‘Be the change’
George Mpanga, better known as George the Poet, was born in London to Ugandan parents. He started rapping as a teenager then turned to spoken word at Cambridge University, with poverty and racism core themes of his work. His award-winning Have You Heard George’s Podcast? tells stories from the Grenfell tragedy and Ghana’s freedom struggle to his take on true love. Part memoir, part history and politics, his new book, Track Record: Me, Music and the War on Blackness, explores ‘the long-running assault on Black life’ and how it has shaped him. He speaks to journalist Kitty Melrose.
What was your early life like?
Northwest London, where I grew up, is a very diverse place, so diversity was my introduction to the world. My parents gave me a sense of identity. They let me know we are from a much longer story and we’re here to represent that story but also to show up for the neighbourhood and the community.
Tell us about Track Record...
Initially it was supposed to be autobiographical. Then George Floyd got killed, we were in a pandemic, there were protests across the world, and I started a PhD [about the economic and cultural potential of Black music]. So it felt inappropriate to present such a self-centred work at that time. It would have been a wasted opportunity to not marry my personal narrative, which entails an ongoing political maturation, to carry the story of that political journey.
In the book, you talk about two different ways of dealing with racism: Black liberalism and Black radicalism. Can you explain these ways of thinking and your personal shift?
I’ve been influenced primarily by Kehinde Andrews. He frames Black liberalism as the idea that racism persists because not enough Black people have access to liberal society. Black radicalism argues that racism is a condition of liberal society. It is not a glitch, it’s a feature. The system is built on racist foundations and so to really eliminate racism we need a new system.
I was in that liberal space. There was a funny contrast between me entering university and some of the movements happening on the African continent that would have a devastating impact on African life. I was oblivious, detached from the international picture. I was institutionalised in what you could argue was a bastion of liberalism in this country, Cambridge University.
My PhD, my second run at university, is more responsible for my [radical] shift, and being influenced by the outpouring of thought, grief and rage after George Floyd. Turning down an MBE [in 2019] was also a turning point. I had to walk through the thought process of, what does the word ‘empire’ mean? Because I wasn’t taught this.
And then reading all these books on my shelves that speak about empire, how it was never dismantled, uprooted, apologised for or reversed. That it is still the logic underpinning our global legal and economic structures, our political dynamics, our complex trade routes, migration, you know, all these norms sprang directly from the imperial era.
So my education of that is what compelled me in a radical direction. I created my own reading list. Ideally we would all leave school with a basic awareness of Britain’s leading role in the oppression of Black and brown people.
‘To be radical you’re just getting to the root of the issue rather than dancing around it’
It feels like there’s been a growth of confidence and authority in your work…
Someone said the same thing yesterday, and I’d never thought in that way before. I think that’s the benefit of drawing on literature. And when you find your feet in the discourse and start to plug the gaps. One thing my PhD supervisor explained to me was that radical comes from the Latin word radix, which means root. So to be radical you’re just getting to the root of the issue rather than dancing around it. I wanted to do justice to the points I made in the book.
What books made a big impression that you would recommend?
For a contemporary view, Kehinde Andrews’ Back to Black and his new book The Psychosis of Whiteness. It’s a provocative title but it’s not an attack on white people, it’s looking at the construct of our racial ordering, which is all relative to a class of people insisting whiteness is just better than Blackness.
Harsha Walia’s Border and Rule is important reading to understand the migration policies, the norms that set in on who we think deserves a chance, who deserves a life and what kind of work would allow someone to be worthy to come into this country. I’ve got friends and cousins from Uganda who are only eligible to come in if they’re willing to change the nappies of elderly people or clean toilets.
I haven’t finished reading it yet but Caroline Elkins’ Legacy of Violence; chapter after chapter detailing British imperial violence in India, Jamaica, Ireland, Palestine, Malaysia. It’s a horror story.
What do you see as the biggest obstacles to greater equality in this country?
Where to start? The lack of political education is the fundamental stumbling block. A lot of people who sound smart talking politics don’t have any original thought. Many of us can’t locate politics in our immediate material situation and that is not by accident. I believe it will be deeply disruptive to the power structure if masses of people were educated in a way that was alive, and in a way that directly connected them to the decision-making processes around them.
I do think British foreign policy is fundamentally imperialist. So we end up locked in these ugly, pointless conflicts for a long time and, if you notice, when elections come around, that’s not even up for debate.
Britain has been described by experts, analysts and scholars time and time again as a vassal of the US. We’ve traded our sovereignty – to use the Brexit language – just not in the way people think. On the back end of that, we are consuming propaganda that requires us to be at each other’s throats. And by design, our economic system actively undermines and impoverishes us.
‘There is no way we can put humanity at the heart of governance without a grassroots move towards community solidarity’
You write: ‘Community is the only thing that will save us.’ In what way?
I talk a lot about neoliberalism, the latest iteration of capitalism. The antidote to that is a people-centred approach to society and the start of that is community. There is no way we can put humanity at the heart of governance without a grassroots move towards community solidarity.
It has been hard for me to articulate the case within Black music that our musicians need to be more responsible. A lot of people will say, hey, many of us are coming from poverty, and every artist is free to do whatever they want, you can’t expect them to take on this challenge. I’m like, well, I can and if you did, they would change. It all starts with community level understanding that we’re all accountable to each other.
What gives you hope for the future?
The incoming generation, and that good people are everywhere. I’m a father now, and looking at my baby boy grow... I’ve always had the sense that people are fundamentally loving but I can see it and I’m reminded of it in him. From Palestine to Congo to Sudan, people will never stop feeling for those who are denied their human rights.
It’s important to pull away from media representations of human life as inherently selfish, to pay more attention to what is right in front of us and most importantly – when I’m signing books, I often leave this message – be the change.
Track Record: Me, Music and the War on Blackness is out now. georgethepoet.com
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Runnymede Trust.
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Photo © Feruza Afwerki
