One of my oldest friend's told me a couple of weeks ago that, “Love and hate live in the same house.” It has rattled around my head since then. I even texted her a week later asking what poem it was from. She said it was just something her grandmother used to say. The reason I’ve been ruminating about it, is because for many years I have had a love/hate relationship with The Guardian.
I was talking to another friend earlier this week. She's been a broadcast news journalist as long as I have known her. We hadn't talked for a while so we chatted about life and work and I told her about the two books I am writing. She was interested in my struggles getting an agent, and not surprised that publishers had shown an interest, considering the stories I have to tell.
She had recently had a book published and had some issues with an editor who wanted her to include personal stuff, identity stuff. She told them she wasn’t talking from a place of identity but as a journalist. Brown and black people can't catch a break on this stuff. White people will both upbraid you for talking about identity and for not talking about it. So far so expected right? Then she said something really interesting: That the Telegraph had been far better for publishing excerpts and getting in depth reviews than the Guardian had been. What a surprise you might think. Not to me. I vowed about six years ago never to write for them again.
The last straw is when an editor contacted me on twitter asking if I would write about the ‘invisibility of black women’. I think I had just done a panel at the comment awards with Suzanne Moore and Eleanor Mills and people were tweeting quotes from what I was saying.
Or it may have been when I did a talk at LSE’s journalism school and again students were tweeting quotes of what I had said. One or the other, I can't remember and I deleted my twitter account 2 years ago, so can't look it up.
I replied to the Guardian editor that if you can find me, you can find other black women. In fact just give some a column, then they can discuss identity to your hearts content. And may even get to write about the topics they are actually interested in.
We are not invisible, just purposefully not seen. Whereas white people are always neutral. The men are authorities and the women are fragile. They couldn't possibly only write from a place of identity could they? Oh no siree. White grievance is just a by product of black and brown insolence.
What is white identity? An interesting question, to which have no answer. A few years back I decided that there was none that I could perceive so I decided that I would give them one. Specifically to those who subscribed to Media Diversified . So we named the different tiers of membership for MD in order to give them one. One that might unify them. So they became Dissidents and Dissenters. I might bring that back.
Before my decision to never write for the Guardian again I had pitched a couple of times to an editor. One pitch was about sickle cell as my family has it, my brother had died from it as I had my niece. No joy. Otherwise my only interaction with Guardian editors was introducing them to writers, arguing online and a couple of heated conversations on the phone when the editors didn't like what I was saying or doing online or off.
I told my journalist friend that I too prefer the Telegraph, at least to write for. My one and only piece for the Guardian was about lack of diversity in the media as a jump off point for Media Diversified, back in 2013. Of course the same article is being written and published still now.
I am grateful for the editor who pulled me out of self-enforced obscurity to write it for them. (I was then on a burner twitter account, coming out of a year's depression after not being able to get funding for my second film- chatting with anarchists until 4am in the morning or later - good times.)
And credit to their accounts department, they do occasionally write to me to let me know that someone wants to republish that article, and they will be depositing 45 quid in my account.
That article has still to this day precipitated the craziest bit of racist vitriol to find its way to my email. Apparently it was being taught in an A level class a few years after it had been published. Someone wasn't happy about that and thought it was a good use of their time to write to me and tell me Africans are poor because they breed too much, get out of this country if you don’t like it etc. You know how it goes.
Not that the article was exactly about racism. I never write about racism really bar the fact it is indelibly intetwined with life because we live in a white supremacist society. We also live in a classist society, so my articles are just as much about class and capitalism as they are racism. Not incidental, just baked in. In fact I get quite annoyed when people ask me to write about racism, there are scholars that have studied for years to understand it. Ask them and read my work before you approach me again. Cretin..
When I write, it's from a place of either expertise or interest. That’s why I have written or made films about Boko Haram, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bride price in East Africa, Ballet, Acid Attacks, Blood Minerals, Central Africa Republic, Prisons and if someone commissioned me to write about rally driving I'd do a pretty decent job too.
My last article for the Telegraph in 2018 was about the UK construction industry and Brexit.
It didn't start off about Brexit, that came during the rounds of edits. My fantastic editor Lo, saw something in the piece that I had not. It was a culture piece. It was as I mentioned before, ethnography. I had pitched wanting to write about the sexism and bullying I had faced which had led to me having to quit. Instead I wrote this, read it for yourself. Go to the comment section too.
In 2013 The Guardian asked me to spend time in their comment section after the piece was published and reply to their readers. That was a trip. I ended up trolling them, the comments were so obtuse.
So I figured let me do the same at the Telegraph. And I am glad I did. The comments were interesting and informed. Mostly working class men, some middle class men who were bosses. One guy who commented that I had only worked on the construction site so I could write an article for the Telegraph. I gave him short shrift. I earned the most I have in my life working in construction, whilst I was only getting 100 quid for the article. The audacity.
I had to give up my Telegraph subscription recently , which I only got because I needed to read and quote from one of the articles for the book proposal. Too skint for subscriptions at the moment.
Before that I co-write an article about the UN’s Predatory Peacekeepers with Guilaine Kinouani. That article, while it didn't go viral like the construction piece, it precipitated a lot of attention on the campaign and the UN's abuses. Lots of articles by journalists including Cathy Newman in the Telegraph and quite a few in the Guardian followed, to their credit. It didn't mention ‘diversity’ once. What a coup.
Not to say the Telegraph is perfect. Far from it. What stupid platform would lose Peter Oborne when they didn't have to? I have a friend who left there after years working up the ladder because she couldn't stand the politics and how it related to trans people. I don't have ANY friends at the Guardian but people have left there for the same reason. Is it the zeitgeist, or a trend? No doubt Guardian editors will be reaching out on twitter to marginalised trans writers to find out, any time soon...
Once upon a time I only read the Guardian for Deborah Orr, Owen Jones, Gary Younge and Seumas Milne. Only Owen is left there now and I stopped reading him when I became gainfully employed. His polemics were a balm during some dark days spent unemployed in 2011, interspersed by hate reading the Daily Mail. But the only article I've read of his recently was about Yemen. And that was because I had written about Yemen, and was going on a podcast. I didn't agree with it but he was no worse than NPR or elsewhere. I even tweeted.
Nonetheless all that said, the reaon why I called the title of this blog ‘love and hate live in the same house’ is because the Guardian serves a purpose. I wouldn't have known about the following today if not for them..
And whilst I stand by this Instagram post, the institution itself, I have love for. And hate.
I should just give a quick shout out to my ex. I realised I've written a lot about a relationship that didn't happen when I was in an actual relationship during that same time period and longer. Whilst we had our issues, he very much supported me at the beginning of Media Diversified in 2013 until the end of 2016. He reads this blog sometimes, so hola!
Last time we met he wanted people to know that a viral tweet of mine that got memed was about him, so here it is again for the Substack.
Have a great day!
Sam
P.s I know there is going to be some non-black women and /or middle class women who try to take my experiences and use them as their own. Trust me, I will hunt you down if you do and you will catch these hands.