Is Tony Blair Right?
Tony Blair - with only a few weeks left in office - said that there are some problems with black (UK) culture. This could just have easily been said about American blacks (who use guns instead of knives) who have a lot of internal problems that we need to fix. Pretending that they don’t exist is not solving anything. Forget about what color Tony Blair is. Is he right? Many schools have recognized that black boys are falling behind and resolved to do something about it instead of continuing to bury their heads in the sand about it.
Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem
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He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped “by pretending it is not young black kids doing it”.
It needed to be addressed by a tailored counter-attack in the same way as football hooliganism was reined in by producing measures aimed at the specific problem, rather than general lawlessness.
[...]
He called on black people to lead the fight against knife crime. He said that “the black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids”. [MORE...]
There is a need for introspection to solve problems. Yes most blacks do not go to jail and there are many black professionals, but this should not be used to cover problems
Filed under: Black American Muslims, Children's Issues, Convert Issues, Posts of no Benefit, Race, Sloganism over Reality
salaams
‘Frank talk’ is needed and is more prevalent, but what about the concern of exposing the dirty laundry to the racists who will use it to further their agendas?
Truth hurts, plain and simple. It is black culture. It may have started out due to proverty but it has become so widespread that it is part of our culture. I have two cousins, who were brought up in a two parent home, in a very good neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. This was a homeowners neighborhood. No apartments (Marynook). They were both killed in that neighborhood, 10 years apart within a mile of each other. Abdullah was 10 and killed in a playground on 87th and Jeffrey and Yusef was 25 and killed in front of Petes Produce on 87th and Stoney Island (yes the 87th street that rapper Common raps about). They also have a brother who served 10 years for a murder he alledgedly commited in the same neighborhood. Proverty did not cause any of this. A sickness that has plagued our communities did.
Almost every single murder victim and murderer I know (not included the ones I worked with in the Detention Center) and I knew plenty, were not from proverty sticken families or neighborhoods. My brother and his friends were even known as ‘The Educated Hoodlums’. People couldn’t figure out why they chose to be thugs.
Umm Adam you are so correct. And our community is really in denial about it. I say that because we condone the behavior (music, promiscuity, disdain for marriage etc) especially for boys/men. We baby them and let them get away with anything, and end not teaching them how to be responsible men.
Talking about the problem isn’t giving racists any fodder. They read and analyze every single statistic about Black people. They know more about us than than we do.
Here is another article stating that almost half of black children in the UK are being raised by single parents
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=44768&in_page_id=34
Here in the U.S. the percentage of white children born out of wedlock is as bad as the blacks’ percentage in 1960. Today almost 80% of blacks are born to single parents and the white trend is heading that way.
99 out of 100 people will go to the hell-fire. how bout those statistics?!
Round, Round, Round We Go
Well, that’s a relief. At last, Tony Blair is “lurching into total frankness” in the last few weeks of his presidency. Just what the country needs. He can at last outline the complete contempt he holds us all in, the myriad reasons wh…
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
This could just have easily been said about American blacks (who use guns instead of knives)
Actually, at least two of the recent spate of murders of teenagers were shootings, not stabbings. And at least one of the victims was half-white and half-Thai, and at least two were Nigerians, not Afro-Carribean Blacks. However, they all lived in the same parts of south London (from Clapham, through Brixton, to Peckham), which are ethnically mixed with white majorities. Clapham, in fact, is not really a ghetto - it’s a wealthy up-and-coming area with lots of posh restaurants and wine bars. But being next to Brixton, it gets a lot of the trouble overspilling.
But I agree with the central point that it’s culture, not poverty. I think one explanation, which doesn’t sit well in left-liberal circles or even in many conservative ones, is that in our political climate, “censor” and “ban” are dirty words and the market is deemed sacred. The government won’t (or in the US case can’t) intervene in these matters, which means that the most violent and misogynistic expressions of Black culture, and the industry surrounding it, thrive, along with the White-owned press which thrives on character assassination and hate-incitement and the extremist control of (a handful of) mosques which is tolerated until they are an embarrassment to the government and not just to the community.
Tony Blair often goes for the headlines that are most palatable for mainstream consumption and never takes responsibility for anything. The slaughter is a recent phenomenen and has happened under his watch.
Are there things that Britain’s Black communities need to sort out? Of course, but Blair’s intervention was misguided and unwelcome.
http://www.griot.wordpress.com