Ganging Up | Southbank Centre

david cohen who's going to chair this next session is the campaign's editor and she feature writer of the London Evening Standard and in the last four years I'm sure this would have escaped your notice he's launched north of the papers till 2020 ten dispossessed campaign the 2011 get London reading campaign the 2012 ladder for London apprenticeships campaign and the current frontline under campaign to highlight and tackle gang culture these components combines and won many awards and they absolutely deserve to I think this has changed an awful lot of the attitude not only to the subject but actually change a respect for a paper we have a lot of criticism of the media quite rightly but I think these campaigns have made people respect an aspect of the media he's published two critically acclaimed books chasing the red white and blue about poverty social inclusion and the race in America and that one the the Jenny Cruz Williams prize for book of the year 2002 and people who have stolen from me which launched the Picador Africa series in 2020 2004 and he's a Harkness a fellow ship traveled on a Hartness fellowship he was born in Birmingham which is a useful thing I think to say and I'd like to thank him for his campaign and for hosting this discussion David Cohen thank thanks dude and good afternoon everyone welcome i'm not going to detain you too long but we have we have a very heavyweight panel here on gang culture I myself I have to confess gang cultures not a subject that was very familiar to me growing up I grew up in a relatively functional middle-class household born in Birmingham raised in Johannesburg and then decamped to London around 1987 and my familiarity with gangs was Woody Allen in run run for the money or something like that with the chain gang but when I came to London I started to think about and encounter a different side of life gang culture is a subject that I've been thinking about and asking a lot of questions about for about the last eight months and what struck me when I entered this world was how the debate around gangs tended to centralize around to polar points depending on how sort of far or close we felt to the subject firstly there was a response of being intensely fearful of gangs for those of us who have encountered gangs or live on those states where there is a gang we know that this can be for very good reason when you look at the statistics I think it's a quarter of the quarter of knife attacks half of gun crime and a fifth of violent crime is because our violent youth gangs in London of 125 teenage murders since 2007 half of them are gang-related so out of this fear which people tend to respond to and which gets put out into the media we've tended to demantoid the second response there I encountered both within myself and London at large was the entire opposite from from afar we tend to glamorize gangs and almost in a sense in encourage a sort of alter-ego identification with with gangs what we sought to do on the standard was to trying to raise awareness to try and humanize gang members and raise awareness of the conditions young people face why they enter gangs what sort of need it was fulfilling and the violence that they faced both within their home and within their community the interesting thing was that research was done late last year by University College London which showed that for a cohort of kids company children one in five of them had been stabbed or shot one in four reported witnessing a killing in their lifetime and nearly half had been stabbed or shot in the last year so he nearly half had seen a stabbing or shooting in the last year so this desensitization of gang members we saw started very early and it led to a kind of conditioning and I think most people living in most parts of London it would be beyond our our comprehension really in our campaigns that we tried we try to relaunch this campaign called frontline London and the aim was to as I say both raise awareness but also we wanted to do something practical and build on the the quality the positive qualities that many young people who enter gangs have and some of them are actually quite entrepreneurial just for the wrong things they know how to measure and how to price they know how to sell and so instead of directing them we took those those skills and we got some young gang members who had had the courage to leave that life behind them but struggling to find jobs in a conventional sense we hope them form social enterprises and we gave them a 10 to 10,000 pound grant from our dispossessed fund and we helped with the aim with the help of kids company to set three social enterprises run by former gang members on their way now one of them was started by two former armed robbers who are now running a successful removals company yeah now you would have wondered how many Londoners would you know call up some armed robbers let them into their house and say you know here's trust them with them or you know the most valuable possessions and then watch them as they drive off in the van by well you can't believe how you know the demand for these two young men has been massive and since we launched that they haven't stopped working and we launched it with a piece which said they'll take your stuff away but only if you hire them I'd suggested their room their business slogan was them coming ready or not we take the lot but they didn't anyway we have two other people who were very much involved in gang culture and here we are supporting with the Evening Standard campaign on our panel today but before I introduce them I'm going to start by introducing somebody who needs no introduction kamilla Batman College Camilla the founder of kids company who in the early 90s launched this charity which is the most remarkable charity and I think in the country it's grown to a 20 million pound charity it helps about 30,000 children a year and is the biggest employer of psychotherapists outside the NHS in London Camilla is herself a psychotherapist and the closest thing in my opinion we have to mother Teresa figure in this modern time that she won't thank me for that she really is a mother and father figure to the most vulnerable children in London I think of Camilla as an alchemist she has created a pioneering approach to working with vulnerable young people it involves a wrap around repenting model of intense intensive attachment and as Jude was saying earlier a lot of the talk has been about deficit of love Camilla's organization is about bringing love to young people who haven't really experienced the kind of love that you would hope that they would get from their family or community environment over to you Camilla thank you very much first of all it's an absolute honor to be here on two fronts firstly I absolutely love men I love women too but I love men and I think having worked with a lot of vulnerable young men at street level now for 30 years I've come to realise that actually this is a group where society doesn't often pay sufficient attention to I don't know whether you're aware but the biggest cause of death amongst young men is actually suicide it's not car accidents it's suicide ie some male sometime in their young lives become so desperate that they decide it's not worth living again and they take their lives and what I found having worked at street level is that I've had the privilege of learning from some really extraordinary young people I claim no credit for what kids company is achieved because the clinical intellectual property of this organization the way learned how to do the business of care we definitely learn from the young people that we have worked with I have very brief time to share something with you and what I would like to highlight is that we've carried out extensive research now in partnership with a number of leading scientific institutions in this country hospitals mental health provisions and research establishments and what the research is showing is that constant exposure to conditions that lead to children being constantly and relentlessly frightened leads to significant changes in the structure and functioning of these children's brains often biasing their behavior towards aggression survival behaviors and high impulsivity the reason I'm saying this to you is not to medicalize a social problem but it's to actually say that now the zeitgeist has it that we have to change the way we do our work with the understanding that aspects of our biological functioning really gets driven by the kind of care environments we're in I has to be the national priority it can no longer be something that people do in secret and it's never talked about what needs to change nationally is that our politicians and our leaders start articulating the philosophy of caregiving in this country and prioritize it as much as the economy or the defense strategy why we have to do this is because there is a cumulatively large numbers of very vulnerable children whose claim to achievement is actually their survival of their childhood and there comes a point where the child who's been victimized will eventually make a shift to taking on the task of survival and sometimes that leads them to behaving as perpetrators of violence and I hope that the debate today will have the subtlety and the sophistication to be able to talk about what is it that we're doing as a nation that forces large numbers of our young people into ghettoized spaces where actually cruelty becomes the currency of excellence and a necessity for survival that's the discussion we need to have and finally I want to conclude with two points we are in a climate where moral judgment has become a substitute for meaningful action I think how politicians decide what the norm is according to their parameters and then they describe that norm that they have defined as part of society whose needs they would like to meet and to whom they feel like how table but the truth is that there is another kind of norm however much we may not want to accept it that belongs to ghettoized spaces that have been abandoned by mainstream and whether our politicians like it or not that is Britain - and you cannot sustain managing a country by absolutely ignoring practically half its population because they don't fit into your conceptualization of the norm and it's in this context that I would like to suggest that it's absolutely urgent and imperative that we begin to look robustly at the fact that we are abandoning our most vulnerable children and young people to survival on their own we have dishonored the contract of childhood where adults are supposed to take responsibility for the care of children and this does not make the children evil it makes our actions as decision-makers repugnant and that's what I feel about it I feel that when you decide to abandon the most vulnerable kids you're a con job as a leader thank you very much thanks Camila our next speaker is the Carla Oh Carla is a rapper and hip hop artists from kentish town in 2006 he was voted best hip hop act at the MOBO Awards he has done several TED speeches and performed all over the UK in New York Brazil Los Angeles and his 2010 album doublethink was described as a sonic kick in the groin delivered by someone trained in music's equivalent of the deadly martial arts he is also an educator recently setting up the hip-hop Shakespeare Company which runs workshops in schools Carla um you'll permit me to deviate just slightly semantics are very important and we are our parva at the bait or a panel and the title was gang culture I do believe and I'll point this out because not to be facetious but there are certain assumptions that I think are made when we put those two words together about what we're talking about but we might not be talking about the same thing or recognize the same things as gang culture ah to me invade another people's countries to steal their resources his gang coach David for example said he wasn't familiar with gang culture didn't grow up around gang culture not to be personal at the same time said he grew up in apartheid South Africa what could be more gangster wish than apartheid right and so this brings us to the crux of the problem that social power access to social power access to wealth access to education can shield one from the violence and the gangsterism that is done in one's name and we can then have a morality play where we only recognize certain forms of violence as socially or certain forms of violence as bad and other forms of violence is perfectly legitimate to the point that we don't even notice them if we want to talk about youth gangs and working-class London in council estates we should specify that if we want to have a broad debate about gang culture and I'm speaking in it we're going to be talking about gang culture in a broader sense but I do believe what was inferred by it by that was youth gangs in London so our focus a little bit around that I will refer to other forms of gangsterism or at least what I recognize it as gangsters when we when we talk about these gangs these youth gangs again there's a distance and there's a problem that exists over there and there is no or at least from I've seen whilst there are very positive initiatives happen in publicly it was very little examination of the relationship we talked about under privilege we never talked about over privilege which is its inverse if underprivileged exists over privilege must exist by it by by virtue of basic semantics right we never talk about the relationship between under privilege and over privilege we talk about those underprivileged people over there and their awful behavior what we never talk about the over privileged and the forms of aggression that over privileged people enact on a daily basis that relate to those forms of behavior we rarely examine the role the institution's playing this is not to blame as people always say whenever you want to look at a broader picture say often people say you blame you know you're making excuses now I want to look at the broader picture if you go to to adopt top and you have diabetes and the doctor tells you it's because you eat too much sugar the doctors not blaming sugar he's asking you to examine your diet and for me having grown up around this kind of violence but having also been equipped from very young tools to understand that violence on a psychological level on an economic level on a political level it's been an interesting tightrope for me because reasoning with people in the street and trying to explain to them the psychological and historical causes of this kind of adolescent violence wasn't exactly going to get me out of a difficult situation right but understanding it allowed me to survive it in many ways and so I think that there needs to be if we are serious about solving these problems which I'm not sure that we are and we have to be honest with ourselves what kind of a society would we create if we empower these kinds of people do we really want that society is that the society we're aiming for did the children the people whose children go to eating an octopus want to have to compete with people whose children come from Peckham and Tottenham for jobs for positions as astrophysicists for the to be the Dean of Oxford are these is this what we're striving for a genuine meritocracy if it is it's going to be a very painful process not just for the people in underprivileged spaces but also for the people in over privileged spaces because being accustomed to over privilege and then all of a sudden having the rug pulled on from under your feet so to speak is is very painful and so for me I'm what I'm interested in is not dialogue in about this problem that's over there it's alien to people like us even someone like myself who is now successful and educate and I have traveled the world even though I come from it right there what I'm interested in is is really genuinely looking at causes that doesn't remove individual responsibility that doesn't remove individual culpability that certainly doesn't bring anyone's child back to life but if you are genuine about solving an illness and violence is a form of illness in my belief at least then you must understand the cause of that particular sickness and propose then adequate and sensible remedy Thank You Carla Carla's talk about gangs of the under-privileged and also the over privileged leads me very nicely to introduce Faris al-bukhari Faris had the kind of childhood you would not wish on anybody and ended up in gangs and going to prison and pulled himself away from that world with the immense courage will power and with the help of kids company Ferris is also a talented actor has acted in a play at the Camden roundhouse with David Hayward and more recently formed the fab arts company a social enterprise backed by the Evening Standard that delivers interactive drama workshops in schools that helps resist children joining gangs but Ferris will forever be immortalized in my mind as the man who said to Boris Johnson when when we both met him he said you were in the Bullingdon boys Bullingdon Club gang it's just a different gang but it's Boris adulteress what sorta gang he was in and this was varus's off-the-cuff brilliant response over to you Faris hello brand my name is Faris I'd like to share a little bit about myself before I start going into the talk as a youngster I didn't grow up with biological family I grew up with my dad until around 10 years old or something till he abandoned me in there and then I moved on with my sister for my sister was young herself so she couldn't really she could have really tamed she was just she was just young herself and just she had a child at 16 years old and I moved in with my sister when I was 11 and she was 18 so that led me to just because she because I couldn't get that she just couldn't control me so I basically just led me to this seek seek the security and she had her own family going on so I just felt really like even when my nephew was fired by the open the fridge and he told me what you're doing that's not your fridge so I never really felt at home like so I seeked family with what use that I call in the gang I called a family that was my family that was my security that was my that was my Haven that was my safe place and within that within that kind of environment you conditioned yourself to not feel when you're doing these can you are doing gang activity what you that are calling gang activity you conditioned yourself to not feel you conditioned yourself to become numb so you can actually survive because this is what you need to survive in that environment where you've got nothing let alone a cuddle you can't even get a cuddle is no there's no love in this in this it's just actually just a form of survival so basically I ended up getting into what you guys might call the wrong crowd but I called loved ones because that was that was the people that took me and when when not when everyone else turned their back on me basically and when you're in an environment like that you you feel very powerless and you seek to regain power and to regain power you end up committing crime acts of violence and all in all when you were some if somebody had committed an act of violence or something like that you think to yourself ah I wonder wonder how that person's feeling but you actually he's like a boxer when he gets punched in the stomach he's conditioned to take that punch and that's what I was I was conditioned to to act in a certain way so I can survive so I never really saw myself as being in a gang I just saw myself as seeking the security of the family and belonging to something instead of just being out there as a lone soldier I've been through all the services social services you've you could bend in teams probations and I see them as all have failed me and I'm not a priority in the government sighs I knew that already so now I'm at the point where I've got I've had I've been doing a lot of therapy and getting help for a moment Camilla like however longer she come to watch a play of mine and at the time I've just been shot yeah so basically luckily enough I did meet someone who actually gave me an alternative family and that's why I see kids company as kids company gave me the alternative really look and what I realized is when I went to prison my so-called family they never written me they never sent me no money come and visited me make sure I got the boxes and socks and whatever else the basics that people need so yeah that's a little bit about my life and now I'm at the point where I'm trying to utilize my experience because I've got for a long time I thought my experience was worthless I thought actually like I've just been a wrong in my whole life and then but now I'm at a point where now can utilize my experience to actually lead others until I was look it's nothing glamorous I've stood on graves and buried my mates and looked into my mates mum's eyes like there's nothing glamorous about that so yeah that's it Thank You Ferris and lastly on the panel coal locker coal is a former gang member who successfully turned his back on gang life and has become a community champion and a youth ambassador at kids company he is also currently partly heading up one of the social enterprises backed by the Evening Standard and events and wedding planning company called new pigs which stands for new beginnings and they they actually did Ed Miliband's Christmas drinks party so not a bad start and calls were also an extremely busy man because he is currently doing his politics degree at University of East London over to you call it's always interesting to cannabis there's so much to say you know as far as I'm concerned everything in life is relative and we've all gone through similar experiences but we didn't experience the same things even in those same experiences and myself I joined a gang for maybe different reasons to Ferris but the underlying issues the same that there is an issue and we lack something can we saw that we could get from being a part of the gang and I've heard so many factors and different kind of hypothesis of how I became a gang member and I ended up being the man that I was or the young man now and as far as I'm concerned I ended up going that way because I was led that way and I'm not saying I was led by my parents like a lot of people that to cosplay man where's the parents my parents were at work like the rest of the countries parents in order to get through you know my mom she was a teacher her mom was a teacher she instilled in me a value for academics I loved academics I excelled in academics I was putting gifted and talented programs I was in the top set for every class I shined in every assessment and I loved learning um my dad was there I was one of the unfortunate few and I could actually call my dad daddy yeah he did teach me to ride my first bike and he did take me to play football so I don't really like it when they gave to the parents all this thick it's deeper than that but you see when I left my home the experiences that I encountered many have not and will not encounter them that's just it I left my house and the moment I close that door behind me there was an element of fear that I could not shrug off it was real they can't tell me that what I had in my mind was an illusion because I've seen the effect of those that regard this threat which was I existence I see them bleed on a weekly basis I see them being attacked marked and I basically had enough of my heartbeat and so fast each time I saw something that was a potential threat so I said you know if you can't beat them you join them I made an executive decision yeah I've made a lot of executive decisions in my life and that was one of them someone else who tell me the decision I made was silly but you know what the decision I made gave my family immunity the very same boys that was breaking into my mom's car when I helped my mom who were shoppings up the stairs that was an executive decision my behalf I had family friends and cousins in the area that they could now go from A to B without being approached they can say all their locks his cousin and then they get a pause and that's what I desired and as a young man I was broken like the rest of Britain yeah and there was other perks I had a form of identity I had more self-esteem because I belong to something you know and I think it's interesting enough and I agree with Carla when you spoke about this whole definition of what is gangs and gang culture we all want to belong that's it you know tribalism is something that all human beings do it's a part of the human condition you know I don't believe that there is some but it's just absolute minority that want to be by themselves and the thing is that in the SD we do feel like we are by ourselves as a collective it doesn't matter how much politicians stand and say they stand for the people you can't say you love someone and be punching them in the face at the same time they will not believe you and I'm not saying that there's MPs out there getting into fistfights but what I am saying is that they are saying one thing but our situation is saying another and the truth is that we didn't feel a part of Britain I tell you the honest truth I study politics I'm engaged in political debates I know a fair bit about politics so I like to think so anyway and I have not casted a vote in this country because to get round and do that is to a still haven't got there because the life I lived was totally outside of what we call the mainstream society if someone attacked me I did not call the police I literally saw the police as an opposition to me the way they dealt with me when they met me on the street corner showed me that they would not for me but against me so their matter if they said that there's a number I can call I had another number that I could call that they showed me love in a different way we may love is debatable but yeah they showed me genuine interest in it see me as scum so if something happened I was more inclined to phone them and we would police ourselves you know I didn't pay tax who wants to pay tax to a place not for that they benefit anything from you know so drug dealing was not only I knew it was making a living of other people's suffering and it's not a great thing when you're in that crack house is not a great thing no I'm not like it's not it's not something that's nice you're watching people smoke things and shoot things in the homes that no one would want to spend the day it's not the Hilton's but you're over there because you know what this is how we survive and this is how we make money and the truth is I'm not condoning it in any way I'm not justifying any form of gangsterism but I do understand it yeah and the truth is that I am a gang member today I'm part of the kids company gang yeah some people let me into the mainstream gang you know and to be honest I still feel like an outsider if I'm going to be absolutely honest with you I still do even though I get invited to a lot of nice events the truth is and I still feel you can't bridge that gap is going to take a lot more than that it's gonna take a lot more than that so I think that gangs have been demonized government has been demonized but the truth is that everyone has to kind of open their eyes and see what's really going on and that's the truth that everyone has their flaws government too you know the gang members and the gang that I was in as firmest was a family I never ever ever said that those were my fellow gang member I said that's my brother I had then afraid of them that way that was in occasion where a friend of mine not a friend of mine a cousin of mine he lives in Peckham Peckham and bricks and I at loggerheads I'm Brixton boy so when the altercation happened where a friend of mine he's now dead but he was alive then um he had the altercation with my cousin and his friends and then they ended up beating them up by Kennedy my cousin then came to see me at LA a day at for the same day at a time and now I was stuck between my family wanting to attack my family but the truth is I saw my gang family is more of a family and I gave permission to my friend that's now dead Alex to stab my cousin just gently to other people it may be like how can someone stab someone gesture that's it's not been caught on my face I've been caught on my chest I've been butchered in my back I've been shot at I've shot the truth it's normal so I let him cut him gently and that to me allows me to understand how much of a center stage the whole ideology of gangsterism takes and that thing that people refer to as a second nation or the underworld Israel is potent and well okay just bearing in mind the contour broader context of us being the VAM festival I wonder if Cole and Ferris could just talk to us a little bit about what being a man means when you're in a gang perhaps a little bit about vulnerability I know that first talked about how in order to come out of a gang you have to learn to be vulnerable again and how painful that process can be and Camilla's talked to me also about how people rail against her because she's made them vulnerable again and of course that makes them full of feelings again but I think for many people here and speaking for myself too being in a gang can seem both the most terrifying thing but also quite exciting and I just wonder if you can talk about what that's like because initially is it exciting and then does it sort of run out of Road and what is it like to be a man in again is it like to be a man in the game it's like a man there selling dreams but delivering nightmares basically to be a man in the gang you're trying to for me it was just basically out I was just trying to I would just be me I didn't see myself as being in the gang and I didn't see my I just I looked up certain people in the estate they were doing certain things they had certain things their life looked good and to me that was very attractive so that's like the security in that and also just when you're going to when you're going to like places to get opportunities because the government say that we put opportunities out there for people why are you not taking it when you go to get these opportunities you need to have the basics in life which is the address the bank account that identification everything else I've lived most of my life of no ID I felt like I didn't like I literally I couldn't open a bank account I couldn't do nothing so that means if I'm going for an apprenticeship or something like that okay what's your bank deals and then he said I haven't got number I can give you my mate pankley Yost he like nothing no we can't do that we we have to put the money into your account and then that doors shut but then you go back to the estate and the kind with the car or in the watch and everything he there's no application there's no nothing the doors instantly opened here you go here's a phone whatever he's this he's that do your job and I guess being a man in a gang is making that money and and surviving surviving surviving them them shoot outs and and the stabbings and the gunshots or wherever is that back then that was what was being a man by actually being a man is being able to realize that because a lot of people in these gangs used might believe that they want to be in the game that is that yeah it's so glamorous that everybody wants to live in a gang actually it's thinking people don't want to live in these games and being a man is being able to actually step away when you've got nothing you wish to see but you're still trying to step away and the whole time I didn't want to be in it a lot of the times I was doing things that I didn't want to do a lot of the times I was in situations that I didn't want to be in but I had to be a man and step up to it so that's my interpretation that being a man in general the lines of blood you know there's the definition of being a man I think cross across society it has been distorted and I don't think many people actually grasp what that means when I was in a gang the definition to be a man of what I was a man because I had some facial hair I thought I was a man because you know what I watched a film of a Congolese child soldier the title was lost I can't remember the title and the guy said I smoke I f word sex I I smoke not I shoot so I'm a man that's a similar definition that I had I'm going to be honest I got a certain capacity of violence I have sex I smoke I make money so then I'm a man and the truth is is not too much of a difference the definition that mainstream society is you know I've got some friends that now work in the sea they do the same thing we do just legally you know what jesse is an eagle to be honest as all evil and where I'm from to be a man is to have the ego and credentials to back that ego that's the definition of a man so and I think it's the definition that everyone gives to a man so I really know my definition of a man has changed that's why my lifestyle has changed yeah interestingly listening to call story about his father being there and Faris's about a total absence of parenting I wonder and people have talked about gang as an alternative family and indeed kids company as a positive alternative family I wonder if we can reflect a little bit on gangs becoming something that young boys joined because of lack of a father figure and also the connection of poverty because the Emanuel Joel former child soldier was down at kids company a couple of weeks ago and he was saying to the young people there that to some extent wherever there are gangs youth gangs it's a failure of society it's a connection wherever you find poverty you find gangs and I just wondered what Camilla the Carla think about the interplay between fatherhood lack of lack of a good enough father and poverty and gang formation I slightly think about it differently in the sense that substitute the word masculinity for potency and what I mean by that is that the construct of being a human being is that we have to nurture but we also have to pioneer a space we have to create generate survival opportunities and so on and I think what tends happen is that their rites of passage for boys and girls where they make a shift from having been nurtured and protected by somebody else's potency and ideally that's a parent and if it's not a parent it needs to be a carer and eventually the passage of growth is one in which the individual who's too vulnerable or smaller the baby the child the toddler grows up and has to take on the responsibilities of pioneering being potent in the social space and in order to do that you have to discover your strengths and your skills and what happens is that those who go through legitimate passages of rites of journey from childhood to adulthood have quite marked spaces where their sense of potency is reflected back at them so it might be the time that they go to university they get into employment they buy their first house they have their children and so on and those rites of passage become clear because they're social markers for them and also you know children living in safer and more legitimate spaces are facilitated through these rites of passage by other supportive adults until they get to a point where they're sure of their own competency or their own potency what happens to abandoned children in desolate communities is that those appropriate rites of passage are not facilitated by social structures because social structures often don't function in these spaces appropriately and then what gets less is how does a male coming from a position of having been maybe constantly abandoned or violated in Faris's case it began with in his family home but in Carl's case it began when he joined you know the more communal space his secondary school and on his way to his secondary school when those kids constantly get attacked they are being pushed back into the position of powerlessness and there's two choices when you're in that kind of position of powerlessness that individual often has you either despair and collapse and we don't see those children so much because they end up often in our mental health institutions or they're just tucked under some cover somewhere and they don't actually want to face the world or you decide that you're going to acquire potency by alternative means and in desolate communities potency the currency of potency is violence the more violent you are the safer you are and the more you send out a message that you're not to be messed with and that is where the perversions of masculinity begin to emerge where actually kids begin to think that the journey of violence is the journey of masculinity because that is where they get to experience some kind of potency and I think as a society we have to start thinking about what kind of rites of passage do we give our boys so that they can enter adulthood legitimately some of those rites of passage are clearly defined for well-cared-for children not so clearly defined for children who grow up in desolate environments thanks I think those are two large factors they're not the only factors are two very large factors poverty and and fatherhood but I would say poverty is not the issue so much as inequality is the issue I could take you to parts of the world that far poorer than anywhere in Britain with you go to Ghana was a Gambia we could go to Cuba you're not going to find throat in your old boys shooting and stabbing each other over which neighborhood they come from you might find that in Jamaica why in Jamaica why not in Cuba right so from society to society you have different reactions to poverty depending on the makeup of the society depending on the media decide depending on how the society is structured and what people's relationship is to that society so I don't think it's just poverty because the poorest part of Britain is still significantly richer than most of the rest of the world right and so do children in all parts of the world get to twelve years old and are faced with this kind of intra-group violence in fact i went to a township in zimbabwe in 2011 kids have never seen guns never seen knives my life and they wouldn't believe me they refused to believe me at the first time I saw someone get hacked in the head with a meat cleaver I was 12 and this is they're saying to me I'm privileged because I come from London yet they live in a place where because they have community the poverty doesn't affect them in the same way even if there's single paranoid if you have ten other men in your area in your neighborhood in your village to look out for you to bus you run ahead if you get out of line to talk to you but most importantly for you to respect and look up to and being disappointed what what got me when I was young was not men shouting at me not men getting angry the the I didn't go with my dad but the father figures I had including my own father to a certain degree what got me was respect my godfather was was a man the most intelligent man I knew he's actually stage manager at Hackney Empire fear he was a guy when it to be light was also a very strong man and his incredibly handsome so it helped right he wanted to be like you but it was respect the idea of him being disappointed in me was more painful than the idea T might be scald me or shower me and so having those people that you respect so much it just I'm saying I'm disgusted me makes you feel like this big that's more important than kind of a patriarch or overbearing madman of a father that kind of abuse doesn't help so I think those two things are factors but we have to look deeper because you can cope in poverty or you can cope with absentee parents if you have community one of my best friends at school his mom and his dad both died he's from Uganda but his church community and his and his religion and his circumstances meant that even though he grew up on a rough estate than the bottom of the ends he's now an aeronautical engineer now if he didn't have that community to insulate him where would he be and so I think that it still takes a village to raise a child I think we'll open it up to questions from the audience now have we got any mice hello thank you very much very fascinating to everybody's points of view I guess I'm really interested in the role of the shame of weakness really and male violence one of the things always seems to get left out of the discussion about gang violence is the same thing that applies whether it's two blokes in a pub on a Friday night whether it's I grew up in a middle-class background borrowed a lot of fights basically because I'm a boy you're not allowed to be seen to be weak and back down and I'll be really interested to hear what your perspective is it was almost like you talked about vulnerability but that's that that seems to me a thing that is specifically male women aren't shamed for being weak in the same way I don't think and I'd be interested to know not you know all of society and I'd be interested to know what your thoughts are on that I think the first thing is to distinguish between weakness and the capacity to feel as human beings we have a wide range of feeling repertoires and that includes sorrow and sadness and we need to be able to allow men to have this range of feelings without being ashamed what's happened in the British culture is that the the more vulnerable emotional repertoire has been described in men as weakness and I that is where things go wrong because it prevents men from being able to share their full range of emotions with people who are intimate with them often no definitely social shame is a factor of everyone shame as a factor nor doesn't like shame but I would contend with the notion that solely the boys I would say in my community in the Gaza they do the same as well they would get into fights they would be with a certain crowd it may be more verbal sometimes but nonetheless if they will assault each other and offend each other and that was a continuous thing but I think and this is just my opinion that maybe females get more from Association because where I'm from girls always kind of like to be with a bad boy and I hear it's a kind of generic kind of thing where the bad boys are always attractive to a certain extent and that's usually because I think of the potency that's associated with um the bad boy you know they have the power to do X Y & Z you know so um young men may go for that head on dot what the social scene wouldn't be seen as strong can't be seen as weak but then young ladies will also like to be associated with that so I think everyone's trying to escape it just in different ways really but definitely it's also saying it's a big factor interestingly when I was started off on the gang stuff I went down to a gangs forum kids company which is a whole lot of current and former gang members and I was describing how the week before I'd been mean waiting for Prince Andrew on the edge of an estate and I've got that little bit early it was a story we were doing about youth apprenticeships and I was sort of just noting a little bit about their state and a group of young guys sort of spotted me and they could see I was not someone they'd met before and they started shouting things out in my direction and my immediate response was that cowardly was just to walk in the entire absolute opposite direction as fast as I could and when I told this to the gangs forum guys they were all like horrified you know no you should have walked past them in this way or that way and shown you weren't scared and so there's sort of a different perception I think about you know what is what is weak and what is brave and also depending on where you are in the cycle even within gangs because just getting a sense of Faris's and cause stories when I interviewed them for the standard you know what was a man and brave to do when you were young became entirely different when you were much older any other questions in the front and then let's take both the questions and then answer them together and David there's some in the corner there that you might not see yeah thank you this debate and discussions linking up quite a lot for me with the one that was earlier with men it was called men behind bars often originally and it was about the impacts of imprisonment on men and masculinity and some of what came out in that discussion was about the destruction and dismantling of public services and how public services even when they were left intact failed so many young people her school and racism create a pipeline to prison so often for so many people and I wonder if there's something about semantics so really my it's a question for you David's I think sorry can we have an evening stern to campaign about caring and about issues and ways in which men and other people can talk about to policymakers in a massive broadcast like that the importance of care why public services matter why it's important to use words like love and vulnerability and shame and what that is and how being abandoned is painful and hurtful and can we have that as a next evening standard campaign well I am absolutely breathless speechless to be here today it's been one of the most blessed blessed time for me for what I am learning just listening to the panel there has opened so many well I wouldn't say wound but feelings to me because I had very similar experience I lived in New York City and how I left home at a very early age because of domestic violence went out there and I myself could have end up on the streets even being a prostitution prostitute but I just felt I had to say something here because if it really does has a lot to do I guess with your strength I call it or something in you to to make you feel that you although you've been through that dark side are you being too let there is something there in you that you're holding on to to bring you where you are today something is in there and that's what I can see in each one of you right there because it's mirroring something but I felt back then when I myself had those choices to make ending up on the street in New York City I left home at the age of 16 so here I am today looking at you beautiful beautiful young men and what you're not doing to your life I am so proud of your so thank you thank you thank you yes my name is Rashid nix I'm the director of the mentoring workshop a quick question is it true that in this post-industrial society that we're currently operating crime does actually pay it might not pay the criminals by it pays somebody and in the context of this gang debate and I use the term gang in inverted commas like my man Akana it seems as if these dysfunctional youth that I run up and down are creating employment as you said for thousands of psychotherapists I'm not joking here Monday I was in a mental health institute it was filled up with young black males providing employment for all manner of people I left there for some light relief I went into the magistrate school and sat in on a stream of cases 80% of which were young black males providing employment for defense lawyers prosecution lawyers judges security guards you name it everyone was getting paid except the criminals and it seems as if even the standard and journalists understanding are also increasing their profile over the back of this gang debate because I know that the standard is spent for my most of my lifetime right in demeaning stereotypical stories about black people so I kind of take it with a pinch of salt when I see the standard getting involved in gangs so my question in the long winded way is does crime pay and are you guys getting paid off of the back of our young men's dysfunctional behavior that's my question well Rober I'm so glad you asked that question well we'll start with America our greatest ally only because there's so much more written in it so more easily easy to reference statistics in America's history it's so much more well known to people I recommend anyone in the room read a book called the new Jim Crow why one we call Michelle Alexander and if to understand america's prison system today America has more people in prison in any country on earth more than China more than Iran more than Russia more than any nation in the history of humanity our chief business partner as in prison today the vast majority of these people are not in prison for rape armed robbery or murder there are more african-american men in jail for non-violent possession of not dealing amounts but personal amounts from drugs over a million to be precise in jail for that then there are four rape armed robbery and murder put together politicians that are seen as left-leaning and democratic like Bill Clinton brought in wonderful things like the free strikes rule we have people in jail in America literally in jail from 25 to 100 years for stealing packets of biscuits and videotapes and I'm being deadly serious I'm not being facetious there's three strikes law metla if you're two first two crimes were serious you're fired crime however unserious meant life in prison so you literally in Michele amazoness book she outlines K could you imagine Iran locking people up for 50 years for stealing biscuits what we'd be saying about how quickly the nuclear weapons would be lining up so caught no problem so it in in in closing because we've got a wraps in absolutely everyone is getting paid it cost far more to keep people in prison it does to send them to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge but this is not inconsistent it's not me being horrible if we know the history of the United States if we know the history of Britain and its relationship to black labor it shouldn't be unsurprising this continuum it's not exceptional it's not me being horrible it's just a fact what would be the consequence if America didn't have those two million black men in jail where would they be what would they be doing what kind of threat would they put this ability of American society so let's not act like we're so shocked and without understand why this exists and I think that dialogue needs to be brought to the fore because it's not in a lot of people's interests to bring this problem to a close it's in a lot of people's interest to keep it going and what the book outlines is we were last 30 seconds is it actually also the relationship between directly from transatlantic slavery and the fighting for moment to American Constitution which didn't abolish slavery it made it legal to enslave criminals to chain gangs to what today we have private prisons and many of these prisons are owned by private companies that Corrections Corporation of America who I do believe are connected the g4s you own prisons in this country so you can see the continuum even over here if a prison is private and the value of my business is based on how many people are have in prison what possible motivation do I have to have less people in prison it's just common sense unfortunately we have run out of time and we can have to wrap up fascinating discussion very wide-ranging and I will just end on a positive note that I think that any heat and light that is brought onto the subject is really positive both from a perspective of all the practitioners involved and I hear that you're a mentor so you are also involved in dealing with the problem I hope that as a newspaper we can do so responsibly and I also would like to hugely thank all members of the panel especially Colin Farris for it and sharing their stories with us and thank you you you

Channel: Southbank Centre

Views: 36,023

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Id: Q_XRsEJ9B54

Length: 64min 51sec (3891 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 01 2014