Episode 2 Black is the New Black

When I heard the name Black Is The New Black,

-it really made me smile.

-I think we're on the edge of a revolution.

Boom!

We have our own thing and it's really rich.

We're the influencers, the taste makers.

Remember when we invented jazz and you didn't know what it was?

Well, now we're going to do something else.

I've never really seen myself as an immigrant. I see myself as a person.

I'm proud to be black. I've never cared to be any other way.

Everybody wants to be us,

but they only want the good parts of being us.

They want our physicality, they want our musicality.

Selling our culture, it's like one big hustle.

They want our talent,

they want our dancing skills, they want our singing skills.

Music hasn't got no colour.

The oppressed always find a way to celebrate, right?

It's a great feeling.

We are people of talent, people of vision,

people of passion.

SHE LAUGHS

There's a great seam of British success.

HE LAUGHS

When it stands out, it is dazzling...

..and we should celebrate it.

We should celebrate it.

I was going to school on my own at seven years old.

These days, you'd be, like, arrested for neglect

or abuse or something like that.

When I'm in, put the chain on the door,

don't answer the door for no-one until she comes home, watch TV.

I had a happy childhood.

There was mum and I, we did our thing.

I'd travel with her on the bus to the nursery, she'd go off to work,

and then at five o'clock she'd pick me up.

I remember enjoying junior school.

I think it was called Mary of Magdalene or something

and I remember it was run by nuns.

Like every other child, mischievous, wanted to dance,

so my mother sent me to a dance school.

I remember getting quite a few slaps across the backs

of my legs for being naughty.

So I remember... Yeah, the kids have got it easy now,

they used to be able to smack the shit out of us when we were kids.

Right from day one, till the day I left school, was a very,

very positive experience for me.

We were told when we were,

I don't know seven or eight to bring in something that really reminded us

of our family at home, and I came in with a bit of Kente cloth,

which is the national cloth of Ghana,

fashioned into a waistcoat for me,

and I brought it in and I explained why it was important

and I did a little sort of traditional dance

and all the class loved it and the teacher just was really surprised

that not only at that age,

I was that knowledgeable about my heritage

but that I was accepting of it and also quite proud.

I went to a small private school in Essex,

but I came back to East London and my friends were from East London,

and I used to hang out in East London.

I started school at three years old,

then my parents divorced when I was eight,

and I ended up going to school, actually,

funnily enough, in Wood Green.

And, yeah, that was an experience.

HE LAUGHS

The people in the class that were considered,

I don't know what the PC word is these days,

but were nerds are geeks of whatever like that, they were my friends,

I could speak to them, we could talk about comics and all that kind

of stuff and all that. But then the people that were the bad boys,

they liked me too, because I had a certain thing about me

that they liked, too, so I could talk to them and, like,

"Yeah, I can test all these guys and keep my reputation,

but I'm not sure... If I test that guy and he clouts me back,

"my rep's kind of going to..."

So I was that... I was always in the middle,

I was never a bad, bad kid but I was...

No police ever came to my mum's door.

Because my father was so keen on education,

I mean, he used to say to us,

when we were sort of three or four years old,

"What college in Oxford are you going to go to?"

And sort of just this idea of going to university, getting an education,

was instilled in us from a very early age.

You know, my experience of growing up is this.

I tried not to let my dreams...

..be taken away from me.

I wanted to be a writer as well as being an astronaut, but I also,

once I put my feet on the ground, I wanted to be a writer.

I was singing melody long before I was talking.

Long, long, long.

They didn't understand anything I was saying in nursery school,

but they understood that voice when I started to sing.

I thought unless I could articulate myself through words,

then I was stuck

because I was very conscious of the fact that people were quite keen

to define me, to determine me before I ever said a word.

Modelling just never entered my mind,

it was just never something I ever thought about.

I was very much into my athletics by the age of 14.

I was very much, "This is what I want to do."

I went to my careers teacher and she said to me,

"OK, Malorie, what do you want to do?"

And I said, "OK, I want to go to Goldsmiths,

"and I want to do an English and Drama degree,

"and then I want to be a teacher."

And she looked at me and she said,

"Black people don't become teachers."

And she said, "Why don't you become secretary instead?"

"I remember saying that I wanted to be an astronaut,

and the teacher said, "Well, Maggie, you know, why don't you go into

"nursing, that's quite scientific, you know? And you like science."

I was working for Sainsbury's at the weekends and my teacher said,

"Oh, well, now, if you were to work really hard,

you would perhaps be able to become a supervisor."

Now, look, there's nothing wrong in being a supervisor in Sainsbury's,

it's a great job to have. But as I said to David Sainsbury,

I don't think he could really afford me, but, you know,

that's another matter.

When I was at art school, and I started making work about, you know,

world issues, one of my tutors said,

"Well, you know, you're of African origin, and you...

"Why aren't you producing, you know, ethnic art?"

And I didn't quite understand that,

but I realised then that an African artist

was not expected to be modern.

I'd finished my degree, I was 20 years old,

and I was saying I wanted to go to the Bar.

I was told, "These two impediments may be insurmountable."

And I thought, "What impediments?"

"Well, the fact that you are black and female."

And I thought, "Those are the two things that I can't

"and don't want to change, and anyway,

"which profession will being black and female be an advantage?"

I personally think that one of the biggest problems is that, at school,

all the black history I learned was just bad,

it didn't make you feel good about yourself.

What a lot of people in England don't know

is that the actual development of England and the development

of most of these powerful Western nations was by the manpower

of black slaves but they've just been wiped out of the story,

so these buildings just...

They'll tell you about the architect and they'll tell you about

the guy who had the idea to build the building,

but they won't tell you how it was built,

even if you put that bit of information in the story,

you've changed the story completely.

I remember when I was growing up, you know,

you were given the impression that Africans

have all been brought up in mud huts and it was all terribly primitive,

which used to infuriate my father.

It's one of the reasons he was like, "I am taking you back to Nigeria

"so you understand where you are from and what it is really like."

My thing was...

I just felt we were deceived a little bit.

Our generation. You know, everything came as a surprise.

When you have to watch a programme called Roots

to understand what slavery was...

I walked to school the next day so angry.

For most of the men that I grew up with,

reading books and knowledge was like kryptonite,

it wasn't something that you dealt with, it was for the nerds etc.

I guess some of us were a little nerdy behind the scenes.

When I think about reading books that have really been very powerful,

slave trade, the islands, the trail winds,

all of that movement of humankind as men of colour

and women of colour was horrific, beyond horrors of horrors.

We'd bought books, and then we empowered ourselves with knowledge,

and it wasn't about being Black Power, it was just knowing your history!

Ali was important,

and I think the first autobiography I ever read was his.

Muhammad Ali was my hero,

simply because the first black man I remember hearing was Cassius Clay.

You know, as a little kid, I'm thinking, "I like Cassius Clay,

"why's he changing his name to Muhammad Ali? What's that?!"

And then as time goes on you hear him talking.

You don't have to agree.

But he empowered himself, and he said stuff and did stuff.

And I just thought, "Wow."

He really made a difference.

The need for cultural identity is crucial.

The sense of not belonging...

For my brother particularly, that was huge,

the feeling of not belonging.

You have that argument with your parents where they scream

at you and say, "You're not like your white friends,"

and on some level, they're right, because you definitely

don't look like your white friends, but on some level you are,

because you've grown up with the same cultural references

in the same schools with the same accent.

It's about being at cultural orphan. That's how I term it.

You know? And if you don't feel that belonging,

at least you've got your family, right?

Jamaica is a conservative country, by and large,

and my parents are very much part and parcel of that.

But, although that is where my heritage lies, I'm not a Jamaican.

There's a strange...disconnect,

because of our parents telling us to integrate from our

original culture, and some of us clung to our culture and went,

"OK, I'm not going to disconnect,

"I'm going to stay true to my culture, because it's important,"

and some of us kept our culture but also were interested in integrating

and assimilating because that was the game in town, right?

And then, obviously, coming to this country,

and suddenly seeing a kind of diaspora of black people

and a kind of new way and not in a kind of ethnic way

but more of a kind of...

a national and racially mixed way.

And that, I think, as a young, sort of, African,

was just sort of fascinating.

I and millions like me fit into a very unique

little category where I was my own culture.

Every aspect of my life,

I wanted to demonstrate the duality of my heritage, of my identity.

We are, I think, the first generation in that line of sort of

immigration that both accept where we're from

but also embrace where we are.

At times in those weird, angsty teenage years,

you look at other girls,

this girl's considered pretty but no-one ever says anything like that

about you. Was it to do with colour?

Was it to do with the fact that I wore glasses?

What was it? I don't know.

At those ages, what you look like is so important to you.

When you were first spotted, what was your reaction?

I thought she was talking to my girlfriend, sort of blonde,

long-hair, blue eyes, you know, I didn't think she was talking to me.

And she, like, said, "No, you."

She gave me her card and...

I was like...

"OK... I have to ask my mum."

And my mum said no.

When I started, sort of back in the late '80s, early '90s...

The successful black models were sort of very exotic,

very dark, very African looking.

And now...

It's incredible what's happened in the last 20, 30 years.

Incredible the difference!

Halle Berry is considered the most beautiful.

She's stunningly beautiful, but there's Angela Bassett,

who is also stunningly beautiful, but...

Halle's lighter, thinner nose, smaller lips,

closer to the white ideal of beauty.

One of the things that, in later years,

I questioned was how I had,

in my early career...

I was the acceptable face of blackness.

You know?

Which was something I couldn't possibly have anticipated.

India, China, Thailand.

Everywhere you go,

being seen as lighter skinned is being seen as superior,

and that's because when white people went and colonised the world,

they foisted on us this ideal of white superiority and we still...

Even though we think consciously, we're like,

"I don't believe that," we do still.

I am a part of the generation that wants to be Beyonce -

beautiful blonde hair/weave...

..fairer skin.

I know that, as much as I have been raised to appreciate who I am

from the inside out,

the heavy burden of this ideal image has often been far greater.

It speaks louder.

The anxiety comes from trying to be something

that I know very well I am not.

The song that I was always asked to sing

as a... little bit of an awkward teenager

was The Greatest Love Of All.

They can say that you're ugly and that you've got

great big thick lips, which is funny now,

because everyone is trying to buy great big thick lips.

They could say all those things, but they can't take away my dignity.

I was telling myself those words,

because what is special about me comes from within me.

-Could you give us a little bit of it?

-Yeah.

# I believe the children are our future

# Teach them well and let them lead the way

# Show them all the beauty they possess inside

# I decided long ago

# Never to walk in anyone's shadow

# If I fail, if I succeed

# At least I'll live as I believe

# No matter what they take from me

# They can't take away my dignity

# Because the greatest

# Love of all is happening to me

# I found the greatest

# Love of all inside of me. #

I didn't know who I was.

I didn't know who I was.

Not white, not black, not anything, not belonging anywhere.

I was taken into the care system, because my mother

just couldn't cope, she couldn't cope with everything.

And then I walked backwards all my life, trying to find myself.

Ugh.

Well, I myself had a breakdown...

..when I was 23.

Struggling with...

identity and who I am.

I am a human being and I've never said I was perfect.

I am a work in progress.

It's good for people to see it's not always happy, happy, happy.

You know, I don't ever want people to conceive me as that way.

I am human, I break down, I cry.

I have real blood.

I am not always up, I'm sometimes down.

I'm not depressive but...

Yeah, it's not every day is a fantastic day

but we have to make do and we have to be grateful for what we have.

When you leave drama school

and you're in the world and you're a black actor,

and you don't see many black actors doing well,

and you're always going for the black role

and it's not the central role,

and I struggled with that.

And I think I started to...

drink a lot

and...self-medicating in other ways,

and eventually lost control of that.

How bad did it get?

I was sectioned.

It was one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had.

I was in the grip of something that was telling me to do things.

Like hearing voices.

What voices were you hearing?

Well, it turned out to be Martin Luther King,

-which was extraordinary.

-INTERVIEWER LAUGHS

Extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary!

I went with absolutely everything this voice told me to do,

and I remember doing all kinds of crazy things, singing for my lunch.

I would go into restaurants, eat the food and then say,

"I've got no money but I will sing for you."

And they would laugh and we'd sing and they'd say,

"Go on, on your way."

And I was very lucky that it was kind of entertaining or jokey

or whatever, but...

I managed to kind of survive like that for about a week.

And then it all started going a bit wrong and...

I obviously started getting mentally tired

and ended up getting sectioned.

Black culture in general is kind of quite informal,

quite expressive as a culture,

whether it's African or Caribbean or wherever else.

You know, you see a lot of them go "Hello," and then a black man goes,

"Yes, brother!" You know what I mean? It's a different vibe.

So you can't be as open, informal, expressive as you'd like to be.

The one thing that a lot of people who are watching this in the most

respectful way are not going to realise, is that,

even with someone like myself, when you walk into a room,

because of the colour of your skin,

you are already kind of judged in a certain kind of way.

If I walk in, like, hastily, like...

HE WALKS QUICKLY

..someone's going to be like, "What's happening here?"

But you kind of feel like you always have to check that because,

the moment you speak aloud, you see people jumping or grabbing their

purse, or someone says something to you and you answer them back

and it's like you're aggressive, even though they said it to you,

you answer back, YOU'RE aggressive.

It's like, well, no, you came at me a certain way,

I responded in the same manner, you just didn't expect that,

and now you're shook and you're calling me aggressive.

That's the kind of thing that gets us shot, isn't it?

You move too quickly, bang! You're shot.

Every time a black boy aged under 18 is stabbed

or murdered on the streets of London,

they never talk about them as the 16-year-old GCSE student

or the talented geography student who's been murdered.

You never hear that.

All you hear is that they were an aspiring rapper

while, actually, they were uploading music to YouTube,

which a lot of people do, but when we talk about younger white males,

you hear he had plans to go on to study mathematics at a university

or something, and it is how those two lives are then viewed

and the assumptions that happen as a result.

I think it is easy to dismiss black kids in this country

because it's only certain areas that are mixed,

so if you're white and you've grown up in an area where you've only

really been around white people, then it comes down to, OK,

what's the media showing you?

If the media's showing you gangs, hoodies, this, that, left,

right and centre, then that might not help your perception.

And that narrative just grows and grows and grows,

and then you do get people,

when you see groups of boys walking down the street with sportswear on,

immediately, they get the fear about it.

That hasn't come from nowhere.

It's a narrative that is slowly but surely drip-fed to the public,

so then instinctively they then become scared of that person.

The people in this country,

they've got to liberate their minds also.

Not to see a black person

as an object but as a person.

And until that happens, particularly those who wield power,

it isn't easy for us to change it.

All violence is pointless, but...

there's a history of violence just in this country, full stop.

And it's not a black thing. I know the truth.

I grew up around rough white boys, too.

I'm tired of hearing that shit - knife crime, knife crime.

It's just violence, man.

As an victim of knife crime, how did it feel?

It felt... I don't know.

It hurt.

It hurt. It hurt physically, it hurt my ego.

At the time, I didn't really think...

I don't know if I thought I was going to die.

It did feel that when it was happening, like I was looking at it,

looking at myself getting stabbed, I remember that.

And then... It's a tricky one, because...

The same people that, whatever, stabbed me,

it was people that was with them that took me to the hospital,

tried to preserve your life.

People are violent. It's not a black thing, it's not a white thing.

It's a people thing.

It's not as black and white as black and white.

Anyway, as a black person, you're always a slight space traveller.

You're always a figure who's walking through territory

that has potentially not been explored before.

It's... It's very difficult to navigate the game,

because the rules are unwritten.

The fact that it is even

a game of sorts, is never made explicit to you, so what do you do?

That was something I did.

I did a lot of self-deprecatory jokes aimed at myself,

aimed at my colour, because I'd seen other black comedians do it.

I'm not making excuses, I have half a brain,

I could have made a decision not to, but, you know,

I was 16 and in show business and going, "Hooray!"

And not really making many...

..decisions that you could go, "That's a good decision, my boy."

I wasn't making many of those good decisions for a very long time.

Still don't, sometimes.

But there is a time when you can own your identity and go,

"This is who I am, let's do this."

I was at college at 16, I had a girlfriend at the time,

doing a fashion show...

and she asked me to help her make the collection.

I'm like, "Make a collection?

"I can't do that. Maybe design a programme, but that's about it."

She said, "No, I'll show you." And she showed me

and I had a natural talent for it.

And after the show, you know,

people were interested to buy what I had created, and, you know,

I was like, you know, "Really?"

A friend of mine said, "Look, you should go to Savile Row."

I said, "It's not really interesting for me."

He said, "No, you should really go and have a look."

There was a very famous tailor called Anderson and Sheppard,

it was on the corner.

And I had a little picture in my mind, like, you know,

one day I'd have a store in that very location,

but, you know, I'm 18 years old, I'm looking at the store and I'm going,

"What a crazy notion."

When I was 17,

I was in A level theatre studies and we went to see Othello.

It was David Harewood, and, like, I'll never forget it.

Seeing him on stage at the time was just, like...

I was like, "Wow!" I remember just watching him.

And not just because of the performance, but I was like...

"I don't know how you did this, but I'm going to do it, too.

"I'm going to do it."

When I was at college, that voice that we all have inside us

that some of us listen to and some of us choose to ignore,

told me I should be doing something else, and I felt like

there was a bigger plan for me,

and I didn't 100% know what it was but I really, for some reason,

trusted that instinct and they decided not to go to university.

I know that other people may have looked at what I was doing as risky

and frivolous. I spent four years, where I had no money in my pocket,

sometimes having to bunk the train just to go and rehearse,

be a part of this girl group.

I was willing to sacrifice going out.

I didn't care about having the latest Levi 501s at the time,

because the dream that I had for myself was so important

that I had to make it work. It was like there was just no other option.

My name is Shevelle Dynott and I'm a ballet dancer

with the English National Ballet.

This picture was taken in my second year.

This picture is so special to me because this is what it's like

being in the Royal Ballet School.

I cannot say I felt like, "Oh, I'm a black guy in this."

I didn't see that as a problem.

I always saw myself as Shevelle the ballet dancer.

Nothing was going to stop me.

Ballet is all I've done from 7 till now, 30.

It's never talent that holds somebody back.

99 times out of 100 it's people's vision of themselves

and their idea of what is possible.

You know, why shouldn't it be you?

I did an Oxford Union address, Oxford University, I was invited

and I remember standing there, thinking,

"This is crazy. These are probably our future leaders all in here,

"and they're waiting to hear me speak."

I didn't have anything written down, I just...

Did it all off the top of my head.

And I just thought, "This is insane."

Not very long after I joined ITN,

the editor who employed me called me up to his office and said,

"I've been thinking about your career."

That was news to me, because at that stage I didn't even know I had one.

And he said, "What I think you should do is anchor the news sometimes."

And I thought,

"This is the finest job in the world,"

because I don't think I would have ever gone to him

and made that suggestion.

I never had that vision of what I would do.

I never, never thought it would end up this way.