I just read Nick Griffin will appear on the Question Time on October 22. Given the recent interview on Radio 1 with 'two party supporters' (one of them only being the BNP's publicity director Mark Collett), I wonder if the BBC has instituted guidelines unique to interviewing the BNP. For example, not questioning anything representatives of the party say, not even factual corrections (the interviewer failed to say Ashley Cole's from London. Maybe she didn't know, but it was enough of a likelihood he was born here, making their argument of race/nationality dubious). I really hate the stance of 'give them enough rope to hang themselves'.
In accepting that the BNP have representation in European parliament, and allowing them a platform, the media (or just the BBC) paradoxically refuse to acknowledge the BNP were controversial in the first place. It doesn't treat them like any other mainstream party in probing their policies, despite trying to signal that all parties that have won seats fair and square are entitled to screen-time, even a relative minnow like the BNP. Okay, it was only a Radio 1 interview, but there was no 'what do you mean' even when Collett and his friend were making typically stupid surrealist racist arguments about 'endangered species' and 'sparrows' and 'crows'. Ick. Maybe if the programme had revealed who were interviewing, they wouldn't justifiably have been able to pretend that Collett is someone whose views could or should ever be taken seriously ('AIDS is a friendly disease because it affects blacks, gays and drug users'). Also, the three main parties wouldn't have had their publicity director interviewed anonymously, as a 'party supporter'!
There seem to be periodic flare-ups on the issue of race, where people seem to get into some kind of collective flurry, and it just comes around over and over. There are also the periodic apologies from one-time racist tv stars, which always seem half-hearted and the best way of wringing out more celebrity juice for viewers. And then people go to either extreme of 'it's only entertainment!', as though racism was just a case of getting the timing right, or 'get the person sacked', as though it's not possible to be ignorant. It's really tedious.
I really liked the Guardian article that I can't find now written by a woman who questioned the attitudes of men around her - she showed how dealing with injustices isn't just about the bigger life situations, but about everyday interaction, and tackling the unspoken assumptions underlying power dynamics in male-female relationships. And there are such assumptions, which are harder to shift because how do you not cause communication to break down all together? I sometimes think this about 'race', not on a macro-scale, but on the scale of everyday interactions with people.
