Alien nation

It must be one of the things we have dragged like mahouts riding elephants, across continents from the east, we the Children of Midnight, dusky denizens of the diaspora, this ability to deny and therefore annihilate. It doesn’t exist therefore I am, sort of a reverse existentialism.

I realise now, as a parent often flummoxed by the antics of my two and seven year olds that sometimes ignore it seems the only thing to do. But it isn’t necessarily the right thing to do; it makes me feel inadequate, in need of that Deepak Chopra handbook, The Seven Spiritual Laws of being a Successful Parent. Ai but that there were really only seven.

I’m dragged back to thinking about my early days because the current debate about Channel 4’s controversial documentary “Edge of the City” has got us all on the edge of our seats.

The documentary trails Bradford Social Services over one year and follows social workers into some pretty gruesome and dehumanising situations.

The program has already been pulled off air once as it was considered too inflammatory right before the local election in May, for fear that it might be hijacked by the BNP. Acting on advice from the West Yorkshire Chief Constable, the station postponed the airing of what promised to be an intriguing documentary looking into the cumulative break down of social structures in inner city areas and what is in place to combat the hopelessness. The program actually depicts four situations but the one which has caused the uproar is the Asian section, in which Asian men are shown to be grooming young, (really young, eleven years old in one case,) white girls for a life of drugs and prostitution. Wealthy older Asian men pretend to be their boyfriends and ply them with drugs and money in order to initiate them into a sleazy life with no exit sign in sight. But the Asian media, from Eastern Eye, a smutty tabloid rag that does as much for the landscape of the ethnic media culture as the Daily Mail does for lifting middle England out of the Dark Ages, and a certain silly website run by an “editor” with no experience of journalism whatsoever out of his mum’s sitting room in Heston, are rattling their sabres like a platoon of agitated Ghurkhas. Even a normally sane and well respected website like BLINK (Black Information Link) has started an email petition to pressurise Channel 4 into pulling the program again. They had managed to rustle up a whole healthy 412 emails in protest at the last count.

The Asian story focuses on two mothers, whose daughters are being groomed as they try and hunt down details of the perpetrators of such wickedness on their daughters. I can tell you as a mother, if anyone, black white or rainbow coloured ever came near either of my children, with these sorts of evil intentions, something visceral and primitive would go off in me. My sympathies lie with these poor girls and their wrecked families. The story that the BNP would hijack the documentary for its own ends might have washed before the elections but it doesn’t anymore. There’s some loony group within the BNP called Mothers against Paedophiles who hint that all Asian men are a sexual threat to all white girls. Paedophiles exist in all colours just check out your local sex offenders support groups. This is not a deranged state exclusive to Paki Go Homes. The BNP have swallowed their own bile and choked on it, seems to most people that they have lost any last shred of credibility since the BBC’s expose last month.

What is disturbing about this is how those who think they speak for Asian media actually don’t. They are protecting their own whitewashed, yes, really, ivory towers, they don’t live in the real world, at least not the world you and I and Channel 4 inhabit. These art the same people who want their own media awards, achievement ceremonies, cultural halls, sounds alarming like a comfortable ring fenced No White Zone, some pre Apartheid state within a state. Why they say, should this documentary be shown at all if it shows Asians in such a bad light? There are calls for censorship and outright banning. This doesn’t ring true in a democracy and even if it is August, traditionally the month with no news, this wannabe story, cooked up by a few bored browns, has failed to ignite the popular zeitgeist. What about freedom of expression, free will and freedom of the press from scurrilous censorship?

Look on any of these sites’ chat boards and you’ll see appeals from Asians to Blacks and vice versa to stand up together, in this darkest hour, to stand together, fight the white ruled media, and kill this negative projection.

Frightening examples include

I am very concerned about this being shown on TV it has only one purpose and that is to excite and create more racism.

And then

The BBC Channel 4 the News, Media etc are all owned by Whites (mostly Jews) so they tend to be bias, to write to print and produce shows ABOUT black people not for black people. Even the heads of ethnic and multicultural arts at the BBC are white. Do me a favour.

No, do me a favour. So we are implying that because they happen to be white that these people cannot justify their positions and career choices. Isn’t that a racist point of view too? If it were a story about old white men seducing little Asian girls, the same people would be screaming “Prime Time, please Mr Byford.”

This crazy mirrored world of double standards has to crash if there is any hope at all that we can truly live together, like normal people in a civilised British society. We bring our own unique spices and flavours to the mix, that’s for sure but when there’s something damaging to ourselves and the community we live in going on, let’s rout it out. It’s not healthy to brush it all under the sari hem. I have my own theories about why cancer is ravaging generations of Asians across cultures and socioeconomic boundaries.

So what of it paints an ugly picture of Asian family life? If it’s true, something’s definitely rotten in the state of Bollystan, if this is what we are allowing our own kids, husbands and brothers get away with.

There is a distinct disregard in certain part of Asian society which regards “whites” as inferiors. I have very little experience of dating Asian men, I’ve always been considered too gora or white in my tastes and my lifestyle. White women are considered by a certain type of Asian male as practise time, basically whores something to play away with out of the prying eyes of the all seeing Allah and of course, Ma. My limited encounters have been angst filled and guilt ridden, there’s still a huge taboo when it comes to being Asian and having sex. Or even just thinking about it. After years of oppression at the hands of the coloniser, one way of breaking out and free is by denigrating the daughters of the host nation. There’s this swaggering better-than-you walk posses of Asian youth adopt in town centre shopping malls, with anger fuelled by a lack of access or opportunity or equality. They smell of fear.

These are the issues which need to be addressed. This whole multicultural masala mix needs some serious counselling. It’s like a marriage on breaking point; where both partners have woken up one morning and decided hey that’s not the person I married till death do me part. In any relationship whether on a one on one in an intimate relationship, in international diplomacy or within the smaller society in which we operate there has to be an honest evaluation of what the good and the bad points are inherent to each party. It’s our fear based on ignorance that separates us and entrenches those old misunderstandings that are coded into us now. If this documentary brings to light some ugly truths, so be it and the next task which confronts all of us, whatever the colour of your tribe, is how do we fix this?

By burying it, appealing for it to be suppressed, we are treading dangerous psychological ground. It perpetuates our own misguided belief that we’re alright Jack when in fact Asian and Black youths in the inner cities are at a crisis with gang warfare and guns, knives and tactics that make the Bronx, New York in the 1980’s look like nursery school. Operation Trident has uncovered not only black on black crime but also Punjabi against Pakistani crime, as well as countless variations of other sub groups of second and third generation Asians at each others’ throats. A documentary such as Edge of the City asks important questions without being sensationalist and insensitive.

Another segment is about a young white boy who has committed 96 offences, the first when he was barely ten. He is given a British Muslim trainee social worker who has the thankless task of keeping tabs on him and trying to support his family too. He tries to instil a sense of value and some moral code in this youngster and maybe there’s a flicker of hope when our troubled hero falls in love with a half Pakistani girl. Bradford Social Services’ risky policy of applying mentors and candidates from different backgrounds could be the treatment for Gurinder Chadha’s next film. A comedy of manners in the Midlands, on the back of her upcoming Bollywood version of Bride and Prejudice.

I know where I’ll be on Thursday at 9pm. On the edge of my sofa with a thermos of chai tea latte from Starbucks, watching the horror unfolding in our communities and asking that same old silly question, why?