Been so busy tweeting that I nearly forgot to do a blog post about our launch đ Shocking, can’t get the staff.
We’ve been tweeting today mostly on the subject of hate crime to support the great guys and gals over at Stop Hate UK and 17-24-30 who have organised National Hate Crime Awareness Week. (In case you were wondering, the numbers refer to the dates of the racist and homophobically-motivated London pub bombings in 1999.) We’ve also been raising awareness of neurodiversity, a concept that is gaining ground in the US but is still little-known in the UK. What is neurodiversity? Put simply, it means encouraging people who think differently – like those with autism and dyslexia for instance, who may be intelligent and creative individuals who struggle to fit into a culture based on conformity.
When it comes down to it, what hate crime and neurodiversity have in common is respecting (or not respecting) the concept of being different. The police service – and society as a whole – has made great advances in the last 30 years or so in respecting and valuing the protected characteristics of race, gender and sexuality. However, we still like to be surrounded by people who think the same as us.
This is the key aim of the NPAA – to promote diversity of thought, and to encourage acceptance of people such as those with autism or dyslexia, whose approach to life is a little different to the norm. When we have achieved this, we will have broken down one of the last taboos.