Last Wed­nes­day a fiery and pas­sio­nate race row took place on BBC Radio 4’s Mid­week radio broad­cast pre­sen­ted by Libby Pur­ves. Joan Rivers became furiously enra­ged when Dar­cus Howe announ­ced that the term “black” offen­ded her; Rivers let loose, fren­ziedly exc­lai­ming, “How dare you call me a racist! How dare you!”

In less dra­ma­tic cir­cums­tan­ces, my hou­se­mate explai­ned to us in a car jour­ney this mor­ning that she found a par­ti­cu­lar lec­ture pro­ble­ma­tic. Not because the con­tent was unin­te­res­ting but because she found it dif­fi­cult to unders­tand the deeply-accented words of her world-renowned Spa­nish lec­tu­rer. As she elu­ci­da­ted her rea­so­ning she pro­fu­sely and repea­tedly said, “I don’t want to sound racist but?” My level-headed friend was afraid to express her fee­lings and thoughts about com­mu­ni­ca­tion dif­fi­cul­ties in lec­ture thea­tres for fear of being bran­ded a racist.

We live in a world where we are inc­rea­singly told that racism is evil, and that we should con­ti­nue to fight the cau­ses of and stamp out racism within our society. Each of us is han­ded a civil res­pon­si­bi­lity to pre­vent racially-motivated oppres­sion at all costs. Yet as this res­pon­si­bi­lity is inc­rea­singly for­ced upon us, we are fin­ding it ever more dif­fi­cult to speak our minds. We keep our thoughts to our­sel­ves, for hea­ven for­bid we should say something poli­ti­cally inco­rrect. Desc­ri­bing someone as ‘black’ has become a poli­ti­cal mine­field. When poin­ting out a friend to another we pause to con­si­der our desc­rip­tion; should he be iden­ti­fied as Black, Afri­can, African-Caribbean, African-American? Who are we to make assump­tions about his origins?

This kind of anxiety is all too com­mon in our politically-paranoid society, and is often counter-productive. How can we ever escape racism if we fear the reper­cus­sions of calling a black per­son black?

The situa­tion is not hel­ped by over­bea­ring black anti-racism esta­blish­ments, which report every poten­tially racial mis­de­mea­nour and spe­cia­lise in exactly the kind of anta­go­nism that fuels such inse­cu­ri­ties. Publi­ca­tions such as weekly news­pa­per The Voice, billed as ‘Britain’s Best Black News­pa­per’ pro­vide an out­let for black com­mu­ni­ties to express their con­cerns. Yet in a world of glo­ba­li­sa­tion where cul­tu­res have become intert­wi­ned, and a society which con­ti­nually stri­ves to pre­vent its own segre­ga­tion, the con­cept of publi­ca­tions aimed at a sin­gu­lar race appear enti­rely hypoc­ri­ti­cal, and fun­da­men­tally at odds with such social aspi­ra­tions. Com­mu­ni­ties facing racial oppres­sion should have a public out­let to voice their con­cerns, yet is a news­pa­per, read solely by a black ‘par­ti­tion’, the best medium for this? Ima­gine the outrage if a ser­vice or publi­ca­tion were aimed exc­lu­si­vely at white peo­ple. “White News” would be a natio­nal scan­dal, assu­redly denoun­ced by the govern­ment as racial slur.

It is my belief that dif­fe­rent cul­tu­ral back­grounds pro­vide for mul­ti­va­riate skills and talents. Afri­cans are dif­fe­rent to Indians in the same way that East Asians are dif­fe­rent to Wes­tern Euro­peans. It is enti­rely pos­si­ble that these races of peo­ple have dis­pro­por­tio­nate abi­li­ties in an assort­ment of acti­vi­ties. To ignore such fun­da­men­tal dif­fe­ren­ces bet­ween peo­ple is sheer igno­rance, for we are each indi­vi­duals and we are all very dif­fe­rent. To use these dif­fe­ren­ces against each other is real racism. Con­trary to the com­mon mis­con­cep­tion; the prac­tice of racism lies not in ack­now­led­ging these dif­fe­ren­ces, but in using them in a demea­ning and inhu­mane man­ner. To announce that some­body is black is not insul­ting and it is not racist. Simi­larly, fin­ding an accen­ted Spaniard’s English dif­fi­cult to inter­pret is also understandable.

Should you now dis­co­ver that the author of this piece is indeed black, con­si­der how it would effect your opi­nion of it. It is the white fear of and the black obses­sion with the recog­ni­tion of dif­fe­rence that will fore­ver allow racism to haunt us, even when those who are truly racist are long gone. As Joan Rivers argued, “It is not about black or white, it is about people.”

I’m quite enjo­ying just sit­ting at my com­pu­ter lis­te­ning to music, so rather than do nothing pro­duc­tive I have deci­ded to make another blog entry. I have no idea why at the start of each diary-esque entry I must jus­tify myself. Maybe I should take an intros­pec­tive look at the real me ins­tead; give the ol’ cogs a tweak and come out bet­ter on the other side.

Lost

Sea­son one of Lost pre­mie­red on chan­nel 4 over the sum­mer. My hec­tic sche­dule and pro­found wis­dom led me to miss the first four terres­trially aired epi­so­des. I saw clips and heard quo­tes invol­ving beasts, an island and a guy named Jack; I wrote it off as a Lord of the Flies mimic. When I found all my hou­se­ma­tes gathe­red on the sofas in the dark, faces like those of man­ne­quins as they sat wide eyed in front of our old 14″ watching epi­sode six I rea­li­sed that this was not neces­sa­rily the tame US import we so often receive. Through the won­ders of the inter­net I acqui­red the older epi­so­des and pla­yed catch up.  This new show was actually inte­res­ting, ori­gi­nal and enter­tai­ning, not to men­tion an adeptly named cha­rac­ter based upon the great “Tabula Rasa” phi­lo­sopher John Locke. Flashing cre­dits also revea­led to me some mem­ber of the old Buffy team wor­king on the pro­ject which essen­tially roo­ted some sort of faith in this show.

In my house of 7 we all have highly varied and diverse tas­tes, we like dif­fe­rent music, films and sty­les and it is very rare to find something we all equally enjoy (aside from faji­tas); Lost is one of those rare things. Each of us seems to draw dif­fe­rent ins­pi­ra­tions and plea­sure from the ongoing ins­tal­ments and our opi­nions dif­fer dra­ma­ti­cally as to our favou­rite inci­dents and whether or not an epi­sode cons­ti­tu­tes as good. The absur­dity of having a simi­lar tele­vi­sion line-up for six months and having to watch a show con­sis­tently for half of a year has esca­ped the Ame­ri­can audien­ces. The mere thought of wai­ting a mas­sive twenty weeks until the sea­son finale filled our house with terror—our atten­tion spans would drift, we would stray away and good heaven’s, we may (all) have to pay for a TV license. Thus we came to a collec­tive deci­sion: I must down­load all the epi­so­des imme­dia­tely and watch them as soon as we can. Once again the inter­net has come through for us, yet orga­ni­sing 7 peo­ple to all be in the same place at once when term has star­ted and we all have sig­ni­fi­cant res­pon­si­bi­li­ties and other plans pro­ves extre­mely dif­fi­cult. Alas we have only tra­ver­sed up to “In Trans­la­tion”, epi­sode 17. But we’ll get there, oh yes we will and then we can move onto sea­son 2 and start the pro­cess all over.

Vero­nica Mars

Ah yes, the other great Ame­ri­can tele­vi­sion show I have grown addic­ted to. This time it is without the sup­port of my hou­se­ma­tes or terres­trial tele­vi­sion. This show was for­cibly inser­ted into my face via the V-mars goons at Something Awful who felt it their need to adver­tise through ava­tars and ban­ners. The intri­gue finally got to me at the end of August and I asked the inter­net ever so nicely to kindly place a copy of UPN’s pilot epi­sode into My Docu­ments; and that it did. Thanks Inter­net. Vero­nica Mars is one of those shows you can casually watch 10 epi­so­des of without having to stop for water, and after a week I had prac­ti­cally finished. Who killed Lilly Kane? Who attac­ked Vero­nica at that party? Why is Logan such an asshole and how does he still manage to be so awe­some? All of these could be essay tit­les for media stu­dies stu­dents who have cho­sen to do something highly prac­ti­cal and aca­de­mic with their time.  They also per­tain to the most bri­lliant and evol­ving story­line of this great genre brea­king teen adven­ture. The blurb for Vero­nica Mars makes it sound so incon­gruous that when desc­ri­bed to peo­ple it acti­vely turns them away: “A teen girl inves­ti­ga­tes school mys­te­ries and deals with being a high school out­cast while loo­king for clues as to the mur­de­rer of her for­mer best friend in a ste­reoty­pi­cal Cali­for­nian poor vs. rich sunshine city.” Yet the cha­rac­ters you would ordi­na­rily expect to be woo­den cut-outs: the bully, the drop out, the boy­friend, the father and the bitches all break the boun­da­ries of tra­di­tio­nal teen sit­coms, they have issues and they have back­ground sto­ries that aren’t sto­len from a soap opera brains­tor­ming ses­sion.

Herein lies my true Buffy repla­ce­ment: it makes my laugh, it makes me cry and it is ori­gi­nal. I can only hope that sea­son 2 lives up to the ever gro­wing inter­net fan­dom that is sprea­ding con­sis­tently through word of mouth. UPN does not adver­tise this show, it had a poor slot in last years sche­dule and in the UK it is only just star­ting to air on cable only Living TV yet somehow the sea­son 2 pre­miere which was pitched in direct com­pe­ti­tion with sea­son 2 of Lost still mana­ged to draw in over 3.3 million vie­wers: UPN’s highest ever (appa­rently).

So that’s that, after going for a year without tele­vi­sion two new fan­tas­tic shows have just drop­ped into my lap.

It’s been a while since I actually sat down and wrote something ori­gi­nal for my blog; the majo­rity of the con­tent I put up con­sists of ima­ges I like, artic­les of inte­rest and a very brief com­men­tary by me. I find myself quo­ting peo­ple and sta­ting that I have the very same sen­ti­ments without bothe­ring to add something of my own. I am a very opi­nio­na­ted per­son that wishes to write often, so I am taking this oppor­tu­nity when I should be in a lec­ture, to dis­cuss that which is on my mind. I feel the main pro­blem with my wri­ting is that I really need to be in the right mood, some­ti­mes the words just flow in cohe­rent and correct sen­ten­ces, some­ti­mes I strug­gle to form a sin­gle paraph­rase. Before I slept my mind was run­ning with things to type, now my mind is blank once again.

I have taken to rea­ding The Times news­pa­per every mor­ning, I par­ti­cu­larly enjoy the com­men­ta­ries and their future res­pon­ses in let­ters to the edi­tor. I am hoping regu­lar rea­ding and com­prehen­sion will engage my brain in the skill that is wri­ting for jour­na­lism, much in the same vein that watching “The Space Race” on the BBC will pro­vide me with great insights into Roc­ket Science; making the occu­pa­tion of roc­ket scien­tist oh so much closer.  

“I feel, the more pro­grams I watch about roc­kets and how they work, the less brains I need to become a Roc­ket Scientist”

Make your thanks heard.