Tony Blair’s time as Prime Minister is running out, so he’s now lurching into total frankness by making overtly racist comments. What’s the problem? The problem is a recent uptick in gang violence involving (the peculiarly British) knife violence. And some gun violence, too. It seems it is happening in the black community. And, according to Blair, it’s all a result of ‘black culture’.
He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped “by pretending it is not young black kids doing it”.
It needed to be addressed by a tailored counter-attack in the same way as football hooliganism was reined in by producing measures aimed at the specific problem, rather than general lawlessness.
There’s only one problem.
Mr Blair’s remarks are at odds with those of the Home Office minister Lady Scotland, who told the home affairs select committee last month that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture.
But Tony Blair has an excuse.
Mr Blair said he had been moved to make his controversial remarks after speaking to a black pastor of a London church at a Downing Street knife crime summit, who said: “When are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it?” Mr Blair said there needed to be an “intense police focus” on the minority of young black Britons behind the gun and knife attacks. The laws on knife and gun gangs needed to be toughened and the ringleaders “taken out of circulation”.
There’s just one problem with Blair’s alibi.
Mr Obunge, who attended the Downing Street summit chaired by Mr Blair in February, said he had been cited by the prime minister: “He makes it look like I said it’s the black community doing it. What I said is it’s making the black community more vulnerable and they need more support and funding for the work they’re doing. … He has taken what I said out of context. We came for support and he has failed and has come back with more police powers to use against our black children.”
A depressingly familiar spectacle, no?
If poor people complain about being poor, they are told it’s their own fault. It wasn’t police brutality that inspired gangsta rap, it was gangsta rap that justified police brutality. Get it?
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Some more recent examples of Toni Blair’s ‘black culture’ murders?
Similarities between the murder of Stephen Lawrence in south London in 1993, and that of Anthony Walker have been drawn by several people including Anthony’s mother, Gee.
She said, “This was an entirely racially motivated attack.
“This is on a level with the Stephen Lawrence case. My son was killed purely because of the colour of his skin. We cannot change our colour.
“
Superintendent Ali Dizaei of the National Black Police Association told the BBC’s Today programme that the murder was “an unequivocal indication that the cancer of racism is still here, 10 years after the Lawrence inquiry.
“Unfortunately, young, innocent black children are subject to it, and I think it is a sad day.
“
However, unlike the outcome of the Stephen Lawrence case, where nobody has ever been convicted of his murder, Supt Dizaei said he was confident Mr Walker’s attackers would be brought to justice.
Paramedics found teenager still alive with ice axe in head
Chalk this one up as one more Blair lie … ‘black culture, would that make the Iraq war a ‘white culture’ event?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Boo – always been a preponderence of knife crimes for the Brits, a nasty effect of their handgun prohibitions.
Booman: “It wasn’t police brutality that inspired gangsta rap, it was gangsta rap that justified police brutality.”
Perfect! Or in the words of Hakim in KRS-1’s, classic song, Free Mumia:
“Claimin’ I cause violence, but America was violent before rap, FACT”
Cheers,
Ben
For those that have never read it, here is the founding and iconic gangsta rap anthem. Notice there are no pimps and no hos. Also, notice they did use the word ‘fag’.
The song was released in 1988, long before Rodney King got beat down. I think it speaks for itself. It didn’t cause violence, it raised awareness about violence. It was a vain effort the pretend they were stronger that the police.
The reason knife violence is “peculiarly British” is because it is so hard to get a gun in Britain. As far as I know, British gun control laws are the strictest of any Western country. To cite Wikipedia:
The fundamental reason why Britain has a problem with gangs is that since it has a liberal (in the European sense) economy, having rejected the kind of strong welfare state that European countries still have, it has a poverty rate somewhere between that of European countries and the United States:
The figures are for 2000.
Even still and upsurge in violence here and in Britain is a disturbing trend, particularly if minority communities are involved. It gets used as an excuse to cut social programs and build prisons. I wonder how much flows from the war, drug addiction among traumitized vets, and government officials looking the other way, because a generation of drug addicts can’t fight city hall. It was during Viet Nam that America became a high crime place from the late 60s through the early 90s. I hate to go back to that. If I lived in a gang prown area I would tell the kids the gang leaders were “probably government spooks”, just to make the kids avoid them.
It has always been clear that the kind of killing that continues in Iraq – uncounted – by the US and GB is, at bottom a racism which is part and parcel of the colonial and neo-colonialism that both Blair’s and Bush’s policy reflect.
To one other observation. I heard Blair in a meeting with Bono and B. Gates, and various African leaders. Blair made this long rambling diarrea of the mouth speech that said absolutely nothing! Makes you wonder how taken in we are with the Brits even when their leaders are as empty headed as ours. Another myth that needs debunking.