Heads in the sand
Yesterday, Blair “lurching into total frankness” tells us the spate of knife and gun incidents is being caused by a distinctive black culture (source).
This comes on the back of being told black dads are more likely to go AWOL - implying they make bad fathers – and that black school children are underperforming.
When Penguin Island found itself chatting to Ken Livingston at a recent party conference, the conversation centered on black on black crime. Penguin Island remembers, rather ashamedly the confidence at which it spoke on the subject, even offering up advice to London’s black community.
The point? Unqualified opinions, patronizingly suggesting it is a cultural thing that needs to be sorted out within the black community. And not that it is a wider social problem based on poverty, lack of jobs and “made it” role models.
Blair thinks he’s telling us how it is, cutting the political correctness. Penguin Island thinks straight talking is good, but let's have it when it's educated and productive, not just because you don’t know the answer and find it easier to take a swipe at political correctness.
Fancy a wilf? Here's one way to waste your time.
Want to make an informed comment? Read this first.
2 comments:
Blair's on pretty dodgy ground here, blaming the black community for recent violence is unhelpful and if anything likely to make matters worse.
But now that he has made his statement, should we dismiss it? There are other minority communities in London that suffer the same levels of poverty, unemployment, poor standards of education, institutional racism etc. but are not associated with violent crime in the same way. Is that down to the white establishment's / media's own prejudices, or is it a cultural reality?
Thanks for the comment Hattie. You are spot on.
To believe it’s a cultural reality dangerously antagonises differences and creates mistrust. Furthermore it irresponsibly
encourages a community-wide “no hope mentality”.
Most importantly it is dismissive of the real problem: unsuitable education, ghettoisation, dead-end prospects, lack of understanding of the community, and successful role models.
While you could say the above is true of many minorities, unique to the black community are the prejudices of the establishment.
These are well documented - the Stephen Lawrence case etc- and were probably seeded in the late 50s by Mosley and alike (ie the Notting Hill race riots).
So in PI's mind it’s the established prejudices that are generating the problem. Creating a danger of cementing the lack of opportunity (and its associated problems) into a cultural reality.
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