Amanda Parris takes important Black conversations off social media and into the real world in new series

In For the Culture with Amanda Parris, Amanda Parris leaves the wars raging on social media to create space for urgent and provocative conversations that centre Blackness and Black folks around the world. 

Parris — who is the series's host, creator and executive producer — explores a different topic in each of the show's six episodes.

"Social media has created an amazing invitation to have conversations … across borders, which has been fascinating to observe and witness. And social media is part of what inspired a lot of these topics," says Parris. "But I think there's a limit because of the nature of the platform. You know, there's only so many characters. You don't get to hear people's tones and intonations. We don't always understand humour." 

While producing the series, Parris travelled to six countries, visiting with people at home, sitting in on their classes and eating with them at restaurants. By assembling a mix of guests from across the Black diaspora, For the Culture with Amanda Parris examines some of the most important issues facing Black folks today from a range of perspectives. 

In an interview with CBC Docs, Parris explained how the show came about, how it's impacted her and what she hopes audiences will gain from watching. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe For the Culture with Amanda Parris?

I describe it as a point-of-view documentary series about the topics that are often in the group chat for me and my friends, are trending on Twitter and maybe sometimes get a small story in a mainstream news source. 

I'm hoping that we can spend some time digging a little deeper than we usually get to go on those platforms to push the conversation forward, to engage people that are not normally engaged and, most importantly for me, to bridge conversations happening between Black diasporas around the world. 

What are some of the ways that this show makes space for those conversations?

We have a mix of different kinds of folks in the show, people who are on the front lines of the topic. 

So if we're talking about the business of Black hair, for example, we have product creators, salon owners. People who are building curriculum in cosmetology schools. But then we also have experts, you know, people who've been writing about this topic for a long time who are in the academic sphere. 

And then in some other episodes we have more well-known names, bigger names, like Gina Yashere in "Diaspora Wars" or Larry Wilmore in "Glass Cliff."

We're also having conversations in places where people feel comfortable. So, you know, inviting everyone into Allison Hill's beautiful salon to have a round table conversation or going to visit Vivian Kaye in her home.

In one of our episodes, we interview a guy named Jab Moses literally on the beach, sitting in a tree. It's a beach that he knows and that's, you know, his spot.

We were just really trying to be intentional about where we interviewed people and in the spaces that we set up. And then about spending time with folks and having long conversations.

What made you want to take the conversations off social media and into the real world?

I pitched this show in 2020, which was a very interesting time, obviously. It was a time when we were also locked inside and social media was often our only way to engage with folks. And so it also came, possibly, from a point of really being hungry to be in the world with people. 

And then just personally, my background. I've never really felt particularly connected to any sort of national identity. I was born in England, I grew up in Canada. My mom is from Grenada, my dad Venezuela. So I think that lack of feeling a strong sense of patriotism or nationalism has really led to this feeling of connection to Black folks globally. 

I'd never really seen that on television, different diasporas in conversation with each other, talking about the similarities of our experiences, the differences, the different strategies that we employ and learning from each other. And I really just wanted to do that.

You travel to many places for this show: Barbados, Grenada, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Did you experience anything that stood out or surprised you?

Every location was a whole new experience and adventure. 

Being in Paris and doing an interview literally in front of a museum that Mwazulu Diyabanza took artifacts from changes the dynamics of an interview. This is the place where he was arrested. This is the place where his picture is literally in the security office so he cannot enter it again. 

And then, in a more casual way, going to London for our "Diaspora Wars" episode, having dinner in this really amazing restaurant called Papa L's, sharing food with a bunch of folks when none of us knew each other before that day. 

Just drinking and eating together, talking about various topics in "Diaspora Wars," the level of camaraderie and connection that happened over that dinner, the laughs and the jokes, I think that's so hard to create outside of an intimate setting. 

What conversation was the most challenging for you?

Probably Mwazulu just because of language. We had to do it via translation … I remember thinking to myself, "I really should have studied French way harder when I was in school." 

But I think it was also hard because he's an activist who is doing a lot that puts him at risk in a lot of ways. And so his guard was up in a lot of ways. 

Also the conversation with Nataki Garrett in our "Glass Cliff" episode was really difficult. [Editor's note: The episode examines Black leadership at work: are institutions and corporations actually ready for change or are Black leaders simply being set up to fail?] 

She was the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and she was so generous and so amazing. But we had no idea that she was planning on resigning the following day. And so, you know, there was the risk of her talking to us within that space on that day.

I think that episode in particular was really challenging, because we weren't talking about something in the past or far away. We're talking about things that are going to put people at risk right now and that people are going through right now. 

Did you learn anything about yourself while making this series? 

I think I learned many things about myself. I think the "Glass Cliff" episode in particular made me question a lot about myself, the work that I do and how I handle it. 

The Black maternal health episode was really challenging, because it forced me to deal with some of the trauma that I've gone through.

The education episode has left me feeling the stakes of my son's educational future even more. It made me and my husband really question whether our future can be here in Canada … because it just feels like things are not changing fast enough. 

You're really joyful throughout the series, especially when you're talking with your guests, but you're broaching very serious subjects. How do you deal with that, especially the heavy stuff?

It was really important to me, from the beginning, that even though we're going to go to heavy places and talk about really serious topics, that this not be a very heavy, serious show. 

In our communities, we deal with things in multiple layers. We're always laughing through the pain and laughing through the horrors. And it was really important for me that this show illustrate all of that. So we might cry sometimes, but we will also laugh and we will also have silly moments. 

I just wanted to show everyone's full humanity. 

For example, when we interview the students from York Memo, we spend the first few moments with them just talking about their ideas of what high school was going to be like and how different that was from the reality. 

That was really important for me to keep in. I remember getting notes back like, "we don't need this much." 

Yes, we do. Because these kids get dehumanized so often in the media, I want to show them in their full humanity. What are their dreams? What did they imagine? What did they think was possible? And then, what was the reality that they were faced with? 

Including the humour and the joy was important because I want to show all of us, not just us in pain and in trauma.

What do you want people to gain from watching this series?

The biggest goal was not necessarily to answer any questions, but to leave people with better questions, to frame the conversations around these topics so that we can stop repeating ourselves and having the same conversation over and over. 

I hope that people leave these episodes feeling like they've got this more developed and nuanced perspective on the topics as well.

And I hope we start having more global conversations. Sometimes, it's really important to be local and to be specific. But I think there are so many shared experiences happening with Black folks around the world. I would love for us to start having conversations across borders more often, to see how we can build together and learn from each other. 

It's not just the Black British experience or the African American experience or the African Canadian experience. We are having these experiences of Blackness that share some commonalities, and across those commonalities — and even across our differences — we might be able to build something really strong.

Lastly, I guess this was just to add Black Canadians into the global conversation. I feel like everyone forgets about us. And so I just wanted to add us in and be like, "Hey, we're here too and we're going through it too. Can we add us into the global Black conversation?"

Watch For the Culture with Amanda Parris on CBC Gem.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.