Everyone is happy for the history of slavery to be investigated so long as the investigation examines the parts in which we look good. David Olusoga Read Quote
Theories, books and ideas created within ivory towers had real-world consequences. David Olusoga Read Quote
Racism is a belief system. It was assembled over centuries from many component parts – bits of biblical scripture, the propaganda of the slave-owning lobby and the pseudo-science of academics working in universities in Europe and America. David Olusoga Read Quote
I am as much British, white and working class, my mother’s background, as I am black and Nigerian, my father’s heritage. David Olusoga Read Quote
Talking about class and identity can be as divisive as talking about race and racism. David Olusoga Read Quote
I was born in Africa but brought up in the north-east of England. Most of my childhood was spent living on a council estate that overlooked the Tyne and I went to the same junior school as Paul Gascoigne, of whom I have a vague memory. David Olusoga Read Quote
I have met other black and mixed-race people who were victims of racism, often far worse than anything I experienced, and who have taken a different path. They moved away from their home towns as soon as they could. David Olusoga Read Quote
Schools unable to keep their lights on and their doors open for the full working week is just the latest bleak instalment of a long-running show. The age of austerity returns for its ninth miserable year; always in the background, the common denominator in everything from the Brexit vote to knife crime. David Olusoga Read Quote
The primitive fight-or-flight regions of our mammalian brains react to immediate danger. We instinctively run from an avalanche but the gradual retreat of a glacier, the portent of the far greater danger of rising temperatures and rising oceans, just doesn’t get through to us in the same way. David Olusoga Read Quote
Public buildings, built from the rates and taxes paid by past generations, are being auctioned off by impoverished councils who need the money to pay the redundancies of workers they can no longer afford to employ. Many of these grand Victorian buildings will be turned into flats that most people will never be able to afford. David Olusoga Read Quote
