Discussion of what is undeniably true – the current wave involves a disproportionate number of young ‘black’ boys
So, much discussion about the black community
This really does not make much sense. There is a black community only in the way that there is a white one, if ‘We’ all, English, Polish, Jewish, Irish, Catholic, Scottish, Liverpudlian, Cornishman, old, young, Oxbridge graduate, NEET – we all share values, customs, experience & as a community are responsible sometimes only for our own, not for ‘them’
In the same way, West Indians, Africans, middle-class professionals, footballers, Mancunians, Brummies, musicians, Muslims, Evangelicals, boys excluded from school, English-born, refugee, have no more necessarily in common than the colour of their skin - & even that is true only if you stretch black to mean not exactly white
Even back in the 1960s, when the word black was not considered polite and non-white faces were only just becoming a commonplace in our cities, there was an interesting debate (at least among my fellow students) about whether you could tell the difference, on sight, between an African & someone from the Caribbean. I think you could, with a high degree of accuracy, though obviously not 100%. We notice more tell-tale signs than we think
We know that the simple questions What is your name? & Which school did you go to?, are, or could be, loaded questions in Northern Ireland, revealing as they almost certainly did, whether you were Catholic or Protestant. I was fascinated by an (Open University?) programme, which reported research which demonstrated that Northern Irish people could also tell, with a high degree of accuracy, someone’s religion from a photograph
There may be nothing in this, but I am surprised never to hear anyone bring it up in relation to youth crime. The influx of black people of many different national origins is one of the things which has changed in the last decade or so. How much does the current unrest spring from rivalries between boys of different national origins? Somalis v Eritreans, Jamaicans v Eastern Caribbeans, West v East Africans. Mixed race v ‘pure black’.
Or whatever
Related post: Community is a wonderful thing
