Are you and Doug sure that we should trust the columnist from the Independent (UK) in question Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and swallow her report wholesale? Here's an excerpt from the Independent article which has been used as the main source by NewsMax and the New York Post:
***** Black-on-black violence: there is a way forward
Who would have thought that the fiery Diane Abbott, a lifelong fighter of racism, would today be calling for tougher legislation?
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
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.
<snip>
There is something distasteful, obscene even in the coverage that has followed the killings [of black men and women by young black men]. 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 at independent.co.uk
<http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/yasmin_alibhai_brown/story.jsp?story=366725> *****
I wouldn't recommend the article to anyone here except maybe Wojtek. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>