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The AIH Transcript for June 22, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

CAROL OFF: Hello, I’m Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening, I’m Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

CO: His family called for help. But the incident ended with a 62-year-old Ontario man shot and killed by police and a furious family in mourning. We reach Ejaz Choudry's nephew.

CH: Unwelcome. The Dutch government is standing firm against pressure to welcome 500 unaccompanied children from refugee camps in Greece. We hear a first-hand account of conditions inside those camps.

CH: What's bred in the bone. Researchers in Dublin find a surprise in the DNA of a man who lived 5,000 years ago: His parents were closely related — perhaps evidence of an elite society in early Ireland.

CH: And...That's the way the bull bounces. Tonight's tales from the archives show a different side to animals we associate with bellowing and charging — revealing that a bulky bovine can be balletic, or even brilliant.

CO: And you knew this is the protocol. And so the paramedics were called. What would they have been able to do? What would normally have happened if the paramedics had handled this?

HC: They would help him by giving him his medication, sedate him, or if that was not it, they would take him into the hospital.

CO: Your family did not call the police, but police did arrive. What were your family members trying to tell them before they responded to your uncle?

HC: That he is not harmful to you. He’s not gonna harm you. He's having an episode, and he's saying that he's going to kill himself.

CO: And the police were told that he was there, he had a knife. But your family was trying to explain the situation to him, is that right?

HC: When we told them that let family intervened, because that is one of the interventions when someone is schizophrenic. One of the main interventions is having someone there. Let the family intervene. Let the daughter de-escalate him, let the son de-escalate him. You think you as a stranger is going to de-escalate him? No, that's not going to work. And they just pushed us back. They just pushed them back.

CO: I'm sure you've seen it, the video. How did you respond when you saw the police break into the door of the balcony?

HC: I watched that video one time. That is unexplainable. That is senseless. There was no crime going on. There was no warrant for him that you had to break into the house. You could sit there for 24 hours, 34 hours, 30, whatever, 40 hours. You do not have the right to take your job easy and break the door and start shooting.

CO: They said that they were at the other door trying to talk to him for about 15 minutes, and he wasn't responding for about 15 minutes.

HC: You're speaking to me in a language that he did not understand. He's not gonna respond to you. He's going to lose out on his voice when he's yelling. So he's taking a breather. He has COPD. So you're saying you’re checking on his well being when you're standing on the balcony, there's a big, big window. You have a visual up through the door and the window. Why do you think you had to break it?

CO: Your uncle didn't speak English?

HC: No, he did not speak English. He could understand a little bit. But when someone's having an episode like that, you don't even know if they understand that.

CO: And there was nobody with the police or with your uncle who could translate what the police were saying?

HC: Nope, nope, nope.

CO: Well, what do you think that was like for him?

HC: I think the only thing that was probably going through his head is that he had four kids that are so young that he's leaving behind. Are they going to be taken care of? That's probably what’s going through any father's mind at that time.

CO: Do you think he believed himself to be in this situation where he was maybe not going to survive?

HC: Well, when you see someone attacking you, all these cops, and then you have a task force breaking through your back door, what do you think's gonna happen? He's told the family before he’s scared of the cops and the badges. So what do you do? You tell me how you're helping by sending someone with that into the situation? You're instigating him. You're keeping him at a high intensity. At a high intensity, someone can do anything.

CO: That would have aggravated the condition he had?

HC: That's aggravating the condition. You're not helping him. I swear to God he was so frail he could not attack an officer that had all that stuff on him.

CO: He was in his 60s. The police say they used a Taser or an energy weapon.

HC: Yeah, we don't know about that.

CO: This I'm just reading from the statement. They said that they used it.

HC: Yeah, yeah.

CO: And that they fired plastic projectiles from an anti-riot weapon Enfield.

HC: Yeah, no, no, no.

CO: And then they stunned him.

HC: Yeah you can say all that stuff from the SIU and all that crap. The evidence we have that I cannot share right now, it shows every single step of every angle of what happened.

CO: I just want to understand that, Hashiom, is that you have some sort of images or videos of what happened inside the apartment?

HC: I cannot share that right now.

CO: But you feel you have evidence that shows what happened?

HC: We have evidence, yes.

CO: What do you want to know from Peel Regional Police at this point?

HC We need answers. First of all, we need to know who the officers were that disarmed their firearms. We want their names out. They neglected what they signed for, what they swore for. They didn't do what they did.

CO: And what do you want to tell them when you have the opportunity to do so?

HC: What was going through your mind at that moment? I want to know how did you come up with that game plan? Please, give me a reasoning behind this plan that you executed.

CO: Do you know how his wife and kids are doing?

HC: They're heartbroken. They didn't know what to do now, you know? He was their support. Now, they have nothing.

CO: Hashim, I just want to ask you one last question. Just tell us a bit about your uncle Ejaz. What was he like?

HC: He was a very nice individual lin the area. If you come here and you ask people then in this apartment building, he used to go five times a day to pray and come back. He had a lot of free time in that sense. He would walk around. He’d walk around the apartment, walk to the mall down the street from here. He'd come home and stuff like that. He stood outside and just enjoyed the breeze, and then sit there and read the Quran and relax, you know, just sit. You can ask anybody in this neighbourhood; they knew who he was.

CO: And how difficult is this for your family that suddenly you're in the midst of something that is going on, a discussion internationally that you are now having to confront this publicly?

HC: We're doing it for our uncle. We're also doing for the people that this has happened to before. This thing is happening way too long. And this is not acceptable. It's not like the funding that comes to the police is private from somewhere. It's all taxpayer money. We, as a community, pay for them. Please tell me how the policies and the training you have, you have no experience, no knowledge, on this kind of situation. You do not know how to intervene in a mental health crisis problem.

CO: Hashim, I'm sorry that you and your family is going through this. It just sounds awful. And I appreciate that you would find time for us today. Thank you.

HC: Thank you.

CH: Hashim Choudhary is one of Ejaz Choudry's nephews. He was in Mississauga. Sixty-two-year-old Ejaz Choudry was shot and killed by a Peel Regional Police officer on Saturday night. Police say they entered his apartment unit after losing communication with Mr. Choudry, and believed him to be a danger to himself. Now, Ontario's police watchdog is investigating.

Arizona COVID

Guest: Murtaza Akhter

CH: As many North Americans start to make patio plans, and dates with family and friends — there are still a lot of places where COVID-19 is just getting started. In fact, yesterday, the World Health Organization recorded the biggest global one-day spike in cases, ever. And that increase is being driven partly by states in the U.S., that may have thought they had dodged a bullet. One such state is Arizona. On Friday, it posted a record 3,200 new cases. And thousands more were added today. Meanwhile, doctors are pleading with the government to mandate mask-wearing, and slow down the re-opening of the state. Murtaza Akhter is an emergency room doctor. We reached him at work, in Phoenix, Arizona.

CO: Dr. Akhter, we know the numbers of new cases in the United States of COVID-19 are going up. Just tell us what does that look like in your emergency room?

MURTAZA AKHTER: Yeah, we're definitely seeing it in the emergency department. We are getting a lot more patients than just a month ago. And not only are we getting a lot more patients, they're also looking sicker, and they have a lot more respiratory complaints. So, for example, cough, shortness of breath, fever, body aches, your typical COVID-like complaints. And on my last shift, every patient I tested, everyone was positive. It's concerning.

CO: And you haven't seen that since the crisis began, that intensity?

MA: Correct. Yeah. And when everybody was hearing about on the news in New York, for example, and definitely even in other countries, we were doing okay, or so it felt like. You know, we had stay-at-home orders, which I think went into place fairly early, which is probably a good thing. And then what ended up happening is over the last couple of weeks, we're seeing a lot more patients. Part of that was expected as a stay-at-home order was released. But in particular, we're seeing a surge of COVID cases, and that's not just state data. I'm personally seeing it in the emergency department.

CO: Are these mostly older people?

MA: So I will say this: coronavirus hits all age ranges, okay? Everybody is susceptible to it. But if you look at the data in Arizona, people who are above 65 and have COVID are 58 times more likely to die than somebody who is under 45 and has COVID. Fifty-eight, not five-to-eight, 58. And so you can imagine how rough this is for the elderly. And so what makes it concerning is when a 25-year-old who thinks he's immune because he's young and healthy. For one, he's not. I'm seeing 25-year-olds in the ER who are sick. But on top of that, the concern is even if he feels immune, he's passing his germs onto other people. And for example, for the elderly, they are so, so, so much more likely to die of COVID when they're infected than younger people. And we have a lot of these patients in Arizona. There are a lot of Canadians in Arizona. Sun City is basically Mini-Canada, here, okay? So we have a lot of Canadian patients who weren't able to go back to Canada because of the pandemic and have been sort of stuck here. And they're really, really at risk.

CO: We are hearing, though, of course, interviews with people in Arizona, young people, streeters, as they call them, saying, look, we don't want to wear masks. We’re out with our friends. One young fellow said that he had family members who had had the virus, but, well, he would wear a mask, but he wouldn't want to be doing that while he was out having fun. So is that an attitude you’re hearing in the state?

MA: Yeah, we're hearing it. And I was young and, you know, had energy once too. But I don't think I was ever this level of selfish. I mean, to say, listen, I feel good. I want to be around friends. And I don't care what happens to older people that I may be in contact with. It's so ridiculously selfish. As I said before, even kindergartners have more empathy. It's really crazy. And so to say, listen, I understand the mask can be important, but I'm just not going to wear it. It's very selfish because the purpose of masks is not just personal protection, but to protect others as well. We live in a society. So unless you're a hermit, to say I'm not going to wear a mask is utterly selfish.

CO: To what degree, though, are they getting their cues, are people getting their cues, from your own leaders as high up as the president, who has repeatedly downplayed the significance of this disease? And at a rally on the weekend, said that the only reason why there are more cases is that they're doing more testing and that he has actually asked them to reduce the number of testings in order to reduce those numbers. What do you make of the leadership you've got?

MA: Boy, there are so many things to respond to just in that question. So for one, my wife's a first and second grade school teacher, right? She always tells me that the most important thing for teaching is modelling. And every parent knows this. If you tell your kid not to cheat, not to lie and not to be mean, but at the same time, you're lying to your family members as a parent, you're cheating on your taxes, and you're being mean to the store clerk. Clearly, those kids aren't going to learn good values. And similarly, when politicians say one thing, but model another, even if Donald Trump or Governor Ducey, or whomever you want to speak about says, listen, masks can be helpful, but they themselves don't wear it, that sends the message that you know, we don't think it's all that important. Even if the words you're saying are different, there's a lot to be said about modelling good behaviour. And we have the data to show it, because when Arizona had stay-at-home orders, patients were much less likely to come into hospital, so much so, like I said, that we were potentially concerned that they were staying at home too aggressively and there was a lot less traffic. There were a lot less people going to stores, et cetera. People listened. People listened to government officials. And so to say that you know, I'm going to recommend that you guys distance yourselves while, you know, we're not going to do it ourselves, really sends a bad message to people. And I'll tell you a dirty secret. You know, I've got physician friends. These are physicians, who once the stay-at-home orders were released by the governor, they started saying, oh, great. When can we hang out? Let's have people over for a pool party. These are physicians saying that. So you can imagine if even physicians who know the data can't keep up with distancing themselves, how are we expecting patients and the population to do the same?

CO: You signed a letter to Governor Doug Ducey, the Arizona governor, asking him to mandate mask wearing. Has he responded?

MA: So what the governor did in the state of Arizona was to basically let the mayors decide, you know, the United States has our sort of federalist attitude. And so in this case, it played itself out to the extreme, where the president passed on the buck to the governors. The governor passed on the buck to the mayors. And as you can imagine, that can go on endlessly until it breaks down. If you let everybody decide for himself, in this case, at the city level, the only way that really works is if nobody from one city travels to another city. Because the coronavirus knows no state borders. It definitely knows no city borders. And so the virus transmits between cities, and the people are commuting between these cities. So, I mean, I think it's not going to be as effective, nearly as effective as if the whole state had orders to wear a mask. But he basically let the mayors decide for themselves, and we'll just see if it plays out okay. But as you can imagine, if Person A wears a mask and Person B doesn't, pretty quickly that breaks down.

CO: Do you expect him to act on your request for people to wear masks?

MA: I can't speak for the governor. I don't know what he'll do. I'm assuming he has multiple factors at play here. Maybe if the numbers surge even more... They're already so bad that if he hasn't already acted, I can't imagine he'll do something different. But perhaps if the numbers stay bad or get worse, maybe he'll make a different call. But I, I just really don't know. All I can speak to is the science of it and the medicine behind. As for political decisions, we just hope people make the decisions that we think are best.

CO: Dr. Akhter, we will leave it there. It sounds very concerning. I appreciate you telling us, giving us an update on what's going on in Arizona. Thank you.

MA: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Stay safe.

CO: All right. Thank you. Bye.

MA: Take care. Bye.

CH: Murtaza Akhter is an emergency room doctor. We reached him at work, in Phoenix.

[Music: Electronica]

Bulls Through Hoops

CH: When we say someone is "like a bull in a china shop", we don't mean they're slinking elegantly around, speaking in hushed tones about the exquisite delicacy of a gravy boat. We mean they're clumsy and destructive. Like bulls. But our stories from the archives tonight prove that maybe we have those huge animals all wrong. Sure, they're gigantic and unsubtle. But they're also capable of surprising stealth. And even a certain lumbering grace. It wasn't always easy for Yorkshire farmer Colin Newlove to teach his bulls to be graceful. But he managed it. As he explained to Barbara Frum in 1976.

[sc]

BARBARA FRUM: Hi, Mr. Newlove. We’re calling you about your bulls.

COLIN NEWLOVE: Oh, yes.

BF: How long have you been training bulls?

CN: Well, you see, I started back in ‘59, with a bull called William. It was a pedigree escher. And, you know, he was bought for a stock bull on the farm. And then I started teaching him tricks. Teaching him things, you know, to perform. And then I thought, used to ride him with a chain from a ring. And I thought, well, if I mouthed him in the way that you mouth a horse similar, I could probably put a bridle on him and bridle him up and ride him like that, you see?

BF: But Mr Newlove, what for? I mean, I can see a poodle in the ring. I can see an elephant in the ring. A horse. But why a bull?

CN: Well, you see, this is the thing. You see, you’ve an awful lot of power to control. And to be able to get a bull to do whatever you want, I don't know of anything more rewarding. You go into a agricultural show, where there’s probably 30,000 people looking on. To be able to take him in and do all these things, lying down on the ground for you, and walking over you.

BF: Are they bright enough for it, Mr. Newlove?

CN: You know, it seems to be if you're prepared to put their time with them, I mean, I put a lot of time in with them. It seems to me, anyway, that once you get the bull's brain working, once you form a partnership, you're on the way.

BF: Mr. Newlove, you know that old expression, just like a bull in a china shop? I mean, that's the whole story on bulls, isn't it?

CN: Well, it is. And with William, I was performing at a show in the South, and I was invited to take him into a china shop. It was the biggest china shop in the town. And I rode in through there, and he never touched a thing, you know? You know, it was over a parkade floor as well. It was a polished floor. And there was these tables with displays of china on them. And, you know, there was never a thing touched.

BF: I bet you he rattled a few cups.

CN: No, not at all. There wasn't real time to turn around.

BF: What will Oxo do, your newest bull?

CN: Well, this new one. I mean, if you tell him to look at something, I mean, immediately, he turns his head and his ears. And you can see that his brain’s working. I mean, and he just look at it, you know?

BF: How long does it take to train a bull compared to a horse? Of course, horses aren’t that bright either.

CN: A long time. I mean, you know, this bull, you see. He’ll come out at shows the summer after next. he'll be coming up three years old before he appears. And he was a-month-five-weeks old when I got him. In the beginning, when you start to talk to them, to train them. I mean, it is like talking to a wall, you know? [BF laughs] you know, there just isn't a glimmer. [BF laughs again] But once they get clicking with you, oh, it's super. It really is you know? I mean, this one now. I mean, if I tell him to kick, he'll just kick.

BF: As long as he doesn't kick you.

CN: That’s it. [chuckling].

BF: Maybe this could be the latest thing in a watch pet, you know, something around the house to keep away trouble?

CN: No, no.

BF: He wouldn't do good guard duty?

CN: You know, you've just too much weight. You know, you've a lot of power and a sense there.

BF: You're super, Mr. Newlove. Thanks a lot.

CN: Righto.

BF: Bye.

CN: It’s been nice speaking to you. Bye-bye.

[/sc]

CH: From 1976, Barbara Frum speaking with Colin Newlove of Thornton Dale, England. About a six hour bull-ride north of Reading. When As It Happens reached Wolfgang Affenzeller, in 2013, he was learning that 1000-kilo animals renowned for charging can also tip-hoof around. Mr. Affenzeller is a veterinarian in Freistadt, Austria. Forty-plus bulls had escaped and headed into town. And while most were rounded up, several were still sneaking around in the forest, unseen. Here's Carol's conversation with Mr. Affenzeller.

WA: Yes, it's another sort of sport. It's not my job in real-time. But it's a little bit funny to play hide-and-seek with the bulls.

CO: To play hide-and-seek with the bulls?

WA: Yes. [laughing] it's funny to see it in a sports way.

CO: Why is it funny?

WA: To look for a bull. Can we find him? Can we catch him? Then it makes it more fun to run us between trees.

CO: How many men are out in the forest running around in the trees?

WA: Yesterday, we were about 50 men. And today, we have, I think, 35.

CO: Thirty-five men running around in the woods with you?

WA: Yes. Yes.

CO: How did these animals get out of their pen?

WA: I don't know. I think some of the fence Is somewhere broken. I don't know, exactly, I don't know.

CO: Have you ever seen anything like this before?

WA: Not always. [chuckling] It's for veterinarians in Austria, especially for guys like me, it's normal to fight with cows and to fight with bulls. Not in this extremely way. It's a daily job, but not in this high. This is this new experience.

CO: Well, Wolfgang, I’ll let you get back to chasing those bulls, and good to talk to you. Thanks.

WA: Okay. Thank you.

[/sc]

CH: From March of 2013, Carol speaking with Austrian veterinarian Wolfgang Affenzeller — who seemed a little thrown by the whole thing.

[Music: Jazz]

Part two: Netherlands and unaccompanied minors, Ireland tomb remains

Netherlands and unaccompanied minors

Guest: Sander Schaap

CH: When it comes to child refugees, some countries in Europe are more welcoming than others. Germany, Portugal, Finland, France are a few that have agreed to take in about sixteen hundred unaccompanied minors. But so far, the Netherlands has refused. Last December, we spoke with Angela Modarelli, a psychologist who works with children at the Moria refugee camp in Greece. She told us about the mental toll for kids living in the dire conditions there — and how difficult it is, in particular, for the children who are unaccompanied.

[sc]

ANGELA MODARELLI: There are more than a thousand children there who have no one. And they have traveled all the way alone. If we only think about this, we can imagine how vulnerable a young boy can be traveling alone from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any other place where there is war ot conflict. So they are the most vulnerable ones. They might have been through sexual violence, they might have been abused. They might have witnessed abuse of others, or even just other things that have to do with violence. And in their home country, some of them have lost family members.

[/sc]

CH: That was MSF psychologist Angela Modarelli speaking with Carol in December. Accounts like that have prompted people in the Netherlands to protest for weeks now, calling on the Dutch government to bring 500 children to their country. Sander Schaap works for the Dutch Refugee Council. We reached him in Amsterdam.

CO: You have been going to Samos, as you say, this island, this Greek island for five years. If you go back, and when you do go back, do you think anything will have improved for those children?

SS: I'm afraid not. To be honest, and that's what I've been saying also to politicians in Holland, if we keep looking for the perfect structural solutions, we're gonna have this discussion for decades. Someone needs to stand up and say it's enough. And to be quite honest, not enough people care.

CO: Sander, on that note, a very despairing note, we'll leave it. And thank you very much for speaking with us.

SS: You're most welcome.

CO: Bye.

SS: Take care.

CH: Sander Schaap is with the Dutch Refugee Council. He was in Amsterdam.

Canadians in China

[Music: Jazz]

CO: It sounds absolutely beautiful. Of course, the landscape alone is beautiful, but what a striking structure this is. And for your study, you go not just into this grand place, but then to a bone, the bone of someone from 5,000 years ago, and then into the DNA of that bone.

LC: Yeah.

CO: What is it that you have found that has, I guess, got you quite excited?

LC: [warm chuckle] So we sampled DNA from a bone excavated there back in the 60s, 70s. And yeah, it came from one of the most beautifully decorated recesses of the tomb. And when we sequenced this man's genome, he was an adult male. It was quite shocking. So we inherit two copies of the genome. One from our mother and one from our father. And this man's two copies were remarkably similar. So really long stretches of identical sequence. And that's sort of the telltale signal of very close inbreeding. And you can actually estimate that and confirm it was first-degree relatives who were his parents. So either brother and sister or parent and child.

CO: But you think that this person born from an incestuous relationship, this was significant, perhaps evidence that they were a part of an elite society, that they were almost like Egyptian pharaohs. Can you describe them?

LC: Yeah. So a lot of work has been done in anthropology, looking at first-degree incest because it is so rare that it's socially accepted. It's a universal taboo for biological and cultural reasons that are very entwined. The only exceptions of social acceptance are among elites, and very often elites in monumental societies who invest a lot in public ritual. So it sort of fits with the material culture that we're seeing here at Brú na Bóinne. And why did these elites engage in this behaviour, this taboo behaviour? There's a lot of theory. incest anyway helps to keep a kin group kind of in power, you know, keep power among a particular clan or group, but also rule breaking itself, breaking a taboo, has a shock value. It allows you to sort of separate yourself from the general population. Right, we can do this. You can't.

CO: Now, there are others who are questioning the research. This BBC researcher who is not involved in your study, Tom Booth, who said that he is wary of looking at this as dynasties or monarchs, as we understand today. I mean, given how remote these societies were. And that we can't see this as the kind of Neolithic “Game of Thrones”. [both chuckle] And, of course, in anyone knows “Game of Thrones”, they know what we're referring to there. But what do you say to that criticism?

LC: I think he makes a very important point there. When we look at this behaviour, we've only ever really been able to look at societies with written records. So they're typically recent enough societies. Ancient DNA is providing us a new way of looking at this social structure hierarchies in the deep past. But of course, we have to be conscious here. We don't have a written record. We are working with populations from a very remote time period. But then at the same time, I do think this is sort of the way forward. We're going to want to use ancient genomes going forward to look at these subtle patterns of kinship relatedness and inbreeding in these prehistoric groups. And we're going to have to try to interpret. And when we do interpret, we're gonna have to draw on anthropology from societies that do have written records.

CO: What other secrets do you think there might be in the DNA of that bone?

LC: Of this man?

CO: Yes.

LC: [bright laugh] Hopefully, we found most them. What I would be interested, I think, the obvious follow on here is we need to sample more. Newgrange is not the only large passage tomb in Brú na Bóinne. There are also passage tombs extremely similar in architecture to Newgrange in whales, in Orkney up in the north of Scotland and Brittany, with their own solstice alignments, similar artwork. So this is a shared cultural sphere, whether that means shared social structures, shared hierarchies, it's an open question. I think another important idea here is whether this hierarchy arose within Ireland after the establishment of agriculture, or whether it was imported in wholesale when the first farmers arrived on the island?

CO: All right. Well, we’ll leave you to it. [laughing] But we’ll find out what you learn. [LC laughs] Lara, it's great to talk to. Thanks so much.

LC: Thanks so much for having me on.

CO: Okay, bye-bye.

LC: Right. Take care. Bye-bye.

CH: Lara Cassidy is an post-doctoral researcher and expert in ancient genomics at Trinity College Dublin. We reached her in Galway, Ireland. And you can find more on this story on our webpage at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Instrumental]

Zoom movie

CH: A movie made with no budget and no marquee names has come out of nowhere to reach record-breaking heights. On June 10, the breakout hit "Unsubscribe" claimed the top box-office spot in the U.S. It's a horror film that tells the story of an internet troll gone bad. Well, gone even badder. What makes the accomplishment all the more impressive is that the script was written in just one day. In March. Of this year. That's when YouTuber and actor Eric Tabach and filmmaker Christian Nilsson realized that, hidden in the dire news of the pandemic, was the opportunity of a lifetime. Their big chance to have a box-office smash — a chance afforded, ironically, by box offices being mostly closed. And so, in the manner of a buddy movie, they hatched a plan. And before long, the two had finished their 29-minute flick, recorded entirely on Zoom. They proceeded to get dressed up in tuxes and head on down to a movie theatre which they had rented out — thereby selling out all the seats. The two sat together and watched their film make movie history. It screened five times. The pair stayed for each viewing and ate popcorn. "Unsubscribe" generated 25,488 dollars U.S. in ticket sales on that day. And every single one of the two viewers at each of the sold-out screenings was thrilled.

[Music: A slow cafe jazz instrumental]

Part three: Encore: Toni Morrison

Encore: Toni Morrison

Guest: Toni Morrison

CH: In the weeks since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, an awakening has been happening across the United States and around the world. And a huge part of that awakening has been literary. Anti-racist reading lists and author recommendations abound. On many of them — perhaps most — you'll find the brilliant books of the late, great, Toni Morrison. The Pulitzer-Prize winning author died last August at the age of 88. And back in 2015, she was Carol's guest, here on As It Happens. It was a different time. But also an all-too familiar one. A year after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. And just a few weeks after Walter Scott was shot by police in South Carolina. From 2015, here's part of Toni Morrison's conversation with Carol.

CO: Ms. Morrison, I want to ask you, you published “The Bluest Eye” in 1970, and at that time, you were still an editor at Random House. You said, though, at the time that you were on a mission. Are you still on that mission? Is it complete?

TONI MORRISON: Did I say that? [CO laughs warmly] That I was on a mission? [laughing] It's a little pompous. Well, I may have. Who knows? But I don't feel so much on a mission. Certainly not in a political or cultural sense. But I do feel compelled now and able now to translate certain periods with certain kinds of characters into a kind of theme, maybe even a philosophy, although that's a little bit of a grand word for it. But I'm interested in limitations, and the journey toward knowledge. And people complain sometimes that my books are sad and have sad endings. And I always think, no, no, no, like in Song of Solomon, somebody dies or something, somebody who wants to live dies. And I say, no, no, no, the point of a happy ending is when the characters acquire wisdom, which is the final stage after knowledge.

CO: And self-knowledge, too.

TM: Absolutely. Self knowledge. When that happens, that's a happy ending.

CO: You've talked elsewhere about what your role is as a writer. I guess that's where I'm kind of turning too now. And you're comfortable with the idea that this being an African-American writer, though, we regard you as one of the greatest American writers. Does it matter to you which one it is?

TM: Yes, yes, it does. Well, it has to be both. You know, it's like, I don’t know, Tolstoy was a Russian writer [laughing], and he was a world writer. You know, I don't know why you can’t be both things. I think of myself, oh, obviously I think of myself as somebody named Chloe Wofford. But out in the world, you know, I relate fundamentally as an African-American female. And what is hanging over that, or sheltering that, or feeding that is the art. That's what I am, a writer. I think I would have been one if I'd been Chinese.

CO: [chuckling] And who are you writing for? There's something you've talked about as well, is that you found that so many Black writers were trying to explain what it was to be Black to white people, that that you weren't going to do that, that you weren't going to write for the oppressor, as you said. That you had to shut the oppressor up and sit down to write. For whom, who were you writing for? Who have you been writing for?

TM: First of all, I'm writing for myself. I mean, I really am a very good reader. And if I read it well, if I understand it well, so I'm giving myself lots of credit for that kind of insight. But to the point of your question, it was true, and I think it was appropriate that early African-American writers, and they were sometimes women, often men, were doing probably the most legitimate thing, which is to tell a white reader, let me tell you what my life is like. It's not like yours. Oh, it’s very much like yours, or what have you, or this is the way you've hurt me, and this is what I've done about it, etc., etc. But I didn't think they were writing to me personally. I mean, they were addressing somebody else. So I always thought I was cut out of their world view. So when I began to write, it was very calculated on my part. Once I got white men out of it, the whole world opened up. You know, this imaginative space that is, on the one hand, very much fingerprinted by the life, the cultural life of African-Americans. But at the same time, like any writing that is specific to a culture, it is accessible to anybody, everybody who wants to read it. And certainly for those who are not hung up by the fact that the author or the characters or the world is confined to the Black experience. What I am aware of, and insist on, it's representative nature.

CO: You've called that the master narrative, the white gaze, the idea that somehow there this master narrative, and you're doing an alternative narrative. That's how people want to define your work. And you even get asked by some people, when are you going to write about white people?

TM: Yeah.

CO: I’ve heard you respond to that. You’ve been polite when you've been asked that question.

TM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s like I enter into another upper level if I can just write about white people. [both chuckling] Maybe after reading “God Help the Child”, they won't ask me that anymore.

CO: Do you think that that master narrative has changed at all in the time since you started writing?

TM: A little bit on the edges, it’s been. I think because now contemporary writing is very, very different from, say, 20 years ago. It’s very self-referential and very inward, you know? It might be a consequence of creative writing classes, where you told write what you know. And people know their lives and their friends and family. So they write very self-referential text. You know, I always force my students immediately, I said, do not write what you know because you don't know anything. [CO chuckles] I want you to write about someone you invent. So if you get to the point, say, in 2010 to 2015, where you’re being asked to eliminate every other point of view except yours, when you write your novel, when you write your poems, nothing in the world impacts on you except your personal experience. And the way in which you might be able to extrapolate that into something else. I mean, it's like that in the movies, everywhere. It's really boring.

CO: [laughing] I agree.

TM: I was asked by my publisher before I published this book to do a two-book contract and write a memoir. And I said, okay. And then I thought about. And I thought, oh dear. I can't do that. First of all, it's boring. I know all of that. I know every bit of it. So there's nothing new there. I want something new [laughing]. I’m not going to tell some old stories. I would fall asleep in the act of it. Maybe somebody else wants to. I cannot do that, you know?

CO: You are listening to As It Happens, and our feature interview with the late Toni Morrison. We spoke with Ms. Morrison in 2015, after the publication of her novel “God Help the Child”, which is about race and racism in America, and about then U.S. President Barack Obama. Ms. Morrison, you talked about as your life goes on, you're developing a philosophy or a theme. And if there's one thing you have tried to explain to people, it's the elements of what race and racism is, the difference. And race means one thing you've said, it means the human race, that's all. Racism is something else. And your life spans from Jim Crow laws to the gunning down of Walter Scott. And what is racism? What has it done to the age, the time in which you have lived?

TM: Well, I remember years ago I used to say, you know, we really have to have a conversation about race. And I thought, yeah, but this is it, the one we're having now. I don't remember anybody being upset about a Black boy being shot in the back. I don't remember that. They got shot all the time. I was saying to somebody earlier my father hated white people because when he was young, less than 14 years old, he had seen two Black businessmen, not thieves, businessmen, lynched on his street. Was it in the paper? Uh-huh, that never happened, not accustomed to it, waiting as I had for somebody to be alarmed. Now it's everywhere. Maybe it'll disappear. But now we know how frequent it is. I mean, we thought after Emmett Till, but it's mounting. And they are such cowards in some of these areas of police work. I mean, can you imagine what it would take, how soft and terrified and self-loathing you have to be to shoot somebody eight times [scoff] in the back? I mean, it's so the opposite of brave. It's so unmanly. You wouldn't think anybody would do that.

CO: You mentioned how it's this kind of a shock and outrage, and that's in the white world. People are amazed to have learned as we are learning through videos and people taking pictures in their home phones and reporting on this that the police were learning, the police routinely harass, and they shoot Black people, and they plant evidence and that they profile Black people, not all of them, but a significant number. And it is regarded as a revelation of this time. But this is not a revelation to Black people, is it?

TM: No, no, no. No, it's so routine. I was interested... Because even my sons, they knew without anybody telling them. I guess my father did always say “sir” when a police stops you for whatever reason. In this recent case of a man who was killed, shot, a Black man by a white cop, and his last words were, I don't have any breath. And the cop said, f your breath. [chuckling] That's on the video. Can you imagine that? What did this guy do? Murder somebody? The other guy had a bad ticket, that guy was selling cigarets. The other guy was talking on the phone. One guy, he was standing in front of his own apartment building, Reached for his keys, and a bunch of cops jumped out and blew him away. I mean, that's terror, isn’t it? It's not they're fearful of the villain. It's that they're cowards.

CO: What are the police afraid of? We heard that actually during what was going on in Ferguson. There's one another police chief from another city that said that white police officers are afraid. They're afraid of Black men. That was what a police officer, a retired one, said was at the basis of it. They're afraid of Black men. And the other thing is, they say that, well, he must have been doing something wrong. He was running away.

TM: Um-hmm. Well, just think about it. That's cultural. That's social. Somebody invented that. For a very good reason, you know? For very good financial reasons, I mean, racism pays. So that you construct an enemy, who is presumably physically not like you. And they've done it throughout history, identifying who the enemy. And who benefits from that distinction when you think about it seriously? There have been small wars about separating races. There's one in Virginia, in which some planters, some Black slaves, some white indentured servants all got together to get rid of a colonial governor, and they succeeded. And when the governor came back from England or wherever he was, they killed them all. But more importantly, they established the following laws. One was no Black person could ever own or carry a weapon. Two, any white person can maim or kill any Black person for any reason. So what that does is separate poor whites from poor Blacks.

CO: When you say racism pays, what do you mean by that?

TM: Slavery pays? Come on, this country moved from an agricultural nonentity into the industrial revolution in something like, I don’t know, three decades. There was nothing here. They caught up to England and Europe with unpaid labour, which they had to continue to bring in because the work was so awful and they died.And of course, in housing, it makes all the difference. And of course, in work, it's like war, it’s a business for the war machine. Racism costs the raced, and it benefits and profits the people who establish the other. Always have.

CO: What has Barack Obama being president, what effect has that had on the United States, on this culture you've described?

TM: It's really extraordinary, I think. The big thing is what the improvements in the country since he's been here, with health care, financially with the deficit, and his very progressive, although not outrageous move politically. That's the first thing I'm aware of. None of that could have happened without the tenacity and the intelligence of him and the people he surrounds himself with. The other thing is I, now mind you, I'm 84, so I'm here since 1931. And I have seen presidents. ANd I’m an FDR birth-type, he was elected the year after I was born. [both chuckling] But I have never seen... I’ve seen hostility toward presidents, but nothing like this. Nothing so demeaning and embarrassing. Not embarrassing for him, but embarrassing for the speaker. Embarrassing because it's like they're reaching so far down into the racist pool of Sambos, associations with animals and bone through the nostrils. I mean, [laughing] I’m laughing, but it really is abominable. And they have not been shy ever about saying what they were up to, meaning the Republicans, the people outside of his party. And the encouragement to another conservative group or what they call conservative. And the speaker of the House said it as soon as Obama was elected. Our job is to make sure this is a one-term president. Period.

CO: You know, we talked about at the beginning that in “God Help the Child”, as it is in other works of yours, that the people can't go on. They can't love or have relationships or reconcile until they confront something in their past, until they deal with something in their past. Is that the same for the United States?

TM: Mmm, a little bit of that is happening. I mean, this younger generation, for instance, is not at all interested in these racial divides. I mean, you know, you have some frat stuff, but I mean, there’s too many mixed race people in their lives anyway. And also, it's just not interesting to them. They may not have something more compelling, but it certainly isn't that. So I’m very optimistic about the forthcoming generation in their lives. The second thing is that it's not hip. [laughing] I mean, it's sort of old-fashioned, that whole notion of superiority, white superiority. And when you hear it, it sounds like some old movie that you saw when you were, you know, a kid. It doesn't sound contemporary. It certainly doesn't sound modern in any way. It sounds retro, profoundly so. That's what's helpful. And a lot of it has to do with the culture, the music, the dance, you know? And certainly some of the writers. And so I think that has made a difference in how certain generations respond to what used to be routine racism, the racist epithets and colorations and distortion, as I was growing up.

CO: Ms. Morrison, it is a great pleasure and honour to speak with you about “God Help the Child”, and about all the other subjects we've covered. And I thank you greatly.

TM: I enjoyed it. And you're welcome.

CO: And I look forward to this memoir that you have committed to writing. [both laughing]

TM: I’m going to give it to somebody else. I would write a memoir under one condition.

CO: Huh?

TM: They let me lie [both laughing], so I can think of something.

CO: So you can invent.

TM: Yes, right.

CO: What a pleasure. Thank you.

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CH: From 2015, an encore presentation of Carol's feature conversation with Toni Morrison. The Pulitzer and Nobel-Prize-winning author died last August. She was 88 years old. And you can find this interview on our webpage at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

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GAVIN SIMS: So things are a lot different this year.

KEITH VOKEY: Very, very different. Yeah, I'd normally be looking at doing probably two, maybe three screech-ins on a day like today. And, you know, meeting probably 50 or 60 locals, come from aways, I should say.

GS: Right. Yeah. And that's the thing. So we're not going to be getting any of those come from always this summer, doesn't look like.

KV: No, it doesn't look like it at all. [laughing]

GS: So how does that affect you?

KV: It completely affects me. I'm absolutely not making any money right now. My bread and butter is the screech-ins. And, unfortunately, that season tends to go from the end of May till the end of September. So I'm already halfway through my season, and I'm losing money by the day.

GS: Right. So how are you holding out any hope that there will be any sort of season for you?

KV: Not much. No, I've kind of given up the ghost on this summer. I mean, even if it kicks in right now, I'm still only going to get half a season out of it. I would like to see it happen, but as far as I know, they're not planning to open up the borders, right, to tourists, so we're not going to see any tourists coming in. So until I hear otherwise from the government, I'm assuming that there's not going to be much there for me. Again, though there are other implications, you know, like getting together in a group I like to sing as part of my show. I don't have to if I don't need to. But, you know, I consider it a very integral part of my show. There's also the kissing of the fish, you know, getting around that, how that that's going to work, I have no idea. You know, it's all kind of jumped on me, you know, in March, well, it jumped on everybody, of course, in March. And there hasn't been much to look forward to, I got to say, you know, for me.

GS: The issue of the fish.

KV: Yeah.

GS: How do you think that's going to happen moving forward? How are people going to kiss that fish?

KV: I have no idea. [laughing] I've been putting my brain to that for the past two months, and aside from coming up with an antiseptic wipe or spray on the fish. But I don't think that will work because I don't think the fish will last very long that way. And I don't know if it would, you know, meet requirements too, health requirements. I'm not sure.

GS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who out there is working on that file, you know?

KV: Yeah, exactly. [laughing]

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CH: That was Keith Vokey speaking with the CBC about how the pandemic has affected his screech-in ceremony business. That interview aired today on the “St. John's Morning Show”.

June 22, 2020 Episode Transcript

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