TMP Online

Following TMP editor Chuka Umunna’s article in the Guardian yesterday and the publication of the REACH report, Winston Alaneme, an 18 year old black student in London, gives his personal view of the problems and the solutions engulfing inner city youth.

“Listen to your elders!” An instruction often directed at young people, which usually falls on deaf ears.

With good reason, young people should enjoy their youth and develop their own sense of identity rather than listen to the mantra of a by-gone age. So why should we think that by glorifying professional middle-aged black businessmen to our youth we will somehow alter their sense of identity? Being a teenager is about rebelling against your parent’s desires; it’s about deconstructing the blankets that have been rapped around you since being a kid and wholeheartedly rejecting their aspirations and creating your own.

I read with interest the leading page Guardian article about a chronic lack of aspiration in black youth. You might call me the other pole in the two extremes. I am of a similar socio-economic group, living in south London I’m a second-generation immigrant with parents from Nigeria but I’m brimmed almost unnaturally for my age with aspiration.

I went to a failing secondary school where I found that the advice heeded to me from my parents about pupil / teacher expectations was largely accurate. I grew up with fellow black boys who were shy and introvert at age 13 become opinionated amateur gangster rappers by age 15, one could only cringe and look on with sadness. The media bull is one too large and its devices to far-reaching to compete with.

Ah the media. There has been lots of talk of late about a growing lack of trust in the accuracy of reporting in the media. Indeed according to the media I don’t exist, a self-motivated 18 year old black-boy at a top ranking University. My demographic is already ‘represented’ in the plethora of RnB / HipHop music. This of course is nothing new; it’s called blaxploitation, the marketing of black people. An unwanted symptom of the black peoples movement, which first concerned commentators in the 1970’s, however it has never been dealt with.

There is now a ‘black-way’ of speaking, behaving and thinking. As such, non-adherence to these guidelines is interpreted as rejecting black ethnicity. The lifestyle and the ethnicity are intrinsically combined and according to many black people one cannot live peacefully without the other. If one rejects the lifestyle they concurrently reject their ethnicity. Coconut.

Of course its all fine to rant and rave, my comments are nothing new, they have been repeated so many times that many have become bored with hearing them and settled on more interesting and convenient conclusions. So what can be done?

Firstly, government should put a complete ban on music and music videos that glorify violence, women as objects or drugs. This restriction of freedom of speech is no different to the one imposed on radical imams who glorify terrorism, the vices may be different and some may argue harder to control but the result - enraged, disenfranchised and vulnerable young people is the same.

Secondly, Government should introduce legislation specifically for the media that restricts their ability to suggest non-tangible differences among racial groups. Some very contemporary examples that do just this are the trailer for “Rush-Hour 3” which utters the disgusting words “stop embarrassing yourself you’re an Asian” supposedly in response to an action by the character of Jackie Chan that is untoward with his ethnic group. Another disturbing film is “Undercover Brother” a film deep rooted in race non-relations, exemplifying all conceivable stereotypes of race.

And finally parents - parents should encourage their children to look for role models in all racial and demographic groups. Brewing young children with a new sense of “blackness” will only present future problems, creating unfulfilled lives mainly occupied with proving others wrong.

What all parties agree on is that something fundamental needs to change. The current black climate seems unsustainable and destined only to create future problems.