Watch Riz Ahmed Address The UK Parliament About The Importance Of On-Screen Diversity

Actor and rapper Riz Ahmed has called on television producers to hire more actors from ethnic minority backgrounds, in a candid speech to the UK parliament in which he spoke about the importance of representation.

Delivering Channel 4’s annual diversity lecture on behalf of the public broadcaster, Ahmed – who has shot to prominence in recent times with parts in Rogue One, The Night Of and Girls – warned that a lack of positive role models in the media was making young people of colour “switch off and retreat to fringe narratives, to bubbles online and sometimes even off to Syria.”

“If we fail to represent, we are in danger of losing people to extremism,” he said. “In the mind of the ISIS recruit, he’s a version of James Bond, right? In their mind, everyone thinks they’re the good guys. Have you seen some of those ISIS propaganda videos? They are cut like action movies. Where is the counter narrative? Where are we telling these kids they can be heroes in our stories, that they’re valued?”

“If you’re used to seeing yourself reflected in culture, I really want you to just take a minute to understand how much it means to someone who isn’t,” he said. “To see [yourself] reflected back. Every time you see yourself in a magazine, on a billboard, on TV, in film, it’s a message that you matter.”

“What people are looking for is the message that they belong. That they are part of something. That they are seen and heard and that despite, or perhaps because, of the uniqueness of their experience, they are valued.”

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h/t The Guardian