Lawrence Hoo - The Power to Change

Lawrence Hoo - The Power to Change

'On the lucky day of Friday the 13th of September, we received a lecture from Lawrence Hoo, The Power to Change, who spoke to us on how his business, CARGO can help educate people on the true origins of African and African diaspora heritage and explore these cultures further than the government curriculum will allow. We were shown the impact of how poetry and art can be used to entice young people in to learning about the heritage of many African and African diaspora heritage through the work of CARGO.

We looked at the origin and meaning behind some words which are central to CARGO’s work including; justice, abolition and race which Hoo determined as a social structure originated around 500 years ago and that the ‘lie has become a fact’. This lie is said to have infiltrated into our education system. Hoo brought to our attention that most education systems teach most subjects, especially history with a Eurocentric view which in turn prioritises all of Europe’s successes and fails to address other countries true origins and achievements. Hoo drew from the course content to demonstrate how this impacts people on a day-to-day basis. Such ingrained prejudice has caused 95% of students from an African heritage to say that they have witnessed racist behaviour. Another statistic which shocked much of the lecture theatre was that only 1% of British books main characters had African heritage. Examples of which many of us knew about was the work Florence Nightingale and the work of her contemporary Mary Seacole and how teachers decide to include this even though it is not on the government’s curriculum. Due to this, it is believed that students across the UK have a ‘filtered form of education’ which is problematic and places members of minority groups at more harm.

To combat many of these issues and make a positive change, Hoo and his associates started CARGO classroom which will broaden the national curriculum and address inequalities worldwide. This will be done through their free resources on their website which we were shown how to use, and it is indeed incredibly easy to use. We were read the poem ‘I wish’ by Hoo which delved into how Hoo wished that he had access to materials that could teach him about the achievements of his culture instead of being taught negative information. An example which was shared with us was Imhotep whose theory behind the pyramids was passed onto the Greeks and which was also the beginnings of Pythagoras. Not only were we shown the alternative history but how we should address people today and the meaning behind ‘colourism’. Hoo showed us that instead of using terms such as ‘black’ and ‘white’, instead use ‘African heritage’ and ‘European heritage’. Throughout the whole talk there was a lasting question to always ask ‘why’, not just sit there and absorb what we are being told but to think about the other perspectives to gain a greater understanding of the situation.

The work of CARGO can be used across the world, throughout schools and across multiple subjects, not just history. The website looks into examples which are from pre-colonialism time to educate and reach as many people as possible. The resources are accessible to people in schools and outside of schools in complicated situations because Hoo and his colleagues realised they needed to make this change instead of expecting the politicians to make the change. For more information, look at the website: cargomovement.org'

Nellie (L6)