Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush Podcast Transcript

Melody Moore [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Secret Resume podcast, hosted by me, Melody Moore. In this podcast, we explore the people, places and experiences that have shaped my guests. Those which have influenced who they are as people and where they are in their work life today. Or as I like to call it, their secret resume. So my guest today is Natalia Nana. Lester Bush. Natalia Nana, lovely to have you here today. And can you just say a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:00:33]:
Hi. Thank you so much for having me. This is really fun. So, yeah, Natalia nana. Pronouns that I use are she or they. Visual description is that I am a woman with light brown skin. I’ve got short black hair in a bob at the moment, and I’m wearing gold rimmed glasses, and I’ve got a big shiny nose ring. So who am I? I currently working, and have been for a while, in equity and liberation and diversity and inclusion, which I think I grew into.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:01:12]:
If I trace my roots back into when I was a teacher, a secondary school, religion and ethics and philosophy, I definitely brought in gender equity and global justice into a lot of way I taught and the schemes of work that I produced. So I can definitely trace the threads. And when I first graduated, it was just after the riots, the riots between racialized communities in Bradford and Oldham in the early noughties. And I. Yeah, was volunteering with a charity called the Anti Racist alliance, which is a grassroots local charity in Harrow, which is really active in supporting racialized communities and also doing art support and creative support, as well as giving legal advice for people seeking refugee status and also petitioning and lobbying racial justice. So even then, I was already volunteering in this space. And then I actually started working with them on what was then termed cultural harmony, because those riots really was a seminal moment in realising that, oh, we’ve got diversity, but we don’t have inclusion, we don’t have integration, we don’t have communities actually living with one another. We have them living besides one another.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:02:32]:
And then I sort of navigated into working as a teaching assistant with kids with severe learning challenges and physical disabilities. And then myself went into teaching. And now here I am, having then gone into charity work with a gender focus, and from working in gender in the international justice, an international charity. Then they really started a journey of looking at, okay, we’re working on international justice. We’re working in areas which are torn by war, and areas which have been devastated or impacted by environmental crises and earthquakes and disaster response, etcetera. But actually, how are we doing that equitably? How are we ensuring that actually, we’re reaching everyone. We’re reaching the most vulnerable, where they’re vulnerable by their personal circumstances, where they’re made vulnerable by society. How are we doing our work in an equitable way? And then that sort of.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:03:32]:
That sort of integrated into actually hold up, how are we working in our offices? How are we working in our relationships with one another in an equitable way and realising, okay, there are some gaps here. So what started, as is often the case, what started with women who are racialized as whites, really leaning in and saying, hold up, we are not getting the same roles, we’re not being given the same opportunities that white men are. That then grew into a wider space to consider LGBTQ disability and racial inclusion as well. And I started sort of as an internal advisor while I was working in the sex and gender violence and gender justice team, I started as an internal advisor on sort of gender and race and equity. And then that grew into me working in the EDI team when it was formed. And then I realised, oh, this is. This is what I meant to be doing. This is who I am.

Melody Moore [00:04:35]:
Let me ask you, I noticed when you started, you said equity and liberation and diversity, etcetera. I’ve not heard anyone else use that word, liberation. And I’m curious as to why you do and what it means to you.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:04:56]:
Good question. I am a huge fan of Edi and I. Edi done well. There are, of course, pitfalls and there are examples of it not being done well, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. EdI, when done well, is fantastic, and equity can be done liberationally. But for me, liberation is looking at actually. Okay, well, let’s. What are the systems? What are the structures? And actually, are they fit for purpose? Are they enabling everybody to thrive as much as they want or are able to? Because equity within systems that still oppress, that still restrict, that still marginalise, well, then I’m still only ever able to sort of reach as high as a non disabled white person who is cis, heteronormative, when actually, if the structure that even they’re operating in doesn’t allow them to fully thrive, doesn’t allow their full creativity, their full agency to actually be brought into the space, well, then that’s not full freedom.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:06:08]:
So I don’t know if you’re familiar, I expect you are, with that wonderful cartoon drawing of the people watching the football match, and it sort of has them on different sized boxes and. I’m so sorry, I want to sort of remember the name of the person who wrote it and who drew it originally, and I can’t. But there are lots of different versions. There are hundreds of different versions. And one that I love most is the one that then has a fourth image for liberation, which is actually, there’s no fence. So for me, that sort of sums it up of a liberation is systemic, definitely. And then when you say, what does it mean? For me personally, it also has that internal sense. So I like sort of considering the eyes of oppression of the individual, the interpersonal and the internal, as well as the institutional of actually, it’s not sufficient for us to say, great, let’s give everyone the same rights and opportunities that white men have been gifted for time immemorial.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:07:10]:
Ash, let’s look at those whites, let’s look at those powers, let’s look at those systems and opportunities. Are they good for humanity? Are they good for communities? Are they good for people? Let’s critique and deconstruct and rebuild. And part of that can only come from if we’re actually doing the internal interrogation of what have I internalised? And I do this a lot with the, you know, the diversity inclusion agenda of it, so soft and led by white women, which obviously traces back to the time of the suffragettes and, you know, white, middle class, I should say middle class, affluent, cis, straight, non disabled white women, I should clarify, seeking the same power that cis, straight, non disabled, rich white men have. And actually, that’s so much internalised capitalist, white supremacist patriarchy in that of, oh, I want what you have. I want to work like you work. And I think that’s interesting when we sort of look at even the female prime ministers we’ve had in England and we say, oh, yes, we’ve had two female or three. Sorry, sorry, Lizzie, I forgot you there.

Melody Moore [00:08:19]:
Easy to forget.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:08:21]:
Easy to forget. Sorry, babe. Oh, gosh. But actually, forget I. Okay, yes, you’ve had three, and they’re carbon cutouts in some way of three middle class, very, you know, heteronormative, patriarchal white women, you know, wearing suits, presenting their feminine identity in a very same way. It’s. They might be cis women, but it was in no way feminist leadership. You know, I love charity.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:08:53]:
It’s a charity, it’s an organisation called Commotion, and they used to be called women in development and they’re advocate. It’s a grassroots organisation who also do consulting. And they’re really progressive in looking at feminist leadership, not just women in leadership, but what is feminist leadership? And I love sort of looking at the example of Jacinta Arden in Australia and looking at. Okay, New Zealand. Sorry, thank you. Looking at Jacinta Arden in New Zealand and how she was, you know, far more bringing in feminist leadership of, I don’t have to be married, I don’t have to be perpetuating this heteronormative 2.4 marriage culture that every other sort of, you know, female leader. Well, not every, but the majority of white female leaders are perpetuating. And we see that’s different when we look at, say, India and Bangladesh and looking at the women prime ministers and leaders that they’ve had a.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:09:54]:
But, yeah, that is my narrative storytelling answer of what liberation means. It’s that sort of internal critiquing and looking at, actually, why do I believe what I believe? Why do I want what I want? And what are the structures that I’m trying to be part of? And are they even good for me and good for the world that I’m dreaming of for myself and for others? And I can see that has been a shift. I definitely sort of came into this work and thought, yes, we want equality. Then it was all, we want equity. And now I’m just thinking, actually, do I want to copy what you’re doing? Because the world is on fire. And especially in our country, we have awfully unwell people physically and emotionally and mentally and socially. We are a country of unwellness and unhappiness. So, actually, why would I want to be perpetuating and copying that? That’s not freeing, that’s not thriving.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:10:56]:
Let’s question the systems, question the structures, and let’s rewrite them and redraw the boundaries for ourselves and for our communities.

Melody Moore [00:11:05]:
Well, a, this makes me want to vote for you as prime minister even more. Before we came on, we were talking about politics, and I said to Natalia Nana that I would vote for her. I’m now doubling my vote. After hearing that, it’s made me think of two other things. One is my company’s called liberare, which is italian for to free. So I feel really passionately about helping people free themselves from the things that they’ve internalised, as you said. And then the third thing, I really feel that around I’m 53, and I see a lot of women of my age leaving the workplace, as I did a couple of years ago, working for themselves, because they don’t want that bullshit anymore. And it’s that they don’t want to interact with the sort of systems and the way of operating that you have to be in order to be successful.

Melody Moore [00:12:01]:
So when people ask about why are there not enough senior women in organisations? I think part of the answer is they’re not willing to put up with the crap that you have to in order to be successful in today’s organisations. And so I really hear you about challenging what it is that we’re striving to do. It’s not just about equity, it’s about creating organisations in an environment that actually works for different people. Not that everyone has to kind of bend and twist themselves to fit into.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:12:40]:
Absolutely. And that’s partly why I think we’re also seeing, you know, that lack of, that exclusion of women from the senior leadership position because we want to welcome women in, but only if they conform to the whites culture, patriarchal culture that the white men and, you know, have had of. You’ve got to come in and conform. We’re not going to come in and bring you in and adapt and make the culture and the systems appropriate for you. So you’re either coming in and you’re being measured against a standard and a criteria that you’ve had no part in writing that doesn’t actually fit your body, your experience, your culture, your identity. So then of course you’re less likely to actually meet it, meet that standard. But also you’re measured far more critically and far more harshly. You know, your boo boo is treated as, you know, an absolute ginormous faux pas and absolute transgression.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:13:39]:
And, you know, you also look at politics and look at Theresa May and Liz Trost and you think, well, okay, like, yes, made mistakes and so on, but Boris Johnson was around for years, for crying out loud. Like, come on, he’s around for years and he’s now, you know, lauded on the social, on the, you know, on the lecture circuit and so on. He’s not, he’s not been ostracised. His name isn’t a joke. Why is it that he is held to one standard and a woman in politics is held to such a different standard of, as you say, like, yes, women who are able to, are leaving, but also I think there’s that. Yes, it’s partly through agency and it’s partly through, well, you’ve been pushed and confined so that actually the natural, you’re pressing the objective seat to save yourself.

Melody Moore [00:14:27]:
Yes, yes, I’m sure we’ll come back to this as we continue to talk, but I’m loving this conversation already. But let’s go back to, well, let’s talk about a couple of people who’ve been very influential in your life, you know, kind of going right, back to the beginning. Let’s start by talking about your mum.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:14:47]:
What about my mum?

Melody Moore [00:14:49]:
Whatever you want to tell us about your mum.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:14:54]:
Oh, my mum. Oh, gosh. I have. I have really complex parents who are so multifaceted. I’m really. Yeah, they’re just really interesting people. I am very fortunate and it’s also been a challenge, not gonna lie, if I have parents who are very individual. So my mum is a black woman from Ghana who came to the UK when she was, I think, 16, maybe 14.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:15:27]:
She came when she was a teenager. She got, I think, a scholarship for school or something, rather. Sorry, mom, I’m totally messing up your biography here. You’re going to need to get an official biographer because your daughter does not know anything clearly. But, yeah, she came in for schooling here when she was 14 and it’s really interesting hearing her talk about that and hearing her talk about her experiences and how people were surprised at, you know, how. What they would term of, you know, how good her English is and how open quotes. Well, she spoke and it’s. Well, of course she’s been to school.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:16:00]:
We have schools in Ghana, we have fantastic schools. But, you know, the perception that sadly still persists that Africa is this monolith of poverty and nothing else, when in actual fact, you know, you think of Kwame and Krummer, the first president, Ghana, who was this amazing polymath, this incredible intellect, has studied in multiple countries much as Mahatma Gandhi. But, you know, that sort of perception that mum had to face and she does so with grace. You know, she’s very much a water off a duck’s back and nothing really. Yeah, nothing sort of really stings her. She’s incredibly gracious in pragmatism. She’s incredibly understanding in an intellectual way of. Well, that’s why people would think that.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:16:47]:
So of course that’s how they behave. She really has this ability to understand and appreciate human psyche and cultural psyches of, well, of course that’s their experience, that’s their lack of exposure to blackness or africanness, so therefore that’s how they would behave. And her understanding of that gives her an emotional protection. That means that she doesn’t take it personally because she’s able to see, oh, that’s why they behave like that. And that’s been really influential on me. I definitely noticed that I am not as gracious in that. I still think, well, that behaviour is not. Okay, so let’s try and change that and take this a bit more sensitively than the mummy does.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:17:28]:
But I also have that I don’t know if it’s a skill or just a characteristic of, oh, when I understand something, I can accept it far more easily of, oh, okay, that’s why you were thinking that because this is your life experience or this is your lived experience or your community or cultural experience, your ethnic experience, your age experience. And for me, that’s been so helpful in my equity and liberation work because I can understand you. I can meet you there, but I then don’t leave you there for me. That’s okay. I can meet you. I can understand that. And then let’s put some breadcrumbs and see if we can lead you out of that rather than that sort of acceptance. That, okay, it’s fine for you to be there because you are from a community where you don’t have much experience to ethnically diverse exposure or ethnically diverse relationships.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:18:22]:
Okay, so how can we now lead you out of that way of thinking and lead you into a way of more diverse and inclusive thinking? And how can we piggyback on the diversity that you do have of you have different relationships, different genders or ages or maybe sexualities in your family. How can you use that as a connector and empathy bridge? How can you diversify what you watch on telly and things like that and not leave you there? So I can definitely credit mum with part of that. And I know your question is about my mum, but my way of thinking is very much connected. And I think that might be partly due to my mixed heritage, that for me, there’s this integration and diversity that is inbuilt. Also, I think it may be linked to my ADHD of making quick connections and bouncing around. So I know I have a narrative style so I can talk about mum and that. And then I also think, oh, yeah, that links in also to daddy and the fact that I’ve got a, you know, a white english father who’s raised by an Edwardian Church of England vicar dad. So my grandfather, his dad, I should specify, who married a dark skinned black woman who raised mixed children and who talks about race.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:19:41]:
You know, I’ve got a comfort talking about race from both of my parents of, let’s address the fact that you’re brown and I’m white, you’re brown and I’m black, you’re brown, and every other person that you’re interacting with in your day is not. Is white. The fact that we walk through the village, you’re being asked, we grew up living in a village just outside of reading, or maybe she call it a town. I don’t know, it seems small to me, but that’s really because I was a child and was only allowed to go to the end of the street. I’m sure it was far bigger in reality. But, you know, I would be asked, oh, who’s this? Is that your nanny? It’s like, no, it’s my mom. And, you know, have had experiences of people asking who my dad is. And I remember once my dad and I, my dad took me to Holland with him and we stopped in a pub there for directions.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:20:34]:
It was in the evening and it was what you’d call a sort of working man’s pub, a watch. And I felt quite intimidated because it’s just all these, you know, all these older men drinking and looking at us as the, you know, as the foreigners who have stepped into this community village pub. And then when we left, this man followed us out and grabbed my hand in the car park, terrifying me. And he asked me, what are you doing with this Mandev? And it was so beautiful that he had come out to cheque. Why this 40 year old man had this, you know, 1012 year old, you know, 40 year old white man had this young brown girl with him and he obviously assumed that there might be a trafficking situation or paedophilia situation going on. And it was terrifying for me because I’m like, this is my dad. And my dad showed our passports. Thankfully, we had the same names, that the guy was satisfied and apologetic.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:21:31]:
My dad was really affirming to him and said, no, thank you. Like, that is exactly what I would want someone to do for my daughter if she was in that situation. And even at the time, I could realise, well, that man’s being kind. And even at the time, I could think, oh, I wonder if other men in that pub thought the same thing, that he’s the one who actually did something. So, you know, I can see that sort of tracing in now to my sort of how to stand up if you see a microaggression or if something’s off key, how to actually be the one that gets up off their pub seat, leaves their pint and does something brave and scary. And anyway, that is my meandering response. You’re going to have a lot of editing. Sorry, but no, no, all of that.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:22:14]:
When you. Oh, goodness. With speaking about my mum, I can’t not talk about my dad and where we grew up and how all of it so integrates. But going back to talking about I’m mum directly as the example that I had from her of one I think the most. The thing I’m most grateful for with mummy is I grew up as this brown skin girl in this mixed family, living in a white area. There was a couple over the road who were asian who we went and visited. And even at the age of, you know, between five and ten, when we lived there, I knew that we were friends with them because they were also brown. I knew that it was, oh, this is our.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:22:56]:
This is the neighbours that we can connect with. These are the neighbours who have a similar experience to us. These are the neighbours that you can just go in and talk real with. And we actually didn’t. I didn’t think we went into any other people’s homes on the. On the street. Dad. My dad’s here.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:23:14]:
Dad, do you remember? Do we visit any other families? Yeah, my dad lives in Estonia, but he’s actually staying with me this week. So, very timely. But even then, I knew that we had that anchor with them because of their racial identity, because of that connection, of being on this road, as. I think it’s like maybe 30 houses on the street, so maybe 60 in total, 30 along. But I. What my mum gave me the gift of is that she had this diverse range of friends, ethnically diverse friends, and I say ethnically diverse because actually they were all professional women, so it wasn’t sort of very economically diverse. They were women of colour and also white women. But it was dark skinned black women who were in education and in social care.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:24:04]:
It was an asian woman who works in local government. It was dark skinned black women who works in the local authority doing race relations. It was a white woman who works in. You know, you’re seeing a trend here of public sector service, who worked in the public sector. I grew up with that. Of these women around the dinner table with my white dad and these black, brown, white women who were professionals, who were in service to the community, but at a professional level, who were on advisory panels, who were advising local councils, who were slaying, to use a modern term for it. And I grew up with that example that has been instrumental in ways that I will never be able to quantify and even identify that. I grew up with that being the norm.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:24:56]:
I grew up with something that was so rare and so precious and too many girls, too many girls with black and brown skin and too many girls with pink skin don’t have that. Don’t have that example of women they can touch women they can see women they can say, oh, hey, you finished with your cup of tea? Women just chatting about work and family and life around the dinner table, showing them with skin on what this looks like, I rejoice and give thanks that little girls around the world and little boys have the example of Theresa May and Angela Merkel and Jocelyn Gerard. End but it also concerns me that, well, we’re also seeing women leave the political sphere, leave the worksphere for the reason that we talked about earlier saying, nah, nah.

Melody Moore [00:25:50]:
Did your parents say your parents presumably were one of very few mixed race couples where you grew up? What was their experience? Do you know of that?

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:26:03]:
Ooh, good question. I don’t know much about that, actually. I think they probably protected me from that. I’ll ask daddy when I get off the call. What I do know is that it’s, you know, my parents makeup is in the minority, mostly when you see interracial couples, black and white. But even actually when you, you know, when you see other inter ethnic couples, interracial couples, it’s normally a darker skinned man, a man of global majority identity and a white woman. And there are lots of socioeconomic, sociological, historical reasons for that, why that is prevalent. And it’s something that I have always grown up with a lens noticing, I think because of the fact that my parents buck the trend is something I’m very, and I invite listeners and yourself to notice that.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:26:57]:
So often when you see films, when you see adverts, when you see that interracial representation, what you see is a white skinned woman, a woman who’s racialized as whites and a darker mandehead. And actually, you know, that’s, you know, there are lots of reasons for that, but it’s something that I really lean away from and I’m quite tired of because actually it contributes to black women and brown women not being represented and being stereotyped and particularly not being seen as the love interest, not being seen as the heroine, being seen as the heroine’s best friend, either, you know, or the wise counselling grandma, but actually not being seen as the romantic love interest. And that’s partly the reason why I think we can celebrate Bridgerton season two and the fact that that’s showcased darker skinned. It was so fantastic. They weren’t just asian, south asian, sorry. They were darker skinned south asian women being shown as the love interest, that was revolutionary and to then actually have their culture be demonstrated, seeing them oil their hair and seeing them make chai washing.

Melody Moore [00:28:14]:
It’S historic and of course, Love Bridgerton. Just generally, I’m going to ask you now, I know the reason for this term, but maybe some of my listeners will not work in the world of diversity and inclusion. Lots of different people listen to this podcast, but you use the term global majority. Now, can you just explain for people what that means? Because people may have seen it and thought, I don’t really understand how that’s used or why that’s used. So can you just tell us a bit about that?

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:28:47]:
Yes, gladly. And another time, I’d be really happy to have a conversation, either on the podcast or with yourself, about language. And, you know, the fact that it’s so iterative. And I wonder if people are noticing that what I do when I’m speaking is partly through self correction and partly through active inclusion. I often use multiple terms for something. So I will talk about people who are racialized, black, brown. I will talk about white people and people who are racialized as whites. I deliberately use multiple terms because they do have different meanings.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:29:22]:
So a term that is becoming increasing in use is people are global majority. And what it means is it’s talking about racialized people, people who are black or brown. And it’s really trying to remedy the minoritisation of black and brown skin and black and brown culture. It’s trying to be quite factual, because actually, when you look at the globe, people who whites, people who are racialized as white people in the northern western hemisphere of the world, it’s a tiny minority. The real minority of the world is whiteness in terms of, you know, the number. And that’s trying to differentiate between power, the power of the world, the cultural power, economic and political power of the world is held by whiteness. And that goes back to slavery. It goes back to when white people discovered votes.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:30:21]:
Dang it. It goes back to slavery and colonialism. And it has set. Set the tone, it set the agenda for history and the future and the current world that we live in. There’s not an area of the world that is not, that has not been impacted or infected, that has not been dominated by the culture of whiteness. And I say whiteness specifically to distinguish between white people and white individuals. Like, I love my white dad and my white granddad and my white cousins, and it’s not about that, you know, but it is about saying, okay, the cultural identity of whiteness and tying with that colonialism and that particular white supremacist capitalism and extractiveness. So when we talk about people of global majority, we’re trying to shift from talking about the power and culture of white dominance or northern hemisphere dominance, if that might feel more comfortable for listeners who are still grappling with oh, what does white mean and what does it bring up? And of course, that might be quite messy for some.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:31:30]:
So can talk about northern culture dominance and instead really try and remedy this wrong. Where we see blackness and brownness as this minority, as this impoverished other. Actually, the world is black and brown. If aliens were to come and arrive, they’d think, oh, cool, so earth is black and brown. I, with a few pinks here and there, up in the north, up in the cold area, up in the north west. And because of boats, a few of them now are in the southeast as well. If we’re looking at the map, you know, flats in it, I’m using the map that is globally dominant, as opposed to a map that goes from east to west, which is just as valid, but has not been popularised, because white culture, white dominance. So talking about people who grave majority is really just trying to.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:32:22]:
Trying to equalise that in the UK, in the work that I’m doing, what I have advised and the charity I work at the most as a heritage charity, and in looking at our racial equity work, I have advised that we use both. That we use the term people of colour, or people who are racially minoritised and people of global majority. Because I think it’s important in the UK in doing edi work, or in doing any work where you’re talking about racialization and racial issues. I think it’s important that we don’t ignore the fact that we are a minority here. We’re a minority in power, we’re a minority in economic access, we are oppressed and marginalised. Not all, but if we’re looking at the majority of people of colour in the UK and how we are treated, how we are excluded, how we are discriminated against, we still see so much economic, political, educational and workplace discrimination as we do also for other groups. But the biggest disparity is when you look at race. So I think it’s really important that we don’t sort of use p o g m people of global majority in a way that might sort of wash over the facts, erase the fact that we’re still minoritized.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:33:41]:
We are still a minority, and I say minoritized in the way that gives it active. We are minoritized. We are not a global minority, but we’re a minority here and we’re minoritized. And when I use the term minoritized, I’m trying to move away from numbers, because you can be a minority and still have a lot of power. You know, when white people travel, you travel with power. When I visit Ghana, there are so many white people. They are there for trade, that are there to extract from the country and who are there for a lovely immigrant life. They’re economic migrants, but they’re not called that.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:34:20]:
Are they called expatriate? You know, and they have their enclave and they have their bars and they’re not actually contributing to the economy that’s filtering into ghanaian life. It’s all expat run. It’s a club, it’s a cult. But they’re economic migrants, but they have a social power. They have an economic power when they are in that black majority culture that I don’t have being in the UK, that I don’t have when I travel, that my darker skinned family don’t have when they travel. So I talk about minoritized, because if Britain had done it right, if. When Britain had invited people of the global majority, the formerly enslaved, formerly colonised countries, to come to England to help England, if they had done it right, if they had prepared the public, if they had done PR campaigns saying, yes, we’re about to have our global majority siblings, we’re about to have our formerly colonised siblings from around the world, the Commonwealth siblings, come to help us. Yay.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:35:29]:
Let’s welcome them. Let’s celebrate them. Let’s welcome them into our pubs, our churches, our homes. If they had done that, we wouldn’t be minoritized. We would have integration, we would have true inclusion and we would. You and I would not have jobs, we’d have different jobs, but we wouldn’t need the jobs that we’re doing if Britain had done it right. So we would be a physical minority. And that’s the dream that I have of, like, oh, I’d love to go back and do that campaign and have it be celebrated.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:36:06]:
So the opposite of no blacks, no dogs, no irish, but actually, like, welcome our irish and black siblings, but no.

Melody Moore [00:36:15]:
Dogs, please, because, no, we’re bringing the dogs too.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:36:20]:
Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay.

Melody Moore [00:36:26]:
Speaking of, I really hear what you’re saying, and it’s something, I often think with organisations, I work with a lot of global organisations and, you know, when we’re talking about if they’re gathering data and what have you, and there’s something that is often not thought of is that, you know, you might be a minority in another country as a white person, that doesn’t mean the same as being a minority, you know, in this country, as, you know, a black person, for instance, you know, because they are expat, because they’re often at the top of an organisation, you know, so you can’t look at your data and think it means the same thing in different countries. And the message I’m often sharing with people is it means different things in different countries. You’ve got to understand that you can’t just mash your data together and expect that it’s. That it’s all going to make sense. But I think that people often at the top of organisations want that simplicity. You know, how can I just look at this and understand it? And actually, there’s so much that sits underneath it.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:37:29]:
But I think I’d even push into that and say, I don’t think it’s just limited to sort of wanting simplicity. I think that, you know, to use Robin DiAngelo’s phrase, I think that it also is an example of white fragility. And for those who aren’t familiar with that terminal, it’s that sort of fragileness. And I know that she’s using a term that I think is intentionally provocative. So I might say like white defensiveness. It’s that wanting to bypass, wanting to skip around, wanting to find any other excuse, any other reason than my racial identity, my white skin, because that then requires, if you have integrity and authenticity, that requires self exploration and change. So actually, you know, I get so sick and tired and it takes a lot of patience when I hear. And I do also do some work with international groups of hear, oh, well, when I was abroad or, oh, I live in this country and my son’s the minority in his classroom.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:38:26]:
And I said, well, yes, he’s the minority physically, aesthetically, he’s a minority, but he’s the power holder in that classroom. That teacher knows that that white kid has more power that those white parents, if they want to complain about something, if he has a negative experience or God forbid, if anything physically happened to him, the international press will talk about that, but they won’t talk about the fact that a class of trinidadian children had a health and safety issue. So there’s that. You can’t talk about diversity. Well, you can, but it’s shit and it’s lazy. Sorry if you need to beep, but you can’t bullshit. So I think truly, thank you. You can’t truly talk about inclusion and not talk about power and you can’t talk about race without talking about that.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:39:19]:
Don’t show me your numbers, talk to me about who in that room has power. And that also goes for gender, of course. If, yes, we’re a majority female organisation. Okay, who’s got the highest paychecks.

Melody Moore [00:39:30]:
Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. I always say that about gender works like women technically are not a minority, but we. Exactly, yeah, it’s.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:39:38]:
But I’ll say, like. Yeah, I’ll say marginalised or minoritized, because even though they’re often the majority, I work in a majority, I work in the charity sector and it’s majority women, majority white, cis women. But in terms of the power that they hold, they’re not the ones setting the agenda, holding the highest positions or where they are. There’s then a gap between the sort of, you know, executive leadership team that might have majority women or parity, and then there’s a big gap when you look at senior leadership, middle leadership, and then when you go down to the lowest roles, that’s when you have, you know, more and more women.

Melody Moore [00:40:13]:
Well, I always find that fascinating with roles, you know, professions that are majority women. I started my career in the NHS, so nursing, predominantly women. But the, you know, proportion of male nursing directors is. Oh, absolutely. You know, compared to. Yes, a junior school teaching in particular, isn’t it? You know, there’s so many more women in junior schools, but disproportionate number of male heads. Anyway, let me ask you about. Let’s go back to your story.

Melody Moore [00:40:45]:
I’m into. We’re talking about expats and moving, but you moved from somewhere just outside of reading, a, where you were very much in the minority, to Harrow, which I think is where you currently live, which is much more racially diverse. Tell us a bit about that. About that experience of moving from one place to another.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:41:04]:
Oh, goodness. Yeah. It was very different in so many metrics. Was the road that we lived on in just outside of reading, as I say, sort of. Actually, I visited there. I went back recently for the first time in probably a couple of decades, and I think it may be as few as sort of 15 streets or 30 in total. So you knew everybody and it was a close. So this real sense of safety in this very small.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:41:32]:
This very small world. And to then be in Harrow of. I went from living at number seven to living at number 114. I’d never been on a road that long. I didn’t know roads came that long. It just keeps going. Now I live at a number 190. It’s just so.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:41:53]:
There’s definitely a physical growth with it as well, that my world is very small physically and relationally of. My grandparents lived nearby, my granddad lived with us half the week and with another parent with us to then being independent, we were suddenly now 2.4 and I say that there wasn’t a. .4 no, it was two parents and two kids. We didn’t have a half a random pair of legs in the corner. Yeah. But we sort of became this, you know, suddenly this nuclear unit, whereas we have been much more of an extended family. And I thought that in itself was interesting. My upbringing of it is my white edwardian Reverend grandfather who lived with us half the week.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:42:36]:
But I’ve grown up with that, you know, actually what is much more of a cultural, culturally diverse norm, a global majority norm, to have extended family live with you. So I’ve really, again, going back to my mom and daddy before I do answer the question, I promise, and talk about Harrow. But I’ve been really rich in growing up with actually both sides of my family, which I suppose explains partly why my dad married a black african woman, because his own internal culture matched that. I’ve grown both sides of my. Of my family, white English and black african and african British, having that real integration of extended family. We’ve had my. My dad’s nephew, my cousin lived with us when he was at uni and reading and I’ve had, you know, my mum’s, you know, my african cousins, my ghanaian cousins lived with us when they came over and were at uni or doing training courses. And then just a new bust, a myth, they went straight back to Ghana.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:43:33]:
I’ve had not one, not two, but three of my cousins or aunts and uncles from Ghana come over, do training courses. Actually five, I think of those who didn’t live with us, every one of them has gone straight back to Ghana and said hell no to living here. Actually, they have a higher quality of life in Ghana. They pay for my drinks when we go out there because they have much nicer houses and a lifestyle out there than the grind. And the culture of work here is so not to their benefit that even if they were to earn more economically in that pure economic metric, it’s not worth it for them. When you look at the other metrics of work life balance and quality of work, quality of role, that they’ve all promptly, swiftly gone back to Ghana. But I share that as an example, just showing. Oh, it’s really interesting that for both of my sides of my family, white and black, it was common to have what in England you call extended family, what for my dad we just call family.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:44:36]:
But to have those extended, non direct 2.4 family, granddad, cousin staying and living with us and it’s lovely just sort of seeing that also now I rejoice in seeing that replicated with my cousins, who I visited Leeds recently, where my. Where my uncle lives and saw my cousins. And it was just great seeing their babies being passed between different family members and going straight to an uncle and coming straight to me. And it’s been really normal. And they are mixed English and Norwegian. So again, seeing that, that’s a cultural value that we’re. That we’re clearly retaining. So it was.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:45:13]:
I share that just sort of that context of going from that. And we then retained that in. In Harrow. We did have my ghanaian family come and stay when they were at uni. Like, come and come and stay in the spare room one at a time, I should add. It wasn’t total chaos. You know, we’re very privileged to have. Yeah, we’re privileged enough to have three bedrooms, or it was four in reading.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:45:34]:
So, you know, I appreciate that privilege that we’ve had to still have space whilst being able to invite others to come in and share that. But to go from that to then being in. I remember walking into primary school, or what was then called middle school in Harrow, and the class was so racially diverse. It was really weird. I mean, also, it was much bigger than my school at Micklens in. Just outside of reading. But there were. I remember, you know, and I can still.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:46:07]:
Any names. I wait, but I remember, like, you know, there was south asian boy, there was. I do remember your names. If you happen to be living, listening boys from Pinna Park Middle school, you know, circa 1991. I do remember every single one of your names. But, yeah, there was. Is. There was Iraqi, there was Israeli, there was south asian Indian, there was Chinese, and there was white English.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:46:35]:
It was the Sri Lankan. It was incredible of, oh, there was an iranian girl who I made friends on my first day. She was seeking asylum in the country and we bonded. She became my best friend there, Shabnam. So it’s just this amazing melting pot. But you also had, you know, there were also two white girls called Sarah. You know, you also did have. And, you know, white english girls as well, because it was a class of maybe 30.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:47:00]:
So it was much more mixed. You had that real wealth of diversity and that spread became my norm. And there was that sense of exhale with it racially. But being in a bigger class then introduced me to different issues of friendships with girls that were much more complex. And it introduced me to racial dynamics that, ironically, I had been protected from. And I think maybe part of it is age, you know, I can’t put it all down. To place or class size or diversity of races. I think partly as age, it was that tweeny age where things start getting a little bit, maybe bitchy and you sort of draw some friendship lines and you sort of do the, oh, let’s like, overhear a conversation where you’re talking about someone.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:47:52]:
But it was the white girls in that class who sort of had the power. They were the sort of more queen bees. Not all of them, but it was a couple of white girls. So I then had to find my place navigating, going from these sort of popular girls that have a little bit of a mean girl vibe. And I don’t think it’s racial, but I don’t know. And that was always, you know, that’s something that, as a racialized person, a white majority situation, that’s always tiring of. You’re like, I don’t know, is it just me and its personality? Is it that we just don’t really click? And actually I get on better with those girls over there? Or is it because I’m brown? Is it because I’m black, cultured of my brownness? Is it something of my culture that I’m bringing? It’s that tiredness and that never goes away. And that’s where the work of white allyship, you know, can come in and is helpful.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:48:46]:
So, you know, a recent example, just thinking of allyship, is recently being in a shop in Hove with my white best, one of my white best friends. And the woman serving was so different with us. She was really warm and friendly with my, you know, my friend whose Rachel is white and blonde and, you know, when she was serving her and I was next, and it was just this coldness. It wasn’t open crates racist, if we’re going to talk about racist as being overt. But it was cold. It was. It was cool. And when we left, there was.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:49:22]:
But, you know, both of us sort of had. I had slumped shoulders and, you know, bless her. My friend Anna said, okay. It felt like she treated us differently. Like, did you. Did you notice that? How do you feel about that? And she said, do you think it’s because of. Do you think it’s because of our skin colours? And I just. I felt like, I just feel safe with you that you’re naming it.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:49:43]:
I feel safe with you that I don’t have to just put on a smile on my face and pretend that didn’t happen. I feel safe that one. You noticed it because, let’s be honest, most white people who haven’t done any allyship work or race work or open quotes, don’t see colour, they’re not going to be any help in that situation. Oh, she was probably just a bit tired or. It’s nothing of. Okay, you’re telling me that you’re nothing. You’re telling me that you don’t see my racial experience or the fact that we’re walking through Hove and I’m walking through hove with brown skin. And if you don’t see that, then you’re not fundamentally safe.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:50:20]:
You’re not unsafe, but you can’t be fully safe for me. You can’t be an ally for me. I can’t fully relax and exhale with you. I have to keep my eyes open for those experiences. So it’s just beautiful. And, you know, it’s partly why she’s my best friends, because she not only notices it, but she then wrestled with that. Oh, do I say something? Do I not? Will that make it awkward? If I do, if I do say something, what wording do I use? And the fact that she said, oh, do you think it’s because of, because of race? I think she said, you know, rather than saying because of your skin colour, which is sort of, you know, making out that that’s the problem, I think she just, oh, do you think it’s the. As a race? And she then said, how do you feel, you know, that, checking in with me? And then she said, do you want me to go back and say something? And it was just like, I can like walk you through those beautiful steps of allyship and just that sort of ordinariness of it, but linking back to school, I don’t, I don’t know how much those experiences were linked by race and so on.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:51:22]:
But what I do know is even if the class was very racially diverse, the teaching staff was all white. It was only in, you know, like two years later, when I was in the last year of that middle school, what others are called primary school, it was only then that I remember two staff members joining who were south asian. And I actively remember that. So there is still something of even when you’re represented in classing, as we mentioned, class dynamics, class representation and diversity, sorry, the teachers, the people you’re being led by the people who actually hold that not just power in a sort of, you know, I set the tone way, but also that cultural power, the cultural influence even in, and even in an area that is incredibly ethnically diverse. Harrow is at the time was 50 50. I think now is more like 60 or 65, 35, majority world ethnicities, races and whites, races and white ethnicities. And I use those words separately, you know, to distinguish between ethnicity. So I did have ethnic diversity in school.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:52:33]:
I remember having a jewish teacher who was also a magistrate, and for Rosh Hashanah she brought in apple and honey and introduced us to that jewish tradition. So I did have white ethnic diversity. I had a white scottish teacher as well, but didn’t have any racial diversity. So that sort of sense of, oh, even in an area, just as with, we talked about gender representation, even in organisations and educational places and so on, where it’s majority female or majority or mixed, that’s not represented in who was being hired at that time.

Melody Moore [00:53:08]:
Talk to me about you. This is, you know, obviously some time after being in school, but you moved into, you know, social care teaching and you, you know, you experienced working with people, not just with racial diversity, with economic diversity, other forms of diversity. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:53:30]:
Gladly, yeah. I’m so, just so blessed. I’m so fortunate that I’ve had the varied experience that I have. And again, part of that is influenced by my parents. My dad and my mum have both been in youth work. My dad has been working in prison system. I almost said my dad has been in the prison system there, which absolutely no shame whatsoever. Lots of people who have experience of the prison system for very, you know, for reasons of injustice, not for reasons of any criminality, and a lot of crime comes from poverty and comes from, you know, most women who are in the prison system who.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:54:04]:
Most women who have experience incarceration are there because of a relationship of abuse, because of a relationship with a male partner, manipulating and abusing them. So just to clarify and make that point absolutely clear, but my dad has worked in the prison system and also in youth work and also as a teacher of English as a multiple language. It was then called isoL. So teaching English as a second language. But I like the phrase English as a multiple language because I think, again, that’s more honouring of the fact that you are someone who speaks multiple languages. Chances are your teacher doesn’t. Chances are everyone who is white in your workplace or social space or faith space doesn’t. And yet you are judged for not speaking English or not speaking English.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:54:52]:
Open quotes. Well, when in actual fact your brain is working twice as fast as mine processing perhaps 1235 languages. And my mum also has been a manager in care homes as well as being in the secondary school education system. My mom also has been a headteacher of a secondary referral unit, which is schools which are set up for children who have been excluded. I think what is often said is schools for children who can’t sort of manage in the traditional school system. I absolutely reject that. It is schools for children who often have been rejected and who have often been failed. And we know that black girls, black boys, children of colour, are three times as likely to be excluded from their examinations, excluded from the classroom, excluded and suspended for the same behaviour that white children are not excluded for.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:55:48]:
So my mum’s bringing that wealth of experience and she’s also been a deputy principal of a college in a very racially and ethnically diverse and economically diverse area. Hackneye. So all of that you can see is sort of like, set the trajectory for me then, you know, sort of. Yeah. Tiptoeing into some of my parents footsteps, as these are natural things to lean into. So I’ve been a shift manager in care homes, caring for children with behaviours and behavioural needs because of being taken out of their family situation, or because of experiencing things in their family situation that have led to them having what we would call disruptive behaviour, because of what I would prefer to call because of them being emotionally dysregulated and psychologically traumatised. You know, rather than focusing on the behaviour that is open quotes, antisocial and disruptive, instead, I like to focus on the fact that these are children who have been traumatised, who have been failed by society, have been impacted by things that they should not have had to experience. I’ve also worked in also in care homes with adults with complex physical and mental needs and developmental needs and conditions, and also in schools for children with severe learning and physical disabilities, as well as.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:57:11]:
What else have I done? Oh, also youth work as well. Something else in there. I’ve worked in new room, which is an incredibly racial and religious and economically diverse area. So all of that has given me so much rich life experience and for me, that’s given me so much empathy and it’s given me that real ability to see my privilege and how rare my life is of actually, to recognise that coming from a household where both parents have been to university and both parents have professional jobs is rare. Going to university is where it’s not the norm for the majority of people in our country. Of course, it’s not the norm for the majority of the globe, but even just focusing on England or on the United Kingdom, what it gave me is an appreciation of the fact that, oh, that’s real life. Real life is actually grittier, real life is actually far more complicated. Real life is actually impacted by systems that I am protected from because they work for me, they’re set up for me with my neurotypicalness.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:58:26]:
So yes, I now have been diagnosed with ADHD and that really helped. But my ADHD shows up in a way that it doesn’t impact my cognition and writing. I can sit down and write essays. So I’ve actually been able to thrive through the traditional education system. Recognising, oh, okay, lots of people grow up without books in their home, without stationery. I grew up with two teachers. For parents, there’s always stationery and, you know, just those small things, the minutiae. I have this ability that I’ve gained through that to recognise the diversity and the complexity and the way that the healthcare system is impacted by race.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [00:59:12]:
It is impacted by class and economic affluence and oppression to see, oh, I’m not coming across many middle class children in the care home system. They’re not the people who are being removed from their families. Okay, why is that? And because I have that inquiring mind and because I’ve grown up with parents who talk so actively and openly, you know, about race, about economics, about mental health, and my dad’s also worked in a psychiatric unit, so. And because they’ve talked about it, it was normalised around the dinner table to talk about religion and politics and racial issues from a young age. I’ve got this. This comfort and literacy and fluency and talking about them already that I guess primed me for then going into these spaces and to really be able to take from it this systematic understanding of who isn’t here, of, okay, I’m not coming across people who are from affluent backgrounds when they’re racialized as white. I’m coming across working class or people who are economically excluded, economically oppressed. They’re the ones who are in the care system.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:00:26]:
They’re the ones whose lives are now being set on a trajectory which we know, we know statistically and experientially. And I know that from firsthand experience with kids in these care homes, of being sexually exploited, of being disenfranchised from their education, of being disenfranchised from the workplace. I know that that is now setting you on a course that I’m not seeing middle class white kids experience. I’m not seeing that mirrored. So that has given me this amazing, amazing insight into the realities, and I say realities, plural, of working class experiences, of mental health experiences, economically oppressive experiences. And I distinguish between them. We know working class experience is very different from being economically oppressed. And what we’re seeing is more of the latter.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:01:23]:
What we’re seeing, sadly, is that the working class is becoming economically oppressed as the things that have kept them afloat with their hard work, with their graph, plus a top up of benefit and seeing that being restricted, then push those hard working, grafting families into economic exclusion, economic hardship.

Melody Moore [01:01:47]:
So tell me what you. What does economic oppression mean to you? What does that look like?

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:01:55]:
It’s a wonderful question. It’s a question I can definitely share some thoughts on, but one that I know I’m not fully qualified to answer. Excuse me. It’s one that I can definitely say I’m not qualified enough to answer. Partly through my own life experience. I have a very professional group of friends, a very ethnically and racially diverse group of friends. Again, I think that traces back to my mum’s example and also through going to school and secondary school in Harrow, where I have come out of uni and college and school with a rich ethnic and racially diverse set of friends, not as gender diverse. I went to a girls school, so that’s something that I am actively trying to lean into in adulthood, of actually forming more mixed gender friendships.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:02:42]:
And also partly because I was. I’m of the christian faith and I was in a christian tradition that’s much more sort of centred on, you know, couples and heteronormativity and, you know, seeing, oh, well, don’t. Don’t mix with, you know, don’t. Don’t mix genders because that’s how affairs start. And of course, there can be some truth to that and also, bloody hell, grow up. So I’m trying to remedy that more in adulthood. But economic oppression, from what I’ve seen in terms of what I study and what I read and what I try and pay attention to and also in the people that I do try and form relationships with from different classes, which I’m very grateful. Church has been a space of bringing that melting pot for me and me leaning into those friendships and treating them as equitable friendships, not treating them as.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:03:30]:
I’m here to help you because I have the home and the space, but actually treating it as cool. Come and move in with me, which you have because I have the home in the space and also I’m learning. And this is a reciprocal friendship. And as someone who has physical conditions, I. Fibromyalgia. You know, those friends. The friendship I’m particularly thinking of has been so beneficial to me in terms of cool, you’re helping me with my care and I’m giving you free lodging. And to call it that very old fashioned term.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:03:58]:
But what I can see a difference of is what we definitely have from the noughties is what I would call, and I don’t think is too harsh a term as what I would call the demonization of people in poverty or of people who are economically struggling. That sort of the myth of the benefit cheats and that narrative that came out, the Vicky Pollard sketches, that real chavification of who were actually the hardest working demographic in our society, you know, especially if we were to look at hours, worked effort in those hours. No long lunches, no sitting at your desk, flexi working, managing your own schedule. But actual grafting in an Amazon warehouse, actual grafting in a care home where. Yeah, I’ve worked in care homes temporarily. There are people who work in them, you know, lifelong. And you’re far more likely work in a care home if you have melanin, if you have black or brown skin. You’re far more likely to work in a care home.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:05:00]:
You’re far more like to be on a zero hour contract if you’re black op around, if you haven’t been to university, I’ve been spat at, I’ve been called the n word, I’ve been hit. I wipe up, you know, I’ve wiped up vomit, I wipe up faeces. I’m okay with that. I don’t see that as bad or dirty or anything. I’m very fortunate. My mum and dad have a very, like, just relaxed attitude to that. It’s just a body fluid. Grow up.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:05:23]:
I don’t get this sort of english thing. Of course, I couldn’t possibly, like, wipe my parents ass when they’re older or anything. It’s just. It’s just a bottom. Like, seriously, it’s only weird if you make it weird or it’s only demeaning if you make it demeaning. Quick shout out there to Sex and the City. The original series. What I love in the finale.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:05:45]:
I don’t know if you ever watched it, but I. In the finale, there’s a beautiful story with Miranda’s character inviting her partner, her husband’s mom, who is experiencing dementia following a stroke, into the family home. And there’s an episode where she’s bathing her and I just love seeing that representation of it’s not the carer who’s bathing her, she’s just bathing her. And the mum is playing with the rubber duck and it’s not weird, it’s beautiful. So that’s just, again, me bringing in my cultural difference there. And I don’t mean racially cultural, because my white english middle class, you know, father has that value as well. But what I definitely have seen and feel nervous about and scared of and sad about in our culture is this demonization of people who need to top up their salaries with benefits. And actually this, you know, their chavs, they’re work shy, they’re shirkers.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:06:41]:
And actually they’re the people doing the jobs that you don’t f ing. And I’m trying to say the f word because normally I would have sweared ten times by now, but I don’t know where the line is. I should have got you to brief me beforehand. But they’re the people doing the job that you don’t bloody want. You know, we see that, don’t we? Post Brexit of, oh, oh, were those unwanted polish immigrants? Were they taking your jobs? No, they were wiping your parents asses. They were pouring your Costa coffees on your way to work. And just. I grieve and I.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:07:12]:
As you can hear, there’s anger, there’s fury at the demonization of the hardest working groups in our culture. There is the white people who are working class, the working class, and I like calling it the hard working class or the class who are working. I’m trying to change language because working class just immediately has this sort of lazy, you know, bias that we have from the media. So I’m sort of trying to look at how I can play with my own language. So, okay, Natalie and Anna, rather than you say the working class, talk about the, you know, the hard working class or the minoritized class, but particularly the working class, you’re far more likely to be working class. You’re far more likely to be in an economically unfair, unwaged, unfairly waged job if you are black or brown. And what I see is with fear as someone who works in equity and someone who is in a brown body. This dualism, the dual confluence of we’ve demonised people who are economically excluded and who therefore need to work in jobs that we look down on, jobs that we don’t want to do, and jobs that pay so little for doing the hardest, ugliest work in our country that pays so little that they need to have their work topped up because we do not pay them enough to survive on independently after working a twelve hour shift, being spat at, shouted at and hit by our parents who are experiencing dementia and doing that with care and grace as much as they can, when they are exhausted and deflated.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:08:55]:
And to also see that we are now demonising people of colour. We are demonising refugees. We are demonising people who have migrated to this country who, by the way, were happy in their countries until we often bombed them, or until we invited them to leave their countries and come over and help us. I know I’m on my soapbox, sorry, I’ll take it down a notch. But it scares me seeing that confluence because we’re seeing that racism increase and we’re seeing that if you’re on benefits, you’re lazy and you’re not helping the country and you’re a burden. We’re seeing this dual narrative of those two come together. I don’t want to use the word terrify, because that would be an overstatement, but it really scares me. That really scares me for people who are hardworking and who are in need because of the systems that we have created that don’t pay and don’t value and don’t give people in those situations the opportunities to open quotes, work themselves out.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:09:57]:
You know, the myth of the meritocracy, that scares me. Sorry to end on a downer.

Melody Moore [01:10:04]:
No, no.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:10:04]:
But let me.

Melody Moore [01:10:06]:
Let’s take things up in a more positive note, then, and talk about your granddad, you know, yay, my granddad. About people who, you know, you know, when I listen to you, I think, well, what can we do about this? How. How do we change people? I love your term. You said earlier about breadcrumbs. How do you, you know, people out Hansel and Gretel style into a different way.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:10:28]:
Maybe I should use pebbles instead of breadcrumbs, since we know how that ended up. Poor metaphor. Pebbles.

Melody Moore [01:10:36]:
Okay, pebbles will. We’ll scratch the breadcrumbs. But tell us about your granddad and what the changes you saw in him.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:10:43]:
Oh, yeah. So, as I said, my granddad was a dwordian. He’s passed. He was born in 1909, a Church of England. Very, I think, actually, very posh, if I’m honest. I think of him as middle class. But I’ve recently was able to turn a vhs video that I had of his 90th birthday into, you know, whatever it’s called, like a USB thing, and download it. And listening to him back, I thought, oh, yeah, that’s where the postionist comes from.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:11:12]:
Because sometimes I just speak really poshly and my mates look at me and it’s like, what? I’m like, yes, I grand. I just jumped out. So here, this edwardian, you know, traditional vicar, and he’s white and he’s then got a son who’s married a black woman and has got children who are Brown, who are the only brown children, you know, in the village and in the same Vin, his village and my granddad had travelled to Kenya. He’d gone as what he would call a missionary he’d done. He was a carpenter. So he had gone over there building homes and I’m sure preaching and trying to bring what I hope was good news. So often, you know, missionaries don’t bring good news at all, but I hope it was good news to people. So he has experience of other cultures, but of course he would have experienced that as him as the power, you know, him as the reverend, him as the teacher.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:12:00]:
He taught English, mathematics, I think, as well as skills of carpentry to the community he was based in. So he does have that exposure and seeing the grace with which, you know, he’s. He’s welcomed my mom into the family if he absolutely loved her, absolutely adored her. My granddad and my parents divorced when I was 14 and my granddad never still come and spend Christmas, my mum, my brother and me, you know, and then go to my dad’s boxing day and vice versa and, you know, switch it up in different years of. Olivia was his daughter, you know, he had a key to our home. He let himself in. He picked us up after school. So it was beautiful to me seeing this posh old english man absolutely freaking adore his brown skin grandchildren Adoros was utterly spoiled and lavished with love.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:12:51]:
He absolutely adored us. And I think for him, my brother was more of another son to him. You know, he saw him more as a son than a grandson. And for me, we had a great friendship. You know, I was very privileged to have him in my life until I was 20. He died shortly before I turned 21 because I’m getting emotional now, but I’m really fortunate that throughout university I was able to get on the coach and go and visit him and spend weekends with him and really have that friendship with him. And because of that continued relationship into adulthood, I got to say, see him grow and change. So originally he had voted, you know, conservative.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:13:26]:
And my dad and my uncle, my uncle’s doctor, Professor Raymond Bush, who is a marxist teacher and lecturer and writer of african studies and liberation. He writes a lot about sort of Egypt and has loads and loads of work in Ghana and farmers rights and. And you sort of see this trend of liberation and being baked into that generation of my granddad’s kids for my dad and my uncle, they worked on him for years about why he should be voting labour. And then he did he very much, I think, in his dad was granted like 80 when he started voting labour, 70. He doesn’t know he was old, but yeah, in his seventies or eighties he started voting labour. And very much I see that change in him and that openness to change. And I see it also theologically. So I became a Christian.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:14:25]:
I was raised, my dad’s an atheist. My mum was then a non practising Catholic. My granddad didn’t, you know, push religion on us or anything, but I sort of grew into Christianity and my, when I was about 20 and we’d have theological conversations, you know, sort of the year before he died. And I remember years ago asking him about female vicars before I was a Christian, it had been in the news, I think, in, you know, probably like the nineties about female vicars. And I remember visiting my granddad and wedding and him saying, well, you know, you know, I respect female equality. He raised us to be very equal. I’m very fortunate. I was raised in the eighties.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:15:02]:
So you didn’t have that genderfication as you disgustingly do now with toys and clothes. I just wore Dungarees and played with the same stuff my brother did and my granddad played football with both of us. And I also had dolls and very fortunate, you know, to have had both. It was both and. But I remember my granddad saying, like, yes, you know, women are very, very clever and, you know, very much, yes, can do lots. And your mum’s, you know, managing a college and women work well and that’s excellent. But being a vicar is very hard and you have to manage some very difficult conversations and circumstances. Circumstances.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:15:38]:
And I just think women are too emotional. I think it would be too hard for them, you know, and that was sort of the early nineties. And I was probably like, come on, granddad. And then I remember talking to him when we were having our theological chat, you know, in like probably about 1999, and him saying, oh, I know, I’ve seen some, some wonderful vicars and I think like female vicars and I’ve heard some wonderful sermons and I think that actually, you know, it really just depends on your skills for the job and, you know, theologically he was saying, you know, God can call anybody, but I really just think that actually as women can be brilliant as vicars and, and, you know, it really just depends. And I use that example when I hear people say, oh, well, that’s just the age they are or, oh, that’s just the time they’re from. And I can feel actually there’s a fire in my belly that comes from grief that then leads to anger. Often for me, they’re too sides of the same coin. Grief puts a fire in my belly of, wow.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:16:37]:
You give them that get out of jail free card. You give them that pass. And actually, how much of it is you bypassing? How much of it is you not wanting to have those conversations? Because I’ve noticed that your grand doesn’t use the n word. So actually you’re fine with. They’re fine with that age group are fine with changing some language. You know, my grandad told me, actually, he said when we were doing eenie, meenie, miney, moe, catch a tigger by the toe, it’s my granddad who said, oh, when I was a boy we used to say catch a n, you know, catch the n word by its toe. And he said, oh, but you know, we’ve just changed it. We didn’t mean anything, but we didn’t know any better, but we’ve changed it.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:17:15]:
And now you say Tigger. And that was sort of late eighties he was telling me that. So all along there’s been these, you know, these sort of moments of me just seeing granddad say, okay, yeah, you don’t do that anymore. You do that. And I stress that he’s an Edwardian Church of England establishment vicar who sent his, you know, his, I think, you know, his first two children, he’s had four. I think they both went to private school of, you know, he’s not a liberal marxist at all. He managed to raise one, yes, but he’s not. So I do sort of push back and say, well, actually.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:17:51]:
And I often push back and I say, wait a second, this is also the generation that went for a war. They went through seeing, you know, the rights for, you know, for jewish people and others, you know, gipsy Roma and disabled people coming through as we saw the extent of the Holocaust. And how many gipsy Roma people who were disabled people who were gay and jewish people or Jews, however they, you know, language which is most comfortable. I know that people prefer to have different preferences. So actually you’ve gone through a time of seeing, seeing rights, seeing equality. You’ve watched on your television, you know, doctor Martin Luther King lead marches and lead protests. You’ve been in a country that has protested against south african apartheid. I grew up, you know, with us not having kit kats and not having satsumas because at the time they came to South Africa.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:18:42]:
I remember my dad being, you know, equally excited about Nelson Mandela being liberated from prison and becoming president as being able to eat a kit kat again because we no longer had to boycott them. So as much as they’ve lived through a traditional time and so on, I also think, well, yeah, and you’ve also lived through the Windrush generation coming. You’re the first generation that have actually had exposure to multicultural Britain. So, actually. And also, you’re not now making the same sexist comments that you did. So why do we let it slide? When they say language about race and ethnicity that isn’t okay, and it’s often that they’re saying it over WhatsApp. So if you can actually start using a phone in the Internet, if you can get to grips with FaceTime and a Zoom call, then I’m pretty sure that you can get to grips with Nan. We don’t use that word for gay people now.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:19:40]:
We don’t use that word for black people now. I’m pretty sure that you really could if I asked you to and if I made clear that actually, I’d rather you didn’t, and if they were.

Melody Moore [01:19:51]:
Yeah. Right. Let me ask you some of my quickfire questions to close off. So, question one is, what’s next for you?

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:20:03]:
Okay, what’s next? Try and be quick. Quick. What’s next is, in work wise, do you mean? Yes, in the field of work, yeah. So what’s next in work is I am committed to staying in the charity I work in. So I do four days a week at a national heritage charity, and then I do one day a week freelancing. Hence, hello, today is my freelance consulting day. And I’m committed to staying at that charity for the next year because we’re doing a real push and I’m working with. I’m co leading on their work, focusing on race equity.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:20:34]:
And I really think that I’m excited by it. I think it could actually make change. So I’m committed to seeing that through for the next year. Then what I really want to lean into, what I love and miss that I used to do a bit more, is doing keynote lectures, doing keynote speeches. As you can hear. I love a soapbox. I’d love to do a Ted talk. I miss that.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:20:55]:
I’d love to be doing more panel speaking and conferences. So I’m really hoping that my public speaking, that I get more opportunities to do that and that, yeah, that the universe, God life sends them to me. I’m from a family of orators. All my family are lecturers. My granddad’s a preacher, I’ve done preaching. I think it’s just the gift of the gab, the gift of speaking well. So that’s that hope for work and I hope that I can yet do it more. Also in part from the fact that I do it well, I enjoy it.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:21:28]:
And in recognising that I’ve had the benefit and blessing of these life experiences and the perspective it’s given me, the richness of my experience, in part to my embodied experience. Being of mixed ethnicities, being of mixed cultures, being of mixed classes, being queer, being neurodiverse, being disabled. And also my disabilities are non visible. My neurodiversity is open quotes, more palatable, more supported, not easy to support because it depends. But the way that my shows up, it is more easy for me to continue with work in a flexible way. So bringing that dual lenses that I’ve got, I just really want to share that with more people to benefit and be like, here, here. Get some experience through like a whistle stop tour of Natalia Nana because I’ve been really beneficial in being able to have all of that.

Melody Moore [01:22:26]:
And what advice would you give to your younger self?

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:22:30]:
Oh, how young?

Melody Moore [01:22:32]:
Any age you choose. Aha, okay, could be last week.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:22:38]:
Because, yeah, I do sort of look at the different natalias or as I now use Natalia nana as a way of honouring both sides of my culture. So I’ve had different phases in life of being called Natalia. When I was in wedgie, then we moved to Harrow, my white english father decided, no, you’ve got to start using one of your ghanaian names. So people who know me from Harrow call me Nana. So now I’m sort of merging both sides of my character. What I would love to say to little Natalia, who’s moved to Harrow is be stronger and be bold in hanging out with the people that you want to hang out with. Don’t feel that you need to hang out with these popular girls who actually make you feel a bit like shit. And it took me some time because I’ve always sort of been on the edge of popularity, but also a bit.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:23:23]:
A bit too much, a bit too. And I don’t know too what? I don’t know if it’s a bit too black. I don’t know if it’s a bit too neurodivergent. I don’t know which of them it is. A bit too. Just quirky and different, a bit too outspoken. I don’t know. So I’ve always been in popular circles, but on the edge of them and being on the edge, easy to be pushed out.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:23:43]:
And that meant that middle school and secondary school were very, very mixed emotionally, mentally, for me, of not knowing, oh, am I in the group today? Am I not? And that sort of colours it when actually, when I’ve then moved into spaces of being with the girls in the sort of what you might call the next circle, not the fully popular girls, but cool enough and like, you know, fun. They’re not always in their books. They’re also going out having fun and we go ice skating for a birthday and they also get their shit done and do their work. I’ve been a lot more content, so I think I’d say that as advice for her and then that, I’m sure would feed through. And what I’d love for more adult Natalia and Anna is go to therapy sooner because I started. Yeah, I started my therapeutic journey. I’ve actually done training, an introduction to counselling courses, and been a samaritan volunteer. So therapeutic listening is something I’ve had a long interest in.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:24:41]:
But I only started receiving therapy when I became an EDI practitioner and when it brought up for me a lot of stuff about identity and, oh, I’m talking to people about race and ethnicity and gender and disability and sexuality and race and faith. Sorry. Like, this is bringing up a lot of stuff for me that I’ve not grappled with. I would, and I deliberately have a black female therapist so that there’s that connectedness and shorthand and immediate psychological safety that I have with her, knowing that she will get some of my experiences without needing to explain them. So, yeah, that would be my advice to young Natalia nana Thalia, as she was called then, and to, yeah, Natalia Nana was an adult.

Melody Moore [01:25:26]:
What about books? Would you.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:25:28]:
What book?

Melody Moore [01:25:28]:
One single. I’m going to give you one book that you would recommend.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:25:33]:
Okay, well, I’m going to tell you now, I’m going to break the rules and not do that, because I have two. I recommend the wonderful book the Prophets by Kahlil Gabram. My mum gave me my first copy of that, I think, when I was 16, which I still have. It’s got highlighting and underlining, and then I. I go back and reread it and it’s just beautiful and it’s life advice and poetry and wisdom. And also I would highly recommend the wonderful book by Patrice Colours, an abolitionist handbook. My journey has gone from sort of, yes, we’re in the system and the system is fine and we tinker it and what we want is inclusion in the system, you know, linking back to our, you know, opening conversation. And now I’m much more.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:26:22]:
I think just by being more aware of how the system is innately racist, the system is innately sexist, the systems are innately ableist, and the systems are innately heteronormative. I think we need to dismantle them. And that’s not to say get rid of the police and we have anarchy at all. But I love the, you know, the premise behind when they say defund the police, it’s a really crap term. What they actually mean is refund social care, refund mental health support, refund family. Sure, start those sorts of interventions. Give some of the money that you’re putting into policing, into mental health. Most people who are in prison have got some form of mental health condition that’s undiagnosed or diagnosed, but actually still imprisoned.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:27:12]:
So Patrice colours paints a wonderful picture of how we can do that, of putting dreaming into practise of actual what would abolition? And I’d probably say, what would de Anne reconstruction look like? What would dreaming in practise look like?

Melody Moore [01:27:32]:
Okay, final question. What would you have for a title for your story? It’s not an easy question, not at all.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:27:43]:
And I do particularly feel that my story is so varied, partly just through my identities being so mixed, but could be something like a wonderful mix or a mixed bag. No, that doesn’t sound very good. But I also. I actually was a bit inspired by that phrase of dreaming and practise. I wonder something about like a practical dreamer. Yeah, I’m torn between either a wonderful mix or a practical dreamer. I will let you.

Melody Moore [01:28:08]:
Thank you. So I just want to close off by saying thank you so much for coming on the secret resume today. It’s been absolutely fascinating. My mind is very stimulated by all of the things that you’ve been talking about. So I genuinely appreciate it.

Natalia-Nana Lester-Bush [01:28:29]:
Thank you so much. It’s been really, really fun. Thank you so much for having me and for the rich conversations.

Melody Moore [01:28:36]:
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