TCSE: Ted Corpus Search Engine

Recorded at	November 02, 2017
Event	TEDxBristol
Duration (min:sec)	15:16
Video Type	TEDx Talk
Words per minute	222.93 very fast
Readability (FK)	69.36 very easy
Speaker	Mena Fombo


1	00:00	Let's play a game.
2	00:01	Mena says, clap once.
3	00:03	(Audience claps)
4	00:04	Great, well done.
5	00:06	Mena says, high-five someone next to you.
6	00:10	Very good, OK.
7	00:12	Mena says, touch the hair of the person in front of you.
8	00:16	(Audience laughs and talks)
9	00:17	I'm serious.
10	00:19	(Laughter)
11	00:20	OK now, touch the hair of the person next to you.
12	00:27	Guys, guys.
13	00:29	Mena didn't say that time, come on, you know the rules.
14	00:33	Thank you for playing.
15	00:34	Just want to see by show of hands,
16	00:35	how many of you just had your hair touched by someone you've never met before?
17	00:41	Yeah, it's quite a lot of people.
18	00:42	And just by show of hands, how many of you were like,
19	00:45	"Nah, I'm not touching anybody's hair today."
20	00:48	I'm with you guys.
21	00:50	I launched the "No, You Cannot Touch My Hair" campaign survey
22	00:53	in the summer of 2017.
23	00:55	And just under half of the respondents
24	00:57	said they had their hair touched on a monthly basis
25	01:00	by people they've never met before.
26	01:03	And within that, 18 percent said it happened once a week.
27	01:07	So if you can imagine unwanted and uninvited hair touching
28	01:11	by people you've never met before.
29	01:12	That's my daily life.
30	01:16	About a year ago,
31	01:18	I got exhausted with constantly saying to people, "Don't touch."
32	01:22	Like, "Thanks for the compliment, but keep your hands to yourself."
33	01:25	And I kind of wanted a recorder to just press play,
34	01:27	but I figured that prevention is much better than cure.
35	01:30	So I printed these t-shirts, and I started to walk around wearing:
36	01:33	"No, you cannot touch my hair."
37	01:35	And I wore them to supermarkets,
38	01:37	I wore them to work and to conferences, I wore them out socially.
39	01:40	But what I found was that lots of people started asking me questions.
40	01:43	So some people genuinely didn't know that this was a thing,
41	01:46	even though it affects my life, I was like, yes, it's a thing.
42	01:49	And some people were like, “Yeah, I want a t-shirt, that happens to me.”
43	01:53	So I wanted to start collecting that data, and the survey was born.
44	01:56	As part of the research for the survey, I made this bit of a social experiment.
45	02:00	[Is touching a stranger's hair without invitation ever OK?]
46	02:02	(Video) Wow, your hair is amazing.
47	02:04	(Laughter)
48	02:10	[How does it make you feel?]
49	02:14	The hardest part of that was trying to chase people,
50	02:17	lift up my shirt to show us wearing this
51	02:19	"No, You Can't Touch My Hair" campaign shirt underneath,
52	02:21	at which point they thought I was flashing them,
53	02:24	and try and say, "No, it's a social experiment."
54	02:26	But when I did catch up with people and asked them how it felt,
55	02:29	most of the people in the video said it was weird and uncomfortable.
56	02:32	The majority of our campaign survey respondents said
57	02:35	that it felt intrusive, it felt invasive,
58	02:37	and they were very angry and annoyed that this happened to them.
59	02:41	One of the things that I find
60	02:42	was that the majority of respondents were female,
61	02:45	so 90 percent in fact, identified as female.
62	02:48	And the majority of those were Black women and girls.
63	02:51	So we know that this is an issue that affects Black women and girls
64	02:55	more than any other race.
65	02:56	A friend of a friend, this white guy was saying, "Yeah, but Mena, you know,
66	02:59	I went on holiday to India for two weeks, and people were touching my hair.”
67	03:03	And lots of other women were saying, "Oh, you know, when you're pregnant,
68	03:07	people come up and touch your stomach, and it’s the same thing.”
69	03:10	Now, I don't want to take that experience away from anybody.
70	03:13	Any form of unwanted and uninvited touching is completely unacceptable.
71	03:17	But most women on average are only pregnant for nine months.
72	03:20	So that type of touching will come to an end.
73	03:23	And I'm not on vacation or on holiday.
74	03:25	And like many of the respondents,
75	03:27	this is the country that I was born in, and it still happens.
76	03:30	Some people, a very small minority, said they didn't mind the touching.
77	03:33	And again, that's cool.
78	03:34	But this campaign is really targeted
79	03:36	at the overwhelming, disproportionate number
80	03:38	of Black people, Black women, Black girls
81	03:40	that experience this unwanted hair touching.
82	03:44	When I was six years old, I was asked to be Mary in my school play.
83	03:48	I was like, “Get in, lead part!”
84	03:50	And the only other Black kid in the school was asked to be Joseph.
85	03:54	And on the day, they gave us this white baby Jesus.
86	03:58	(Laughter)
87	04:01	Now, I accept that it is genetically possible
88	04:04	for two people of African ethnicity to birth a white child.
89	04:07	But this was the '80s England,
90	04:09	so I don't think that that was the point my school was trying to make.
91	04:12	So I asked for a Black baby, they said no.
92	04:15	And in response, when all the parents came in, I just refused to smile.
93	04:18	(Laughter)
94	04:20	That was the day that my inner activist was born.
95	04:24	When I got to seven,
96	04:25	I started to notice that I was different to my peers.
97	04:28	So I concluded that I was really, really, really intelligent.
98	04:32	Hear me out.
99	04:34	(Laughter)
100	04:35	So basically, this is kind of the age
101	04:37	when they started to notice that I was Black.
102	04:40	And so they'd asked me really crazy questions like,
103	04:42	"Why are you Black?"
104	04:43	And because I was really intelligent,
105	04:45	I'd give these overelaborate, detailed explanations.
106	04:48	And I would say, "I was born Black."
107	04:51	And this was mind-blowing to them because then they would keep asking,
108	04:54	"But why were you born Black?"
109	04:56	And I'd never considered why they were born white.
110	04:58	But I would kind of say I just was, and we’d go back and forth.
111	05:01	But it became very apparent that this wasn't the response they wanted.
112	05:04	So not just being intelligent, I was very creative.
113	05:07	So I made up stories and I would tell the other kids
114	05:09	that I was walking to school one day in the pouring rain
115	05:12	and a car drove past me, this massive puddle splashed me with mud.
116	05:15	And by the time I got to school,
117	05:17	the mud had dried so hard that I couldn't wash it off.
118	05:20	Well, the kids actually believed the story.
119	05:22	And they'd be like, "Is it true?" And I was like, "Yeah."
120	05:25	And they would go and get their siblings
121	05:27	and say, "Tell my sister why you're Black."
122	05:29	And so this became my rhetoric that I would go around telling people.
123	05:32	And the fact that they believed such a ridiculous story
124	05:35	made me conclude that they were idiots and I was really intelligent.
125	05:38	(Laughter)
126	05:40	Many years later, my birth mother Ayiba would tell me stories
127	05:43	about when she would go to work, and she would take her Nigerian lunches.
128	05:46	So she would have egusi and okazi, garri, and her colleagues would say,
129	05:50	"What's that smell?
130	05:52	What are you eating? What is that?"
131	05:54	And she would look at them and she would say,
132	05:57	"I am eating worms."
133	05:59	(Laughter)
134	06:00	"I am eating snake."
135	06:02	"I am eating insect."
136	06:04	And she said, “Somina,
137	06:05	sometimes you just have to tell these people what they want to hear.
138	06:09	They think I am a savage, so I will act like one."
139	06:12	My seven-year-old self learned to tell people
140	06:14	what I thought they wanted to hear.
141	06:17	By the age of eight,
142	06:18	I had convinced other kids that my hair is made of sponge
143	06:21	because, of course, being Black, it couldn't be made of hair.
144	06:24	But by nine, my difference started to become more of an embarrassment.
145	06:27	And I remember going on a residential
146	06:29	and on the first night, all the girls had to shower.
147	06:31	And I was more developed than my peers.
148	06:33	So we get into the showers and my peers were fascinated by my body,
149	06:37	so much so that they took it turns to run into my shower and to grab me here
150	06:41	and to grab me here
151	06:42	to see what it felt like.
152	06:44	And at the time, I tried to laugh it off,
153	06:46	but it was humiliating.
154	06:49	And it was so humiliating
155	06:50	that for the next three days, I didn't wash.
156	06:53	And every day the girls would say, "Come shower,"
157	06:55	And I was like, "No, I'm not going."
158	06:57	And by the third day, I couldn't tell whether they wanted me to shower
159	07:00	because they still wanted to grab my hair or to see me naked,
160	07:03	or whether it's because I smelt so bad,
161	07:05	because one of my guy friends turned to me and said, "Somina, you stink."
162	07:09	I remember being mute the rest of that day.
163	07:13	The rumor kind of spread through the school.
164	07:15	And over the next couple of weeks,
165	07:16	I remember being pulled out of my class and sent to the headmistress's office.
166	07:20	And as I got there, there was a male doctor in the office
167	07:23	and the head was there and another teacher.
168	07:25	And they had concluded that it was unusual for someone my age to have developed.
169	07:29	So they wanted to examine me.
170	07:30	And they pulled open my skirt and my knickers
171	07:32	and looked down to see that I had hair.
172	07:36	And I returned to class.
173	07:39	When I got home that evening, my foster mother, Jean,
174	07:41	was absolutely furious when she found out.
175	07:44	And she called the school,
176	07:45	she said a few angry words and then she put the phone down
177	07:48	and she turned to me and she said,
178	07:49	"I did not give permission for that to happen to you."
179	07:53	She said, "I'm really sorry."
180	07:54	She said, "It takes all types of people to make a world
181	07:57	and there's absolutely nothing wrong with you."
182	08:00	And I was very grateful for my mother for saying that,
183	08:02	because it does take all types to make a world.
184	08:05	And if we appreciate difference
185	08:06	and it's not such as this intrigue that we feel a right
186	08:09	or an ownership to go and touch.
187	08:10	And maybe if other mothers shared that story with their daughters,
188	08:13	then perhaps we wouldn’t be seen as so much of an other.
189	08:16	My childhood may not have been so humiliating.
190	08:21	In 1810, a woman named Saartjie Baartman was taken from South Africa
191	08:25	and brought to the UK.
192	08:26	She had distinct features, she was a Black woman,
193	08:29	she had a large behind,
194	08:30	and they put her on display in Piccadilly Circus.
195	08:32	And thousands of thousands of people would come year on year
196	08:35	to stare and to point and to touch.
197	08:37	Fascinated, intrigued, curious.
198	08:39	She survived for five years in the UK and when she died,
199	08:42	doctors and scientists were so fascinated by her body,
200	08:45	they made a plaster cast
201	08:46	and they preserved her organs in museums until the 1970s.
202	08:51	And in 2002, Nelson Mandela sent for her to come home
203	08:54	where she received a burial.
204	08:57	When I think about the experience I had at school with my peers
205	09:00	and I think about the women who answered
206	09:01	the "No, You Cannot Touch My Hair" campaign survey,
207	09:04	and I compare that to the experience of Sarah Baartman,
208	09:07	I have to say that the actions keep repeating themselves.
209	09:10	This fascination with Black bodies,
210	09:12	when I say Black bodies, I include Black hair,
211	09:14	has been around for centuries.
212	09:17	So is the motivation for touching hair
213	09:21	different to the motivation for those that went to see Sarah Baartman?
214	09:25	I'll say that again.
215	09:27	Is the motivation the same for touching hair
216	09:29	as it is as the actions that happened to Sarah Baartman?
217	09:33	Human zoos were first founded by a guy named Carl Hagenbur,
218	09:37	and he traveled the world and he took tribes,
219	09:40	predominantly African tribes,
220	09:41	and he presented them in Europe and in the Americas.
221	09:44	And people would come to stare and to see.
222	09:47	And those zoos existed until the 1960s.
223	09:49	And I think to myself, had I been born a few decades earlier,
224	09:52	could this girl have been me?
225	09:55	Hundreds of thousands of people came to point and to stare and to view.
226	09:59	Many women who responded to the survey
227	10:01	said that people touching their hair,
228	10:03	it felt like being petted in a zoo.
229	10:09	"Your hair looks like my pubes" is what a group of lads chanted at me
230	10:13	as I walked down Bristol Harbourside.
231	10:15	"I've never touched an Afro before"
232	10:17	are the kind of comments that people respond
233	10:19	when I challenge them after they've just grabbed my hair.
234	10:23	"You can touch mine" is a common response I get in meetings or at conferences
235	10:27	as a trade off for exchanging hair touching.
236	10:30	One woman said to me,
237	10:31	"Well, if your hair wasn't so beautiful, people wouldn't touch it."
238	10:34	After I went up to her and said, "Don't touch my hair again."
239	10:38	Is the motivation different?
240	10:40	Because the actions are still the same.
241	10:43	A 14-year-old girl from Bristol
242	10:45	wrote in and said that she was in the shopping mall
243	10:48	and a group of girls
244	10:49	came and started playing with her hair from behind.
245	10:52	And when she turned and asked them to stop,
246	10:54	they laughed and walked away.
247	10:56	Is the motivation different?
248	10:59	Because the actions are still the same.
249	11:02	Another woman talked about her boss's boss walking past her desk every day,
250	11:06	playing with her hair.
251	11:07	She said it happens not just to her, but to other women, always of color.
252	11:13	Is the motivation different?
253	11:15	Because the actions are still the same.
254	11:17	A father talked about his daughter begging to have her hair straightened
255	11:21	because the touching had become relentless.
256	11:23	A mother talked about having to braid her child's hair every day
257	11:26	because the touching had come too much.
258	11:29	Is the motivation different?
259	11:31	Because the actions are still the same.
260	11:36	We live in this world that is systematically unequal.
261	11:39	So we have designed it to favor one group over another and over another.
262	11:44	And we start to say terms like “unconscious bias” and “microaggression”
263	11:49	and “macroaggression.”
264	11:50	But I would argue that we should really be saying “racism.”
265	11:54	The motivation hasn't changed, the actions are still the same.
266	11:58	If you imagine that we were to describe words as people,
267	12:00	then I would argue that power would be the grandfather,
268	12:04	prejudice would be the grandmother,
269	12:06	and together, they have given birth to racism.
270	12:09	Now, racism hooks up with ignorance and they create microaggression.
271	12:15	If you imagine that microaggression is raised by ignorance and racism,
272	12:21	what do you think she's going to become?
273	12:25	Every time you put your hands in my hair without my permission,
274	12:29	you are her.
275	12:32	And every time you ask my permission and I say no,
276	12:36	you are also her.
277	12:40	And every time you see it happen and you don't call it out
278	12:43	and we don't have systems in place to stop it from happening,
279	12:46	you are her.
280	12:50	I call hair touching "hair attacks."
281	12:53	Every Black person, Black woman, Black girl
282	12:56	deserves the same privileges as our peers.
283	12:58	So we deserve the right to go to work and to not be attacked.
284	13:03	We deserve the right to have an education and to not be attacked.
285	13:07	And we deserve the right to go for dinner with friends
286	13:09	and not be expected to be the educator of all things, Black hair, Black history,
287	13:13	Black hair care.
288	13:18	Many of the respondents were angry at the responses
289	13:21	that come when you challenge things.
290	13:23	So I asked them, what can we do?
291	13:25	What can be done?
292	13:26	And they came up with three things.
293	13:28	One, they said that the touchers just need to stop touching.
294	13:32	So if you're someone who touches,
295	13:34	whatever you need to do, put a memo,
296	13:35	a Post-it note on your computer, educate yourself, but stop touching.
297	13:40	Two,
298	13:41	they said that more education and awareness was needed
299	13:44	and that looked like more representation in mainstream media,
300	13:48	more history in schools, and not just one month.
301	13:52	I hope that this talk today has helped to raise some awareness in education.
302	13:56	But don't be complacent.
303	13:58	Google, YouTube exist.
304	14:00	So if this reaffirms your position or if this is new to you,
305	14:03	then learn, share.
306	14:04	And three, last but not least,
307	14:08	they said that we need to call it out more.
308	14:11	We all need to call it out more.
309	14:14	What does that look like?
310	14:16	I'm going to tell you.
311	14:17	I'm going to split us through the middle.
312	14:20	You guys over here are "don't."
313	14:21	When I point, you're going to say your word
314	14:23	and you guys over here are "touch."
315	14:25	It's two simple words.
316	14:26	And this is how we call it out.
317	14:28	Audience: Don't.
318	14:29	MF: Guys, that was weak.
319	14:30	(Laughter)
320	14:31	It's two simple words.
321	14:33	So if anybody doesn't understand
322	14:34	or doesn't know or hasn't experienced this yet,
323	14:37	this is how you call it out.
324	14:38	Audience: Don't touch!
325	14:40	MF: I want to hear it loud,
326	14:42	like these guys at the front.
327	14:43	Audience: Don't touch!
328	14:45	MF: I want to hear it one more time.
329	14:47	How do we call it out?
330	14:48	Audience: Don't touch!
331	14:51	MF: Angela Davis said,
332	14:52	"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change,
333	14:56	but I am changing the things I cannot accept."
334	14:59	I extend that to you and I say, if the motivation is truly different,
335	15:05	then we need to let our actions be that change.
336	15:08	Thank you.
337	15:09	(Cheers and applause)

Mena Fombo: No. You cannot touch my hair!