Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2021

The Current Transcript for December 16, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

TITUS DIVALA: We are living in a time when the best solution to the pandemic has been found, but most of our population will still live as if we are in the first wave, where no vaccines existed.

MATT GALLOWAY: As countries like Canada rushed to get third doses of the COVID vaccine into arms. Many nations are still desperately waiting to roll out first doses. In 30 minutes we head to Malawi, where vaccine shipments is only one hurdle in protecting that country. We'll also go to South Africa, where a lab is trying to reverse engineer an mRNA COVID shot to create a vaccine for the African continent. Also this morning, the stories we tell about ourselves can be seen in the films we watch. And for much of Hollywood's history, that story has been missing something.

WIL HAYGOOD: Race has always scared America, and race has always frightened Hollywood. There is simply no getting around it.

MG: The historian Will Haygood's new book looks at race relations in America through the lens of cinema from Gone with the Wind and Roots to Get Out. He's here in an hour to talk about the changing narrative on screen. We start, though, with big, unwelcome decisions for the Christmas season. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

How Omicron could affect holiday plans

Guests: Dr. Susy Hota and Samantha Yammine

JEAN-YVES DUCLOS: To those who were planning to travel, I see very clearly now is not the time to travel. The rapid spread of the Omicron variant on a global scale makes us fear the worst for Canadians that may think of travelling.

MG: That's Canada's Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos speaking yesterday, and it sounded uncomfortably like what government officials were telling us one year ago. Yet again, holiday plans in Canada have been complicated by a new COVID 19 variant. The federal government is now advising against any non-essential travel outside of this country, and even though staying home like these, people in Vancouver have questions about what is and isn't safe right now.

FEMALE VOICE: It just feels like we're at the beginning of another cycle of needing to be really restricted in our actions. I was also thinking about going to spend a good chunk of time with a friend down in the States, in Idaho in the new year to catch up and all of a sudden that may be in the air. So as we try to re-emerge and reconnect, there's just a whole other variable thrown into the mix again.

ANOTHER FEMALE VOICE: Yeah, well, we're madly trying to find some rapid response COVID tests. We're so sick of not doing our events. So if we can carry on, find a way to do that with some kind of sense of security. It's hard to even know how to process this anymore.

DIFFERENT FEMALE VOICE: In my extended family, there are some unvaccinated individuals or they have... they've gotten one shot of two shots. So my immediate family is being more weary and thinking of just spending time together in our house this holiday season.

MALE VOICE: We have been actually a bit more confined to our space. We are not meeting more people right now, these days.

NEW FEMALE VOICE: I think that this year we're having a battle with our other side of our shared daughter's family since they're not vaccinated at all. We've already been sort of stressed and they already gave us COVID once, and I'm hopeful that with a family of seven another one on the way. We are not going to get it, but I don't think we're going to change our plans, which are already not to see very many people.

NEW MALE VOICE: We already have plans, my family and I, to keep it small and we haven't been socialising in two years. So, nothing new.

MG: This morning, we're going to try to answer some of your questions about what happens when you mix holiday plans with a new variant. Dr. Susy Hota is an infectious diseases specialist at the University Health Network in Toronto. Dr., Good morning.

SUSY HOTA: Good morning.

MG: I think a lot of us have that sinking feeling again. Are we back to March 2020?

SUSY HOTA: It really feels like it's some days, I mean, I think we're further ahead, we know more about what to do. We know more about the basics of the virus. But there are a lot of uncertainties about Omicron and the way that it seems to take off in populations when it gets a foothold is really quite, it's amazing. It's not like anything we've seen before. So,yeah, I think it's really unfortunate that this is happening at a time of year when people were just starting to feel a little more comfortable that we had gotten things under better control with Delta. We're heading into the holidays. I think it's very much deserved for a lot of people and long awaited to have these opportunities to see family and friends. And here we go. You know, it's suddenly a really critical point where we have to make changes. So yeah, it's a tough thing to, I think, come to terms with and really understand, you know, like this is an important time.

MG: Let's walk through some of the scenarios quickly that people might be trying to evaluate and process. We were talking about international travel, and the federal government has urged people not to travel abroad unless it is essential. What about domestic travel? If someone has booked a plane or train within Canada over the next couple of weeks, what should they be thinking about?

SUSY HOTA: I think understanding where you're going, regardless of whether it's international travel or within the country is important, so knowing what's happening with their COVID infections, what restrictions are in place, being familiar and able to follow, what what's going to be required will be absolutely important. There isn't a restriction amongst Canada, you know, within Canada in terms of travel, so people can go. Vaccination is really important. What we're seeing with Omicron is it looks like two doses of our current vaccines don't provide as much protection at all. So some early estimates of two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, for example, provide somewhere between 30 and 40 percent vaccine protection against symptomatic infection. But a third dose increases that significantly to about 75 percent. So I think this is a time where if you're going to do anything and you're going to be planning to see other people going to different parts of the country being boosted or having that third dose is going to be really important. And then following the masking and public health restrictions that you'll be going into.

MG: What about if people want to get together with friends and family, especially given last year where so many of us were on our own isolated people weren't able to get together? If people want to do that this year, what do they need to be thinking about?

SUSY HOTA: I do think that we should be able to do smaller gatherings, and it's all about scale, so smaller... You know, keep it to whatever a core group is, you know? Think about splitting it up and having conversations with people in advance as well so that you understand who's vaccinated, who's not. And if people are uncomfortable with the situation, they can be open about it and opt out. You know, we all have our own health to consider as well, and some people who are immune compromised may not feel comfortable as well. So I think those kinds of negotiations have to happen in advance. And, you know, trying to find a setting that seems safer, especially if you're going to be seeing people who are coming from multiple different households and you don't see that often you might want to switch to an outdoor gathering or indoors, keep windows open. You know, I think wearing masks indoors for these kinds of socialisation, it's harder. But in certain circumstances, you might want to consider wearing masks when you're not eating or needing to take them off. Keeping some distance. It's about scale and just kind of adding the layers of protection. And the final thing we can do is rapid test right before you go to the event. And it has to be really, literally before you're going to be going into the door because really, what it tells you is, do you have infectious virus at this moment. And it does have some shortcomings. I will say it's not always the best at picking it up if you do have the virus, but if it's positive, it's very useful, you know, you can't be there. But if it's negative, it doesn't entirely rule it out. It's just one other thing you can add to the mix.

MG: Tell me more about the rapid tests. Again, this has been the subject of great conversation. We've been talking about it here on the program. People looking to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Now in Ontario, the tests are being made available at malls and libraries and liquor stores. They'll be soon available at some pharmacies in Alberta, not until January in British Columbia. When you take a look at all of the tools that are in front of us from, as you said, small gatherings, wearing masks, getting the third dose. How important of a tool could those rapid tests be?

SUSY HOTA: So I find it really hard to kind of put in perspective which tool is more important than the other. I kind of feel like they're all important. We don't know enough about Omicron and the dynamics of how the virus behaves in the human body to really know if rapid test is like the most important thing that you can do, or just all the sort of broad measures are, you know, going to outweigh that. Regardless, I do think it's helpful given that we're in such a precarious position, and I feel like we just need to bring out everything we could possibly do to prevent further transmission, further harm from Omicron. So these rapid tests have pros and cons. You know, you can take control of things yourself by doing them yourself. You know, they're actually really fast in providing results. And they also can, like I said, reflect if you have infectious virus. So it can give you some pretty relevant information if you get a positive test result back and then you go ahead and get that confirmed with a sort of, a gold standard test, the PCR. The disadvantage... The main disadvantage in my mind is that it has a lower what we call sensitivity. In other words, it's not as good at ruling out infection. So if you get a negative result from this rapid test, it could actually just be that you didn't sample well enough in the nose. You know, it's something that you have to be trained in, right? Or you're just not picking up virus because you weren't shedding as much in the nose at that moment. But two hours later, you may be. So it's not perfect. And that reduced sensitivity is one of the things that makes me a little nervous because the people use this test to try and diagnose their own infections like they're coming down with symptoms, but they're not really sure what it is, and they rely on the results of this and this test it's not good enough. You need to get a PCR if you think you have symptoms. These tests are useful if you don't have symptoms and you're adding it on to all the protective measures we talked about as sort of an added screening test.

MG: Just very briefly, the third shot. This is a huge focus for the Ontario Premier Doug Ford yesterday, making this kind of war efforts to get everybody vaccinated. A call to arms, as he was saying, there are other jurisdictions across the country that are speeding up the third shot as well. How important will that be?

SUSY HOTA: It's going to be incredibly important because it will help us, maybe not right away, but in the short to medium term and the longer term, if we can get immunity up in the population vastly like that will be our way to try and level things out over time. As I mentioned, it's not going to help us immediately, though. So I think we have to be putting a lot of effort into vaccinating people with a third dose and of course, getting people who haven't had their first and second doses vaccinated now. But we also have to recognise that in the short term, we still face a threat. And so, you know, I do think we have to also reduce our contacts with other people, which means thinking about where you're going, how many people are around you, you know what you're doing and especially over the holiday period, that's going to be critical.

MG: Dr. Hota. Stay with us. We want to bring another guest into our conversation, Samantha Yammine, science communicator. She goes by Science Sam online. Samatha, good morning to you.

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: I think a lot of people, myself included, we're all doing this calculus kind of in real time, trying to figure out what we should, shouldn't do, what we can and can't do. Given, as I said, where we were last year, where we were a month ago and where we might be going. How are your own plans shifting in the face of this variant?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: Yeah, I'm right there with you. My plans from last week compared to yesterday morning compared to yesterday evening have changed significantly. Essentially, I had quite a few, not too many, but I had a few plans, some small get-togethers with friends scheduled throughout this week. And basically, what I've been doing is reassessing and realising, you know what? I don't think I should be seeing new people this week and even next week leading up to the 24th, because I do want to get together with some close family who's all fully vaccinated on the 24th and 25th. And so it's not making sense for me right now to be meeting up with people especially in a context where we wouldn't wear masks because I wouldn't want to have to isolate because right now we're within 10 days. And so if I were to come down with symptoms or have a known contact, I'd be isolating over Christmas, and that's really what I'm trying to avoid right now.

MG: This is part of... We've talked about this before this idea of a risk budget. Tell me more about that.

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: Yeah, we're really thinking about how to reduce our risk budget, keep it as low as possible. It's impossible to have zero risk. It's very difficult, at least to have zero risk in anything in life, including this. So when you think of your risk budget, the goal right now is to keep it as low as you can. So if you do want to get together with a few people again, as Dr. Hota said, not mixing too many households, but your immediate, fully vaccinated family, it's a good idea to make sure you're not taking on other risks right now. So in our household, I can give you an example. We decided, you know, in these few weeks, my partner who was going to the gym is not going to the gym right now because that's just an added potential opportunity for exposure, a potential risk that we felt we could reasonably cut out so that we could take on this other, hopefully smaller risk of a small get together on Christmas Eve.

MG: You pick your spots.

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: Exactly.

MG: What are... And we've been talking about rapid tests, and there's this scramble for people to try and get a hold of them because in most jurisdictions, again, not all, there are some provinces that have been ahead of the curve on this. They're not easy to get. If you can get them and you're having a little gathering. Should the RSVP include the need for a negative COVID test, is that something that's within the realm of possibility again, if people can get their hands on those tests?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: That's something we're doing in my family, we're having again, everyone's fully vaccinated, we do have just one unvaccinated toddler not yet eligible yet. So for their protection and just for all of our protection because as Dr. Hota said, we have some reduced immunity against infection and also transmission for many of us who are six months, at the six month point since our second dose. So for those reasons, a rapid test is a really good idea. We're going to do it for anyone that we're seeing in the next week and especially on Christmas Eve. The key thing here, though, is that rapid tests are less sensitive, so they're not as good as picking up any virus in the early stages of infection. So what that means is that if you're planning on using a rapid test as a screening tool, it's really important that you haven't had any new contacts in the previous two or three days because it won't be as good at picking up infections you might have just gotten. But it's pretty good if your last potential exposure was a few days ago. So if you're trying to use a rapid test as a screening tool to get together on the 24th, don't see anyone from the 21st onwards, especially without a mask, if you can.

MG: These are touchy subjects. I mean, telling people that they need to be tested before saying that if you're unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated, I'm sorry we love you, but you can't come to this event. Do you have advice on how people could approach those conversations, given how sensitive this is?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: It's really difficult. I just sent some of these family text messages to some different group chats yesterday and for the past week. I think what's really important is to always start with a place of love, if it's someone you were going to see on Christmas, chances are they're someone that really matters to you and that really needs to lead in the conversation. It shouldn't be about, well, I am vaccinated and you're not and you're not this and you're not and you do this activity. None of that. It's not the time for finger pointing. This is a hard time for everyone. Really, what I've been focussing on is one, the fact we get together because we care about each other. I'm worried about my parents who just got their boosters and won't be fully protected. I'm worried about my niece, who's not yet eligible for vaccination and really focusing on like we all care about each other. We will be able to see each other any time, and it's kind of an arbitrary date. So if we, you know, if we... Coming from that point of love to protect these people and focussing on that, let's make some tweaks.

MG: Dr. Hota, one of the reasons why this is difficult is because it's very fast moving. There have been reports suggesting that Omicron might be less severe in terms of the illness that it generates than other variants. You could imagine coming out of that people might be wondering, why are we changing our holiday plans? Why is my stomach in a knot? If that's the case? What do you say to that?

SUSY HOTA: Well, yeah, it is very, very fast moving. And that's part of the problem is that the information we get comes in bits and pieces. And, you know, we don't typically draw conclusions after one study comes out and show something we got to see that replicated elsewhere and corroborated in other parts of the world. We need the context, et cetera. And so to your point about... This is less severe, even though it's going up fast. Why are we reacting this way? I don't think we can say with any certainty that it's less severe yet. That's my perspective. I know early data out of South Africa is suggesting that and the experience there looks like shorter hospitalisation lengths, less hospitalisations, less need for ICU care in people who've been there. But that's one country. And if you look at what's happening in the U.K. and in Denmark, other parts of Europe, hospitalisations are rising rapidly and we're not necessarily seeing the exact same picture play out. So we don't really know what it's going to look like when it hits the population at large. And like I said, with that moving so quickly, you have to do something before you see the signal.

MG: What's at stake from your perspective? Again, if you spend a lot of time on social media, the panic button has been depressed many, many times. Outside of that, people may not understand kind of what's going on. So from your perspective, doctor, what's at stake here?

SUSY HOTA: So the cases of Omicron in Ontario are rising very rapidly, and the overall number of cases we're seeing of COVID 19 is rising really rapidly. And you know, sometime back, people start saying we got to decouple these things. We have to stop, you know, fixating on the actual number and look at hospitalisation, people getting really sick from it. That's what really matters. But I don't think we can do that here because even if this is slightly milder an infection than previous variants, with the sheer numbers we're going to see if we don't do something to stop transmission, we're going to end up with a lot of people who are hospitalised, more than we've ever seen before, a lot of people requiring ICU care. Our healthcare system cannot handle that, and we're especially in a precarious position because we're facing a lot of shortages of healthcare workers already in the hospital. A lot of burnout. [inaudible], but we don't have people to care for the patients. So that's what's at stake is not just if you get COVID, we may not be able to help you. It's like if you get anything and you need a hospital. If we're overwhelmed, we're not going to be able to help you. So that's the situation we absolutely need to avoid. And these two things are connected. There's community transmission rates and this risk of hospitalisation, regardless of how severe it is.

MG: Samantha, we're just about out of time. We're 21 months into this. This is hard news. How do you keep your spirits up while you're communicating the reality of what we're going through?

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: I think just remembering that this is something that comes in waves, which means there are hard times and there are easier times. We've had, we've been really lucky here. We've had a lot of easier times. We've had days where we didn't have to think about this as much. Keeping that in perspective and keeping in perspective where we were at this time last year, I think is what gives me encouragement.

MG: It's good to speak with you both about this. This is important. Thank you very much.

SAMANTHA YAMMINE: Thanks so much for having us.

MG: Dr. Susy Hota, infectious disease specialist at the University Health Network in Toronto. Samantha Yameen is a science communicator. She goes by the handle Science Sam online. Today at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. I'll be hosting a special program here on CBC Radio One right across the country, celebrating safely. CBC Radio's COVID call and special Dr. Brian Goldman of White Coat, Black Art and Dr. Jackie Kinley, psychologist, will be here to answer your questions for an hour about how to stay safe and connected during this holiday season. Again, that begins at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Your CBC News is next. And then:

TITUS DIVALA: We ended up becoming a laughing stock. We begged for vaccines. We got them and then we destroyed them. The vaccines had a shelf life of less than three months, and to deliver those vaccines to people in time, it's extremely difficult.

MG: As if rolling out a vaccine program wasn't difficult enough already. Countries like Malawi are being given vaccines that are about to expire. The challenges in the push to vaccinate Africa and some solutions coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

Checking in on vaccine progress in South Africa and Malawi

Guests: Petro Terblanche and Dr. Titus Divala

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, the history of race in America, as seen on the silver screen, the author and historian Wil Haygood will join me in just under 30 minutes to talk about the fraught history of black representation in cinema. But first, vaccinating countries in Africa is urgent, but not easy.

[Music: Theme]

TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS: Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant. We're concerned that people are dismissing Omicron as mild, even if Omicron does cause less severe disease. The sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems.

MG: That's Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO. And many of those unprepared health systems he's referring to are in Africa. Most countries on the continent are still struggling to vaccinate their populations, and in spite of public pleas from governments and the W.H.O., donations from wealthier countries have become unreliable when it comes to the vaccine. Well, now South Africa is working to create its own coronavirus vaccine, backed by funding from the W.H.O., a company called Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines is working to develop a shot based closely on what's publicly known about the mRNA vaccine made by Moderna. Petro Terblanche is the managing director of Afrigen Biologics. She's also a professor of Health Sciences at Northwest University and joins me now from Cape Town, South Africa. Petro Terblanche, hello.

PETRO TERBLANCHE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: I want to ask you about the work that you're doing in a moment, but first, we in Canada and many other countries are just now coming to grips with the Omicron variant, and we're looking to South Africa as scientists there discovered it first. What is it doing in that country? How would you rate how South Africa is handling this variant right now?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: So we have a few hotspots, the Harting province, particularly very high incidences. We see mild disease, we don't see very serious disease. We have some hospitalisations, no deaths and no people in ICU. So we're managing fine at the moment, but it is still spreading to other provinces.

MG: When you take a look at the bigger pandemic picture, how far along is the country when it comes to vaccination?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: So the country is doing fine. We have vaccinated between 50 and 40 percent of our own population. But the challenge is if we look at the bigger Africa continent. In Africa, only seven percent of people are fully vaccinated. And if we continue at this rate, we will only be reaching the W.H.O goals by 2023. So this continent is really, really way behind the rest of the world.

MG: And so it's with that in mind that the W.H.O. has given your company money to develop a COVID vaccine. Walk us through what that entails and what you're trying to do.

PETRO TERBLANCHE: So the purpose here is to create a platform. A COVID vaccine is our first catalyst, but ultimately this is about creating capacity and capabilities in Africa to produce our own vaccines. The process we have gone through is we had a facility that was just completed and fit for purpose to produce end to end mRNA vaccines. We had at that time hoped to have a technology transfer from BioNTech or Moderna. That didn't happen. So we've partnered with a fantastic science base in South Africa and in the United States and in Europe, and we are developing our own vaccines. So we have fully mapped the mRNA vaccine production processes with already at lab scale made the drug substance. We know we have the RNA. We know that the sequence is great and we are now starting the formulation to make a drug product at lab scale. We will then scale up and produce sufficient scale up GMP good manufacturing practice material for clinical trials, then transferred to Biovac, our partner for commercial production.

MG: And you're using the Moderna vaccine as sort of a blueprint for what you're creating?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: Yes. So we're working... We forward innovate, we don't reverse engineer, we forward innovate. We’re using the Moderna sequence, which is the Wuhan sequence and that was a strategic decision driven by a number of reasons. And we are making a compatible vaccine to Moderna because we want to demonstrate our capability to make a good vaccine.

MG: Explain the difference between the two. A lot of people have characterised this in stories written about what you're doing as reverse engineering. You're saying that it's not reverse engineering. What do you mean by that?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: So I think the term reverse engineering is understood by most people... And that was used as a descriptive. Reverse engineering means that you start with the actual final vaccine, you analyse the content, the process and you work backwards and you make the vaccine. We have started the sequence and we are now forward innovating. So we are making a vaccine based on the sequence. But we’re using our knowledge base, our science base and information that's available in the public domain.

MG: It's not using a sample of the vaccine?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: No, no. We will do competitive studies using the vaccine, but we're not using... We haven't started working with a sample of the vaccine. We've started at sequence.

MG: How difficult is it to duplicate? And mRNA vaccine, when you don't have all of the information Moderna isn't providing you with the formula, with the complete ingredient list.

PETRO TERBLANCHE: It's difficult. There are some technical hurdles and unknowns that we don't have. There is enormous public domain knowledge and with a good science base, it is very possible. But there are key components of the process in terms of payload, in terms of the backbone, in terms of some of the formulation ratios for the nano lipid particles that we don't know, but we work through it experimentally. What helps us is the fact that some of the top scientists in the world is working with us to ensure that we make a vaccine that is compatible, that's safe, effective and also affordable.

MG: Was there any hope that Moderna would share that key information with you?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: Yes, very much. And I still hope that we can at some point reach some agreement to have... to work with Moderna on some aspects of the process.

MG: I want to ask you more about that in a moment, but if you had that information, how quickly would you be able to develop this vaccine?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: We'll probably... It's difficult to say because a turnkey tech transfer might also take long, and we've now jumped in and we're working with teams so that we make our own vaccine. But I believe that there would have been significant cost savings and time savings up to six months if we have access to some of the key knowledge points that we now have to experimentally discover.

MG: And so in the absence of that. How much does that extend the process by?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: So the process now is in terms of regulatory approvals being extended probably by six months, but also for clinical development, because if we had a tech transfer and we had a compatible vaccine, the clinical trial process could have been faster. Now we may have to go through a phase one, phase two and phase three clinical trial development because we're making the new vaccine.

MG: Is there something specific about Moderna that you chose as a blueprint rather than Pfizer or the other vaccines that have been developed?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: So, both the two mRNA vaccines currently on the market or superb vaccines. We chose the Moderna because in some comparative pre-clinical studies, the vaccine performed better. But we've had a broad, broadly neutralising antibody profiles were quite good. And because Moderna didn't have a footprint in South Africa and Africa and BioNTech with Pfizer has the arrangements with Biovac, we decided strategically to focus on the Moderna sequence.

MG: One of the reasons why that's important is because Moderna received a huge amount of U.S. taxpayer funds to help develop its vaccine, and there has been a real push from members of the U.S. government that the company should share the process, should free the patents, should make sure in the midst of a crisis that as many people can develop this vaccine as possible to help save as many people. Do you think that that is at all likely?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: I don't know. I think Moderna's been caught up in a whirlwind at the moment around IP issues, and I'm glad I don't have to manage that. I don't know. I hope, I hope that Moderna executives and board will at some point sit down and have a rational and open minded look at this and share it.

MG: Do you think they could stop you as this process continues?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: They could stop us to go commercial. In terms of current titans [inaudible] in South Africa and other African countries. So we will... We will work very hard to get a voluntary licence from Moderna. However, we're also busy with a second generation vaccine that may not infringe on the patents, and therefore we would be able to go commercial. But currently we can go up to phase three clinical trials, but we will need, then a licence from Moderna to go to commercial and actually get it into the clinic, into the arms of people where it's needed.

MG: If South Africa has its own lab to develop these vaccines, how much of a game changer is that?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: It's massive. This is a seat for building an industry on the continent. The decision was made to start with mRNa because of the versatility of the platform and because it is a true platform, you can rapidly develop new vaccines, look at variants and also look at other vaccines for other diseases. But this is part of an aligned, concerted effort for Africa to create capacity and capabilities to make our own vaccines. And the target is set by 2040 we're going to make 60 percent of the vaccines that this continent needs, in this continent, on this continent.

MG: How far along is that? I mean, we've spoken with people, scientists, public health workers, with people in the pharma community, in Kenya and in other countries on the continent who have talked about that idea of building their own. That while waiting for vaccines to be donated, there is an effort to try to create infrastructure for the next pandemic. How far along is that?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: So I think for the first time in many, many years, there is momentum, there's funding, there's support, there's resources and they/our government's commitment to focus resources towards building the industry. There will be a number of platforms not only mRNA there are other vaccine platforms which are more suitable for some of the vaccines required by Africa. The implementation of this strategy, which is being signed off by the African Union and driven by the Africa CDC with international partners that should happen in February and already implementation actions have started. So I think the 2040 goal is ambitious, but I think it's very possible.

MG: And what are some of the other diseases? I mean, we've been talking about COVID 19, but what are some of the other things that that platform could help tackle?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: HIV... The burden of diseases on this continent HIV, TB, Zika, Rift Valley fever, malaria, Schistosomiasis. So there are diseases on the continent and in other low and middle income countries which the rest of the world have forgotten about or never have had or will not have. So we have to focus on burden of disease vaccine candidate to address that for Africa.

MG: Has it taken this crisis to really spur that, that action?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: It has. It has, I think, one of the positive legacies that COVID will leave with us is the continent has really woken up.

MG: What sort of burden do you feel in helping to shepherd this along?

PETRO TERBLANCHE: It's a burden, not. Nothing, motivation and lots of energy and a team that is so inspired to contribute and to make a difference that it's been a fantastic, energetic six months for the Afrigen team.

MG: The world is watching and we will perhaps talk again as this continues. In the meantime, thank you very much.

PETRO TERBLANCHE: Thank you for fantastic support globally.

MG: Take care. Bye bye.

PETRO TERBLANCHE: Bye bye.

MG: Pedro Terblanche is managing director of Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines. They're trying to create a COVID vaccine in South Africa. She's also a professor of Health Sciences at Northwest University, and we reached her in Cape Town. That vaccine can't come soon enough for South Africa's neighbours with Omicron already spreading. In Malawi, only three percent of the population is fully vaccinated, and vaccine access is just one part of the problem. Dr. Titus Divala is an epidemiologist at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences in Malawi. Dr., Hello to you.

TITUS DIVALA: Hello. Thank you for having me.

MG: Thank you for being here. Given that three percent vaccination rate in Malawi, what are you most concerned about when it comes to the Omicron variant?

TITUS DIVALA: The major concern is that we're living in a time when the best solution to the pandemic has been found. But most of our population will still live as if we're in the first wave when no vaccines existed and people will end up dying preventable deaths.

MG: Tell me about the supply of vaccines. How difficult has it been to get vaccines in Malawi?

TITUS DIVALA: It has been extremely difficult to get doses into the country. We have from the beginning relied on the COVAX facility, which unfortunately did not perform well. Later on, we relied on bilateral donations, which unfortunately were happening whenever countries have doses that are near expiry, and it was usually a struggle to get them utilised in time. Also, because we do have challenges getting the doses out to people in time.

MG: There are a couple of things that I wanted to ask more about. I'll start with COVAX. When you say that it hasn't particularly worked well, what have the biggest failings been for COVAX from your perspective on the ground there?

TITUS DIVALA: The biggest failure has been COVAX's failure to secure enough doses. COVAX's failure to compete with nations that are hosting the pharmaceutical companies that are producing these vaccines. And also, as you know, a lot of pledges were made, but most countries did not meet their pledges. So COVAX has essentially failed. Hopefully it will be revamped.

MG: And then when it comes to the bilateral deals, as you mentioned, you're getting vaccines, but there's a shelf date that's on them. They're very close to expiration. What has that meant? How often is that happening?

TITUS DIVALA: It's very frequent, and I do know that some countries have refused at times to receive such doses. But for poor countries like ours, we know we need vaccines and we end up just receiving. And there was a time when Malawi incinerated 16,000 doses after failing to utilize them. just 16,000 doses, but we ended up becoming a laughing stock. We begged for vaccines. We got them and then we destroyed them. But if you look at it, the vaccines had a shelf life of less than three months and to deliver those vaccines to people in time, it's extremely difficult. The part that many people just don't appreciate.

MG: So tell me more about that? The vaccines arrive. But as you say, they're only as good as the systems in place to get the vaccines out in some ways. What have you been up against in terms of delivering those vaccines?

TITUS DIVALA: So we've been up against several forces. So for example, the first thing you have to get the vaccines from the airport... old districts across the country, from the district headquarters. The vaccines have not go to rural villages, but from the district headquarters to areas where people live. The road network is not good in most cases. Secondly, you also need to come with accurate information to the people. What we've noticed is that a lot of people need quite some time to understand that the vaccine is important to them before they're going to accept to take it because it's pretty new. There's a lot of misinformation going around. So that's another challenge that we go against. So all that effort put together does slow the process of getting vaccines into arms.

MG: What are some of the stories that you've heard from Malawians and on why they won't get vaccinated, why they may have concerns around the vaccine?

TITUS DIVALA: The stories are not unique to Malawi. It is a challenging time for governments and their partners who are working to get vaccines out. Unfortunately, what has happened is that even is simple, rare side effect is bloated on global media. You can't go and say this doesn't exist. So what's happening is that it's not the regular misinformation, but it is correct information but provided out of context. So one part of the problem is about contextualising the challenge and helping people make a proper risk benefit analysis. These risks benefit analysis that are happening right now in people's homes. People who are not trained to handle such information. The second challenge has been just a basic frank misinformation from religious groups just indicating that the vaccine is there to harm them. The vaccine is, in some cases, described as satanic.

MG: What sort of work are you doing with those evangelical leaders, with faith leaders to get them onside?

TITUS DIVALA: The government has so far taken obstructive approach. So what's been happening is that there are community outreach activities where all influential leaders are invited, including the local leader...local community leader, as well as religious leaders are invited to a session where the health authorities take turns to address concerns that they have. After that kind of session community members are invited and a health talk about vaccines is conducted. During that conversation people are given the opportunity to ask questions, and those questions end up addressing fears for most of the people in that community. At the end of the day, we are seeing that a lot of people are moving from not wanting to vaccinate, to wanting to vaccinate. But as you can imagine, the amount of effort and time needed to get to that point is substantial.

MG: There is also, I know, an issue when it comes to just the number of healthcare workers that you would need if you had the vaccines to be able to get those vaccines into arms, how challenged is your country when it comes to making sure that there are, as I say, enough of those medical professionals available?

TITUS DIVALA: Human resource is a big concern at the moment. Before COVID-19 came into being, we were talking of a vacancy rate of 52 percent for health personnel across the country. In other words, we needed 52 percent more, so that gap was worsened by COVID-19. A lot of stuff I've had to be diverted to managing the disease, but also a lot of staff failing to go to work because of symptoms or testing positive. We do need a substantial number of workers to make sure that we deliver the vaccine far and wide. With respect to community health workers, the country's goal is to have a community health worker for every 1000 people. But right now, it's nearly 7000 per community healthcare worker.

MG: When you talk about diversion as well, I mean, COVID isn't the only disease that is in front of you. How has this pandemic affected Malawi's overall health resources when it comes to tackling things like HIV and tuberculosis?

TITUS DIVALA: We are slowing down on HIV aids. We are slowing down on tuberculosis, so it is a substantial problem which must be managed and quickly because as this will keep coming and keep getting worse, we are also moving further and further away from our core duty of ensuring that these essential and absolutely important diseases are always managed. They do take way more lives than COVID-19 is.

MG: One of the things that we hear constantly is that the world isn't safe until we're all safe, that everybody needs to be part of the solution to this pandemic, which is why there is so much attention, not enough, but so much attention on the issue of equity and vaccine equity. What would your message be to a country like Canada, given what you've just described?

TITUS DIVALA: The most important thing to realize, we are in this together. The key thing that needs to happen for vaccines is number one, share the doses. Malawi has a population of 18 million, but the people who critically need to be vaccinated are less than 10 million. If we can fully vaccinate that population we'll be much better. Next thing that's critical is to support us to create local capacity for producing vaccines. Share the technology and share the innovation, waive the intellectual property rights so that vaccines can be easily produced. It's not just vaccines, diagnostics and all those tools that are critical can be safely produced within our region. In terms of the wider challenges, the challenges of human resource that I've talked about now. Human resource capacity expansion locally is critical. What I'm asking for is not necessarily asking Canadian doctors to come and work, that would be a huge burden. But what I would ask for is to support the local training, to support the resilience so that these sustainable local capacity development that will be useful now and beyond. [Children talking in the background]

MG: I wish you the very best. It's important to hear what's happening in your community, and I appreciate you taking some time to talk to us, doctor. Thank you very much and good luck.

TITUS DIVALA: Thank you much for having me.

MG: Dr. Titus Divala, epidemiologist at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences in Malawi. Working as you heard from home, like so many people right around the world. Coming up after your regional update:

WIL HAYGOOD: All of these dramas that were happening in the 1960s, people who were very brave, many black people, you would think that Hollywood would have grabbed their stories and put them on the screen.

MG: Hollywood, for the most part, did not put those stories on the screen. In 90 seconds, the historian Wil Haygood will explain why and how America's race problem has played out in the world of cinema. My name is Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Music: Theme]

Analyzing race relations in the United States

Guest: Wil Haygood

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. The year was 2016, the comedian Chris Rock was hosting the Oscars ceremony.

CHRIS ROCK: [SOUNDCLIP: Why this Oscars? Why this Oscars? You know, it's the 88th Academy Awards. It's the 88th Academy Awards, which means this whole no Black nominees thing has happened at least 71 other times. OK, you got to figure that it happened in the 50s and the 60s. You know, in the 60s, one of those years, Sidney didn't put out a movie. I'm sure... I'm sure there were no Black nominees. Some of those years say 62 or 63, and Black people did not protest. Why? Because we had real things to protest at the time. [loud cheering and clapping] We had real things to protest, we were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer.]

MG: As Chris Rock points out Black people throughout American history have not been fully recognized for their contributions to cinema. That doesn't mean, though, that those contributions didn't exist. Wil Haygood knows that all too well. He's a journalist, historian and author. His new book is called "Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World." Wil Haygood, good morning.

WIL HAYGOOD: And good morning to you!

MG: What do you think of what Chris Rock said in 2016?

WIL HAYGOOD: Very powerful and important to say. I mean, I think it put people on notice at that moment about what had been going on in cinematic history in this country.

MG: This book goes all the way back to 1915 and the release of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. That film was important for a few different reasons. Let's start with this one. Why was it so important in the history of Black moviemaking?

WIL HAYGOOD: Well, it was the first movie that was so appalling and so widely received by white America. While it was a savage attack against Black dignity and Black freedom, cinema in 1915 was only 50 years removed from the end of slavery. So you still had, you know, those raw feelings. We were far, far away from true freedom for Black people in this country. And then you have this movie, the 'Birth of a Nation' that really is the first Hollywood spectacle. I mean, it was the Star Wars and Star Trek of its time. One out of four American citizens saw that movie between the years of 1915 and 1919. And so this was a movie where the Ku Klux Klan were heroes and Black men were rapists and villains. And if you were Black, you almost had no choice except to rise up and go down to the theatre with the picket sign and to march. And that's what happened. There were marches all around the country. There were protests, there were uprisings, there were people who were jailed and there were also court cases. And so it became really the first opportunity for Blacks to stage a cinematic uprising in this country. And they did, and they had white friends who joined them also.

MG: And it also, in some ways, the success of that inspired Black filmmakers to tell their own stories. Tell me about Oscar Micheaux, who's he?

WIL HAYGOOD: He was a very spectacular figure. My goodness. He went out to South Dakota as a farmer in the 1920s. He had some success. He was a Black man, had some success in the Wild Wild West as a farmer. But he also started writing novels, and it hit him one day. Hey, this thing called cinema. My people, Black people love cinema, too. So maybe I'll find a way to turn my novels into scripts. And then if I can film these scripts, I'll try to find some theatres to show these movies. And it worked for him. He started out making small 15 minute one reel silent films, and then he started travelling city to city hiring actors making larger films within an eight year period. He had really given birth to Black cinema in this country.

MG: What did it mean for Black people in the United States to see themselves and see their own stories being told?

WIL HAYGOOD: It meant so much because in the mind of Oscar Micheaux, he had to take on this savage movie that had come out in 1915 that was still playing off and on in various movie theatres around the country in the 20s. So his goal was to cast handsome looking Black men, lovely Black women. And I'm going to tell stories about families who are Black, and I'm going to show the world what it means to be Black and to celebrate the arts and to be celebrated inside of the arts. And they'd play in Black theatres in St. Louis and Harlem and in Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles. You had a movement and it was started by one man, Oscar Micheaux.

MG: One of the things you do in this book. As you highlight specific films and talk about their impact in cinema, but also in the United States more broadly, I want to run through some of those films. This is the Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 1939. It's a bit of "Gone With the Wind".

[SOUNDCLIP: a clip from Gone with the Wind.]

MG: Hattie McDaniel was the first Black person to win an Oscar for playing Mammy in "Gone With the Wind". Tell me about how she was seen by Black audiences.

WIL HAYGOOD: It was a very stereotypical role. Her character's name was Mammy. She had no first name, she had no last name. There was no family in her life. And yet it was a very, very popular novel. Won several literary prizes. Margaret Mitchell was one of the best known authors in America, and it was a very successful movie. Hattie McDaniel was told by some of her friends that she might not want to try out for that role because it was such a stereotypical role, she had played a maid in many movies, but she had also worked as a maid, and she famously said "I would much rather play a maid then have to work as a maid". And so she played the role when she was nominated and she won. But she wasn't allowed to sit with the white cast at the Oscar ceremony. Usually, if you win an Oscar, your phone starts ringing and you get more offers in Hollywood. I mean, it is a huge stepping stone and it was then and it is now. But it wasn't for Hattie McDaniel. Her phone didn't ring. She went on.... She went on to other roles, but never as a doctor or a lawyer or schoolteacher. She played maids, and she died in the 1950s, quite alone and quite unsure of how her legacy would be written.

MG: Let's talk about somebody, an actor whose phone rang regularly throughout his career. You have a chapter titled: "Two Cool Cats with Caribbean Roots Disrupt Hollywood". Tell Me How Sidney Poitier disrupted Hollywood.

WIL HAYGOOD: He was so charismatic, he was so well-trained. He was a handsome actor. There are white heroes in this book. Stanley Kramer and Ralph Nelson, they were two of the filmmakers who cast Sidney Poitier in some of his earlier... earlier leading man roles, he was the first on the scene, of course, to be cast in these big movies and... But if you were cast in a film and you were Black, you were inextricably linked to the civil rights movement, which is why Sidney Poitier was there with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 at the march on Washington. He was more than just that screen image. This was a very segregated nation. In many ways, it still is. So a lot of whites looked at Sidney Poitier, and they judged the whole race of Black people by him. And so he was very careful in the roles that he played. It's very notable that he never played a true villain. He never played in those early films a murderer. He always played somebody who was on the right side of righteousness in the film. He always played a near saintly figure. But it was rare when he would kiss somebody on screen and not at all if they were white. So, yeah, his career really sort of mirrored in a sense, what was happening in this country as far as racial attitudes, race has always scared America and race has always frightened Hollywood. There is simply no getting around it.

MG: The other cool cat that's referenced in that chapter is Harry Belafonte. I mean, they were both deeply active in the civil rights movement. And you've kind of hinted at this, how did Hollywood treat civil rights on the screen and the civil rights... And the movement in particular?

WIL HAYGOOD: When Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of his 1963 march on Washington, he wanted some film stars there. He said, well, there aren't very many Black film stars, Ossie Davis and Eartha Kitt and Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, he gathered as many as he could to join him at the march on Washington. There were many agents, film agents told their clients white and Black, hey, stay away from the march on Washington. Martin Luther King Jr. is loathed and hated within the FBI, so don't go, don't be linked to Martin Luther King Jr. But Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier were very brave, and they went and they gave money to King. Now you would think that all of these dramas that were happening in the 1960s, fact based dramas about people who were very brave, many Black people in Alabama, in Mississippi, in Georgia, in Texas, you would think that Hollywood would have grabbed their stories and put them on the screen. However, they would not. Hollywood was just afraid of race. Here's a story that I think needs to be mentioned, Matt. So in 1964, three civil rights workers are in Oxford, Ohio. Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, as you know, went into Mississippi to register Black voters. And they were murdered within 24 hours of being in Mississippi. And much later it was found out that law enforcement figures, local law enforcement figures, participated in those murders. And so that happens in 1964. 1988 a movie comes out in America. I remember going to that movie on the first night "Mississippi Burning" and it was about how they cracked the case of this horrific murder and the two heroes in "Mississippi Burning" were white FBI agents, and nothing was further from the truth. White FBI agents did not crack or solve that case.

MG: What did that tell you that that ended up being the storyline?

WIL HAYGOOD: Hollywood wanted to have white saviour heroes and those two white heroes were played by Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe. Wonderful actors, but it was a twisted storyline and it wasn't truthful.

MG: Let me ask you about something. I mean, there are films and then there are films on television. This is something that I remember watching in 1976, something that television viewers had never seen before.

[SOUNDCLIP: a clip from "Roots"]

MG: That's from Roots. Wil Haygood, why was Roots such a revolutionary moment in Black filmmaking?

WIL HAYGOOD: Wow, just hearing that, I don't know. Just hearing that really, really fills me with chills. I had just come out of college in 1976, when Roots came on TV, and I remember sitting with my family watching it and my three sisters started crying. In America, we had never had national discussions about slavery or about racism, really. And there were, of course, only three networks then. And so whole families, white families and Black families sit around their TV set and watched this movie based on an Alex Haley novel about his family's journey from Africa into America. And it was riveting. I mean, to see it for like six straight days every night on TV meant that the country was forced to deal with a fact based story of what America had done to a significant number of people inside their own country. I mean, it was a powerful moment and it became an overwhelming success.

MG: What do you think it changed when it came to what people thought was possible when it comes to the stories that are told?

WIL HAYGOOD: A lot of the stars in Roots thought that there would be much better offers after that series and there were not. I think it helped the nation more than it aided Blacks in their efforts to rise on the 60 foot movie screen. I think Roots really gave a lot of Black scholars, Black writers a moment to go on radio and TV talk shows and talk about how much this nation had ignored the plight and the pain of Blacks. It was all of our stories. It was brave of TV to do it, but they had to cast a lot of white stars to get the whole nation to watch. But there is no doubt, I think, up to that point, Roots was the most astounding cinematic effort that this nation had ever seen in its history of cinema, big screen or small screen.

MG: There are so many films we could talk about. I want to sneak in two more before I let you go. This one, we're going to skip ahead a few decades. This one changed for so many people. It was funny, but it was smart, and it changed for a lot of people how they thought about what could be possible in terms of the stories that are told. This is a little bit of the trailer for Jordan Peele's Get Out.

[SOUNDCLIP: Trailer for Jordan Peele's - 'Get Out']

MG: How is that film different from the way that other films have tried to talk about racism?

WIL HAYGOOD: You know, it was tricky. You sit down in the theatre and you saw this couple, mixed race couple, I mean, white lady and her fellow who was Black and they were going to visit her family. And you just assume because it was out in the lovely leafy suburbs that it was going to be a nice home visit. And then it turned into something very chilling, very frightening. It was a drama. It was kind of funny, but it was ultimately tragic, wrapped around in the paranoia of interracial relationships in this country. And so I think in that, Jordan Peele in a very smart and shrewd way, he fooled the public. And yet they knew it was art. It was just astonishing, and it made a lot of money. It was brilliant when he did it. Absolutely brilliant.

MG: The last film I want to talk about is perhaps not something that people think of as a film. You write in the book "None of the films of 2019, films released in 2019 had the impact of a 2020 video shot on an iPhone". And you're referring to the footage of the murder of George Floyd. Why did you frame it that way? Why did you talk in this book when you're speaking about Black films in a white world… talk about that moment in that way?

WIL HAYGOOD: It was the one moment, I think, in this country and because we all watch it. On TV sort of in real time, we had the footage of it, we had that moment by moment footage of it. It was like your worst racial nightmare and yet it happened. It ignited, as we know, a worldwide movement, people marched in Canada, in America, in South Africa, in Japan and all throughout Asia, in Europe because it seemed....[pause to collect his thoughts] To really crystallize the ongoing century long painting of Black people in this nation. I watched it and cried. I just cried. I mean, it was just really very painful. Any actor or actress, Black can be in a movie theatre, and they know a day later in this country that they could be on the ground with somebody's knee on their neck for having done less than nothing. And so. It caused the movement just like the Birth of a Nation, caused the movement, this caused a movement. And so it was just very important because so often in the past, Blacks have not had somebody on the scene to tape a horrific incident. And this time there was and I think many whites had to think, Oh my God, if that can be done out in the broad open of daylight. What's happening to Black people in the dark of night. I think Hollywood really woke up because you had a movement that was called Hollywood for Black Lives, then it was, you know, it was a whole lot of Black stars who joined that movement and marched. And so if Hollywood is to change, I think that that moment will be remembered for causing Hollywood to widen its reach to let Black and brown filmmakers, Asian filmmakers sit at the table, it's a big table and there's room.

MG: How well do you think Hollywood has done? I mean, just finally, given the fact that we learn our stories through the stories that we see on screen, how well do you think Hollywood has done in telling these stories now and meeting this moment?

WIL HAYGOOD: Well, I think Hollywood has certainly... And it's certainly gotten better, but I think that... I think is happening on the small screen more, you know, Apple, Netflix, Hulu, they're doing some great stuff on the small screen and we're seeing stories with more more racially diverse cast on the small screen. Still have some problems on the 60 foot wide motion picture screen, but we all still love movies. So I hope Hollywood has a moment of wokeness.

MG: This is a fascinating book. There are a million films we could have talked about. I'm glad we were able to speak about some of them. Will Haygood, it's a real pleasure to speak with you. Thank you very much.

WIL HAYGOOD: Thank you very much.

MG: Wil Haygood's new book is called Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World. That's The Current for this Thursday, Q is next on CBC Radio One and a heads up. I'll be hosting a one hour program across this country. It begins at 1:00 PM Eastern Time here on CBC Radio One, called Celebrating Safely: CBC Radio's COVID call in special. Dr. Brian Goldman, host of White Coat, Black Art and psychiatrist Dr. Jackie Kinley, will be here to answer your questions about how to stay safe and connected this holiday season. A Holiday season that a lot of people were looking forward to and of course, it's been turned upside down and sideways by Omicron. We want to hear from you. And again, that begins across the country at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Before we go, the author, activist and feminist Gloria Jean Watkins is also someone who has thought and spoken a lot about the history of race and culture in America. You, of course, may know her better by her pen name, bell hooks. bell hooks died yesterday at the age of 69. She was a towering figure, wrote beautiful books including Ain't I a Woman and All About Love. She taught at schools like Yale and City College of New York, and she reshaped how many Americans looked at feminism, capitalism and race. bell hooks gets the last word today. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

BELL HOOKS: I began to use the phrase in my work white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy because I wanted to have some language that would actually remind us continually of the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality and not to just have one thing be like, you know, gender is the important issue. Race is the important issue. But for me, the use of that, that particular jargonistic phrase was a way, a sort of shortcut way of saying all of these things actually are functioning simultaneously at all times in our lives. And then if I really want to understand what's happening to me right now at this moment in my life as a Black female of a certain age group, I won't be able to understand it if I'm only looking through the lens of race. I won't be able to understand it if I'm only looking through the lens of gender. I won't be able to understand it if I'm only looking at white... how white people see me, and I don't know why those terms have become so mocked by people. Because in fact, far from simplifying the issues, I think they actually, when you merge them together, really complicate the questions of freedom and justice globally because it means then that we have to look at what Black people are doing to each other in Rwanda. We have to... And we can't just say racism, what have you. We have two problematize nationalism beyond race and all kinds of ways that I think there's a tremendous reluctance, particularly in the United States, to do to have a more complex accounting of identity.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Thursday 16 December, 2021 Full Transcript

More Stories Like This