Matt T

It's too easy for the rowdy, threatening youths

I've just returned from the Notting Hill carnival, an event in which a large part of those attending were black youths, which must make it 'libertarian' blogger Natalie Solent's idea of hell. In a recent post (I'm not going to link to her site), she had this to say about black youths in Britain.

"Because the biggest problem facing black people in Britain (and the US) is crime by other blacks. This truth is often denied, but you watch the loudest deniers choose which tube carriage to get into late at night and you will get an education. Even black women will avoid a group of young black men. Imagine the tragedy of a black mother who watches her son go from being a lovable kid to being one of those rowdy, threatening youths. Eventually her fear for him may well turn into fear of him. "

Now unless I am reading it wrong she thinks all 'group[s] of young black men' are 'rowdy, threatening youths' who even may (she allows a 'may' here) frighten their mothers.

It gets worse, but first it gets bizarre. Solent believes that an incentive against anti-social behaviour is 'Get a good job and you can marry the girl of your choice.' But welfare has removed this link, and so now men don't need to get a good job to get a 'good girl'. So they don't bother to get the job. This is fascinating take on the whole subject of dating and marriage, and presumably must impact all the way up the job market, until investment bankers find that the black teenagers on social security have nabbed all the attractive women.

Now it gets worse . The problems faced by young black youths are basically because THEY HAVE IT TOO EASY. I'm not making it up. Solent says,

'Although the rising generation may never explicitly make the calculation "I don't have to work so hard because I'm black," that is the message that will filter down through the millions of little allusions, jokes, observations and examples that make up each individual life experience. And of course, many of them do explicitly make that calculation.' This, Solent adds, means black youths 'cannot fail to be dimly aware that they are sadder, cruder, less accomplished and complete people than they might have been.'

Now that someone intelligent can believe any of this is pretty stunning. It sounds like a comic-book impersonation of the Daily Telegraph from about 1952, and indeed manages to come up with all the lines you expect in this sort of thing (it even manages to get that usual trick where the writer decides she knows what black leaders of the past would have thought -- 'If their ancestors, who wore their black respectability with fierce pride and strove for black education with all their might could see them now'). I suppose we should at least be glad that Solent didn't feel the need to laud the achievements of black Britons which we would have all read waiting the inevitable 'but'.

There's not really much to add. What can you say to someone who actually believes that black youths do less well at school than other youths because they expect to get all the good jobs when they are older, and anyway if they don't they will enjoy a life of luxury on the State, which will in turn get them all the 'nice' girls?

My main concern is whether this absurd view of the challenges and problems facing black youths is not just that of a small corner of the blogosphere, but instead represents mainstream right opinion. I fear it probably does.

posted by Matthew @ 8/25/2003 07:00:00 PM Comments: 0