Over the years, society has become so contrived that we refuse to acknowledge the truth, even if the truth is right in front of us. And blaming seems to have become our favourite past time. Who should we blame for these stereotypes? The media- surely, they are the ones cooking and feeding us these stories. Or is it our society in general? We usually tend to stick with the ideologies which do not rattle us or make us uncomfortable.
Although UK as a nation has flourished over the past few decades, in terms of embracing people of different faiths and backgrounds, making the UK a multi-cultural society; however, it seems as though we have taken several steps back and have started raising fingers at one another. “You aren't trustworthy as you're part of XYZ culture” or “you people are all the same” etc. This may seem outlandish and absurd to many, but it would be naïve to believe that such prejudice ideologies do not exist.
There are many such prejudice ideologies which exist in current day Britain; such as, “most black murder victims are killed by blacks”, “street grooming gangs come from Pakistani Mirpuri community” and “Indian women are 8 times as likely to be chemists”, etc.
Such outlooks has been discussed by Trevor Phillips, in his documentary, “Things We Won't Say about Race that Are True”, to be aired on 19th March 2015, on Channel 4 at 9pm.
Trevor Phillips speaks about the different stereotypes that exist in the British society and how he has suffered numerously as well, either by being stopped and searched by the police for no fault of his at all, or being attempted to be shot at.
Phillips states, “If African Caribbeans are statistically more likely to commit some kinds of crime than other people, as indeed they are- we are especially proficient at murdering other African Caribbeans, for example- it might make some sense to understand why, so we can stop it from happening. Not all Jewish people are wealthy; in fact some are extremely deprived. But if- as is true- Jewish households in Britain are on average twice as wealthy as the rest, might it not pay to work out what makes these families more likely to do well? Is there something that the rest can learn from their traditions and behaviour?”
People may judge someone on the basis of these stereotypes but what the fail to understand is why they exist and if they are true, why so. The two examples that Phillips has given shows us an insight to the thought process of many, where they will associate a form of crime with a certain race, but will not try to maybe understand the subliminal message in order to prevent further crimes from happening.
On the other hand, people are avoiding giving their opinions incase it gets misconstrued and they are misunderstood as being a racist. If a person speaks against a certain crime taken place, which may have underlined a certain faith, there are possibilities of people becoming defensive and taking offence of the opinions, consequently lamented the opinionated as a racist.
One would have thought that with the change in time, with better access to global knowledge, one would have become more enlightened and accepting towards different people. But as Trevor Phillips suggest, with the way society has somewhat become regressive, “we risk a return to the days of 'No blacks, no Irish, no dogs'.”
