Hi Laundry member Ann here. This discussion is really interesting and i would like to share a case study with you all. A couple of years back two of my sons got badly beaten. They were playing football in the park with friends when four men walked towards them and began rummaging in their bags, then one of them slapped my son over the head. My sons and their friends decided to grab their bags and walk away from the situation, but the men followed them. One approached Daniel (my youngest son who was 16 at the time) and asked if he had a light, he said no and then they attacked him knocking him to the ground, one began to push his finger into Daniels eye. My elder son ran towards them in anger and pulled them off Daniel and began to fight them, but he didn't have much chance - one against four, they grabbed his tennis racket and beat him really bad with it. It all happened so quickly and their friends said it didnt feel real it was more like a film they were watching but they rang the police. When they heard the sirens the four men ran off. The Police caught two of the men later on the same day after the attack. My sons gave statements and descriptions of the men 3 who were Asian and one who was afro-caribbean. An identity line up was shown on a small TV screen and steven and daniel were asked to identify any of the attackers, steven recognised and identified one of the men that the police had caught. But the outcome was that they had to let them go because they did not have enough evidence to charge them. So it feels to me there was no justice here. i know its very complex because we do need to protect innocent people and people are also frightened to give evidence (none of their friends would give evidence for fear of there being some comeback from the attackers). But there is another issue here - these attackers seems to fit into sterotypes which are spread through media, whereas the media should prevent the spread of sterotypes as they seem to become rooted into peoples minds and they become them, rather than challenging them. Although as Brendan pointed out not all people act as the media portrays them, evident during their project when they had positive responses from the muslim community. Also i like Bevs thought on learning to speak again, if we can dispense with stereotypes maybe we can create some kind of new language.