First, on tonight's Channel 4 News, a report on rising numbers of homophobic attacks in UK cities. Brian Paddick gave a great interview about the problems that gay folks face when reporting crimes, and pointed out that a report (referenced in the piece by Channel 4 News) had revealed that 75% of those who had been attacked for the sexuality failed to report it to the police because of the homophobia. He also talked eloquently about the ways in which society makes homophobia acceptable (analogous to : the use of "gay" as an insult or disparaging term, the ways in which "gay" is portrayed in various media, and so on.
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Also on tonight, which will later be available on BBC iPlayer and 4oD as appropriate (I don't know if those can be accessed by non-UK web users), there are going to be two programmes on tonight about the ways in which Whiteness is portrayed as the beauty standard. On BBC1 there will be Make Me White, and on Channel 4 there will be Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth. The Channel 4 programme is part of a series of documentaries that Channel 4 are showing at the moment discussing race from a number of different angles, the first one was "Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo", the title of which I find slightly problematic (it's really not that big of a taboo, as even the trailers for the show reveal, since plenty of racist scientists have broached the topic over the decades!). On Thursday there's another called "How Racist Are You?" although the trailers don't make it very obvious what that's going to be about, at least a part of what it will touch on looks to be things related to White privilege.
I don't yet know how much of any of these shows I'm going to watch myself, because I'm very clear that race is not my area (I try not to do racist things, and to be respectful and all that, but it's not something I can go out as an opening batsman for - definitely lower order for me). If I do watch them I'll come back with what my impressions were (the one I am most likely to watch is "How Racist Are You?"). But I just wanted to let people know that this stuff is out there and if people want to take them on, they can.
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