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Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · Pod Save America

0:00
Speaker 1: It seems to me that literature is the last thing
0:02
Speaker 1: that we can depend on to tell us the truth
0:03
Speaker 1: about who we are. Because politics can no longer do that.
0:07
Speaker 1: Politicians have to lie. I mean, they have to. I'm
0:13
Speaker 1: not talking about your speeches, John. No, I know. I'm
0:17
Speaker 1: not saying you had to tell us a few burnished lies.
0:21
Speaker 1: Because Brother Barak had to say what he had to say. No.
0:25
Speaker 2: I'm John Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone.
0:30
Speaker 3: My guest this week is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian
0:34
Speaker 3: feminist and writer of novels, short stories, and nonfiction. In 2009,
0:39
Speaker 3: she gave a speech about cultural representation called The Danger
0:41
Speaker 3: of a Single Story that's become one of the most
0:44
Speaker 3: viewed TED Talks of all time. A few years later,
0:47
Speaker 3: she delivered another speech called We Should All Be Feminists
0:49
Speaker 3: that became so famous it was sampled by Beyonce for
0:52
Speaker 3: the song Flawless.
0:54
Speaker 2: So why am I interviewing her for Offline?
0:57
Speaker 3: Well, last summer, when I was first thinking about doing
0:59
Speaker 3: the show, A friend sent me an essay that Chimamanda
1:02
Speaker 3: had written, an essay that went so viral it briefly
1:05
Speaker 3: crashed her website. It was about social media. And here's
1:09
Speaker 3: the part where my jaw dropped. Quote, She goes on
1:23
Speaker 3: to write that, quote, We have a generation of young
1:25
Speaker 3: people on social media so terrified of having the wrong
1:28
Speaker 3: opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to
1:30
Speaker 3: think and to learn and to grow. The assumption of
1:34
Speaker 3: good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness, but
1:37
Speaker 3: the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings.
1:40
Speaker 3: We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another.
1:44
Speaker 2: God help us. It is obscene. End quote.
1:47
Speaker 3: So yeah, she has some strong feelings on the topic.
1:50
Speaker 3: And you can read the whole essay on her website, Chimamanda.com.
1:53
Speaker 3: It's good context for the conversation you're about to hear.
1:57
Speaker 3: But the story behind the essay is also really important,
2:00
Speaker 3: so I want to explain that too. Chimamanda wrote this
2:03
Speaker 3: piece about accusations of transphobia that were directed at her
2:06
Speaker 3: on social media by two people who had attended one
2:09
Speaker 3: of her writing workshops. One, a young feminist whom she
2:12
Speaker 3: was close to. The other, a non-binary writer who later
2:16
Speaker 3: identified themselves as a Kweke Emezi.
2:20
Speaker 2: And the reason they accused.
2:21
Speaker 3: Chimamanda of being transphobic is because of an interview she
2:24
Speaker 3: gave in 2017 where she said, Many people, especially in
2:36
Speaker 3: the trans community, found that statement hurtful and exclusionary. They
2:40
Speaker 3: felt that Adichie's comment implied that trans women were somehow
2:43
Speaker 3: lesser than cis women, and that she should have included
2:46
Speaker 3: trans women in the broader category of womanhood. Chimamanda clarified
2:50
Speaker 3: her statement soon after the interview in a Facebook post,
2:53
Speaker 3: where she wrote, perhaps I should have said that trans
2:57
Speaker 3: women are trans women, and cis women are cis women,
3:00
Speaker 3: and all are women. Because saying trans and cis acknowledges
3:04
Speaker 3: that there is a distinction between women born female and
3:08
Speaker 3: women who transition, without elevating one or the other, which
3:11
Speaker 3: was my point. I have and will continue to stand
3:14
Speaker 3: up for the rights of transgender people, not merely because
3:18
Speaker 3: of the violence they experience, but because they are equal
3:20
Speaker 3: human beings deserving to be what they are.
3:23
Speaker 2: End quote.
3:25
Speaker 3: This statement did not make the controversy go away. It
3:28
Speaker 3: continued on social media and in the press for the
3:30
Speaker 3: next several years until Chimamanda called out her two former
3:34
Speaker 3: students in the pretty fiery essay she wrote last June.
3:38
Speaker 3: This is obviously complicated. A debate that probably shouldn't be
3:41
Speaker 3: adjudicated on social media because it involves nuance and requires context.
3:46
Speaker 3: And that's partly why I wanted to interview Chimamanda. certainly
3:50
Speaker 3: not to adjudicate this controversy myself, though I do ask
3:53
Speaker 3: her about it, as well as her beliefs about trans women.
3:57
Speaker 3: And you can judge her answers for yourself. But what
4:00
Speaker 3: I really wanted to know is why this very prominent
4:03
Speaker 3: Nigerian feminist and global literary figure has been so troubled
4:07
Speaker 3: by what she describes as a, quote, passionate performance of
4:10
Speaker 3: virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter,
4:13
Speaker 3: but not in the intimate space of friendship. I wanted
4:17
Speaker 3: to know why she thinks that good faith, in a
4:19
Speaker 3: world of social media, is dead, and why she believes
4:22
Speaker 3: that's dangerous for activism, for politics, and for literature. And
4:26
Speaker 3: so I asked. And she had quite a lot to say.
4:30
Speaker 3: As always, if you have questions, comments, or complaints about
4:32
Speaker 3: the show, feel free to email us at offlineatcrooked.com. Here's
4:37
Speaker 3: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Thank you for taking the time to
4:46
Speaker 3: do this. I wanted to talk to you today about
4:49
Speaker 3: an essay you wrote last June on the subject of
4:52
Speaker 3: social media because this is a show about all the
4:55
Speaker 3: ways that social media is shaping humanity for good but
4:59
Speaker 3: mostly bad. And I figured you might have some strong
5:03
Speaker 3: opinions on that, especially after writing an essay that went
5:05
Speaker 3: so viral, I believe it briefly crashed your website. So
5:10
Speaker 3: for people who don't know, The story behind this essay
5:13
Speaker 3: starts with two people who attended one of your writing
5:16
Speaker 3: workshops in Nigeria. But before we get into the essay itself,
5:20
Speaker 3: I'm just curious, like, how long have you done these workshops?
5:23
Speaker 2: Why do you do them? What do you hope people
5:25
Speaker 2: get out of them?
5:26
Speaker 1: So I've done them for 10 years, I think. And really,
5:31
Speaker 1: I just, I wanted to give people kind of what
5:33
Speaker 1: I didn't have when I started out, which is a
5:35
Speaker 1: community of writers. A community of writers who are not
5:39
Speaker 1: just Nigerian, but African. So The workshop is kind of,
5:44
Speaker 1: I think of it as Pan-African because I started it
5:46
Speaker 1: really with my very dear, dear friend who's now passed away,
5:50
Speaker 1: Binyavanga Wainaina, who was a brilliant Kenyan writer. And we
5:55
Speaker 1: both felt that we come from a continent where writing
5:58
Speaker 1: is still considered something odd to want to do. And
6:06
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, I was supposed to be
6:07
Speaker 1: a doctor because when you do well in school, you're
6:09
Speaker 1: supposed to do something serious. And I wanted to be
6:13
Speaker 1: a writer, right? And I think that's the same story
6:16
Speaker 1: for so many people. And so I kind of wanted to,
6:18
Speaker 1: when I was published and started being well-known in Nigeria,
6:21
Speaker 1: I thought, I want to try and create this community
6:25
Speaker 1: of people who can gather in a room and realize
6:28
Speaker 1: that that thing that they want to do is perfectly normal, right?
6:32
Speaker 1: And when you're surrounded by people who want to do
6:35
Speaker 1: the same thing, you start to feel less strange and
6:37
Speaker 1: less odd. And also, I think I just wanted to
6:41
Speaker 1: let them, kind of just give them a sense of
6:44
Speaker 1: here's what I did, here's how it works, that sort
6:48
Speaker 1: of thing. So the writing workshop is not just about
6:52
Speaker 1: writing stories, which obviously, but I think stories are rooted
6:55
Speaker 1: very much in politics and in social issues. So we
7:00
Speaker 1: talk about all kinds of things. And a dear friend
7:03
Speaker 1: of mine, I love to tell the story, a dear
7:05
Speaker 1: friend of mine who visited the workshop, who's Norwegian, said
7:10
Speaker 1: to me, it's not just a writer's workshop, right? And
7:13
Speaker 1: he said, A, you're brainwashing them for good.
7:18
Speaker 2: Always a good use of brainwashing.
7:22
Speaker 1: But I think what he meant was that we just
7:24
Speaker 1: talked about everything, right? We talked about, so you're writing
7:27
Speaker 1: a story, but we need to talk about the backdrop
7:30
Speaker 1: to it. We need to talk about the politics in
7:31
Speaker 1: Nigeria I mean, anyway, so you can tell that I'm
7:34
Speaker 1: very passionate and proud of this workshop. And it has
7:39
Speaker 1: created a community. So in the past 10 years, there
7:43
Speaker 1: is now a community of people who went to this
7:45
Speaker 1: workshop and who have gone on to be published, who
7:47
Speaker 1: have gone on to start magazines, who are just doing
7:52
Speaker 1: things in the world and telling stories. And I think
7:57
Speaker 1: the only thing that I would say is a negative
8:00
Speaker 1: for me is that I have to write too many
8:03
Speaker 1: bloody recommendation letters. Because now they all.
8:08
Speaker 2: They all start to blend together after a while, don't they?
8:11
Speaker 1: So I probably shouldn't say this publicly, but we actually
8:14
Speaker 1: do copy and paste. You know, they're all really brilliant.
8:16
Speaker 1: So I'm like, brilliant, let them into your program.
8:19
Speaker 2: I've been there. I've been there.
8:20
Speaker 3: No, I mean, as someone who was supposed to go
8:23
Speaker 3: to law school... but wanted to do more writing, I
8:25
Speaker 3: would have probably benefited a great deal from being in
8:28
Speaker 3: a writer's workshop of a community of other writers. So
8:31
Speaker 3: it's fantastic that you're doing that. So can you talk
8:34
Speaker 3: a little bit about what happened with the two attendees
8:37
Speaker 3: you wrote the essay about?
8:39
Speaker 1: So really, I'm going to tell you a very short
8:42
Speaker 1: version of it, which is that.
8:43
Speaker 2: That's great, yeah.
8:45
Speaker 1: One of them kind of became a person that I took...
8:50
Speaker 1: that I would ask to come to dinner at my
8:52
Speaker 1: house and lunch. And I would talk to her about
8:54
Speaker 1: things because she was a young feminist. And I, at
8:58
Speaker 1: the time, believed very much in talking to young feminists.
9:02
Speaker 1: And so we would have these conversations. I think I
9:06
Speaker 1: took on a role of a mentor of sorts. And
9:10
Speaker 1: the other writer who didn't necessarily come to my house,
9:13
Speaker 1: but I supported because I would write recommendations And then
9:19
Speaker 1: I gave an interview in London in which I was
9:22
Speaker 1: asked about trans women. And I said that I think
9:25
Speaker 1: that trans women and women have different experiences. This was
9:30
Speaker 1: then said to be transphobic. But for me, what was
9:35
Speaker 1: just shocking was that these people who knew me, these
9:39
Speaker 1: two writers, then went on social media and just started
9:43
Speaker 1: writing utter nonsense. about how I wanted to kill trans
9:48
Speaker 1: women and how I was a murderer. It was upsetting
9:51
Speaker 1: and quite hurtful, I have to say. But I thought,
9:54
Speaker 1: you know what, this is how it works now. So just,
9:56
Speaker 1: you know, just move on. And then my parents died.
10:01
Speaker 1: My father died in June of last year. My mother
10:03
Speaker 1: died in March. And it's just really completely changed everything
10:09
Speaker 1: for me. I feel that I've become a different person
10:11
Speaker 1: in so many ways because my parents were such central
10:17
Speaker 1: anchors in my life, right? So.
10:21
Speaker 1: So my nephew calls me one day and he says, auntie,
10:24
Speaker 1: he was upset and he says, auntie, there are people
10:26
Speaker 1: saying that grandpa and grandma died as punishment for you
10:29
Speaker 1: because you're transphobic. And, you know, there's a kind of
10:34
Speaker 1: rage that is new to me now in the face
10:38
Speaker 1: of grief, right? I just thought, you know, I think
10:43
Speaker 1: I'm okay with being insulted because I think it's part
10:48
Speaker 1: of But it just felt to me, this is a
10:49
Speaker 1: no-go area. You do not say that about my parents
10:53
Speaker 1: who have died. I mean, I just, I lost it.
10:56
Speaker 1: And so in a very sort of angry 3 a.m.
11:04
Speaker 1: in the morning phase, I wrote that essay. And can
11:09
Speaker 1: I just say, I have no regrets. I would write
11:11
Speaker 1: it again, exactly as I wrote it. that's the background
11:15
Speaker 1: to what these two people did. But I think for me,
11:17
Speaker 1: the essay then became about something bigger than these two writers.
11:21
Speaker 1: It became about, and I don't want to sound, there
11:25
Speaker 1: are times when I worry that I'm starting to sound
11:27
Speaker 1: like a cantankerous old uncle, you know, where I say
11:30
Speaker 1: things like, we're not civil anymore. You know, we do
11:33
Speaker 1: not talk to each other with compassion, but it's true.
11:36
Speaker 1: I mean, and I find that really worrying on so
11:39
Speaker 1: many levels.
11:40
Speaker 3: Well, you know, we talk about this on the, on
11:43
Speaker 3: the show, all the time. I've had that same experience
11:46
Speaker 3: as you have as well, which is I think you
11:48
Speaker 3: and I are only a couple of years apart. And
11:50
Speaker 3: every time I'm complaining about the vitriol on social media,
11:53
Speaker 3: I always think to myself, am I just like some
11:56
Speaker 3: old man yelling at kids to get off my lawn?
11:59
Speaker 3: But I think there's two major things about social media,
12:02
Speaker 3: and I sort of want to get into them with you.
12:04
Speaker 3: And I think you identified the first, which is just
12:07
Speaker 3: sort of the nastiness on social media when you're sort
12:10
Speaker 3: of behind a screen and you don't see the face
12:12
Speaker 3: of the person that you're communicating with. And then I
12:14
Speaker 3: think there's a second issue, which is it sort of
12:17
Speaker 3: strips away context and sort of the full explanation from
12:23
Speaker 3: the positions that you take and what you believe. So
12:25
Speaker 3: just on that, I know that shortly after you gave
12:27
Speaker 3: that March 2017 interview, you wrote a Facebook post because
12:32
Speaker 3: you said you wanted to clarify your thoughts. And you
12:36
Speaker 3: wrote in that post, Perhaps I should have said trans
12:38
Speaker 3: women are trans women and cis women are cis women
12:41
Speaker 3: and all are women. So, you know, just trying to, again,
12:45
Speaker 3: the media coverage of this is like all over the
12:46
Speaker 3: place too. So was your statement simply about pointing out
12:49
Speaker 3: the different life experiences of cis women and trans women? And,
12:53
Speaker 3: and why was it important for you to just point
12:55
Speaker 3: out those differences?
12:57
Speaker 1: I did also say, I think in that post that
12:59
Speaker 1: cis is not part of my vocabulary. And the reason
13:03
Speaker 1: I say that is that I think a lot of
13:04
Speaker 1: this conversation is about language. And I, you know, obviously
13:09
Speaker 1: as a person who, you know, earns a living by writing,
13:13
Speaker 1: language is really important to me and clarity of language
13:15
Speaker 1: and meaning, right? It's really important to me to ask,
13:18
Speaker 1: what does this mean and where does this come from?
13:20
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I've strangely become a kind
13:24
Speaker 1: of feminist icon, which I like to joke about. And
13:27
Speaker 1: there are many good things about it, right? But that's
13:29
Speaker 1: not my day job. I'm actually... storyteller. The thing that
13:33
Speaker 1: I'm interested in is reading and writing. I want to
13:36
Speaker 1: spend all of my time reading poetry and fiction and
13:40
Speaker 1: hopefully writing a bit of that too. But talking about
13:44
Speaker 1: feminism then made me become this sort of feminist icon.
13:48
Speaker 1: And I think maybe because I talked about it in
13:50
Speaker 1: a way that's accessible to people and in a way
13:53
Speaker 1: that wasn't about jargon and also wasn't about theory. But
13:57
Speaker 1: then what it did, I think, is that for many people,
14:00
Speaker 1: I was then expected to become this kind of expert.
14:04
Speaker 1: And the expectation as well was that I knew the language.
14:08
Speaker 1: I'm actually not joking when I say that until that
14:12
Speaker 1: sort of furore that happened, I did not in fact
14:16
Speaker 1: know what cis meant. So I'm not in the feminist
14:21
Speaker 1: academic circle. I don't know the latest language. I don't,
14:24
Speaker 1: you know. I'm much more likely to read a memoir
14:28
Speaker 1: by a trans woman than I am to read theory
14:32
Speaker 1: about transgender ideology, because I'm interested in stories and in
14:36
Speaker 1: human beings. So anyway, so I wrote, I said that,
14:39
Speaker 1: and why did I say that it's important to note
14:42
Speaker 1: the differences? Because it is. I mean, there are things
14:45
Speaker 1: that are fairly obvious, but for ideological reasons, we're no
14:48
Speaker 1: longer allowed to say them. You know, I'm a feminist
14:53
Speaker 1: because from the time that I was three years old,
14:56
Speaker 1: I knew that being born in this female body meant
14:59
Speaker 1: that there were so many things I was going to
15:01
Speaker 1: be excluded from. Actually, we've just been having a conversation
15:04
Speaker 1: in my family because being female means that I cannot
15:09
Speaker 1: inherit certain things. My parents have just passed away. There
15:12
Speaker 1: are things that when you're a woman, you cannot inherit.
15:15
Speaker 1: And so my point was, it's okay to acknowledge differences.
15:19
Speaker 1: But also it's important, I think, because what's happening on
15:22
Speaker 1: the left in the U.S. is that there's a kind
15:28
Speaker 1: of expectation that if you acknowledge difference, then you're attaching
15:32
Speaker 1: value to it. So now there's a hierarchy of oppression. So, well,
15:39
Speaker 1: she said that because she means that trans women are
15:41
Speaker 1: lesser than. And I'm thinking, of course not. I mean,
15:45
Speaker 1: and anybody who knows me knows I don't think that way.
15:47
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any human being who's lesser than, right?
15:50
Speaker 1: I mean, I just don't. The other thing I wanted
15:53
Speaker 1: to say is, just in talking about these two writers
15:55
Speaker 1: who went on social media, for me, it's not, I
16:00
Speaker 1: really do welcome people disagreeing with me, right? I really do.
16:04
Speaker 1: I like, actually quite like a good argument about ideas.
16:08
Speaker 1: What I did not like and what I found awful
16:10
Speaker 1: was that they could easily have called me or sent
16:13
Speaker 1: a text, or emailed, because they had access to me
16:15
Speaker 1: and we knew each other. And so there's something very
16:18
Speaker 1: performative about going on social media and sort of doing this.
16:21
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because as I sort of went down
16:25
Speaker 3: the rabbit hole preparing for this interview, and, you know, again,
16:28
Speaker 3: I came into the contact with the essay first.
16:29
Speaker 2: I read that first.
16:30
Speaker 3: And then, of course, I tried to look at the backstory.
16:32
Speaker 3: And it did seem like the entire controversy was centered
16:34
Speaker 3: around a misunderstanding where when you pointed out differences, people
16:38
Speaker 3: did attach a value statement to those differences. And they
16:41
Speaker 3: thought that you were saying that somehow trans women should
16:43
Speaker 3: be excluded from womanhood in general, which sounds like it's
16:47
Speaker 3: not what you think at all. And like, it doesn't
16:49
Speaker 3: seem like, are there any policies that the trans community
16:52
Speaker 3: supports that you oppose, whether it's ability to access gender
16:55
Speaker 3: affirming healthcare or the inclusion of trans women in women's spaces?
17:00
Speaker 1: No, the one thing that I'm thinking about, I'm actually
17:02
Speaker 1: writing an essay about this and I've read, and it's
17:04
Speaker 1: interesting because since this happened, I feel like I've become
17:07
Speaker 1: an authority of sorts on this subject because I went
17:10
Speaker 1: and I read every damn thing I could find because
17:13
Speaker 1: I really was taken aback. I didn't quite understand what
17:18
Speaker 1: all of the vitriol was about. I really was genuinely
17:20
Speaker 1: taken aback by it. And so I thought I'm missing something, right?
17:23
Speaker 1: There's clearly something that I'm missing. So I then started reading.
17:27
Speaker 3: For people listening and who are confused, you are, I've
17:31
Speaker 3: heard you say this before, you're supportive of the trans
17:33
Speaker 3: community and you're supportive of, you know, I think I
17:35
Speaker 3: heard you say, if any country is denying access to
17:39
Speaker 3: gender affirming healthcare, that's immoral.
17:40
Speaker 2: You're opposed to that. And that's all true.
17:43
Speaker 1: I am. I am. I mean, I'm completely, but, but,
17:45
Speaker 1: you know, there's also something about having to say this
17:48
Speaker 1: that I find upsetting because, you know, it's kind of
17:51
Speaker 1: like a politician who's kind of made to say, you know,
17:57
Speaker 1: you're racist with no evidence and that a politician suddenly
18:01
Speaker 1: has to say, no, I'm not. And then the headline
18:04
Speaker 1: then becomes, politician denies being racist, which in itself gives
18:08
Speaker 1: a certain kind of power to it. So I find
18:10
Speaker 1: myself really bristling, you know, really bristling and having to
18:15
Speaker 1: state what seems to me fairly obvious. I think that
18:17
Speaker 1: anybody who knows the things that I've stood for cannot
18:20
Speaker 1: possibly think that I would agree to a group of
18:24
Speaker 1: people being excluded from any kind of access to civil rights.
18:28
Speaker 1: I just, it's just not the person that I am.
18:30
Speaker 3: It's funny that you talked about being a politician because
18:33
Speaker 3: in some ways, in many ways, social media sort of
18:36
Speaker 3: forces everyone to become politicians now. And like everyone, every
18:40
Speaker 3: public figure, and even people who are sort of not
18:42
Speaker 3: really public figures are expected to like post their beliefs
18:45
Speaker 3: and statements, and those statements and beliefs get picked apart
18:47
Speaker 3: much like you would with a politician. And again, you know,
18:50
Speaker 3: it's one thing if someone has a position that you
18:52
Speaker 3: oppose and they should be called out for that, but
18:54
Speaker 3: sometimes the context disappears when you're on social media. But
18:58
Speaker 3: I do want to get to your point about performance,
19:01
Speaker 3: which you talked about. And, you know, later in the
19:03
Speaker 3: essay you wrote, you notice in certain young people today,
19:06
Speaker 3: a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in
19:09
Speaker 3: the public space of Twitter, but not in the intimate
19:11
Speaker 3: space of friendship. We've talked a lot on this show
19:13
Speaker 3: about how social media can turn life into an endless performance.
19:18
Speaker 3: Gia Tolentino coined that phrase. Why do you think that is?
19:23
Speaker 1: Because there are benefits to it. There's very little to
19:28
Speaker 1: gain from being thoughtful or acknowledging nuance, but there's a
19:34
Speaker 1: lot to gain from having that sharp one-sentence killer about someone, right?
19:41
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Speaker 3: you think that younger generations tend to behave like this
22:35
Speaker 3: because they're more immersed in social media than older generations?
22:39
Speaker 3: Or do you think there are other factors at play?
22:43
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. I've thought about it. And maybe
22:46
Speaker 1: this is what they know. And I should say as
22:49
Speaker 1: well that it's not just about people like me who,
22:57
Speaker 1: you know, are public figures and have a platform. the
22:59
Speaker 1: so-called young people who are participating in this kind of
23:02
Speaker 1: thing are themselves also, I think, suffering from it. Because
23:05
Speaker 1: I think there is a kind of fear that they
23:10
Speaker 1: live in not just a bubble of what I like
23:14
Speaker 1: to call a kind of ideological orthodoxy, but also a
23:16
Speaker 1: bubble of fear, of fear of saying the wrong thing,
23:19
Speaker 1: because they worry that their own will come after them.
23:23
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I think sometimes, and maybe this
23:26
Speaker 1: is also a consequence of my feeling that people are
23:30
Speaker 1: generally better than, I mean, I really think that human
23:34
Speaker 1: beings fundamentally on the whole are not too bad, right?
23:38
Speaker 1: And so I sometimes think that the young people who
23:40
Speaker 1: are on social media and just writing this awful, nasty
23:43
Speaker 1: things are doing it out of fear. Because I think
23:46
Speaker 1: there's a sense in which if you then say, well,
23:49
Speaker 1: maybe we should have a bit more nuance in this conversation,
23:52
Speaker 1: your people will come after you because then they'll say
23:55
Speaker 1: you're I guess selling out or being a pick me.
24:00
Speaker 1: These are all the things I've been learning because I'm
24:02
Speaker 1: not on Twitter.
24:05
Speaker 2: Do you use social media? Like how much are you
24:07
Speaker 2: on social media?
24:09
Speaker 1: I have an Instagram. Instagram is gentle. Instagram is really
24:16
Speaker 1: just a celebration of fantasy.
24:19
Speaker 2: Certainly compared to Twitter. Certainly compared to Twitter, yeah.
24:22
Speaker 1: And I'm all for vanity. So I think Instagram, but
24:25
Speaker 1: I don't even do it myself. My assistant does. So
24:27
Speaker 1: we just talk about which picture should we put up.
24:30
Speaker 1: But the reason I don't do it myself is really
24:32
Speaker 1: because I recognize that I have, I recognize my personality
24:37
Speaker 1: flaws and I know that I would get into fierce fights.
24:41
Speaker 1: And so I just step away. I would not have
24:45
Speaker 1: the self-control to not sort of get involved in rolling
24:50
Speaker 1: the mud. So that's why I'm not on Twitter.
24:53
Speaker 3: Well, I thought it was interesting, and you say in
24:55
Speaker 3: the essay, and you just mentioned that, you know, this
24:58
Speaker 3: fear of having the wrong opinion is sort of robbing
25:01
Speaker 3: people of the opportunity to think and learn and grow,
25:04
Speaker 3: partly because in this day and age, we are thinking
25:08
Speaker 3: and learning and growing out loud in public in front
25:11
Speaker 3: of everyone else. And so there's sort of less room
25:13
Speaker 3: for error. I think the challenge is all of social
25:17
Speaker 3: media now is just flooded with opinions all day long.
25:20
Speaker 3: It's mostly opinions, unfortunately. How do you think we should
25:24
Speaker 3: distinguish between opinions that are merely bad or even offensive
25:29
Speaker 3: and opinions that are harmful or feel threatening to some people?
25:33
Speaker 3: And who gets to draw that line?
25:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the question. Who gets to? And that's why,
25:38
Speaker 1: by the way, I really, I mean, what you said
25:40
Speaker 1: about opinions for me, that's also one of my I
25:45
Speaker 1: think maybe we should do less opinion and more like fact.
25:50
Speaker 1: So there's a... I love this line, this lovely line
25:54
Speaker 1: from a lovely poem by Robert Lowell. And the line is,
25:58
Speaker 1: and why not just say what happened? And I think
26:02
Speaker 1: about this a lot because... And I think also just
26:06
Speaker 1: in terms of thinking about what's going on in the
26:10
Speaker 1: US right now. For example, all of the noise about... CRT,
26:19
Speaker 1: which on the one hand for me, I just think
26:21
Speaker 1: this is just complete nonsense from the right. But then
26:24
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I think the answer for the
26:26
Speaker 1: left is not just to say, nobody's teaching CRT to
26:29
Speaker 1: your kids. The answer is maybe to talk about it.
26:33
Speaker 1: How is in fact the history of African-Americans taught in
26:37
Speaker 1: American schools? I kind of feel that maybe we should
26:40
Speaker 1: have more of a fact-based and more narrative approach to things.
26:46
Speaker 1: And so when a person has an opinion, maybe we
26:49
Speaker 1: should talk about what's backing up that opinion. You don't
26:51
Speaker 1: just wake up and pull things out of the air, right?
26:54
Speaker 1: I mean, so for me, I really want to gauge
26:57
Speaker 1: what a person is saying. If somebody has an opinion,
26:59
Speaker 1: I want to understand where is it coming from? What
27:01
Speaker 1: does it mean? What are the facts behind it? What's
27:04
Speaker 1: the story behind it? And the question about who gets
27:08
Speaker 1: to say which opinion is offensive But that's part of
27:13
Speaker 1: living in a democracy. Nobody gets to see. And maybe
27:15
Speaker 1: this is also a question about that age-old idea of
27:19
Speaker 1: free speech and where the line should be drawn. So
27:23
Speaker 1: I'm a person who believes very much that the answer
27:26
Speaker 1: to a bad idea is more ideas. I do not
27:29
Speaker 1: believe that the answer to a bad idea is somehow
27:31
Speaker 1: to find ways to stifle it. Because I think that
27:34
Speaker 1: when you suppress things, they only fester. And I know
27:38
Speaker 1: this as a person who's a storyteller. And just human
27:41
Speaker 1: nature is like that. And I think there's a lot
27:43
Speaker 1: on the left that is about suppression that I think
27:47
Speaker 1: is really unhealthy.
27:48
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting on your point about critical race theory.
27:51
Speaker 3: I've thought about this a lot as well because, you know,
27:54
Speaker 3: you're right. You get the right has their story about
27:57
Speaker 3: critical race theory and their argument, their opinion is that
28:02
Speaker 3: the left is teaching kids to hate America. And then
28:06
Speaker 3: sometimes the left responses, that's not real. That's not really happening.
28:10
Speaker 3: But I think about your most viewed TED Talk ever
28:14
Speaker 3: about the danger of a single story. I do think
28:16
Speaker 3: this is– we're better off in a contest of narratives,
28:20
Speaker 3: in a contest of stories with the right. And so
28:22
Speaker 3: if the right is going to say the left is
28:24
Speaker 3: teaching a history of America that causes people to hate America,
28:28
Speaker 3: I think that the left should tell a story about
28:30
Speaker 3: America that is real, that is based in slavery as
28:34
Speaker 3: our original sin and the racism, the systemic racism that
28:37
Speaker 3: still exists here, but also the– movements of people over
28:41
Speaker 3: the decades and the years, civil rights activists, women's rights activists,
28:46
Speaker 3: who have overcome and made progress in this country. And
28:51
Speaker 3: that's why this country is still worth fighting for. That's
28:55
Speaker 3: why this ideal is worth fighting for. And so if
28:57
Speaker 3: you start to tell a story that people can recognize them.
29:01
Speaker 1: Can I just say that's very Obama-esque. So that's what
29:04
Speaker 1: you were getting. That's what you got, got, got up
29:07
Speaker 1: to when you wrote the speeches, right?
29:08
Speaker 2: He was, he was my, he was my writing workshop teacher. Yeah.
29:13
Speaker 1: No, but I kind of agree with that in political terms,
29:17
Speaker 1: but just more outside of politics. My thing is just
29:23
Speaker 1: say what happened, right? I think the focus on history
29:26
Speaker 1: should be more narrative. I really don't think, and I
29:30
Speaker 1: think maybe if, if, Maybe if African-American history in particular
29:35
Speaker 1: were taught in a more narrative way, maybe the conversations
29:38
Speaker 1: we're having today would not be so fraught, right? I
29:41
Speaker 1: think that if people really understood just the magnitude of,
29:49
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to use a word like evil,
29:51
Speaker 1: that the American state perpetrated on black people, I think
29:55
Speaker 1: that most people you know, good human beings would not
29:59
Speaker 1: be so horrified at the thought of reparations, for example.
30:02
Speaker 1: I feel as though part of the problem with the
30:04
Speaker 1: state of the conversation, and I know that, of course,
30:07
Speaker 1: there are always going to be people on the right,
30:08
Speaker 1: a certain kind of person on the right who just
30:10
Speaker 1: doesn't want to hear it. But I think if we
30:12
Speaker 1: were more familiar, right? I mean, I remember for me
30:15
Speaker 1: when I came to the U.S. and I started reading
30:17
Speaker 1: African-American history, because even I knew very little about Black history.
30:22
Speaker 1: And I just was stunned. And so... You know, my
30:25
Speaker 1: American home is in Maryland. And to think that as
30:28
Speaker 1: recently as the 70s and communities in that state, people
30:31
Speaker 1: were draining the swimming pools so that black families would
30:34
Speaker 1: not swim. And for me, I'm thinking, what? You know,
30:38
Speaker 1: it's not slavery. It's in the 1970s. And I think
30:40
Speaker 1: if people knew this, not in a way of saying
30:44
Speaker 1: somehow you're bad or even look how good you are
30:48
Speaker 1: because we've overcome that. But simply, here's what happened. I
30:52
Speaker 1: think maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm being too optimistic,
30:54
Speaker 1: but maybe the conversation today would be, I don't know,
30:59
Speaker 1: maybe just less, it's just, I just find that when
31:04
Speaker 1: race comes up in the US on both sides, the
31:06
Speaker 1: left and the right, there's a problem with it. There's
31:09
Speaker 1: a problem with the way that the conversation is had.
31:12
Speaker 1: I mean, you do not reach people by sneering at them.
31:16
Speaker 1: And there are people who believe the CRT nonsense who
31:21
Speaker 1: actually believe it, who maybe if you're engaged with them
31:24
Speaker 1: and said to them, actually, here's what's being taught in schools.
31:27
Speaker 1: And by the way, here's your history. Maybe, I don't know.
31:30
Speaker 1: Would it change their minds? I don't know. But I
31:32
Speaker 1: do know that yelling and sanctimony and sneering is not working.
31:36
Speaker 1: And the left is very good at sneering.
31:39
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting.
31:40
Speaker 3: I mean, again, I come at it from the political standpoint.
31:44
Speaker 3: Some people, you won't change their minds at all, for sure.
31:46
Speaker 3: Some people, they believe it. And if you told them
31:48
Speaker 3: the other side, they'd still believe it. And, you know,
31:50
Speaker 3: they believe in racist ideas. But there's a lot of
31:55
Speaker 3: people in the country. There's 300 plus million people. And
31:59
Speaker 3: I think one thing I've been saying on the show
32:00
Speaker 3: is I think what social media does is we are
32:03
Speaker 3: very good if we're on social media a lot at
32:05
Speaker 3: knowing exactly what people think who are on our side,
32:10
Speaker 3: who think just like us, who are partisans on the left.
32:13
Speaker 3: We're also pretty good at knowing what people on the
32:15
Speaker 3: far right think because they're pretty loud on Twitter too.
32:18
Speaker 3: And I think that obscures the fact that there are
32:21
Speaker 3: hundreds of millions of people who aren't on social media,
32:24
Speaker 3: who aren't voicing their opinions, who actually have pretty complex
32:27
Speaker 3: views on a lot of different issues. And I think
32:29
Speaker 3: we have to try at least to meet them where
32:31
Speaker 3: they are and then persuade them to come along. And
32:36
Speaker 3: I think that social media has made people feel that, yeah,
32:39
Speaker 3: maybe persuasion is just hopeless at this point because we
32:42
Speaker 3: know that the right is dug in and we know
32:44
Speaker 3: that we're dug in and there's no one left in
32:45
Speaker 3: the middle to persuade. And in the middle is a
32:48
Speaker 3: problematic term anyway, because people think it means like you're
32:50
Speaker 3: centrist and that's not necessarily what it means. It means
32:52
Speaker 3: you could have all kinds of different views, very progressive views,
32:54
Speaker 3: some conservative views. Yeah.
32:57
Speaker 1: Which is interesting in itself, I think. But I mean,
33:00
Speaker 1: to what you said, just struck by that word persuasion,
33:04
Speaker 1: because I am a keen believer in persuasion. And I
33:08
Speaker 1: think I think it's important in politics. You cannot write
33:12
Speaker 1: a person off starting out. I mean, I feel like
33:15
Speaker 1: it's important to give a bit of room. And my
33:19
Speaker 1: general feeling is there's some people that I just will
33:23
Speaker 1: not talk to because there's no point. And I say
33:25
Speaker 1: this in conversations about feminism, right? And here I am
33:30
Speaker 1: in Lagos, and this is a country that is And
33:34
Speaker 1: refreshing in the sense that people are very in your
33:37
Speaker 1: face about what they think about women, unlike in the U.S.
33:41
Speaker 1: where they will not tell you, but they're thinking it. So,
33:44
Speaker 1: you know, it's true. Right. So in the U.S., I
33:47
Speaker 1: think when Hillary Clinton was running, there are people who
33:49
Speaker 1: felt a woman cannot be president, but they would probably
33:52
Speaker 1: not be willing to say it. In Nigeria, I've just
33:54
Speaker 1: been in my home state, my ancestral home state, and
33:56
Speaker 1: a woman was running for governor. And a bunch of
33:59
Speaker 1: men just say, oh, but a woman can't be governor.
34:01
Speaker 1: They're just like, yeah, a woman just can't be governor.
34:04
Speaker 1: There's certain men who have these opinions that I think
34:06
Speaker 1: there's no point. They will never change. But in that
34:09
Speaker 1: cohort of men, there are people who I think we
34:11
Speaker 1: can have a conversation. And if I can try and
34:13
Speaker 1: shift his view just a little bit, he has power.
34:16
Speaker 1: He's then going to go on to shift policy, hopefully.
34:20
Speaker 1: And that's how we change the world. I think change
34:22
Speaker 1: has to be incremental. I mean, we're not children in
34:26
Speaker 1: preschool who want everything and want it now. The sad
34:29
Speaker 1: thing about being adults in the adult world is to
34:31
Speaker 1: realize that You know, persuasion is a good thing. Compromise
34:36
Speaker 1: in certain ways is a good thing.
34:38
Speaker 3: Do you think persuasion is possible on the sort of
34:43
Speaker 3: social media platforms we have today? Because that's where I keep... No.
34:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I don't think it is. I just don't
34:50
Speaker 1: think it is. The platform Twitter in particular, I think,
34:55
Speaker 1: because Facebook is kind of... Facebook is an entirely different
34:58
Speaker 1: kind of monster, right? I mean, it just, it just,
35:03
Speaker 1: it just kind of feeds people nonsense. But I do
35:06
Speaker 1: think that the social media platforms are not, you know,
35:11
Speaker 1: the DNA of these platforms are not to encourage thoughtful, um, persuasion,
35:17
Speaker 1: I don't think. Um, but can they maybe, I mean,
35:22
Speaker 1: they're not right now, but can they, what if we
35:25
Speaker 1: all kind of, um, you know, drank a potion that
35:29
Speaker 1: made us all sort of a bit more compassionate and
35:31
Speaker 1: a bit more patient, would we use social media differently?
35:36
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know.
35:37
Speaker 3: I think it has to be less. I mean, I
35:40
Speaker 3: think there are spaces where, you know, you can text
35:43
Speaker 3: groups of friends and you're willing to have a more honest, thoughtful,
35:47
Speaker 3: nuanced conversation because the whole world isn't paying attention to
35:50
Speaker 3: every single word you say so that you're not You're
35:54
Speaker 3: not arguing with this fear in the back of your
35:56
Speaker 3: mind that if you make a mistake, trip up, say
35:59
Speaker 3: the wrong thing, reveal some ignorance that you may have,
36:02
Speaker 3: which every human has, then that's it for.
36:05
Speaker 2: You or people are going to come to you.
36:08
Speaker 3: And so I think if there are ways– the problem–
36:13
Speaker 3: someone who focuses on disinformation always says it's not necessarily
36:16
Speaker 3: about free speech.
36:17
Speaker 2: It's about free reach.
36:19
Speaker 3: And everyone has free speech and there should be free
36:21
Speaker 3: speech on platforms, but you don't have a right to,
36:24
Speaker 3: not everyone has a right to say things that just
36:27
Speaker 3: go as far as possible, nor is that necessarily a
36:29
Speaker 3: good idea to have a situation where every single thing
36:32
Speaker 3: that we're saying all the time goes to every single
36:35
Speaker 3: person in the world. Because that level of connection, that
36:39
Speaker 3: intensity of having the whole world be that much connected
36:42
Speaker 3: is going to lead to some bad things.
36:45
Speaker 1: Oh, and it has led to some bad things. Look
36:49
Speaker 1: at your former president and what he.
36:51
Speaker 3: Did with social media. Yeah, no, that's a very good
36:54
Speaker 3: example of leading to bad things. I mean, you hit
36:57
Speaker 3: on something at the end of the essay that I
36:59
Speaker 3: think is sort of central to all this. You wrote,
37:02
Speaker 3: the assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is
37:05
Speaker 3: not goodness, but the appearance of goodness. We are no
37:07
Speaker 3: longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel
37:10
Speaker 3: one another. God help us, it is obscene. Why do
37:13
Speaker 3: you think the assumption of good faith is dead?
37:17
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. I mean, no. Do you know?
37:20
Speaker 1: I really don't know. It's something I think about quite
37:22
Speaker 1: a bit. And I think it's something that's kind of
37:25
Speaker 1: happened in the past, maybe 10, 15. I think it's
37:28
Speaker 1: relatively recent in the sense that when I, so I
37:33
Speaker 1: first came to the US in 1997 to go to college.
37:37
Speaker 1: And obviously social media wasn't much of a thing then.
37:41
Speaker 1: But in just having conversations, even in just small academic circles,
37:46
Speaker 1: I think there wasn't that much fear of, tripping up
37:51
Speaker 1: and then having people come after you. I think it
37:54
Speaker 1: was more of an assumption of good faith. I don't
37:57
Speaker 1: know why that is, but it's obvious that that's how
38:01
Speaker 1: Twitter now operates fundamentally. And even taking back something one
38:06
Speaker 1: has said is no longer allowed. I mean, there's an
38:09
Speaker 1: assumption that one hasn't changed from the person that one
38:12
Speaker 1: was 25 years ago.
38:15
Speaker 2: Right.
38:15
Speaker 1: I find that really troubling. I'm learning and growing every day.
38:20
Speaker 1: There are things I said 10 years ago that I
38:22
Speaker 1: don't believe anymore because I like to think that I'm
38:25
Speaker 1: slightly wiser now with encroaching old age. And to be
38:30
Speaker 1: made to somehow, to be made to go back to
38:35
Speaker 1: that person that I was and to be told this
38:37
Speaker 1: is who you are and this is who you will
38:39
Speaker 1: always be just seems to me very strange.
38:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I've been trying to figure this out for
38:44
Speaker 3: a long time and I've been trying to separate out,
38:46
Speaker 3: is it just social media? You know, in the US,
38:49
Speaker 3: I think part of the problem is that politics are
38:52
Speaker 3: so polarized and we have seen so many bad things
38:57
Speaker 3: from the other side, like our former president.
39:00
Speaker 1: But which came first? For me, that's the question. Which
39:03
Speaker 1: came first, right? I mean, so all of this polarization
39:07
Speaker 1: and the assumption of good faith being dead, Which came first?
39:13
Speaker 3: Well, and also the question I have for you is,
39:15
Speaker 3: I mean, this is I think I have a US
39:18
Speaker 3: centric view of this, obviously, because this is where I've
39:20
Speaker 3: lived my whole life. So I think, oh, maybe it's
39:22
Speaker 3: just political polarization and social media just fueled the political
39:26
Speaker 3: polarization that already exists. But what is it like in Nigeria?
39:29
Speaker 2: Is it?
39:31
Speaker 3: Are the politics polarized first or was it social media
39:34
Speaker 3: or how do you see that?
39:37
Speaker 1: Nigeria is different because our politics is not ideological. And
39:45
Speaker 1: we don't have a left or a right. There's really
39:47
Speaker 1: no ideologies. Our politics is a kind of patronage politics.
39:51
Speaker 1: And so I think because it's not ideological, that kind
39:53
Speaker 1: of polarization doesn't really exist. So what you have is
39:58
Speaker 1: the majority of Nigerians furious at terrible government, which has
40:02
Speaker 1: been our story since independence in 1960. So that hasn't changed.
40:06
Speaker 1: Social media, I think, has given young people a voice
40:09
Speaker 1: in this country. So in that sense, I'm actually kind
40:12
Speaker 1: of pro-Twitter for Nigeria because I think that it's given
40:16
Speaker 1: young people a voice. It's allowed young people to make
40:20
Speaker 1: complaints about things that they would not have been able
40:22
Speaker 1: to before. And it's also forced the government to sometimes react.
40:28
Speaker 1: By the way, I should tell you that Twitter is
40:29
Speaker 1: currently banned in Nigeria. It has been banned for the past,
40:32
Speaker 1: has it been up to a year? For just the
40:35
Speaker 1: most stupid reasons. But of course, all the young people
40:38
Speaker 1: have VPNs, so they are all on Twitter anyway. But
40:41
Speaker 1: it just shows you the power of social media that
40:43
Speaker 1: the government felt that it should ban Twitter. But in
40:47
Speaker 1: terms of just thinking about the U.S., I think social
40:51
Speaker 1: media and the way that it's structured, it's kind of
40:53
Speaker 1: an American invention, isn't it?
40:55
Speaker 2: Yes.
40:57
Speaker 1: And so I think the U.S. has managed to export
41:03
Speaker 1: its issues to the rest of the world. So you
41:05
Speaker 1: have people fighting American battles that are not really their battles.
41:10
Speaker 3: You know, they call it political hobbyism here. is that
41:14
Speaker 3: it is, you treat it as like a daily hobby,
41:17
Speaker 3: you're fighting with other people, but the actual work of
41:20
Speaker 3: persuasion and democracy, which takes knocking on doors and having
41:24
Speaker 3: one-on-one conversations, that is not as attractive to people because
41:27
Speaker 3: it is much harder work, slower work, much more, you know,
41:31
Speaker 3: and it's much easier to wake up, see the news,
41:33
Speaker 3: get outraged, and tweet something at someone.
41:36
Speaker 1: And then the benefit is you don't get, if you're
41:38
Speaker 1: doing the sort of grassroots on the ground walk, you
41:41
Speaker 1: don't get the high of likes. We can't, you know,
41:44
Speaker 1: I think it's important to, I mean, there are benefits
41:47
Speaker 1: to being nasty on Twitter. Right. There are.
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43:52
Speaker 3: some people say that this debate about cancel culture or
43:55
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it, is really about a
43:57
Speaker 3: power imbalance, right? Public figures have always had large platforms
44:02
Speaker 3: to say whatever they want, even if what they say
44:04
Speaker 3: is offensive or hurtful to others who may not have
44:07
Speaker 3: those same platforms. And social media merely corrects that imbalance
44:12
Speaker 3: by giving everyone a voice.
44:13
Speaker 2: What do you make of that?
44:16
Speaker 1: Again, this is the kind of statement that requires a
44:19
Speaker 1: lot of you know, nuance. So on the one hand, yes, right, obviously.
44:23
Speaker 1: And I think in particular, in a place like Nigeria,
44:25
Speaker 1: and I think many other countries in the world where
44:27
Speaker 1: for so long, not just that young people did not
44:29
Speaker 1: have a voice, but that the system that was supposed
44:32
Speaker 1: to be democratic really wasn't. So I like to say
44:35
Speaker 1: that what we have now is an ostensible democracy. But
44:39
Speaker 1: so in Nigeria, yes, young people have had a voice.
44:42
Speaker 1: But I don't think it also means then that, so
44:48
Speaker 1: this idea that People in power have always been able
44:51
Speaker 1: to say what they want. And now Twitter means that
44:55
Speaker 1: we get to hold them accountable. Yes, but if you're
44:59
Speaker 1: holding them accountable with a bit of sense in your
45:02
Speaker 1: bloody head. My point is, again, it's not about saying
45:08
Speaker 1: that I don't want people to disagree with me or
45:11
Speaker 1: with people who are in power. But it's about saying
45:13
Speaker 1: we have to start with a good faith assumption. We
45:16
Speaker 1: have to engage with what they're saying. We have to,
45:19
Speaker 1: when we do disagree, disagree with intelligence and facts.
45:27
Speaker 2: Right.
45:27
Speaker 1: And really, honestly, if these two writers had to go
45:33
Speaker 1: back to them, so I was upset that they did
45:35
Speaker 1: not sort of reach out to me to say, we
45:37
Speaker 1: don't like that you said this and here's why, which
45:40
Speaker 1: I really would have appreciated. But had they in fact
45:42
Speaker 1: gone on social media and said, we don't like that
45:44
Speaker 1: she said this and here's why, I don't think I
45:47
Speaker 1: would have been so upset. It's going on social media
45:50
Speaker 1: and saying she's a murderer. There's a difference. And I
45:53
Speaker 1: just think that there's some things that are unacceptable. So
45:56
Speaker 1: I would not consider that holding quote unquote public figures accountable.
46:00
Speaker 1: I think that's nonsense.
46:01
Speaker 3: I wonder if at the core of this, you know,
46:04
Speaker 3: good faith discussion and sort of how to restore the
46:06
Speaker 3: presumption of good faith, like empathy is actually what we're
46:11
Speaker 3: looking for here. I mean, you know, look, I, again,
46:14
Speaker 3: went down the rabbit hole on this issue, partly because
46:17
Speaker 3: I was preparing for this interview. But when you read,
46:21
Speaker 3: when you get past sort of the social media attacks and,
46:24
Speaker 3: you know, people saying you want to kill trans people
46:27
Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff, and you really look
46:28
Speaker 3: at the issues, you think, you know, the trans community
46:32
Speaker 3: has experienced incredible pain and exclusion and violence. And you
46:37
Speaker 3: wonder if some people who are upset are just coming
46:41
Speaker 3: from a good place and a place where like, you know, look,
46:43
Speaker 3: I want to live my life. I want to be respected.
46:46
Speaker 3: I want to be welcomed. I want to be embraced.
46:48
Speaker 3: I want to be just like everyone else. And when
46:50
Speaker 3: someone doesn't see that, and when I hear comments, again,
46:54
Speaker 3: they may be comments taken out of context, but you
46:56
Speaker 3: see them, you see the headlines, that someone says, I
46:59
Speaker 3: am other, then that's going to hurt, you know, and
47:02
Speaker 3: I'm going to speak out and hurt. And I wonder
47:04
Speaker 3: if trying to put ourselves in people's shoes more, even
47:08
Speaker 3: if it seems like they're coming at us in bad faith,
47:12
Speaker 3: is sort of the answer here.
47:13
Speaker 2: I don't know what you think about that.
47:15
Speaker 1: So two things. There's a part of me that, the
47:18
Speaker 1: part of me, you know, me being a woman who's
47:22
Speaker 1: had sort of female socialization from birth already bristles at
47:26
Speaker 1: that because I'm thinking, wait, hold on. Someone's being nasty
47:29
Speaker 1: to me in a way that I find very unfair
47:31
Speaker 1: and I'm supposed to be sort of the saint. And
47:33
Speaker 1: I'm done with saintliness, right? I mean, I'm just not
47:37
Speaker 1: a saint. I'm not interested in being a saint. But
47:39
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I did have, and that's part
47:42
Speaker 1: of the reason I then went and started reading. And
47:45
Speaker 1: in particular, I wanted to read memoirs. I wanted to
47:47
Speaker 1: read stories of trans women's experiences. Because I do think
47:53
Speaker 1: that there were two aspects to all of the sort
47:56
Speaker 1: of backlash. And because I wasn't on social media, I mean,
48:01
Speaker 1: initially I was so surprised at how people kept calling
48:03
Speaker 1: me and friends who sent me flowers were saying, hanging there,
48:06
Speaker 1: and I thought, my God, right? No, we forget that
48:09
Speaker 1: being a public figure does not mean that you are
48:12
Speaker 1: somehow immune to depression and hurt and just sort of,
48:16
Speaker 1: you know, not wanting to get out of bed for
48:18
Speaker 1: weeks because you don't understand why people are after you, right?
48:21
Speaker 1: You're not vaccinated from all of those things just because
48:23
Speaker 1: you're a quote-unquote public figure. But I did think that
48:26
Speaker 1: there were two things there, which is I did think
48:29
Speaker 1: that there were people who were genuinely hurt, who genuinely
48:32
Speaker 1: felt that somehow I was saying that they were other
48:36
Speaker 1: and less than. I think that there were people who
48:38
Speaker 1: fell that way and that made me feel bad. But
48:42
Speaker 1: I think that by far the noisier people were the
48:46
Speaker 1: performers and that those people I had no time for. Yeah.
48:52
Speaker 3: I mean, we've been talking about this so far from,
48:55
Speaker 3: you know, a political perspective, persuasion. I was so curious
48:59
Speaker 3: how you think about it from a literary perspective, because
49:02
Speaker 3: one of the lines in the essay is, you know,
49:04
Speaker 3: you criticize people who claim to love literature, the messy
49:07
Speaker 3: stories of our humanity, but are also monomaniacally obsessed with
49:10
Speaker 3: whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. I wonder how you
49:14
Speaker 3: think this debate and these issues affect writers, people who
49:19
Speaker 3: write fiction. novelists, which, you know, you can write about
49:23
Speaker 3: characters that are horrible. You can write about, you know, like,
49:27
Speaker 3: how do you think about that?
49:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's actually the thing that worries me the most,
49:31
Speaker 1: because obviously that's the thing I care about the most,
49:34
Speaker 1: stories and literature. I just, I worry about what's going to,
49:38
Speaker 1: I think the art, I mean, I think the sort
49:41
Speaker 1: of literary arts that will be produced in the US
49:44
Speaker 1: in the next 10 to 15 years, unless something changes,
49:47
Speaker 1: will be awful. I think it will be flat. I
49:51
Speaker 1: think the characters will be terrible mouthpieces. Because what's happening
49:56
Speaker 1: now is people are afraid. I really think that people
49:59
Speaker 1: are afraid of not just writing about certain subjects, but
50:04
Speaker 1: how they write about it. I think art has to
50:07
Speaker 1: be able to go to a place that's messy, a
50:09
Speaker 1: place that's uncomfortable. You have to be able to write
50:12
Speaker 1: characters who are assholes in all kinds of ways and
50:16
Speaker 1: not have that be somehow, not have that become something
50:22
Speaker 1: that explains you, the writer. So I've had conversations with
50:25
Speaker 1: young people who, and again, I find myself sounding like
50:29
Speaker 1: the old cantankerous uncle because I say to them, you're
50:31
Speaker 1: not reading with any kind of complexity. So You know,
50:35
Speaker 1: I ask them what they think about something and, you know,
50:37
Speaker 1: they say things like, well, there was a character who
50:40
Speaker 1: said the N-word. Or they'll say there's a character who
50:44
Speaker 1: was a misogynist. And that's the literary kind of feedback
50:48
Speaker 1: that they have about a piece of literature. And I
50:52
Speaker 1: find that to be awful. Well, first of all, it
50:56
Speaker 1: seems to me that literature is the last kind of
51:00
Speaker 1: the last thing that we can depend on to tell
51:02
Speaker 1: us the truth about who we are. Because politics can
51:05
Speaker 1: no longer do that. Politicians have to lie. I mean,
51:08
Speaker 1: they have to. I'm not talking about your speeches, John. No,
51:15
Speaker 1: I know. I'm not saying you had to tell us
51:18
Speaker 1: a few burnished lies because Brother Barack had to say
51:23
Speaker 1: what he had to say. No, no. But really, I
51:26
Speaker 1: think literature, we have to, for me, it's looking at
51:30
Speaker 1: literature and thinking literature is the last thing that can
51:32
Speaker 1: tell us how we really are. Literature is a thing
51:34
Speaker 1: that can reflect to us who we are. But if
51:37
Speaker 1: we have this kind of social situation where everyone is terrified,
51:42
Speaker 1: where there are things that people call sensitivity readers in
51:47
Speaker 1: publishing houses, I think that's a bad idea, right? And
51:50
Speaker 1: here's why. I think some people will write terrible books
51:53
Speaker 1: and I think novels have worldviews. So you can read
51:56
Speaker 1: a novel and you can sort of tell that this
51:58
Speaker 1: novel has a racist worldview, right? You can read another
52:01
Speaker 1: novel in which a character is a racist but it
52:04
Speaker 1: doesn't have a racist worldview. But we should allow both
52:08
Speaker 1: because then we can use ideas to talk about why
52:10
Speaker 1: the book with a racist worldview is bad. But the
52:15
Speaker 1: problem becomes where writers think they cannot approach certain subjects
52:19
Speaker 1: because they're going to be called out. I was reading
52:21
Speaker 1: a piece about young adult literature and all of this
52:24
Speaker 1: that's been going on in the young adult literature world
52:27
Speaker 1: where people have been called out for all kinds of
52:29
Speaker 1: things and, you know, young writers have been banished, and
52:34
Speaker 1: sometimes it's one sentence in the book, and I just think,
52:36
Speaker 1: my God, I really worry about the literature that's going
52:41
Speaker 1: to be produced. And I have to tell you, I mean,
52:44
Speaker 1: I don't want to name names or anything, but there
52:45
Speaker 1: are a few recent novels that I have read that
52:49
Speaker 1: I've found depressing. Depressing because I think there's so much
52:52
Speaker 1: potential here, but I can see, I can just see
52:55
Speaker 1: in the writing the holding back.
52:58
Speaker 2: No, I think that's interesting.
53:00
Speaker 3: I think that the argument is probably if there are
53:04
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of novels with racist worldviews or misogynist worldviews,
53:09
Speaker 3: and there aren't necessarily people there to explain why those
53:13
Speaker 3: worldviews are bad, that those worldviews will somehow rub off
53:18
Speaker 3: on or shape the views of the people who read
53:20
Speaker 3: the novels, and then we're going to have more people
53:22
Speaker 3: who buy into that racist worldview. But again, that goes
53:26
Speaker 3: back to like, Are you able to just get rid
53:29
Speaker 3: of those ideas altogether? Or do you just need to
53:34
Speaker 3: fight them without other ideas that say, this is the
53:36
Speaker 3: anti-racist worldview. This is the anti-misogynist worldview. It seems like
53:41
Speaker 3: that's the contest that you want to engage in.
53:44
Speaker 1: But I think for me, the question is, we cannot
53:47
Speaker 1: wish away misogyny. We cannot wish away racism. And I
53:51
Speaker 1: sometimes feel that there's an impulse on the left to
53:54
Speaker 1: do that where, you know, and I start to find
53:58
Speaker 1: it not just annoying, but also kind of patronizing. Misogyny
54:02
Speaker 1: is rife in the world. And I don't mean just in,
54:07
Speaker 1: you know, it's not even just, oh, women are not
54:09
Speaker 1: CEOs and women are not. I mean, just fundamental things,
54:13
Speaker 1: the large swathes of the world where girls are not
54:17
Speaker 1: going to school because they are girls. I mean, they're
54:20
Speaker 1: real things happening we have to be able to write
54:23
Speaker 1: about them and and especially in narrative ways because that's
54:26
Speaker 1: how we can we can get people to to feel
54:29
Speaker 1: because i think the thing that literature does well is
54:31
Speaker 1: literature doesn't just tell us what happens it tells us
54:34
Speaker 1: how it felt and we cannot wish it away so
54:38
Speaker 1: i and we cannot write about it in ways that
54:40
Speaker 1: are always sort of ideologically correct right so so the
54:45
Speaker 1: world is complex women um sometimes are the ones who
54:49
Speaker 1: are fiercely in support of FGM in many parts of
54:54
Speaker 1: the world, for example. That kind of ideologically isn't pure, right?
54:59
Speaker 1: Because women are supposed to support girls and women, but
55:02
Speaker 1: often they don't. You know, there's racism in the world. Sometimes,
55:08
Speaker 1: you know, people on the left are very racist. So
55:12
Speaker 1: there are people who have very progressive views, but who
55:14
Speaker 1: have really messed up views about race. We need to
55:16
Speaker 1: be able to write about that. Right. I just feel
55:20
Speaker 1: that in literature, and I think you can see that
55:23
Speaker 1: my voice is good. I need to sort of take
55:24
Speaker 1: a deep breath because I feel so strongly about, about
55:27
Speaker 1: the future of storytelling. And I think that this whole,
55:33
Speaker 1: the way that I don't like that expression, cancel culture,
55:36
Speaker 1: because I think it's been appropriated by, you know, sort
55:39
Speaker 1: of Fox news. Um, but, but, but what that refers
55:43
Speaker 1: to this kind of people feeling afraid of saying the
55:46
Speaker 1: wrong thing, um, this kind of what I like to
55:49
Speaker 1: call this sort of insistence on a kind of unrealistic purity,
55:54
Speaker 1: I think it's so bad for literature. I really do.
55:56
Speaker 1: I think there are, in fact, enough people in the
55:59
Speaker 1: world who can say, this is bad and here's why.
56:02
Speaker 1: I think that there are. The problem is, I think
56:06
Speaker 1: the gatekeepers on the left think that people are not
56:09
Speaker 1: as bright as they are.
56:11
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I also think that, at least
56:14
Speaker 3: in my experience, your own ideology is shaped by, and
56:19
Speaker 3: you are more confident in it if you are exposed
56:23
Speaker 3: to those other ideas. Like I went to a college,
56:26
Speaker 3: College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, and I was
56:30
Speaker 3: political science and sociology. And it was a college where
56:34
Speaker 3: there weren't all just liberal lefty professors. The political science department,
56:37
Speaker 3: there was a lot of conservative professors. And my sociology
56:40
Speaker 3: professors were very left, off the deep end left.
56:44
Speaker 2: And I loved them all.
56:45
Speaker 3: But I became a progressive in college because I would
56:48
Speaker 3: go and argue with my conservative professors after class and
56:51
Speaker 3: I'd find out what their ideas are. And then I
56:53
Speaker 3: realized to myself, oh, I don't like those ideas because
56:55
Speaker 3: I've thought about them. I've argued against them. I heard
56:59
Speaker 3: from my sociology professors, I think I like those ideas better.
57:02
Speaker 3: But I wrestled with all of the bad ideas to
57:05
Speaker 3: come to a conclusion about what I believe that I
57:06
Speaker 3: felt much more confident in because it was a belief
57:09
Speaker 3: that I came to after a lot of careful thought
57:11
Speaker 3: and argument with people who I disagreed with.
57:15
Speaker 1: So see, I couldn't agree more. I think fundamentally that
57:19
Speaker 1: progressive ideas are better. I think that they're better... for
57:24
Speaker 1: the world in general. I also think that we should
57:28
Speaker 1: be able to defend them. So I feel so strongly about,
57:31
Speaker 1: you know, having, I want to sharpen my ideas. I
57:35
Speaker 1: want to be challenged about what I believe. And that
57:38
Speaker 1: is why for a while, I must confess, I would
57:41
Speaker 1: turn to Fox News until I realized that it's just
57:44
Speaker 1: an utter cesspit. It was not about ideas. It was
57:47
Speaker 1: just about a stupid performance. But for me, it's really
57:50
Speaker 1: important to, Our ideas are better, but we should be
57:55
Speaker 1: open to challenge. And so when I talked about what
57:58
Speaker 1: I think this impulse on the left is to kind
58:00
Speaker 1: of suppress and don't say, don't talk, it almost seems
58:03
Speaker 1: as though the left does not have enough confidence in
58:07
Speaker 1: its own positions and so is unwilling to have it
58:12
Speaker 1: be challenged. And I remember my early years in the U.S.
58:15
Speaker 1: sometimes thinking that, in particular on the subject of race,
58:18
Speaker 1: I used to feel kind of you know, kind of
58:21
Speaker 1: sort of mildly annoyed with certain very left white academics who,
58:28
Speaker 1: when they talked about race, I just thought, I sometimes
58:31
Speaker 1: felt I was being bullshitted. I sometimes felt I was
58:33
Speaker 1: being patronized. And, you know, how they would say, you're
58:38
Speaker 1: not supposed to say that, don't say that. And I
58:39
Speaker 1: would think, why, right? I mean, black people are not inferior.
58:45
Speaker 1: I know that for a fact. So when you say
58:47
Speaker 1: don't say that when somebody says it, I'm like, no,
58:50
Speaker 1: I want to tell that person why they're full of shit.
58:52
Speaker 1: And I will tell them that with facts. Right. I mean, yeah.
58:56
Speaker 3: No, I mean, look, one of one of the one
58:59
Speaker 3: of the challenges with finding a good faith person on
59:03
Speaker 3: the right to challenge your opinion is, like you said,
59:05
Speaker 3: with I think some of the trends that you're talking
59:07
Speaker 3: about on the left happened on the right a long
59:09
Speaker 3: time ago. And so you have, you know, Fox is
59:12
Speaker 3: nothing but performance and most of right wing media is
59:14
Speaker 3: at this point. So it's tough to actually find a
59:16
Speaker 3: good faith conservative to argue with these days, which is
59:20
Speaker 3: part of the issue.
59:20
Speaker 1: You know. How did that happen? But here's the thing.
59:24
Speaker 1: Where are the thoughtful right wingers in America? Where does
59:29
Speaker 1: one find them? Because even the Wall Street Journal opinion pages,
59:33
Speaker 1: sometimes I just think, but surely, yeah, I'm like, but
59:36
Speaker 1: surely you don't even, yeah, I mean, they don't even try.
59:39
Speaker 1: There isn't even sort of a semblance of, I mean,
59:42
Speaker 1: it's just really bad. And I read them and I think,
59:44
Speaker 1: but surely you can tell that this is nonsense. But
59:46
Speaker 1: can I just say, I sometimes also feel that way
59:48
Speaker 1: about the opinion on the left, the New York Times.
59:52
Speaker 1: I really like the Washington, I think the Washington Post
59:55
Speaker 1: is actually really good.
59:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, Post has done good in the Trump era.
59:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, really good.
1:00:00
Speaker 3: So your last question on this, and then I'll let
1:00:03
Speaker 3: you go. You've been generous with your time. Your last
1:00:06
Speaker 3: book was not a novel. It was a beautiful and
1:00:08
Speaker 3: moving account of you and how you and your family
1:00:10
Speaker 3: processed your father's death in the early days of the pandemic.
1:00:14
Speaker 2: It's called Notes on Grief.
1:00:16
Speaker 3: And I wonder, did that experience put any of these
1:00:21
Speaker 3: issues we've talked about in greater perspective or to make
1:00:25
Speaker 3: you think more about how we should treat each other
1:00:27
Speaker 3: or interact with one another or what's really important?
1:00:32
Speaker 1: That's such a good question. And I don't want to
1:00:37
Speaker 1: get emotional. I'm trying to, I'm being, I'm doing my
1:00:41
Speaker 1: tough persona today. So I'm resolutely not going to cry
1:00:48
Speaker 1: because I often will when I talk about how much
1:00:50
Speaker 1: I've been changed by my dad and my mother. But yes,
1:00:54
Speaker 1: I did think a lot about it. And I really
1:00:56
Speaker 1: just feel like I'm a different person. And it's strange
1:00:58
Speaker 1: because I think it's really important to think about what
1:01:02
Speaker 1: matters now. I think about it all the time, like
1:01:04
Speaker 1: what just really matters to me. And I'm so much
1:01:07
Speaker 1: more aware of mortality. So I'm always thinking about I
1:01:09
Speaker 1: could die tomorrow. So sometimes I'm like, I better do
1:01:12
Speaker 1: it today because, hey, I might die tomorrow. I mean, obviously,
1:01:15
Speaker 1: I don't want to die tomorrow because I do want
1:01:17
Speaker 1: to raise my daughter who's six. I don't want to
1:01:19
Speaker 1: leave her. in the clutches of her wonderful father. But anyway,
1:01:26
Speaker 1: it's also made me kind of have much less patience
1:01:29
Speaker 1: for bullshit. By which I mean, the things I think
1:01:35
Speaker 1: before experiencing grief, I would let slide. Now I'm not
1:01:40
Speaker 1: willing to, because I worry that life is so short
1:01:45
Speaker 1: and if one feels strongly about something, one should do
1:01:47
Speaker 1: something about it because we don't know how much time
1:01:49
Speaker 1: we have. And I think had my parents not died,
1:01:52
Speaker 1: I would not have written my essay about social media.
1:01:56
Speaker 1: And it's not because I didn't feel these things before,
1:01:59
Speaker 1: but I just thought, you know, just leave it alone.
1:02:03
Speaker 1: But now, now life is so damn short. The people
1:02:08
Speaker 1: I love are so much more precious to me. I'm also,
1:02:11
Speaker 1: I think it's also made me much more willing to
1:02:13
Speaker 1: say sorry. I think saying sorry has always been a
1:02:20
Speaker 1: thing that I've struggled with. But since experiencing grief, I
1:02:23
Speaker 1: think life is so short, you know, reach out to people,
1:02:26
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So I think I'm doing that
1:02:28
Speaker 1: a lot more. Knock on wood.
1:02:31
Speaker 3: Chimamanda Adichie, thank you so much for joining Offline. I
1:02:34
Speaker 3: really appreciate it.
1:02:37
Speaker 1: I've had a really good time. Thank you.
1:02:48
Speaker 3: Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted
1:02:51
Speaker 3: by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Andy Gardner-Bernstein and
1:02:55
Speaker 3: Austin Fisher. Andrew Chadwick is our audio editor. Kyle Seglin
1:02:59
Speaker 3: and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Jordan Katz and
1:03:02
Speaker 3: Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Tanya Somenator,
1:03:06
Speaker 3: Michael Martinez, Ari Schwartz, Madison Hallman, and Sandy Gerard for
1:03:10
Speaker 3: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian,
1:03:15
Speaker 3: and Amelia Montooth. who film and share our episodes as
1:03:18
Speaker 3: videos every week.