn the only joran we had when you were going door to door yeah what was it like it was really fun i have to say i really enjoyed doing ok i mean people might find that crazy people actually do want to have political conversations and when they don't they make it really clear so. you know you can back off quite quickly the thing i found is that it's very rare that someone's racist to your face i mean it did happen it was very rare and people who just want to. they speaking kind of human to human and they they want to know a little bit about you and they're willing to have

a conversation and that really surprised me one of the things that really struck me from like twitter well divest is knocking on people's doors was how much more hopeful i was after a 2 hour session of like knocking on people's doors and talking to them rather than looking at my replies on twitter and so you know people really surprised me and people would say that they change their minds about sent things but not for a 5 unfortunately and i'm spent my whole life like yeah i mean how to put together it was often because i had a really nice conversation with you today and you know sometimes having that conversation was not for me didn't have to bring in the stats in the science it's very hard to change people's minds i was saying that it's very very hard times i felt like people would just be like say ok ok just because i wanted to get rid of me or your work so that was work and also how quickly when you open the door doesn't do that right i mean i don't go door to door i like to see you like how your i think argue with a racist and just be so depressed so quickly i mean how quickly were people judging

you they look you up and down and go here is someone who looks like you i don't know anything also about you and therefore you fit into the following stereotypes that i'm going to adhere to i have to demonstrate that i belong to the area and to go beyond because people just would assume someone is like you from new and which people that i know is that part of east london where there's more people that look like me and i've been i why would you assume but when did it become. this point of like i belong and you don't well again i think this is a lot to do with our sort of cultural amnesia and very selective telling of the history of empire that actually black and brown people have been present in this country well since roman times admittedly in smaller proportions but that once you understand that phrase the we are here because you were there and that empire is

the reason that we live in a multicultural society that if we teach that if we have a much richer understanding of the relationship between the various colonized places that occurred during. during the years of empire maybe there would be a better a better sense of belonging there with the stops being so i mean if you have a question and your belong in i grew up in a small town in the east coast of england that was when i 1st experienced racism but you know bear in mind i look like this my so my dad is is is from yorkshire. and my my biological mother is indian via guyana right so that's my mixed race miss i did experience some racism in that in that village when i was growing up but it's not you know it's minus stuff and also your parents since 81 i always go on which people of color got which is that you got to work twice as hard to get anywhere i can get but i didn't get that because all of my experiences of racism were

effectively positive and maybe that is a reflection of my own privilege and and being mixed race rather than. integrated into one particular ethnicity the parent has with me and it was just important part my dad to us about racism he in fact used to tell us if anyone calls you that he went yeah. he used to make us practice punching on him this is hilarious when i'm no violent person he said a line the 3 of us up and say right punch me here as hard as you can if any one of us says it. i mean the face i was 6 years old right. this is and then my mom at the same time who was the polar opposite to my so my dad and was actually from pakistan and she would say you know if they say that you tell them that the p word means clean in or do i'm sorry like one time primary school in the playground said to me that he would and i said and i thought about it so i punched him i said i use mom's line and i decided not to punch him and say i said the p.

word means clean and he was so confused. that he doesn't this is odd to me like this because he has never said anything again about because he just looked so confused so he said my version of that story it's the parallels are very striking up because because when i got called the he was school when i was about 7. by a kid whose name i still remember but i went. i did punch him. and i do you know advocate violence. but i got summoned by the headmaster. and i was terrified because i thought i was going to get into big trouble yeah and what happened was he suspended him and so the outcome for the sort of thing by being positive experiences that's really good because my thing is just to say just ignore it yeah yeah so that's why i think that my own personal experience my own personal narrative is is not necessarily very informative for my own so the development of my ideas it's not absence it sets you apart to try to understand what was going on

in that situation but i can't pretend that i've been the recipient of serious racial abuse through my life more so if you i mean i think i mean yeah i mean you get trolled down if you're a public person joe so you know it's. and there's certainly been instances 3 life but for me you know it's more about the subtle ways that these things come up you know being in the room when you know your colleagues are talking about migrant labor and they say well migrant labor is the come. from the caribbean and pakistan has become obsolete and they're in the room and my privacy for go and. so this is actually i experienced a lot more racism when i went to the university of oxford and. in like middle class well you know the think tank well then this is you know today the stereotype about the white working causes was a really negative because epithet ties into like this racist screen and my

experience of growing up with a white working class of course is that racism everywhere but i got much worse racism and like when i was at the university of oxford which really scared me because i was like these people are going to be in positions of power they are going to run the wild and i know what i really think i've seen them get drunk yeah i'm so bad at city was really important to me deciding. you know do you do policy. myself to be more public in my was so i thought i know. what these people really think of all of us and what they think of working class people especially not just on a big t.v. program on the b.b.c. and i was used as an example of the b.b.c. successful racial diversity and when i heard that i was like if. i'm your racial diversity then you have a real problem yeah that's very important that you point now because they will use yeah i will use us at times and it's really important that we say this isn't real change real change is when i see you know ethnic minorities in this country and

groups all around the wow you know being given real opportunities and not disproportionately on their weight is not disproportionately dying from whatever. onus is coming up you know having equal access to public services that's the real change so i want to see it's not just the odds it's a black faces in high places right mike yeah yeah i'm not no no exactly and you know we see we see a good representation of black and brown faces on t.v. but we don't see it behind the camera and we see amazing representation of black faces in you know football for example but we don't see any of it in the managerial struggle and it's a civil right really needed to have power he gets to write the script he gets to coach the team he gets to be the dodds right so yeah that type of representation real representation of real power you know is still missing yeah and not even the conversation about racism still today is too superficial for me and i want to go

much deeper think much more about institutional change ok should we have audience questions. i have from toronto canada. as you said racism is politically advantageous in a white supremacist world wins elections is one of the engines that keeps capitalism running it justifies subjugation of racialized people to lower wage labor and poverty so why are we still trying to argue as racists about the scientific basis of their church humanity when it would serve them to recognize it here well that's a great question but i think that the answer from my point of view is and part of the motivation for writing this book is that there are i found that the science in this book is not new and not controversial so the idea of the biological essential as a man and a biological basis for race has been utterly taken down by science by genetics that is a non-controversial thing to say within the lab within academia but what i found as

a science communicator and in talking to publics is that that that information hasn't filtered down into into public consciousness and that's on me right you know that's my job is to do that. and then secondly on top of that that in the last few years with the rise of. populism and nationalism and changing political discourse but also the way the public embrace particular genetic ancestry testing kits products i think has actually changed the conversation about race and reintroduced biological essential as in my ideas into the public discourse in a way that i don't think any of us within genetics anticipated so i think part of my job is actually just again disabusing people of those of those ideas in a way that i didn't think we'd have to do if we were having this conversation 10

years ago. yeah i want to acknowledge how hard it is to do this what especially if you're a person of color and to have these conversations with race this is exhausting and there's just times when you just think what's the point of having this conversation they're just not going to they're not going to see it but i think more generally what we have to do you. is counter to the way in which. racism is being used to support certain governments and certain ideologies that right wing are quite mainstream ideologies and we've got to keep having that conversation and one of the areas that i find that i get most hope is when i have this conversation with the younger generation who are not everyone but for the most part seems much more up for talking about if we need to all do the work and have the conversations and it doesn't to start with government starts with the in your own household and within your own family and at your school and you

know we need people to do the what but isn't just people of color let's have another question so you just face a little bit on how cool the defects in equality how do you think it could have been different was covert if it wasn't for the poor and say should we have towards the virus thank you really has exposed the levels of inequality in societies whether it be about gender based inequalities whether it be about race whether it be about income and who's losing their job who is most likely to die and it's really society under an x. ray and demonstrate how much inequality matters and that is a lesson for us going forward because unfortunately cove it could just be a dress rehearsal for something much worse and you look at climate and potentially other pandemics and things that can go wrong and i think. the societies that can the coffee. are import that can stick together that follow instructions that's

going to be really important for any kind of crisis coming up yeah from my perspective exposed to how we think about science and society as well in the relationship between science and policy. and so you know the fact that it was racialized into discreet ways early on one was the provenance of the disease so there. you know racialized the tax right here in london a kid from my own university with from singapore was beaten on oxford street in america that there are so many attacks against chinese americans and korean americans there has a son with a pedia page you know numbers in the many thousands already so that was that was one aspect and then how. minority groups are more likely to be infected or more likely to die and these are best explained by socio economic factors rather than rather than sort of you know genetics or molecular biology you can't deal with a with a pandemic without having science and you can't make vaccines without science that

you know that that is our job. in this process but if you don't deal with the underlying problems. and in fact the underlying causes of this pandemic which is man's humankind interaction with nature itself the fact that we are encroaching upon territories because of climate change and causing climate change which means that we are interacting in nature where these viruses coronaviruses live humankind is not exonerated from this conversation it's not a natural phenomenon that this that this occurred to this pandemic occurred it's because of our integrated relationship and changing relationship with the environment i think we're going to take another question. hi. family growth up his education an anti-racism education system i think how large is still not widely taught in schools and university or when it is taught it's quite explosive to slavery. or history rather than an intersection or subject

across all 4 subjects so in your respective fields economics and science how what do you think lisa take place in order for us to be learning about racism and understanding and to racism in the education system so i think we're interesting nexus right now because the concept of anti racism has been weaponized against and to racists which is you know fundamentally problematic you know our government are focusing very much on this question of whether the introduction of of discussions about anti racism you know are serving education i teach at u.c.l. just over there and we have race and genetics and race and eugenics integrated into our buyout biology courses and that's been like that for 40 years i think that might be a slightly unusual history because a lot of race science and eugenics actually occurred at u.c.l.

and what i've discovered in the last couple of years since doing this book is that that conversation doesn't even spell out side of the biology department at u.c.l. let alone into the broader society i think that overall. my sense is that to normalize these conversations is part of the social change it requires a political movement and it requires you know revolutionary voices and conservative voices but ultimately you know i do think the arc of history is towards progress i think that is true i think we're in a weird blip at the moment i don't we i mean do you do you agree or disagree with that i hope it's by also warry that we are you know regressed same i think we are a very worrying time if we're not going to. learn the lessons from kobe and we're not able to say ok yes we truly are going to build back better we're going to make sure we do do a green you'd say oh and we do have higher wages and you know invest more in our

health care systems and the rest of it. then we would have missed this this major moment in which we could have had the acceleration of change positive change like there was off to the 2nd world war and just just to answer your question as well and just what the economics discipline condemning is all kinds of problems with the way in which economics is tool but one thing i would say to those studying economics right now is to oss. distributional questions i asked him will this policy or will this particular way of looking at markets he will be affected he will win and he will lose and ask why and when you are says questions and you follow that through why you always come back to issues of prejudice and it's really important for us to push back on subjects like you know your hair i'm hearing from you on science and genetics and you know economics which also kind of thinks of itself as a science sometimes even though it's

a social science i think it's fairly obvious to the audience we both like. in the mist. and you know asking people to. be challenged well deliberately challenge and i didn't get into this to talk about race i go into this because i really like evolution and d.n.a. and genes but the point but there comes a point where you know if you're a scientist talking about humans then you can't not talk about this and i think that you know that's my message to to my my scientific. colleagues and friends is that it's not enough to sit back and say you know what we did the research and it's up to people in public some governments to talk about the policy implications necessary or otherwise for my work we are part of society and i think it's the same for economists as well that that that we need a much better more integrated approach to understanding. history

and how our history informs our present science is political and always has been political and if you say it's not you haven't been paying attention for the last 500 years yeah the missing really gets to speak to you and even though. i know this is history and science of racism and the way in which science is often used by racists i think it's one of the things i really take from this conversation is really but if us as individuals trying to do our work and finding that in all disciplines in economics and in science there's this massive blind spot when it comes to race and racism and prejudice and the way in which it's playing out in all industries all sexes i think that some think that everyone can look at their own spare of work and understand that racism and prejudice is always bad we all have it within our us but we socialised to be racist all the time we have to take that

action to fight and it's at the individual level and within all disciplines if we're willing to be have that conversation and be brave then we will be somewhere else in 5 years or in 10 years and that is the work that needs to be it's on so even though it's difficult or i do find it difficult. it's a positive sign alternately because you know it wouldn't be worth changing if it wasn't like that absolutely and it is called the struggle for that for a reason so so keep going yes keep going i'm going to do the things we can't like hard or anything going to do that. i couldn't accept the reality that my actually going to go on a rubber boat and cross the aegean with 60 people to seek. solemn in europe when i

was a teenager listening to him i never expected that this would have been it's very very important for me that you acknowledge the honor that is due to my food i don't care the color of your skin i don't care your ethnicity please cook my food but at least respect my roots to come here navigating b.-o. crissy racism language barriers to boards and statements and then rebuild your life is by itself a success. from the al-jazeera london broadcast center to people in thoughtful conversation people use the lowest get agreement they describe the outsider with no host and no limitation the difference between a migrant and refugee is clearly a choice when your refugee you are forced to flee part of asthma can act had what has happened a lot in the west is that culture and food are separated studio b.

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a witness documentary on al jazeera we know what's happening in our region we know how to get the plate that others and not the fires are still going on the way they tell the story is what can make a difference. al-jazeera . they're watching the news hour live from a headquarters in doha i'm dating obligates are coming up for the next 60 minutes daily occurrence iris infections in india exceed 100000 for the 1st time an evening curfew is tightened in its worst affected states jordan's detained former crown

prince says he'll disobey orders banning him from communicating.