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As a young child, Gamal ‘G’ Turawa was brought up in a white foster family in Kent. He didn’t give much thought to being Black until he moved to London with his biological father, where a Metropolitan Police officer spewed a racist insult at him. Why then did he end up aspiring to become an officer with the same police force? Recounting his life’s story with riveting candour, Turawa explores how a deep-seeded desire ‘to be as white as possible’ led him to a career at the Metropolitan Police, the racism he experienced there and even perpetrated himself as an officer, and how coming out of the closet as a gay man ultimately led him down a path of self-acceptance and self-understanding. Intimately captured by the UK director Cherish Oteka, the documentary The Black Cop: A Villain, a Victim and a Hero is both a troubling account of institutional racism in the UK and, through Turawa, a deeply moving portrait of the complexities of identity.
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Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
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Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
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Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
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Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
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Animals and humans
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War and peace
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Art
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Human rights and justice
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Family life
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