WEBVTT

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Salam alaykum.

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Before I start talking: We've been sitting for a long time, 
so I just want to play a little game.

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I need two volunteers from the crowd, 
any two random volunteers...

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...little game.

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Another random volunteer?

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Alright, come up.

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Come on up here.

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(Applause)

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Stand right here.

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Stand facing each other.

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So, the game we are going to play
has only one rule.

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There is a red line here

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and the person who convinces 
the other person to cross the red line, wins.

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That's the only rule.
If you convince her to cross the line, you win.

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If you convince her to cross the line, you win.

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What would you tell her 
to convince her to cross the line?

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Girl 1: "Be strong. Use your strength."

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Girl 2: "There is an iPad over the line."

NOTE Paragraph

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RA: So you try to bribe her to cross the line.

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That's a good thing, that's a good thing.
Thank you.

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Thank you, thank you.

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(Applause)

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Now, the real answer to that question is, 
you tell that person:

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"If you cross the red line, I will cross 
the red line and then we'll both win."

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See, that's the difference between 
real life and competitive sports.

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In competitive sports, we believe 
that there has to be only one winner,

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but in real life we can all win together 
and I'll try to explain this later.

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(Applause)

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The reason I decided to talk 
about racism today is because

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four months ago, I was chilling in the 'Nile Street' 
with around 15 of my friends,

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University of Khartoum Students,

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people that society considers to be educated people 
and the future of our country,

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and they were talking about politics,

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you know, UoK students love talking 
about politics, religion and all of that,

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so I said, you know, let's see what these 
educated people have to say about racism,

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and so I decided to start
a conversation about racism.

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They were are all saying beautiful things 
until this one guy asked a question.

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He said, "What if a man from Southern Sudan, 
who happens to be a Muslim, well educated,

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and has a decent job,

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what if this man proposes to your sister?
Will you allow it?"

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14 out of the 15 guys
that were sitting said no,

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and they insisted they said this 
has nothing has to do with racism.

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So that brings me to a question. 
Do people understand what racism is?

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A statistic that we did in 12 schools
throughout Khartoum,

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12 high schools –

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we have been working with high school kids
about racism, doing workshops –

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80 percent of our high school students

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do not know anything about racism.

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They don't know what racism is.

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But once you explain it to them, once you say,
"Racism is this, that and the third,"

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and you give them examples of racism,

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they all click, they say, "I know this is happening 
but I just didn't know that it has a name."

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so it shows you that this is 
a big problem that we live in everyday,

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but we don't have a name for it, that means 
we cannot point to it as a problem and solve it.

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So the question is,

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Is there racism in Sudan?
Is there racism in Sudan?

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You guys wanna answer it?
Audience: Yeaah!

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RA: OK. But the average person...

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Before before we continue, 
let's define racism, alright?

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Racism is views, practices and actions,

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reflecting a belief, a belief that members 
of the same race share certain attributes

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that make this race collectively, as a whole,

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less desirable, more desirable, inferior, superior.

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It's like when you say,
"Black people are thieves,"

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that's it, you are closing the door, 
saying black people are thieves.

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"White people are this," 
this is racism, when you generalize.

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Alright.

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So to answer the question,
"Is there racism in Sudan?",

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what we'll do instead of saying yes or no – 
you guys already said yes,

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but then my presentation will be over 
so we still have to do this.

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So to answer the question, 
we'll look at racism

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and what it does to an individual and 
what it does to society.

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And then we'll look at the Sudanese 
individual and the Sudanese Society

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and see if there are traces of racism.

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So first we'll talk about 'stereotypical racism'.

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Stereotyping is when you generalize something,

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just like I said, "Black people are thieves."

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You see one black thief, you say,
"All black people are thieves."

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This is stereotypical racism.

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So what stereotypical racism does 
is that it reinforces the stereotypes,

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for example, we continue with the thief thingy,

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if – let's say we have a tribe called Tribe X, 
and Tribe X is known to be a tribe of thieves,

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so what we'll see on the streets, 
if a lady is walking by, she sees a kid from Tribe X.

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He hasn't stolen anything yet, still a kid,

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she says, "Oh, that's the Tribe X kid, 
so I'm gonna cling on to my bag,

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because I know what he is trying to do, 
he is trying to steal my purse."

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So this Tribe X kid goes and 
sits on the public transportation

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and the man sitting next to him is like,

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"Oh, Tribe X kid is sitting next to me.

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I need to check my pocket every two minutes 
to make sure my wallet is still there."

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So this kid is being treated like a thief 
before he steals anything,

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and if anything is missing, 
society accuses him of being a thief.

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So society actually pushes this guy 
towards being a thief,

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and if we look at the Sudanese society, 
we have a lot of stereotypes.

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One of the stereotypes that we have 
is about the Shaigiya people.

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Is anybody here Shaigiya?

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Raise your hand if you are Shaigiya.

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So OK, we love Shaigiya people, 
it's OK to be proud of yourself

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as long as you don't think you are better 
than anybody else, that's not racism.

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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One stereotype that we have about 
Shaigiya People is that they are cheap.

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Some people say Shaigiya people 
don't like giving anything,

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so let's look at a kid 
who's born to a Shaigiya family.

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This guy is born and society treats him
like he is cheap,

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for example if I want to make a phone call 
and I don't have credit,

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this guy sitting in the middle is Shaigiya,

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so I go like, "Do you have credit?",
he says, "No,"

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then I'm like, "Oh, he's Shaigiya."

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"Do you have credit?"
(Laughter)

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So this guy – so I'm giving him 
an excuse for being cheap.

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I'm like, "You are Shaigiya, it's OK, 
you don't have to be generous."

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If he does something nice,
I'm like, "Oh my God!

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This Shaigiya person
has actually invited me for a drink.

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I don't know how it happened."

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(Applause)

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So what we are doing is, we are not giving 
him a chance to be a generous person

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because we are giving him an excuse
for being cheap

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and we are not actually encouraging him 
to do do anything,

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so this enforces the stereotype, 
it makes him more and more cheap.

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And this can be seen in our society.

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One of the things that racism causes
is what we call self-hatred.

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When a person is constantly subjected to racism,

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they start to question themselves.

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They start to hate themselves.

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It's like, "Oh, I'm black, maybe there is 
something wrong with my color,

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because people are making fun of me,

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my hair is nappy, there is 
something wrong with nappy hair."

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And then you become embarrassed of who you are.

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And we can see this in the Sudanese society.

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Some of our sisters, they're bleaching 
their skin with toxic chemicals

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because society tells them that 
if you become white,

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if you behave like white people,
then you become a better person.

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(Applause)

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And so you see a Sudanese person 
goes to Egypt, he stays in Egypt for two months,

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and he comes back as an Egyptian.

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He stays in Saudi Arabia, 
he comes back as a Saudi Arabian,

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because we don't have a reason 
to be proud of ourselves,

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because we have racism within ourselves.

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So if you consider self-hatred
– (Applause) –

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and you look at the Sudanese society, 
you see a lot of self-hatred.

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One other thing that racism does is

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it creates more racism, 
what we call reverse racism,

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and reverse racism is when 
somebody is being racist towards you

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and you don't want to hate yourself, 
so you say, "Hey, I'll just hate you

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and I'll become racist towards you," 
and this will create a head-on collision

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and that can be seen
in the African-American struggle.

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It lead to the rise of militant groups,

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we have the Black Panthers, 
the Black Panthers is a militant group.

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When the average African-American 
was straightening his hair and lightening his skin,

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the Black Panthers, they were growing afros 
and taking the AK47

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and then that created more violence.

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The white people called them niggers,
they called them wiggers.

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You call me chocolate,
I'll call you vanilla.

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And then it just became
a conflict within the society.

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So racism leads to more racism,

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and we can see this in our society here.

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Some tribes, they never get along here in Sudan,

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because one tribe might have started this 
and became racist against this tribe,

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and now they are racist against each other

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and this leads to nowhere.

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So what's being done
to fight racism in Sudan?

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Well, I'm actually here
to talk about a group of people.

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I'm very honored
to be a member of this group.

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We call it the Unity House,
and what we do is –

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shout out to the Unity House –

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Big round of applause!
(Applause)

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The Unity House is a group of artists, 
musicians, writers and... yeah.

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What we do is we fight racism through art.

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We perform at open mic nights,

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we perform at poetry events and we try 
to fight racism through poetry and writing.

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We also conduct workshops, 
we have conducted twelve workshops

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throughout the capital in high schools... 
(Applause)

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with high school children, where 80 percent 
of them don't know what's racism is.

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We have conducted five workshops 
in Aldamazeen and in Babanosa

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and we have conducted a workshop
for poets in Aldamazeen.

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So how this works? 
Why do we use arts to fight racism?

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The thing with arts is that arts is a soft tool, 
art is easy to accept,

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like you saw the play
by Shawareea earlier,

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like they're trying to send you
a very deep message

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and you just see it in a form of entertainment, 
it doesn't have to be rare

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so that's what we do,

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in performances we create scenarios,

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in workshops what we do
is we usually work with artists,

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so we get them to feel comfortable first

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and then we start talking about racism, 
and then we create scenarios.

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One of the workshops we were working on,

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poets from Aldamazeen, this one girl 
at the beginning of the workshop,

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she introduced herself, she said, 
"My name is so so, and I'm a war poet."

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I said, "What is a war poet?"

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She said, "I write poetry to provoke people 
and encourage people to fight the rebels."

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That was her idea.

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After five days, after the workshops finished,
she performed the piece.

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And in that piece she was talking about 
building a house with her lover,

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her and her lover building a house.

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So I called her and said, 
"What is this that you're talking about?

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Like, what does this
have to do with racism?"

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She said, "My lover is the rebels that I'm fighting 
and the house is Sudan that I'm trying to build."

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(Applause)

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So the whole idea changed

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because we just got together and we started 
talking and we started creating scenarios.

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And the power of scenario is

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that sometimes you don't know something is wrong 
until we put you in that position.

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I was doing a workshop in 
Abubaker Alamin High School in Omdurman for girls

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and this one girl, she said, "A man proposed to my sister
and we rejected him because of his tribe,

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and my sister loved this man very much

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and then she got depressed and 
she dropped out of school for two years now."

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And I said, "Is this right?"

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She couldn't tell me it was wrong,
so she said,

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"You know, we are tribe, we have our traditions, 
we can't give our daughter to anybody."

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So I tried to switch things a little bit.

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I said, "What if the man that you love 
comes to propose to you,

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and your family rejects him
because of his tribe?"

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So she was quiet,
so then I tried to flip it again.

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I said, "Is your mom and dad
from the same tribe?"

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She said, "Yes." I said, "Let's assume 
they were not from the same tribe."

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I said, "Is your dad a good person?",
she said, "Yes."

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I said, "Does your dad deserve
to be rejected?"

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She said, "No."

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So I said, "What if your dad came 
and proposed to your mom,

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and then he was rejected because of his tribe, 
would that be fair?"

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She said,
"No, that's not fair."

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So what we do is we mix things a little bit

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and when we put them
in positions that they're not in,

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and that way we can change the society.

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One other thing that art does
is art gives you a lot of options,

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like I can talk about racism,
or I can talk about the things that racism does.

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And one of my favorite topics
is to talk about self hate.

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If I feel like a group of people hate themselves 
because people have been racist towards them,

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I try to make them feel better.

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So to end this, I'm going to share 
a piece of poetry that I wrote

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for all Africans, because I believe 
Africans are very beautiful people

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and they deserve to be happy
for who they are.

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(Applause)

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And this piece is called "Africa".

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So Africa, please wake up, 
your history was stolen.

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Some of it survived 
but still it was taught wrong.

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We wasn't taught about the beautiful 
African beings, the African kings

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that traveled all across the globe
doing African things.

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African rhythm,
African words over African beats.

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African [artists] [still sleeping] 
through them African streets.

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African eyes, open up and realize 
that sit back and watch as the melanine dries.

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It hurts me to see all the Africans cry.

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Africans, why?

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Why Africans die, over hunger 
while the colonizer's eating our pie.

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Africa is not poor,
that's an African lie

00:12:36.441 --> 00:12:38.625
black gold still glitters
under African sky.

00:12:38.625 --> 00:12:40.711
Best believe these facts
from this African guy.

00:12:40.711 --> 00:12:41.961
(Applause)

00:12:41.961 --> 00:12:43.604
Thank you.

00:12:43.619 --> 00:12:45.594
(Applause)