Racism on the Telly

Questions in Parliament, Gordon Brown apologises in India, headlines all over the tabloids - just how important is Jade Goody?

Racism is important and should be challenged. But why are we so worried?

Because Jade is a role-model and people will copy her? In that case we should get her off.
Or because she is representative of the typical Brit, prone to casual stereotyping as well as deliberately insulting behaviour? In which case we really should be apologising, in addition to voting her off.

Or is she such a figure of fun that racism will be weakened by her joining into it? (Or are the Great British Public too stupid to realise her lack of actual talent or indeed anything desirable at all? Hmm, tricky one.) We could explain that she has made a whole career out of being thick and we are exposing racism as typical of this? But I guess it didn't work when Johnny Speight wrote Alf Garnett into TV history.

One tabloid headline called Jade "The Dim Reaper". Another pointed out that there still are problems in Iraq and Afghanistan and that these might be more important issues.

There is a lot of racism in Britain. How do we reduce it?