Britain’s House of Commons is about to get a lecture on diversity from none other than Caitlyn Jenner, the man formerly known as Bruce.
Channel 4’s diversity lecture started in 2016 amidst the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and was first delivered by black British actor Idris Elba. Actor Riz Ahmed (“Rogue One”) delivered the speech in 2017.
A spokesman for the channel said, “The aim of the Channel 4 diversity lecture is to raise awareness and stimulate public debate about diversity issues.”
“Caitlyn Jenner is one of the most high-profile transgender people in the world and her transition brought transgender issues into the mainstream, helping to stimulate debate and increase awareness,” the spokesman continued.
According to The Guardian, Caitlyn Jenner’s lecture will also be kicking off Channel 4’s “Genderquake season” — two weeks of programs that will “open up the debate on gender.”
Last year, Pakistani-British actor Riz Ahmed took diversity advocacy to a whole new level when he actually suggested that a lack of minority actors on screen could push people toward terrorism.
“If we fail to represent, we are in danger of losing people to extremism,” Ahmed said, according to the Guardian, saying that insufficient outreach could force people to “switch off and retreat to fringe narratives, to bubbles online and sometimes even off to Syria.”
“In the mind of the ISIS recruit, he’s the next James Bond, right? Have you seen some of those ISIS propaganda videos, they are cut like action movies,” Ahmed said. “Where is the counter narrative? Where are we telling these kids they can be heroes in our stories, that they [are] valued?”
“If we don’t step up and tell a representative story, we are going to start losing British teenagers to the story that the next chapter in their lives is written with ISIS in Syria,” he continued. “We are going to see the murder of more MPs like Jo Cox because we’ve been mis-sold a story that is so narrow about who we are and who we should be.”