Panorama: hate on the estate (updated)

Posted on 19th October, 2009 by

There is a Panorama programme on tonight (BBC1, 8:30pm BST) about two Asian Muslim journalists who spent two months undercover in a Bristol housing estate, and encountered overt racist hostility, including both name-calling (Paki, Taliban etc) and physical assaults, when they left their flat. The abuse came from people of all ages. You can see a written report on it, with a short video, on the BBC’s website: Reduced to a four-letter word.

(One question: are they a couple, or just posing as one? Surely an unrelated Muslim man and woman should not be living together like that for a mere journalistic scoop, particularly when other means could have been used to find all this out.)

Update: when watching the programme, it became obvious that all the people who were taunting the “couple” were local yobs who were hanging around and causing trouble, some of whom had ASBOs (court orders against them intended to stop them making a nuisance of themselves). The footage gave the impression that there were a lot of people who helped them, both in simple things like giving them directions and in scaring off the yobs, and they were as white and ‘working-class’ as the kids. There was also a little girl who was obviously trying to be friendly despite the undercover reporter pretending not to speak much English, calling her a “beautiful lady” (how sweet!). There was definitely a racial element to the taunting, and a gang of them had also attacked Sri Lankan shop workers, but it was entirely the doing of these hooligans, mostly (but not all) male, pre-teen to young adult. The programme did not seem to investigate whether these same people were making life miserable for others on the estate as well. Given what these kinds of youths do on pretty much every other run-down estate where they exist, not just to non-whites, that would seem likely.

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  • aiman

    I think it’s pointless to speculate whether they are a couple or not. They were working together for this programme. People can live very far apart and still do wrong things. God is the best judge.

  • LeedsLad

    lol, white people must have the same ruthless mentality. She gets abused for 8 weeks hoping to contribute for a better understanding and we get this guy to speculate upon some unfounded saucy stuff about her and the other volunteer. Seems to me she was far safer in that nasty hood than being assumed a “slut” on the web.

    I shared a house with two Muslim girls during my university, so I don’t see why that would make me or them less of a Muslim or a suspect.

  • George Carty

    Isn’t this kind of yobbery from NEETs (rendered unemployable by globalization) the real cost of cheap Chinese consumer goods?

  • aiman

    “Given what these kinds of youths do on pretty much every other run-down estate where they exist, not just to non-whites, that would seem likely.”

    I agree. Some time back in New South Wales (Australia) a teacher was left traumatised after a nine-year-old student ripped out her hair in class. He would have done the same if she was a non-white. A lot of youth violence, though not all, is colour-blind. People of all colours suffer personal injuries equally in this world. When racism is institutionalised it only adds to the overall situation.

  • Codf1977

    LeedsLad - I agree totally with what you said.

    What is it with religious fundamentalists (be it Christian, Jewish or in this case Islamic) that assumes that 2 people of the opposite sex, left alone can’t keep there hands out of each others underware ? That aside what does it matter anyway, would it have made it any less of a story - NO so why bring it up.

  • http://eclecticalmanac.wordpress.com Atia

    Surely it would be more Islamic for people to stop assuming the worst and speculating on whether the two journalists were living together alone for this documentary? It only takes a bit of common sense to work out that a whole team of people are involved in making a programme like this. .-= Atia ´s last blog .. =-.

  • http://rumoured.wordpress.com Salman

    The researchers purposely found an area with such repute and sent its investigators there.

  • http://innerreflectionstranscribed.wordpress.com Sumera

    Most sane people wouldn’t walk down an estate as notorious as the one in Panorama, nevermind living there for 8 weeks for a documentary!