ETHNIC
MINORITY campaigners have called on the BBC to scrap
a controversial documentary addressing whether young
black men in Britain are facing a crisis.
In The Trouble With Black Men: a polemic,
due to be screened on BBC3 tonight, the black journalist
David Matthews investigates the problems suffered by
Afro-Caribbean boys in the education system.
In two subsequent documentaries, he
considers the links between black youth and crime, and
the sexual stereotype of the black man as a well- endowed
Lothario unable to commit to a long-term relationship
and likely to be an absent father.
Members of the black community and
leading black newspapers have accused the BBC of reinforcing
racial stereotypes while failing to present adequate
solutions.
Ligali, a not-for-profit organisation
that campaigns for equality for African British people,
has written to the BBC asking the corporation not to
show the three-part series. Toyin Agbetu, a spokesman
for Ligali, said the first programme in the series "realised
our worst fears". He added: "It's unbalanced.
They had a six-minute section on solutions in a 52-min-ute
programme - 12 per cent.
"All it did was reinforce negative
stereotypes. It's a waste of licence fee payers' money.
The title is deeply offensive. The equivalent would
be The Trouble With Asian Men, a programme about terrorists,
or The Trouble With White Men, a programme about paedophiles.
It refers to all black men, there's no limitation to
that title."
Michael Eboda, the editor of the leading
black newspaper New Nation, said the BBC was still failing
ethnic minorities, more than three years after Greg
Dyke admitted that the corporation was "hideously
white". He added: "The majority of people
in this country don't know any minority ethnic people.
When you do programmes such as this, it is the only
idea those people will have of what black people are
like. It's just wrong."
In an editorial, The Voice, another
prominent black newspaper, said the documentary "exploits
the racist stereotype of black men as promiscuous, lazy
and obsessed with rap".
"At a time when the police admit
that the stop and search of black people is at an all-time
high and when black deaths in custody are in the headlines
again, this programme is inappropriate,'' the newspaper
said.
"Black men are also licence fee
payers and deserve programmes that don't insult them."
The BBC, which last year met its target
of employing 10 per cent of its staff from ethnic minorities,
hit back at the criticisms. Celia Taylor, commissioning
executive on the programme, said it was a response to
"compelling statistics", such as Afro-Caribbean
boys being three times more likely than white boys to
be excluded from school.
She admitted that the programme's title
was "provocative'' but said the BBC ran it past
the Commission for Racial Equality before going ahead.
Ms Taylor added that the BBC had shown many "incredibly
positive and aspirational'' programmes about black people,
as well as exposing institutional racism in the undercover
documentary The Secret Policeman.
She said: "[The] statistics raised
the question, what on earth was going on with young
black men? If you don't ask the questions, how do we
start addressing these issues?"
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