The issue of youth violence never seems to be far from the headlines with almost daily accounts of a new homicide even though fewer people are actually being injured in violent attacks. (1)   There is also a tendency to frame the deaths as some form of internecine conflict among Afrikan young people. (2)  However, looking at the “the UK’s first 100 victims” of 2019, less than a fifth have been confirmed as Afrikan, still disproportionately high but not as much as the media inferences suggest.  The victims are also most likely to be aged between thirty and thirty-nine, again counter to the dominant narrative. (3)

 

It’s also generally assumed that the assailant is Afrikan yet in some of the high profile cases this has proven not to be correct.  When fourteen year-old Jaden Moodie was knocked off his moped and stabbed to death the media was replete with ‘gang war’ inferences until it was revealed that eighteen year-old Ayoub Majdouline has been charged with the brutal murder.  (4) Similarly, the police informed the family of teenager Ethan Nedd-Bruce who was murdered last October that the ‘person of interest’ in the case was an older, European male but it doesn’t appear that this information has filtered out to the media or wider public.

 

Another noticeable occurrence is the change in tone when an “innocent” non-Afrikan becomes the victim like Jodie Chesney or Yousef Ghaleb Makki, as Roderick Lynch, chair of the Liberal Democrat campaign for race equality observed it becomes a ‘national crisis’:

“It’s deeply saddening what has happened. There have been 723 homicides in the UK – the highest since records began. It’s taken the murder of two non-black members of society for the home secretary to act, as though black lives don’t matter.”  (5)

 

Thus the ‘something must be done’ brigade spring into action.  The easiest reach is usually a proliferation of stop and search initiatives, even though there’s no evidence they have an effect on killings.   These measures will also invariably over-target Afrikan youth even though, overall, “positive outcomes” (where the police officer detects an offence after a stop-and-search) were higher for white people.  (6)

 

The ‘pathological family’ family trope continues to be trotted out while other institutional factors get underplayed.  (7)  But it remains the case that Afrikan children are more likely to be excluded – in some cased 168 times more likely (8) and “Excluded pupils are 200 times more likely to be involved in knife-related offences. More than half the prison population has been expelled from school.” (9)

 

Short of the usual campaigns and petitions it’s questionable who much we can meaningfully re-direct the focus of the police, schools and media based on a sense of goodwill or fair play.  Key change will occur when the community intervenes to take back control of the narrative that is projected on to our young people.

 

The obviously response to mis-representation by the media is to create our own media; if the schools are criminalising our young people, we need our own schools and if the police are terrorising them, we need an effective community security/defence force.  But such institutions must be based on a resilient value system.  In this regard some serious remedial work is being undertaken by organisations like the Manhood Academy for boys that have been running rites of passage programmes since 2016.  The Manhood Academy sees as its mission “To nurture, through a ‘Rites of Passage’ program, the evolution of our ‘Boys to Men’ through social, emotional, economic and spiritual guidance, under the wings of ‘The Manhood Academy for Boys.” It does this in order to manifest its vision of ‘Building Leaders of Tomorrow for the World of Today’ by aiming to:

• Teach our boys about manhood
• Expose our young leaders to images of positivity and responsibility.
• Become more empathetic towards community issues, encouraging them to become active and responsible citizens.
• Create tangible goals that are in direct relation to their value system, passions and expectations.
• Understand their most powerful weapon is at their disposal; and having the ability to communicate effectively is the key to unlock that power
• Better understand themselves and the world around them.
• Respect and practice materialising their dreams, future and their potential.
• Understand that with confidence and a powerful sense of self, they have won every battle, even before they have started. We want our young leaders to be balanced.
• Have a vivid vision of what they want from life and the steps necessary to get there; we want our boys to become unstoppable, focused and iconic! (http://www.manhoodacademy.co.uk/#about-us)

 

When we interview Bro. Davis Williams from the Academy last November, they were preparing to take a cohort of young people for a “life changing and historic Rites of Passage Initiation into Manhood that took place in West Africa (The Gambia).”   The popularity of the programme is evidenced by the hundreds of calls fielded from interested parents looking to get their children involved in the next programme. (10)

 

The challenge faced for any coherent programme of bringing Afrikan young people to adulthood is proscribing meaningful roles in the community they are being trained to inherit.  This challenge merely underscores the indelible fact that the ultimate success of a rites of passage programme lies not in the (often immeasurable) talents of the progenitors of but in the capacity of the wider community to effectively utilise the young for the collective good.

 

(1) BBC News (12/04/19) Fewer people injured in violent attacks – A&E data study https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47902292

(2) Michael Turner (12/04/18) Youth violence can be reduced, if we face the difficult truths. https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/945038/london-crime-youth-violence-reduced-government-try

(3) BBC News (08/03/19) Killed in 2019: The UK’s first 100 victims.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47476217

(4) Matthew Smith (01/02/19) Yes, he is a thug. http://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/mt.php/2019/02/01/yes-he-is-a-thug

(5)  Rabina Khan (05/03/19) Sudden concerns about knife crime are overdue. Regardless of race, all fatalities should be considered tragic.  https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/knife-crime-stabbings-theresa-may-police-cuts-jodie-chesney-a8808196.html

(6) Anoosh Chakelian (05/03/19) Cocaine clichés and London blinkers: yet another knife crime myth-buster. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/03/cocaine-clich-s-and-london-blinkers-yet-another-knife-crime-myth-buster

(7) Jackie Long (04/02/19) Schoolmates of Jaden Moodie speak out after his killing.  https://www.channel4.com/news/friends-of-jaden-moodie-speak-out-after-his-killing

(8)  Office of the Children’s Commissioner School Exclusions Inquiry (2012) “They never give up on you”. p. 9 https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/They-never-give-up-on-you-final-report.pdf

(9)  Sharon Hendry (02/03/19) ‘OUR FIGHT AGAINST EVIL’  Friend of stab victim Jaden Moodie says his exclusion from school put him on a path to tragedy.  https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8548021/jaden-moodie-murder-school-exclusion/

(10) The Manhood Academy For Boys (21/01/19) Happy New Year. https://uploads.strikinglycdn.com/files/4b7fb62a-d8d1-450e-9f30-93df810413b7/HAPPY%20NEW%20YEAR.pdf

 

We ask the question:

 

How can we get to grips with youth violence?

1) Does the media help to criminalise young Afrikan people by exaggerating their involvement in crime?

2) If the schools are effectively preparing our young for prison, how should we respond?

3) Are we in need of a coherent community wide value system?

4) What is the wider community responsibility for Rites of Passage programmes?

 

Our Special Guest:

 

Bro. Davis Williams: an organiser, activist and a co-founder of The Manhood Academy for Boys.  He is the author of No Enemy Within and Along Came a Lion.   The Manhood Academy recently took a group of young males to the Gambia as part of a Rites of Passage programme.  http://www.manhoodacademy.co.uk/