When I wrote a recent blog about disproportionately negative representations of black males in the media, I did not foresee this example which has bizarrely back fired on Sky News. These news platforms invite on guests with particular perspectives to suit crafted narratives pushed out to mainstream audiences. Often it is subtle, but this interview was a shocking example of a commentator pushing out oversimplified racialized slurs and lazy stereotypes.
On 26th June Anchor Adam Boulton invited former MET chief superintendent Kevin Hurley to comment on the Brixton chaos, which resulted in 22 police officers being injured when an angry crowd at an unlicensed music event began to throw bottles, debris and vandalise police vehicles. Adam appeared surprised when Hurley began spewing out his opinions on why ugly scenes insured once the police showed up in force.
He started by saying: “The reality of it is you will get street parties particularly in African Caribbean areas where they will turn up in large numbers”.
His attempt to associate street parties or unlicensed music events (UME’s) with African Caribbean areas is not strictly accurate. As a nation we’re aware of numerous other unlicensed music events across the country, for example, more than 6000 people attended a UME in Manchester where sadly a person died of a suspected drugs overdose, three people were stabbed and a teenager was raped earlier this month.
We also know that Bristol council put out an apology to residence following a UME, and that there were UME’s this month in Notting Hill and on Streatham Common. Hurley’s assertions that these types of events are synonymous with ‘black people’ and council estates were designed to mislead. The reality is during lock-down many people across the nation have been attending UME’s.
When asked what we can do to stop UME’s [to prevent incidents like Brixton happening] Hurley responded:
“The only way you’re going to deal with it is to have social intervention that gets upstream and helps manage the problems that comes from single parenting, particularly amongst young African Caribbean women... “I’m talking about intervening and supporting families when the children are 3 & 4 years of age to prevent them from going down this route of rebelliousness and often offending.”
It’s really important to tackle at source utterly ridiculous assertions perpetuated in the media, that firstly suggest a person’s ‘race’ or ethnicity is the reason why some people exhibit criminal tendencies. Secondly suggesting black absentee fathers and single parent households are the result of criminality and bad behaviour among young black youths- this is both untrue and unfounded.
Hooliganism is well known in British culture
Let’s unpack it properly starting with hooliganism. Hooliganism basically describes how some young people behaved in Brixton on the 26th June. According to politics.co.uk it is defined as disorderly aggressive and often violent behaviour.
England has one of the worst reputations for hooliganism in Europe at international football matches, so were some of the young people in Brixton acting distinctly British in this context, what is the difference?
Perhaps Hurley believes that white British hooligans parents also need to have social intervention in their homes when their children are 3 & 4 years old. It’s incredible to think that commentators are invited on TV talking such hogwash.
Basically it all falls apart when people try to offer up ‘race’ as an intrinsic reason for why people engage in public disorder, vandalism and or criminal behaviour generally.
Racialized criminality
I’ve heard Nigel Farage countless times make the same analogy as an LBC radio host. He too equated broken homes as being the main reason why there are crimes committed by black gangs and knife crime in London.
In a 2018 interview about knife crime on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan, Akala was at pains to explain time and again to Piers- why seeing black youths identity as inherently linked to criminality is a deliberately misleading tactic used by the British press. He referred to it as 'racial virtual signalling'. This is exactly what Sky news and its guest commentator is guilty of here.
Piers Morgan asked: "There is no doubt that right now the knife crime element of murder in London is predominantly young black teenage boys. So my question for you is there any racial or cultural element to what is going on relating to knife crime in young black teenage boys?."
To which Akala attempted to set the record straight with facts. "In the last 2 years it is still important to remember that the overwhelming majority of murders have not been committed by black teenagers, so for example in 2017 there were 117- or 116 murders, 21 of which were of teenage black boys and in 2018 there were 134 – 24 were of teenagers in general so it’s important to keep that in mind."
"It’s almost as if a black person does something negative, the entire black community is to blame, a black person does something positive, they suddenly gain their humanity and right to be viewed as an individual."
[comment directed at Piers Morgan] "...you will never be called upon the explain that not all middle aged white men are paedophiles, despite that hundreds, maybe thousands of them are convicted of sex offences every year, because it is self evident that not all white middle age white men are paedophiles."
The problem with dividing criminality down racial lines is that it produces distorted perceptions. Paedophiles exist in all racial groups, however media reporting in the main does not attribute this to being a problem within the white community, even through the National Crime Agency and UK police arrest around 500 child sex offenders a month- according to an article in the Independent in May 2019. Similarly the Telegraph newspaper this year in April published a shocking statistic that there are about 300,000 paedophiles in the UK sharing sexual images or abusing children on the dark web. It is by no means an accident that the racial demographic of the majority of these perpetrators was not a part of the features.
'Why was the public disorder in Brixton racialized and linked to the (unrelated) Black Lives Matter movement by Sky News commentators and reporting in the online daily mail?'
Gangs & gang culture is not new
‘Social indicators for violent crime among young working class street gangs have remained consistent for 200 years: relative poverty, masculinity, exposure to domestic crime, lack of education.’ Akala
In spite of actual facts Akala suggested the press deliberately use race as marker when reporting some criminality. There is a very real causal link between the media and public attitudes that mean intentional or unintentional distorted narratives produce a generalised misunderstanding of the facts and bias attitudes as a result.
I am not trying to make excuses for the despicable scenes we witnessed in Brixton and to a lesser extent in Notting Hill this month, rather I believe it is important to call out and challenge at source continuous negative misrepresentations and virtual racial signalling is carried out in the media.
On black single parent families
Hurley conflating single parent households with crime and incidents of public disorder is not new. I have heard this so many times in my life- one would assume it must be fact. The truth is there are a myriad of reasons why people behave the way they do. I use the word ‘people’ as an all encompassing term because human beings from all persuasions commit crimes or behave badly, similarly at the other end of the spectrum, people from black single parent families lead successful productive lives in society. It seems so basic, but worth noting when you hear this rubbish constantly put out.
For the record, almost every black family I know (including my own) have a conventional family structure with a mum and dad raising their children to be well educated, happy, successful and productive in society. This is our norm; I have no idea if it is vastly different for others. Naturally there is likely be some households where divorce or a relationship has broken down- but isn’t this the general case in all sections of society? Especially when you consider divorce statistics show 42% of marriages in England and Wales end in divorce.
You would think from what you see and hear that the majority of black family structures have broken down and that black men don’t know how to be supportive fathers. Where is the evidence for this, and why do they seem to have no voice to counter this narrative?
Let’s keep calling this out because it is unacceptable, dangerous and divisive to continually divide up society through the prism of racial lines. Good or bad, people are just people at the end of the day. I’m sick of this!
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images used in this article
Hooligans: Mirror
Akala: Good Morning Britain twitter
Gangs: Daily record / evening standard
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