Ask and ye shall receive....
AM: Any way possible to put this in the lead of the story, as it doesn't violate the WP/LAT restriction?
06 January 2003
I took my son to see Michael Moore live at the Roundhouse, in north London, before Christmas. The US radical and author of the best-selling book Stupid White Men was (mostly) clever, funny, angry, sharp, iconoclastic and sceptical about the lies and humbug processed by the US government and big business. Sure there were some flunked bits – you expect that, the troughs are part of the adventure, an evening with a well-worn rebel.
What we did not expect was to feel so enraged at one point that we almost walked out. It was when Moore went into a rant about how the passengers on the planes on 11 September were scaredy-cats because they were mostly white. If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no disrespect from anybody. God save us from such stupid white men, especially now, when in the US and the UK, black people's lives are being ripped to shreds by drugs, lawlessness, fear and frightful violence plus the endless circle of racism, exclusion and incarceration. This is not awesome, Mr Moore; it is a calamity, for descendants of slaves unimaginably more so.
Remember this as we mourn the murders of two young Caribbean women, victims, it is believed, of tough black men who control some streets of Birmingham and London and Manchester and who kill because they feel like it and they can. "Young, Gifted and Dead," Metropolitan Police anti-gun crime posters in 2001. They showed real pictures of young men in pools of blood. Nobody took any notice.
The maiming and killing goes on and on. Blood is freely spilled in clubs, schools, streets, shops, the privacy of a balcony and a small garden. Orchestrated feuds between gangs became more thrilling as guns took over from knives and knuckles. Michael Cabey was shot as he sat on a wall; Wayne Henry and Corey White were felled as they sat in their BMW; Godfrey Scott was shot in the neck and his flatmate Ray Samuels was found skinned and his tongue sliced off; the brother of the soul singer Mica Paris was shot dead in Croydon. In parts of London,14-year-old boys carry weapons and show them off. A black youth worker too frightened to be named tells me: "These kids are vicious. They think bullying and beating each other up is what sissies do. They talk about killing. They are kings when they kill. One even brought me a cat he had shot to show the others they are in command. They love it that everyone is afraid of them, even their own parents."
What lovely names they had, Latisha Shakespear (17) and Charlene Ellis (18), blasted away as 30 bullets were fired early on New Year's Day as they stepped out from the stuffiness of a party to get some fresh air. A picture of them taken just before the party shows them in hats and identical fluffy white jackets. A former black gang member – Scorcher, if you please – says he is sure that these victims weren't "gangsta bitches but that they were well connected and there will be reprisals for this". How reassuring on both counts. So it is OK to waste "gangsta bitches" and those who may be members of the gang who did this?
There is something distasteful, obscene even in the coverage that has followed the killings. Male journalists in mainstream papers, like Moore above, write over-excitedly about the guns, giving us pictures and prices, plus interviews with cool gang members, carrying on as if this is some Tarantino movie that has hit town. Meanwhile, decent black men and women in particular – mothers, sisters, lovers and daughters – weep and grieve as black-on-black killings rise in our inner cities, just as they have in the US.
Yes, we have massively more guns and armed crime in our society, and all races are involved. But British Caribbeans are disproportionately affected by the problem, and their numbers are small – only about 550,000. Their lives are vulnerable, for a whole raft of reasons.
Blunkett and Blair are, at last, turning their attention to this problem, too long ignored or hidden by white and black leaders. A summit is to be called in Birmingham, and there is to be a change in the law to introduce a minimum five-year sentence for anyone found with a firearm. Who would have thought that the fiery Diane Abbott, lifelong fighter of racism, would today be calling for this tougher legislation? But then she is a black woman and MP for Hackney, where she has watched the horror of spiralling black-on-black violence.
But the law alone cannot do the job. I think Abbott should head a task force to challenge the culture of confrontation, ignorance, violence, drugs, sexism and heartlessness that has corrupted young black males with their false emblems of pride and extracted respect. She is trusted more than many of the black middle-class suits who will be called upon to take charge of any initiatives.
We need the Government to nail the producers of vicious filth. Violent songs and videos sustain these men in their life choices. They feel good that they are lauded as desensitised robo-killers. And please, I simply don't accept all that liberal wash about the neutrality of art, popular culture, television and music. In December, a pitiless black gang of young men were convicted for violent car jackings. They had modelled themselves on old American gangsters, even dressing like them. The hardest gangs love So Solid Crew and the duo Oxide and Neutrino, who, of course, deny they have any real influence with such songs as "Bound for D Reload (A&E)". Neutrino has himself been shot outside a club, and three members of So Solid have been charged with carrying loaded guns. It is scandalous that the music industry and others walk away without any conscience about the harm they do or the good they could do.
Many other interconnected issues need to be examined. Afro-Caribbean men are over-represented in the mental health services, according to a new report by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. There is a crisis here, and the treatment offered is inferior to that received by white patients. School exclusions and behavioural problems, too, need to be part of the analyses. Policing has gone through dramatic changes since the Lawrence report (although too many racist officers remain in place) but what can be done about the refrain that there is no trust between the police and black and Asian people? Home Office research (Paper 129, 2000) shows that now there is support for stop-and-search among all ethnic groups, as long as the police treat suspects fairly, with dignity and without racism. There will be more black men stopped in some areas where gun crime is high. To decry this as evidence only of prejudice is now unacceptable.
There is another name I would suggest to Blunkett for his summit – Jock Young, the criminologist whose book The Exclusive Society is the most compelling and convincing analysis I have seen on some of what we are witnessing. He can see the connections between Thatcherism, racism and the self-perpetuating cycles in which images and expectations of young black men have been ingested by some of them and activated to become our worst collective nightmares.
While nice liberals and career anti-racists luxuriate in denial, a community implodes.
y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk
Senseless killing is in our midst, everywhere, and we look the other way and ignore it's reality or shrug our shoulders and say, "what can I do?" Dangerous times.