MixTogether & Friends

Commentator Sunny Hundal has finally mentioned BBC Asian Network on his Pickled Politics blog. Until recently he has had his say via Asians In Media where nobody can comment.

In his latest post, he gives 5 reasons why the Asian Network should not be axed. They are:

.
1) It would reduce competition

2) [the Asian Network is] A source of talent for the BBC and rest of the media

3) It would create ‘parallel lives’

4) It would abandon Asian license fee payers

5) [It would] Remove a vital platform for British Asian culture

Nowhere in his list is there any mention of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of the Asian community: those who have been disowned, or who have fled home to escape forced marriages or other forms of child abuse and domestic violence. There is no mention of those who would like some content for mixed race families, despite the hostility to race mixing in some Asian households. Sunny Hundal knows very well that MixTogether members submitted a widely-supported proposal to the Asian Network last year for this kind of content.

Left wing commentators like Hundal are fond of challenging dominant paradigms. Be it U.S. cultural hegemony or the power of organised religion, they usually have something negative to say about them (and they are often right). When it comes to the dominant paradigm of Asian life in this country however, there is a deafening silence from these ‘principled’ commentators.

In fact across Asian media- in print, on the radio and on TV- those who choose or are forced to live a life outside the traditional community structures are made almost completely invisible.  Lip service is paid to their plight in the form of ‘debates’ and the occasional  documentary or story piece, but that is as far as it goes. There is a terror of admitting how deep these problems go, so they are covered up behind a glossy screen of Bollywood and bhangra, fair-skinned models and fabulous clothes.

The Asian Network has spent £12m a year on its service. Meanwhile charities who work with the most vulnerable in the Asian community have had their funding cut. Karma Nirvana has had to cut its Honour Helpline service. Where is the fairness in giving £12m of License Fee money to a station aimed at the Asian community when that station does next to nothing to help struggling Asian charities?

Those who find themselves outside the dominant paradigm of Asian life in the UK are rarely seen and never heard. The tiny group of professionals who hold influence within Asian media (and yes many of them owe their careers to the BBC) know that they hold the power to change the outcome for these most vulnerable members of the Asian community. So why do they choose to ignore them?

Is a British woman who has been cut off from her Asian roots by her family for most of her life not a license fee payer too?  Does she pay her license fee to fund an Asian station to treat her as if she is invisible? Does she pay to fund ‘debates’ where there is always a call from some hardline traditionalist to remind her why she has been locked out of her own culture?

Are British license fee payers paying the Asian Network to propagate the dominant Asian social paradigm that so many young Asians want to escape from?

And if so, why should the station be saved?

Update: I have emailed Virendra Sharma MP, who is supporting an early day motion on the Asian Network, urging him to take MixTogether’s perspective on board.

After the news broke on Friday that BBC Asian Network faces the axe along with 6 music, campaigns were launched to save the stations.

Both are visible on Twitter, whare the #saveasiannetwork campaign has been attracting regular posts from interested parties including the Asian Network’s Bobby Friction and other artists and producers.

Bobby Friction invited all supporters of the network to email him in order to begin mounting a resistance to the rumoured closure.

I have emailed him to offer the support of MixTogether and members of other established organisations.

If people are serious about campaigning to save the Asian Network, they will need the support of reutable organisations, not just the same artists, DJs and producers who have always been with them. If any future administration is to be convinced of the merits of a BBC Asian service, that service will need a more radical social agenda as well as more listeners. Programming aimed at those who have survived disownment / forced marriage / rejection of a non-Asian partner would deliver both.

A rejection of our offer of help with this campaign would give a clear indication of the direction it is going in.

I hope to hear back from the organisers. They need the credibility that that we have to offer.

Update: there are also Facebook campaign groups here and here.

Race relations in the UK reached a new watershed this week as Labour’s John Denham, the Communities Secretary, stated that people from ethnic minorities are no longer automatically disadvantaged in modern Britain. He feels that inequality should be tackled on an economic basis without special regard to ethnicity, which is basically the centre-right position.

Denham’s contribution is the latest in a line of statements from high-ranking Labour ministers aimed at de-coupling the party from its former identity politics. Britain has moved on a long way since the 1970s heyday of racial agitation, and it is good to see politicians finally catching up.

The quality of Denham’s ideas can be measured by the angry snarls he has provoked from the usual 20th Century race warriors. Yasmin Alibhai Brown took to the picket lines of Southall once more in yesterday’s Standard. The Guardian’s Joseph Harker is still pushing the tired old Black Panther definition that racism=prejudice+power (hence only whites can be racists). Yvonne Roberts in the Guardian tries to paint Denham’s speech as a thinly disguised bit of BNP propaganda. Herman Ouseley refuses to accept that we are ‘comfortable with diversity’.

The one thing you notice about all of these commentators is that they are of a certain generation. They are older people who fought in the important race struggles of the late 20th Century, but who can’t let go of the outdated Marxist creed that used to bring people together back then. They can’t accept that times have changed, and they can’t let go of the idea that all white people are racist oppressors. Not one of them even mentions the racism within minority communities, because they can’t bring themselves to admit it exists.

With characters like this given pages in the national media to spout anti-white prejudices, it is no wonder that the majority population has finally lost patience.

Not all white people are racist, and plenty of non-whites are racist. The experience of couples on MixTogether.org proves this beyond doubt. The ‘racism=prejudice+power’ meme never stood up to much scrutiny, but today it is observably wrong. It has as much relevance to 21st Century British life as the idea that the earth is flat: they are both ideas to be looked back on with faint disbelief.

Younger commentators like Sunny Hundal have welcomed Denham’s speech. It is to people of our generation and younger that smart politicians now look for their cue on race matters. Alibhai-Brown is history.

As one MixTogether member reminds us in their signaure:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
- Charles Darwin