- One of the best known black personalities on British
TV said yesterday that 'gangsta' street culture was a 'deadly virus' that
was destroying a generation of African-Caribbean boys.
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- BBC sports presenter and former Tottenham Hotspur striker
Garth Crooks said there was a direct link between films and rap music glorifying
violence and the drift of black boys away from education and into crime
and violence.
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- 'There is an epidemic out there, and it is killing some
of our children. Do you think there could be a correlation between this
and the growing dissipation of our cultural values?' he said.
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- Crooks's passionate plea to the black community to tackle
the issue of gangsta street culture was delivered to 2,000 delegates attending
the third London Schools and the Black Child conference to discuss the
increasing crisis of black children's underperformance in the education
system. Addressing himself directly to young black men, Crooks said: 'As
for the youngsters in our community who think they are gangsters; grow
up. You are pathetic. You are not gangsters or clever. You are kids and
it's time to impose zero tolerance.'
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- He continued: 'Street culture will become a deadly virus
ripping indiscriminately through our next generation, robbing millions
of their potential.'
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- Crooks said his strict Jamaican parents had instilled
in him a respect for decent family values. 'In my day it was only the rude
white boys who did not go to school. We were too afraid.'
-
- His words were echoed by outspoken Labour MP Diane Abbott
and Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality. Abbott,
who has organised the conference for the past three years, told The Observer:
'It is important to understand just how seriously we are taking this problem.
Two thousand people turned out for this event on a Saturday morning.
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- We are talking about a lost generation.'
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- Phillips told the gathering of parents, teachers and
educationalists: 'Our girls and especially boys face exclusion, denigration;
they face failure, they face destruction.
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- 'For every boy from our community at a university campus
today, there are two in jail. That is the measure of the crisis we face.'
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- Phillips also argued that the Commission for Racial Equality
should survive as a separate anti-racist body. He said government plans
to merge it with bodies responsible for gender and disability rights were
misguided.
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- Phillips and Crooks both defended Abbott's decision to
take her son out of the state system and send him to the exclusive City
of London boys' school.
-
- Phillips invoked the words of black civil rights leader
Malcolm X by saying black parents had to fight for the survival of their
children 'by any means necessary'.
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- An opinion poll conducted by Mori for the Greater London
Authority found that 55 per cent of Londoners believe the teaching profession
should reflect the city's ethnic diversity, while 29 per cent disagreed.
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- Last year the proportion of black teachers in London
was 2.9 per cent. The latest figures for school pupils show that 19.5 per
cent are black. The proportion of all non-white pupils in London was 43.5
per cent, while ethnic minority teachers made up 7.4 per cent.
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- A report commissioned by the London Development Agency
to tie in with the conference reported that 70 per cent of African-Caribbean
pupils left school with fewer than five high-grade GCSEs.
-
- The report concluded that low teacher expectations played
a major part in the underachievement of black children and that black pupils
found they were encouraged by black teachers.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,11374,1302841,00.html
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