Is David Starkey Right ?

[Frank Sidney]

Of course the people involved in the riot are not purely representatives of any of the racial groups involved. But that doesn't mean they can't be critisized and failing of their particular culture can't be highlighted.

 

I haven't seen or heard of anyone blaming the black or any other community on mass for what's happened but they should be brought to book for their failings and negative examples of the group should be highlighted, not hidden.

[azazel666]

That's an unusually poor analysis from you azazel.

 

How can Starkey be correct? He's highlighting problems within our inner cities and blaming the white contributions to them on 'black culture'.

 

The white chavs may well be emulating the black ones, but claiming they're becoming black or blaming black culture would be like saying black chavs are becoming white because they all speak with London accents and sit on their arses all day expecting the state to provide for them...ridiculous!

 

The pernicious culture is the Culture of Chav!

 

Eh up BF, hope you're well! And thanks for the compliment!

 

I went into a little more detail in my subsequent post as to why I agree in the whole with what he said.

 

I think the error in what he said was the term "black culture". As I said, I don't think that all black people are like that, but there is definitely a rather undesirable culture that HAS brewed itself within the black community here and abroad. This has undoubtedly spread out into the young whites and some Asians...

 

An Indian friend of mine regularly makes reference to whites sitting on their arses drinking strongbow off state benefits.....I can see that this actually IS a trait which has developed itself among a lazy section of the white population, more so than the Indian population. No point dwelling on the fact if he said "white culture", there's a problem here bigger than the use of words to deal with.

 

I could also use "black culture" to describe happy, jovial large black women singing gospel songs in church. Not hurting a fly and probably never would. Would anyone object to the term being used in this reference?

[boyfriday]

Also, you can't really state that all the problems are due to them... Your basically doing what your slating Starkey for!

What am I doing? Being a 'chav' is an entirely voluntary status, to me they are ill educated, ill bred people who engage in criminality, whatever colour, religion, race or wealth status they are.

 

But yes chavs are part of the problem!

They are the problem, assuming we have the same definition of what one is.

 

Also, most chavs I see and have met, also listen to a lot of rap, go figure!

They do lots of other things too..but nothing compels them to behave anti socially, but they probably don't help them maintain a virtuous existence either.

[just_words]

What am I doing? Being a 'chav' is an entirely voluntary status, to me they are ill educated, ill bred people who engage in criminality, whatever colour, religion, race or wealth status they are.

 

They are the problem, assuming we have the same definition of what one is.

 

They do lots of other things too..but nothing compels them to behave anti socially, but they probably don't help them maintain a virtuous existence either.

 

So now your ok with categorising people into stereotyped groups... Just so I know!

 

 

In my opinion there are exceptions to every rule, also the reasons of allegiance can vary vastly...

[shims]

I haven't seen or heard of anyone blaming the black or any other community on mass for what's happened but they should be brought to book for their failings and negative examples of the group should be highlighted, not hidden.

 

The reason you have not heard anyone credible apportion blame en masse (as a whole) is because it would be absolutely ridiculous to do so!

 

No one community was involved. We all know this.

[tinfoilhat]

Quite right. The majority of rap music consists of ***** spirituals extolling unitary familly life, hard work and respect for ones elders. Far too much attention is paid to works such as F... the Police and A to the mother....ing K while such rap classics as Ice Cubes "Mofos betta pay dey council tax widin da required fiscal period y'all!" and Tupacs classic homage to responsible library borrowing "get dat book back bitch cos is overdue" are seldom in the headlines. I blame whitey.

 

In your post (which is a good un btw) you do allude to something else. Gangster rap wasn't invented 5 years ago. Try at least 20, as the top tunes that you quoted, nwa's straight outta Compton is being pushed by iTunes at the moment f the police and all. As a white teenager I used to listen to that on my Walkman when I did my paperround. Note I said "paper round" not "drive by shooting " or "drug dealing". Me and my friends have, on the whole, gone on to lead productive lives and not a youth centre or social worker in sight.

[boyfriday]

Eh up BF, hope you're well! And thanks for the compliment!

You're most welcome

I went into a little more detail in my subsequent post as to why I agree in the whole with what he said.

 

I think the error in what he said was the term "black culture". As I said, I don't think that all black people are like that, but there is definitely a rather undesirable culture that HAS brewed itself within the black community here and abroad. This has undoubtedly spread out into the young whites and some Asians...

I don't want to box myself into a corner where my posts lose credibility because it appears Im defending the 'black community' gratuitously because I'm not. But what I would say is that the features of the black underclass are similar to those of the white one, I don't believe there's anything inherent in how black people behave or what they believe that is vastly different from white people.

 

When my grandparents came here they upheld many of the positive qualities of what being British was all about, I've said before that my gran used to celebrate Empire Day and ruled her house with an old school Christian rod of iron.

 

How these black youths are behaving today is totally alien to her (and most black people), and many of them have little or no Caribbean influences at all, my granny is old enough to be the great, great, great, grandmother to the youngest of them, who have probably never visited Jamaica and in all likelihood never will-in fact their black influences are most likely from other members of their peer group and the commercialised (stereotypical) version of "black culture" portrayed in the media.

 

I have a relative who works in education and deals with kids who've been excluded from the mainstream. Invariably they are poor, ill disciplined and from single parent families. The 'black' ones are mostly mixed race, being brought up by a white mother who has long been abandoned by the black father. These kids (of all colours) are rootless, angry and the mother's can do little with them..their influences are the friends they associate with who socially/economically are similar to them. None of this excuses their behaviour, Granny Friday advocates some more 'traditional' and draconian methods of punishment for them, many of which I don't disagree with, but it's a much more complicated issue than simply blaming one culture over another.

 

An Indian friend of mine regularly makes reference to whites sitting on their arses drinking strongbow off state benefits.....I can see that this actually IS a trait which has developed itself among a lazy section of the white population, more so than the Indian population. No point dwelling on the fact if he said "white culture", there's a problem here bigger than the use of words to deal with.

But if he described on national television, feckless Indians who sat on their arses drinking cider all day as "becoming white", the lynch mob would be after him!

I could also use "black culture" to describe happy, jovial large black women singing gospel songs in church. Not hurting a fly and probably never would. Would anyone object to the term being used in this reference?

I doubt it because it would be a positive reference, just as I'm proud of being from Sheffield, and would be defensive if a Southerner (or worse a Leeds dweller) highlighted the negative aspects of it.

 

I think that's what also rankles with what Starkey said because he's so conservative and detached from the culture that he's deriding.

[boyfriday]

So now your ok with categorising people into stereotyped groups... Just so I know!

Well there's often something stereotypical about criminals-they're associated with behaviour I don't like!

 

In my opinion there are exceptions to every rule, also the reasons of allegiance can vary vastly...

Not quite sure what you're alluding to there, I'm not making any rules and appending them to anyone.

[azazel666]

I don't believe there's anything inherent in how black people behave or what they believe that is vastly different from white people.

 

I can see all of your points there. Apart from maybe the one about an Indian on the box complaining his kin were turning white....think we would be laughing about that one rather than lynching him. Didn't a politician once get pulled for calling some black people "coconuts"? Haha.

 

As for black people behaving differently than whites. I am finding it hard to describe what I am trying to say here, and I apologise in advance if I cause any offense.

 

A black person does not have to behave any different to a white person. I have no doubt that if I met you, for example, in a pub there would be nothing about your behaviour that would identify you as black compared to the rest of the guys in the bar.

 

What I mean by this is that I doubt you would be making a kind of spitting sound between your teeth, that you would be going "brap, brap blud", having no regard to the people around you, or would be displaying bright flashing jewellery that you couldn't possibly afford..........

 

Now most black people are not like this.....but the above traits that I described are associated with the behaviour of *a proportion* of black youths, and probably the majority of the ones who are on the streets of London making exhibitions of themselves.

 

It's this that the white chavs have imitated, and see ALL of these things as cool. From the mouth noises to the disrespect. Now we could argue that the kids would have been disrespectful anyway. We have no way to prove this or otherwise, but to suggest a link is by no means a crime.

 

As Mr Starkey said, 80% of gun crime in London is committed by blacks. Eighty percent!! So whilst there may be a reason for this there is clearly something brewing amongst the black community.

 

In a further effort to show I am not saying that person with black skin is automatically a gun toting thug, I have to say that it goes beyond skin colour. It's the brains in the bodies that power them. It's an attitude that has grown through the environment and attitudes shown by their peers in the community. Skin colour just adds another label to add to a particular group.

[just_words]

...

 

And can I add, some of the white imitators are blatant racists but sound and act this way (!?), but they've still picked up this behaviour somehow... And since they listen to rap and certain rap quite often promotes such behaviour, it is easy to assume that this is where they are learning their mannerisms.