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Bradford really is the place where a particular mould of South Asian journalist goes to project their internalised racism.
All in this quest to prove that they are not like these 'backward' and 'uncivilised' folk of Bradford. Pathologising a whole community by creating caricatures that fuel right wing rhetoric.
No detailed discussion about racism, deindustrialisation, Islamophobia or austerity and how this affects lived experiences daily.
How different are these journalists from Sajid Javid?
Some of these 'journalists' need to humble themselves and learn from @BegumNadiya about how to represent marginalised and demonised communities on the BBC. Her documentaries about Bangladesh were excellent.
#WeAreBradford looks like it has a different tone. That, however, doesn't change the fact that Bradford Pakistanis/Kashmiris have forever been the collateral damage for trash journalism.
This is why I will never stop shouting about the vacuum that exists when it comes to working class South Asian voices in the arts, journalism, media etc. This situation is exactly what happens when being of colour and being working class are seen as mutually exclusive.
Said journalists can get caught up in their feelings and play victim all they like. You can work through that in your own personal time. What you won’t be allowed to do is use this perceived victimhood to deflect a very important conversation.
The reality is that race and religious hate crime is rocketing in the UK. And that’s only the reported incidents. The idea that the representations you carve out in your work doesn’t contribute to Muslim schoolgirls having their hijabs ripped off in the street is disingenuous.
WAKE UP! Your work has real life effects. People are getting beaten up in the streets out here and in some cases LOSING THEIR LIVES, whilst you so desperately seek validation from middle England.
Muslim communities continue to be fucked over in housing, education, the criminal justice system. Maybe if you bothered to look at the statistics, you’d realise that your work on national television will either be complicit in all of this, or contribute to a change in narrative.
