The Space Between Black And White

Esua GoldSmith

Esua Goldsmith has always been a writer. Her memoir  “The Space between Black and White”  illustrates the painful, lonely existence of a mixed race child growing up in Britain as an “only “. That child was Esua.

Life can seem like a whole series of random events that don’t make any sense, but it’s only when you write them down that you can see that they form a pattern. It was almost to tell her story to herself that Esua wrote her memoirs. As a child she was lonely and felt a need to to explain her “onlyness” In a book full of voices she sowed in the threads at different stages of her life.

As an advocate, Esua campaigned for a special category in the census of 2001 for a mixed race category. 20 years of data shows how mixed race is different from other racial experiences. For example , in the UK, there are more mixed race kids in care of social services which may be an indication that people do not know where to place children with mixed heritage.

At the same time, bi-racial people are reconnecting with their roots, discovering their communities and finding out who they are and what it means to experience a sense of belonging. Esua explains that this journey of discovery “ means absolutely everything to me. I looked in the little picture books that you get when you’re a kid and all the early readers and so on, there was just nobody who looked like me. I felt very much like an only. So not only are you dealing with racism, but you’re dealing with onliness which is different from loneliness. It’s a sort of feeling that you have no kin and no place in the world. And that’s a very hard thing for a very small child to learn”.

As a mixed race child growing up she longed for a role mode and to see the possibilities of what she could become.   Being a published author has been a terrific validation of all the writing Esua  has done in  her life.  She has  always been a writer. The Space between Black and White has opened  her life to the most fantastic writers in general and Black writers in particular.

#TesseTalks is curious about governance and diversity.  Esua tells us about her visit to the Anne Hathaway’s cottage where  a feminist  historian who was the tour guide points out a great long board, in the dining room with one chair at the end and benches all around. The only person who had a chair in the whole room was the patriarch. He was the dad and he sat at the one end and he ruled the roost. Everybody else sat at the board – literally a board of wood. If you have a seat at the table, it literally means you are on the front bench, which is where the language comes from in the House  of Commons. Everyone else who didn’t have a seat at the table would be sitting on the floor. Esua laughs, ” So  literally the terms board and chair are actually about furniture!”  

We end or conversation with an invitation for ” inclusive leadership to design the culture of inclusion encouraging all voices at the table “designed for equality”.

Esua can be found at  : LinkedIn | Instagram | WebsiteTwitter | Facebook

READ OUR FULL TRANSCRIPT HERE

00:00:00 Paula: Welcome to “TesseTalks” with your host Tesse Akpeki and co-host Paula Okonneh, where we share with you top leadership and management strategies. This is a journey of discovery. We are learning that leadership is personal and professional, and we hope you will walk with us in this journey. Our guest today is Esua or Esuanswa Jean Goldsmith. And we are going to be talking with her about her book, “The space between black and white”. So let me tell you about Esua. Esua is a British Ghanaian feminist author. She’s a campaigner, she’s a facilitator and she’s the founder director of  Anona development consultancy working in the voluntary sector. Her mixed race memoir, “the space between black and white” was published by Jacaranda # 20&20. Illuminating her inner journey growing up as a mixed race child in Britain. Esua Jane Goldsmith’s unique memoir exposes the isolation and ambiguities that often come with being an only. She was raised in the 1950s in south London in Norfolk with a white working class family. And her education in racial politics was immediate and personal. I can only imagine. From Britain and Scandinavia to Italy and Tanzania, she tackled inequality wherever she saw it. Establishing an inspiring legacy in the women’s lib and black power movement. There’s so much to read about her, but what I’m going to say is welcome to “TesseTalks” and let’s go from there because there’s so much to talk about.

00:02:07 Tesse: Yeah, Esua welcome to “TesseTalks”. Yeah. I’m so happy and excited to have you on the show. For so many months we’ve been trying to get you on and unfortunately you were unwell the beginning of the year, and I’m glad you’re better now. 

00:02:26 Esua: Thank you. I had long COVID so it took me a while, but I have actually. I’m feeling much, much better than I was.

00:02:34 Tesse: Yeah. And it’s just your energy and what you do. I am thrilled to be talking to you about your memoir, “The space between black and white”. Because I know for so many years it was your dream to do this. And to just see you win that prize I don’t, I think if you had heard my scream of delight, when I read the newspaper and your name. My friend’s name was actually in the Guardian announcing you as one of the 20 people who won. I was just so overjoyed about that. So come to my question, which is, why did you write the book on the theme of mixed race identity? And how much do you think things have changed since you were young in a world that seems to be more polarized than ever? How optimistic do you feel about what the mixed experience will be like for the next generation?

00:03:29 Esua: Well, I guess I needed to write this story. As you say Tesse, this has been my lifelong dream. Because I felt that the mixed race story had simply not been told. There is a lot that’s come in the last few years. But certainly growing up as a young kid on the streets of south London, I felt like I was an alien from outer space. I felt I kind of dropped from outer space into this alien planet and everybody was a different color from me and I got racism in the streets and racism from young boys. And a lot of my family were teachers, just said, oh just ignore it, you’ll just encourage them if you complain about it. Just take it, it’s not important. And so the thing is that if you’re in a black family, you can talk to your parents and they can guide you. But I actually had nobody to talk to, nobody who looked like me. I looked in the little picture books that you get when you’re a kid and all the early readers and so on, there was just nobody who looked like me. So I just felt very much like an only. I talk about what it’s like to be an only. So not only are you dealing with racism, but you’re dealing with this loneliness which is different from loneliness. It’s a sort of feeling that you have no kin and no place in the world. And that’s a very hard thing for a very small child to learn. So I felt that there are still people even today who feel that, I was really surprised at some people of color who are brought up in the villages in the UK, outside of urban areas, say that really resonates with them that idea of only onlyness. So I thought I need to tell this story for me to make sense of my life. Life seems like a whole series of random events that don’t make any sense, but it’s only when you write them down that you can see that they form a pattern. So it was almost to tell my story to myself that was the first thing. And secondly, because I felt that I would have loved to read a book about somebody who was mixed race myself growing up or black so that I would be able to have a role model, I would be able to see what I could become. Do you know, Tesse, I didn’t even know what I would look like when I grew up? I never seen any black adults at all. So I had no idea what I was going to look like. And would I look right in a wedding dress? Or I just try to imagine myself and I just couldn’t. So I really wanted this book to be able to explain what that  onlyness like. And also to be part of a history, of our history. People say that white supremacists history is a history with all the black threads taken out. I wanted to be one of those black thread that I could sew back into our story. I felt it is not just my story, it belongs to all of us collectively to bear witness about who we are and what we are. And I think that’s one of my prime motivations. And I do think things have changed a lot since I was young. I described in my book where I actually towards the end, where I actually walked into quite recently, a room full of mixed race people who all looked like me. Well, not exactly like me, but you know. It’s the first time I’d actually seen a group of people who you didn’t have to explain what you are. I cried, I really cried, and I noticed that some of the people who came after me who joined the group, they also cried. It’s a very emotional moment when you find your tribe. It really is. So it was very heartwarming and all of us talked about how mixed race is the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the UK. 

00:07:29 Tesse: Wow.

00:07:30 Esua: Actually, there are lots and lots of us, and we’re all different mixes. The particular experience of being black mixed race, I think because of closeness to blackness and all that anti-black racism, so on and so on. We have a particular identity, but nowadays there is a lot more discussion and a lot more understanding that mixed race people have a particular identity within that people of color community. And when I was young and I was a radical in the 1970s, I was a big black power supporter and Angela Davis and all of that. So I had a radical kind of history. Everybody called themselves black at that time. So you couldn’t explore the diversity within our community. And now I think what has changed is that we can actually recognize that we are an incredible rich, exciting diversity within that black identity. And that I feel proud now we’re talking about my mixed race rather than feeling I have to apologize for it and be black and make sure I’m good enough and so on. And I think that’s something that is a burden for mixed race people that we are now shedding, and we’re able to say, this is an actual identity. And I remember Tesse, I was one of the people who campaigned for us to have a special category in the census of 2001 to a mixed category. And so now we’ve got 20 years of data about how mixed race is different from other racial experiences. And for example, not a lot of people know that in the UK, there are more mixed race kids in care of social services than any other ethnicity. Which just shows you that people still don’t know where to place us. And it’s difficult to place us literally in families. And we are reconnecting with our roots and discovering our communities and discovering like we’ve now got 20 years of data and we don’t have to put other on any forms. We actually can say who we are, and that means absolutely everything to me. So I do think that we’re in a polarized world as we are now, and we’ve just been talking about the football and all of that and how awful that all is. But I think in this polarized world to see ourselves in all walks of life and see the outpouring of support for people who experienced racism, I think is very heartwarming. And I feel very much a part of that community of all of us. 

00:10:14 Tesse: Wow, that’s so powerful. When you say the onlyness that leads to loneliness, sewing the threads. Paula what are your thoughts? I get reduced to tears, and I feel when I hear Esua’s story, I feel how it must’ve been lonely for her as a child being the only. But actually having data notes seems as there’s something different, there seems more hope and more aspirational things that can be achieved. 

00:10:43 Paula: Yeah, that jumped out at me, the onlyness and loneliness. Yeah, it really resonated with me. I’ve never heard that term, but what it did was it made me walk in your shoes. Because when someone actually takes a word and you’ve coined a term out of it onlyness. You really, really must have felt alone. So I can just only imagine your pain. And then you said that you walked into a room with mixed race people, people who looked like you and that it felt so good. I can just imagine that how it must’ve been extremely lonely growing up. 

00:11:27 Esua: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a piece right at the beginning of my book. And I wonder if I could read it to you because what you’re saying, I think it illustrates it really well. It shows exactly that. And one of the things about my book is that I write it and it’s a memoir, not an autobiography. So I write it in the voice of the age that I am. So that I write it in a child voice in the present tense. So you can imagine what it was like to be me at that time as an adolescent voice, and then an adult voice. This book is full of voices, and this is me and my child voice. And I want you to imagine that I’m on the Common it was in November, it was cold, it was dark, getting dark. It was raw and I’d just been playing on the swings and my auntie told me that we have to go home. So we’re walking across the Common, these big open spaces that we have in London and full of trees and grass and so on. And this chance meeting that I had really struck me all my life. I was just under five years old at the time four and a half. So in the foggy half light, I can just about make out a family group moving slowly across the grass ahead of us. As we get nearer, I can see they’re wearing the strangest clothes. Long robes and trousers, glimpses of red golden blue with short jackets, scarves, and hats to keep out the late autumn chill. The woman is wearing a green and gold scarf around her head, like a turban. They stand out in the fast fading light, like a flock of brightly colored birds. The smallest bird breaks away from the group and runs towards me a little girl about four years old, the same age as me. She has dark skin and black fuzzy hair like mine. We stop and stare at each other, spellbound rooted to the spot. A sudden shock of connection of recognition, I know you. Kumba, Kumba I think it was Kumba they called her, something like that. Kumba ran off to join her family and they moved off across the Common and out of sight. It all happened so quickly, I can’t quite believe what I’ve just seen. I try to run after her, but auntie Belinda holds me back. We have to go home now she coaxes, your mum will be back from work soon and it’s getting dark and your Nan will have the tea ready. Tea time, it always interrupts something really important just at the wrong moment. I have discovered a secret, I’m not the only one. I’m not alone in the world. There are other others and more than that, colored people come in whole families, mom, dad, and two children, not just one offs like me. I feel strange, excited, scared, shocked all at the same time, but also comforted”. 

00:14:42 Tesse: Wow. 

00:14:45 Paula: Powerful. 

00:14:46 Tesse: Wow. 

00:14:47 Paula: Very powerful, wow. Oh, my word. It just, wow. That’s all, I really I’m lost on words because you haven’t, you have captured your deepest feelings at that time. At four and a half, not yet five and as you said, you’d never seen anyone like you. And you saw one person that looked like you, and you’re like, wow like you’ve got to tea time and it was like discovery. You said teatime always interrupted some important things. And for you the important thing was that they are colored people that come in families. 

00:15:25 Esua: Yeah, I’d never seen that before. On the television, there’d be one lone black person playing a banjo or something in some American film. But never been whole groups like that, actually families. So it was a complete mystery to me. And just suddenly having that revelation was something very important. And it’s interesting that I come back to Kumba. I said to my mum, I wanted to be called Kumba. And right at the end of the book, I come back to that whole remembering her, after my life journey. At 65, I thought about that little girl and how long it took me to find her in me.

00:16:09 Paula: We’re speechless Tesse and myself. 

00:16:11 Tesse: Yeah. 

00:16:14 Paula: It’s always good to get other perspectives, because we can talk from a different perspective. But today the podcast is about you. And so I was going to ask you, has been an author in any way helped change that perspective? Has it opened up your eyes and your mind and your perception of the world? And have people come to you to say, wow, we can relate to that.

00:16:36 Esua: Yeah, it absolutely changed my life. And we were talking about being chosen by Jacaranda. The Jacaranda, I have to big out Jacaranda because they are, I think the only all female publishing house in the UK, all black women, all women of color. There are only about seven or eight of them. And they decided on this fantastic idea. It was established by Valerie Brandos. She had this fantastic idea that their publishing house Jacaranda was going to publish 20 books by black writers in 2020. That’s why we called the 20 and 2020. And the idea was that it was the answer to all those white publishers who said, oh well, we would publish black writers, but there aren’t any, we’ve been looking for them. And if they could write well, we would publish them and give them prizes, but there aren’t any. And so even to this very day, there are less than 1% of all books published in the UK by black writers or even featuring black characters. Either children’s books or adult books. Jacaranda had this national competition and over a hundred black writers entered it. And we were from all kinds of genre because I think we get stereotyped into certain genre. But we were crime writers, poets, nonfiction, memoirists, novelists. We spend all sorts of different genres and they’re my new best friends. We were all of us prize winners in 2020. And it was just the most exciting thing. And of course, as I said before, mine was one of the first books to be published. And as soon as literally I’d come out of the printers and into all the bookshops, they all closed down because of COVID, because of the lockdown. And so it was really touch and go that we would even have all 20 of us published, they were really struggling. So we did a crowd fund to fund the printing of the rest of the books. So we were all published in 2020, and it was a terrific day and it really did change my life. I always felt looking back that I was always writing. And when I was eight I wrote a play, because my mum married when I was eight and we moved to Surbiton, which is just outside London. And it’s whiter even then, at least in London in that very early sixties. There were beginning to be populations of black people, but my mother took me away from that to this Surbitons like the epitome of white. So I got all this racism all over again. Who are you? Why are you like that? You’ve been rolling in dog shit and all of this kind of stuff that I got day after day. And I told the teachers and they all said, oh just ignore it and you make it worse and they’re only joking and so on. So I thought, right, what can I do? So what I did, I was eight years old I wrote a play called, “why I am brown”. And I got all my school friends to play the different parts of my African father who I’d never met. So, and my mother and my auntie Belinda and my Nan and all of this. And so I got them to act all the parts out. My teacher actually enlightened as she was said, I could actually perform it in front of the class. So I had my first play, the one and only play I’ve ever written. But I talk about it in the book and the response to it and the response of the teachers and so on. And it gave me this idea, if you tell your story, people start to treat you differently. Because after that, and I had to make most of it up cause I didn’t know anything. And I said to my school friends that my father was an African king a chief, and he was going to come back and get me. And you’ll find out from the book that although I made that up and everybody thought that was funny, that it was actually the truth. I didn’t know it, but it was. And so at the end of the book, when I did meet my dad, I found out that that was true. But I certainly realized that after that I went on writing and I’ve written throughout my life. Not for publication, but all sorts of things. And I’ve got so many contemporary notebooks. I’ve always kept a journal, literally written my life so that when it came to writing this memoir, I actually had all the material there. I never threw any of these books away. And some of it was actually written at the time so that I could transpose it. Like my 14 year old diaries all day, what happened to me and how I responded to it. Yeah, I think that being a published author has been a terrific validation of all the writing I’ve ever done in my life and just made me suddenly realize I’ve always been a writer. And it’s opened my life to the most fantastic black writers, writers in general, but black writers in particular. And that we are coming into our own now because we’ve recently set up something called the black writers Guild, which has got all the famous writers on there. And I tell you, I turned up to the first meeting and there was Bernadine Evaristo, and all sorts of people there. And I was thinking, oh my God I’m with the grownups now, I really felt so excited. And normally you’d go Rocco along to see people like that speaking. But they were just like ordinary members of this group. And we were talking about right into all the press and all the publishing houses and having champions who would speak on our behalf in each publishing house and so on. And get them to set targets of editors and staff and writers, who they were going to publish to Penguin and Random House and all these big publishing houses. So we really are making waves this year and particularly during the George Floyd and the black lives matter and all of that. I think people really thought, oh God we got to do something. So literally we were being invited to speak to really high up people in some of these publishing houses saying, we’ve got to get a plan, we got to get targets. It’s been the most exciting journey to be an author. And it really has changed my life because I’m talking to you for example about the book. I’ve had lots of invitations to talk and do podcasts and do live streams. I’d say I’ve done one a week since lock down. So literally I’ve done about 50 or 60 live streams. And what is interesting is that every time we have a different kind of conversation, because there is a lot in my book and it covers so many different themes, feminism, international development, travel, moving around from country to country. All sorts of different themes that are inter-woven into it. Obviously mixed race identity is the main one. But I’ve lived six decades, so it’s almost like a history book as well because it covers the miners dry, President Bush and everything that happened. The fall of the Berlin wall and Mandela coming out of prison, the year I met my dad. And so I got my life against a backdrop of world event. So that’s why I’m hoping that people see the black story against all these events that we were there. We have our history which was not being told at the same time. So it was a lot of research, but I have to say that while I was writing it, it was absolutely fascinating. And I had a mentor who fact checked everything and she was saying, you couldn’t have been humming “she loves you on this day” by the Beatles because it wasn’t released until the following year. So that you, you really had to literally just to say one thing about the weather at a certain time. You maybe had to read a whole book or about the politics or who was the prime minister. And I describe scenes of houses and what was in the interior and so on. So you really had to go into every decade, what was happening, how people were talking even. They wouldn’t use phrases in 1960 that we do but they would talk in a very different way and they would have different cultural references about what was on the telly and all that sort of thing. It was a really interesting thing. To be a writer you realize that it’s not a question of just write this, a memoir is. You just write down what happened to you. You have to craft it into a work of art, and it’s got to read like a novel. You’ve got to have suspense in it, you’ve got a land every chapter and now read on and get them on a cliffhanger. And what’s going to happen to me next? And you have to see yourself as a series of dramatic incidents. Cause life actually is a whole load of boring stuff and then suddenly something really incredible happens. So you have to actually craft it so that it seems real, but actually is like a novel, it’s a story. And you’ve got to engage people. It’s no good boring the pants off people. You’ve got to engage them. 

00:26:05 Tesse: So talking about engagement, it’s really interesting because the important discussions are happening now by inclusion and governing bodies and governing boards and staff. What are your thoughts from your own experience, about encouraging inclusion in the real way, not tokenistic, not ticking the box. What this rich experience that you’ve had of identity and belonging, how can that be woven into leadership at governing level? 

00:26:34 Esua: Well yeah, it’s interesting because Tesse you and I share that experience of training and actually being on boards, serving as chair and also as trustees. And in addition, working with lots of different organizations, institutions large and small from the sort of community groups and the activist groups right up to some of the aid agencies and so on that I’ve worked with. Literally alike, large corporate sector organizations. They’ve got operations in 40 or 60 different countries, they’ve got thousands of staff employed all over the world. So that like you, I share this passion for nonprofits and for the work that they can do in the potential that they can have. I also feel that having served on boards all my life and having worked with boards all my life and having been a trainer in inclusion and diversity and all of that. I’m very much of a mind that we are in a way trying to make the best of what is basically institutional dysfunction. And all these institutions if you look at even the names of them, like the board and the chair and all that. What are these pieces of furniture? Actually patriarchal system. Tell you what I went round, Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife, her house in oh years ago. And there was a feminist historian who was the tour guide, right? So we go into the main room and all there is, is this great long board, which is their dining room with one chair at the end and benches all around. And she said, is there anybody here work on a board? And so I put my hand up one or two other people did,. And she said, this is where it comes from, the chair. The only person who had a chair in the whole room was the patriarch. And he was the dad and he sat at the one end and he ruled the roost and everybody else sat at the board and the board was literally a board of wood. And if you have a seat at the table, it literally means you are on the front bench, which is where the language comes from in the House of Commons. And everyone else who didn’t have a seat at the table would be sitting on the floor. So it literally is actually about furniture. And when I saw that, I thought we got to get rid of the furniture, kick the whole lot out. Because it seems to me that’s where you can move around the benches and the table. But you have got a basic patriarchal concept there, which is really difficult to shed. And yeah, it is really fascinating. So it made me think we have to redraw the whole map. And I’ve always felt, okay I went along with the inclusion and diversity, the language changes every 10 years or five years or whatever, you go along with that. We’re still fighting racism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. And it seems to me that it changes its name, this thing every now and then. And it’s about the status quos ability to accommodate enough of us to keep people quiet. But it just seems to me that inclusion, what are we being included in? To that. And I’m thinking, is that what we really want? And I honestly think like the feminist mantra about we’re not interested in equality, we’ve got something better in mind. It was a radical transformation of society. It was saying, you can’t just be included in an unfair system, because you’ll get bought into that and you’ll still be in a ranking hierarchy. What we need is a transformation of the world in which everybody fulfills their potential in which there aren’t these kinds of value-based hierarchies around race, around gender, around how much money you’ve got, what sexuality you are and all of that. Feel  an ambivalence towards the word inclusion, because I feel like we’re being included in something which has been designed to exclude us. So you can’t really, you can’t really be included in it. So I’m a real revolutionary at heart, I absolutely think that we can reimagine this whole thing. And at the moment I’m working with an organization, well it’s a feminist collective called “Healing solidarity”, and we need to do the healing and we need to have the solidarity and we need to reimagine a world in which everyone is included. No inclusion into something that was never for us, which everybody tries to keep us out of and was never designed to be equal. It was designed to be hierarchical. That’s my take on it. 

00:31:29 Tesse: Wow. 

00:31:32 Esua: Yeah, we go in to spaces like that and get that agenda across. 

00:31:40 Esua: Wow I’m inspired. When Esua says that I love the Swahili term “Ubuntu”. And it includes, we’re one. I see you, you see me, we are one. And I just totally love it. Paula I’m out, you go on, in a good way of course inspired. 

00:32:00 Paula: Yes, absolutely. I’m sitting there thinking about, how every time we have a guest on, I learn something so new. I liked that part about not included into something that was never designed for you in the first place. That’s absolutely the truth. You’ve got to change it to make sure that everyone started from ground zero, and then we can build on that, right?

00:32:22 Esua: Yes. 

00:32:23 Paula: So with all of that, unfortunately we are coming to the end. I want to know if there’s anything that you have that you can offer listeners? It could be like a free chapter of your book because you’re such an interesting woman, person, author, biracial. Can I describe you as that? 

00:32:41 Esua: Yes. Yes. Yes. That’s the American term. Yeah. 

00:32:46 Paula: If there is something that you have that you’d love to share with our audience, get an inkling into a lot more than about you or a lot more what you’ve written about than you know, 30 minutes plus or the 30 few minutes you could say. 

00:33:02 Esua: Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk about it,really. These are my passions, and I would say that if you would like to get more involved, then please go to my website, which is “Esuantsiwagoldmith.com“. And there you will find all the different things that I’m involved with and you can obviously buy my book and it’s on audible and it’s, I read it myself on audible as well. And it’s on Kindle and you can get it from Jacaranda or Amazon. And also I’m involved in a lot of different solidarity groups. So you’ll see all the different things that I’m involved in, in my website, and you’ll be able to connect with many different groups because I write as a radical activist. My books are about changing the world, they’re not just for a nice read. They’re all about changing the world. So I’d love to invite people who are listening here, who feel inspired and want to know more to come and join me. I’ve got all these different social media handles, so you can follow what I’m doing and get involved in those groups and support those groups. So I would very much welcome that. And I think on the Amazon, you can read the chapter, the first chapter of my book for free. Just to where it says open here and you get, and then you can read that. But I would also like to leave you with something from my heroine, Angela Davis. Who I had the great pleasure and privilege to meet. And I talk about how I met her in my book. But one of the quotes that she has is “you have to believe that you can radically change the world, that it’s possible to radically change the world and you have to do that and believe that every day”. And I think that’s what powers me out of bed in the morning. The belief in change that it can happen, we will do it, we will imagine, we can imagine different. And if there’s one thing that COVID has taught us is not only that we are up against a pandemic and against the whole of this system that I’ve talked about and also a planetary crisis as well. But at the same time, there was an outpouring of kindness in every neighborhood and outpouring of caring of going and seeing our neighbors and making sure they’re all right, and taking shopping to them and redistributing our spare food, and does anybody want this? I don’t need it. And I just think that’s the kind of society I want to live in and I found it in lockdown. And we have to take that into the future with us and make it happen. Because COVID shows us that spontaneously everybody is capable of that inside. They are, they really are, most people are. And when you think of what’s happened with the football is in the UK and all the racism that’s pulled out of there, but all the heartwarming support that there is. And you’re right Paula, you were saying, sometimes you need a crisis. You sometimes, you need things to get so bad that people think, hang on this isn’t right. And I think a lot of genuine people feel that and I’m with them, let us have this international movement of solidarity and kindness. That’s the movement I want to belong to. 

00:36:31 Paula: I love it. Folks that was Esua Goldsmith for you. You’ve got to listen to this again, you’ve got to read her book and I love her quote too from Angela Davis, “You have to believe that you can radically and powerfully change the world for change to happen”. Thank you, thank you, thank you Esua. 

00:36:53 Esua: Thank you so much to both of you. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. Thanks for inviting me on lovely space you’ve created. 

00:37:01 Paula: What word comes to me, radical or two words, radically change. 

00:37:08 Esua: Right

00:37:10 Paula: To our listeners, you have heard Esua and I’m sure you feel in yourself ready for change. So please head over to Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else where you listen to podcasts and click subscribe. If you like what you heard, which I’m sure you did, please write us a raving review. And if you have questions or topics you’d like us to cover related to leadership or governance, please send us a note. Remember, it can be personal as well as professional. And last but not least, if you’d like to be a guest on the show, head over to “Tesseakpeki.com/tessetalks” to apply.