George the Poet on Music, Memory, and the War on Blackness Art & Culture (Part Two)

Welcome to Intelligence Squared. Where great minds meet. I'm producer Nia Sorrenti. For this episode, we're rejoining for part two of our conversation with George the Poet on music, memory, and the war on blackness. If you haven't heard part one, do just jump back an episode and get up to speed. George joined us recently on stage at the Kiln Theatre to discuss the themes of his new memoir.

track record, in which he locates his personal story alongside a broader social history of race and identity in Britain. Now it's time to rejoin the conversation, recorded recently at the Kiln Theatre in London. Here's our host for the evening, writer and social commentator Shantae Joseph. As soon as you get back from Uganda you start University of Cambridge and one of the things you talk about it i with your time in Uganda is like being in a place where everyone is also black and kind of feeling that sort of like comfort and that joy and then going to Cambridge where you've been thinking of like one of like four black people like in your halls at the time was like three like

Which is just in insane. I mean I know I I grew up in Northwest London. I went to John Kelly now Cress Gar Academy, so it I always say that like I grew up in a time where I remember in my year, there was there was one, there was like two white girls. One of them, she's like my best friend to this day. Her name is Charlotte, but in school we just call her White Girl because she was like the only one. You know, I love her so much, she's my girl to this day. But it was like I I remember kind of growing up in that environment, like growing up in Brent, I never really had It it's so weird to say now, but I never really had this idea of like kind of being a minority. Trust me. I never had that imposter syndrome. Like there was of course there were different like racial groups, but there there wasn't any white people, so I never really acknowledged them as like a dominant cultural and the world. It never occurred to me, yeah. I put that in the book as well. Until I went to to University of Bristol and I was like Oh This is the real English. But I it we get to

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