To tackle knife crime in London, policymakers must resist the black criminality myth
When historian David Starkey used BBC Newsnight as an opportunity to blame a ‘criminal Jamaican culture’, and black music, for tainting white Britishness with its inherent black gangsterism, a sharp but familiar chill ran down my spine. This wasn’t because I was listening to the rants of yet another senile racist being provided voice by the BBC. No, it was that the views he expressed did not deviate far enough from the long-withstanding views among key British institutions, and parts of British society, that blackness, typically among young black men, is inextricably linked to a criminal culture. And while the majority of us would hold Starkey’s views as wholly distasteful and racist, sadly, many would only find an issue with his delivery and not in his argument.
This is because for half a century race has been a prism through which crime could be understood. While two-thirds of knife-crime in the UK involve white people, in the areas where it does involve black people, like London, our institutions, such as the government, our public services and police forces, have opted to tackle crime as an issue unique to that community. This logic suggests that if crime is more prevalent in one group, then how you address it must focus almost exclusively on that group. It provides licence to measures many would deem draconian if not focused on non-white communities.
Instead of placing emphasis on safeguarding one of the most vulnerable groups within London, we have opted to vilify them. Rather than reducing inequality, tackling structural racism, preventing school exclusions, stamping out racist hiring practices, unequal pay, discriminatory housing policies, deaths in police custody etc, that could ameliorate crime in London, we’ve opted to build criminal databases containing black children, coin myths of black-on-black crime, police black culture and ban black music. By explicitly tying London’s violence and knife crime to young, black men, politicians have homogenised and dehumanised them to the point society no longer empathise. This is the ‘black criminality’ myth. It tells us that there is a link between blackness, black culture and violence — turning the young and often poor, black boy from victim to faceless aggressor. And by doing so, sending a message to young black boys that, to be black is to be criminal.
The roots of this myth can be traced back half a century to the rise of Thatcherite Neo-liberalism of the 1970s and ’80s and the need to respond to the civil unrest that came about due to sharp rises in economic inequality. In Policing the Crisis, Stuart Hall explains how the term ‘mugging’ was used in America to explain a new type of crime which involved violent street robberies. Mugging was presented as a key element in the break down of law and order in Britain, and like in America, it was the black mugger who was used to symbolise it. To protect the country, black kids were locked up without reason and with no actual victim, the only witnesses being the police who arrested them. Labelling helped systemically racist structures such as the police and the media produce spurious evidence of rising levels of black crime, which in turn justified stronger police measures. Hall explains how ‘mugging’ gave birth to the range of discriminatory policies that would define the years to come. In the wake of rising violence in London, the government, needing to handle ‘black inner-city violence’, has been supported in their attempts to bring back policies already deemed racially discriminatory and harmful, such as Stop and Search and Joint Enterprise.
In today’s London, where high levels of crime and violence can be attributed to factors such as inequality, mental health and poverty, the myth of black criminality is enabling policymakers to continue to introduce more authoritarian policing techniques and policymaking directed at black communities. The Gang Matrix, devised in response to the London Riots, is an almost exclusively black database of suspected gang members, including children as young as 12. Campaign group, Stopwatch, recently identified that “being matrixed” results in being turned away from job interviews, excluded from schools, and even barred from libraries. Many have never been arrested, guilty only of being born in the wrong area or friends with the wrong people. You would be forgiven for forgetting that the riots came about as a result of a black man being shot dead by the police and not a desire to throw more black people in jail.
The black criminality myth is not exclusive to gang violence. Black forms of cultural expression also fall under the remit of paternalistic policymaking and over-policing. A 2019 report by DCMS found prejudicial treatment against black British music, expressing concern with institutionalised racism and unfounded concerns from police and councils who place pressure on venues to increase security or cancel shows altogether. Ten years ago, the focus was on grime, where the police used now banned ‘Form 696’ to prevent artists from performing in venues. Today, Drill, which compared to grime is the sound of an additional two decades of suppressed anger, normalised violence, gentrification and exclusionary schooling, is also being constricted from growth. With no answers for rising knife crime, The Mayor of London was able to galvanise YouTube into removing 100 songs from their channel. I’m troubled that we have a Government who believes that if we’re to keep our streets safe, we need to legislate against black art rather than tackling the causes. Moreover, I’m troubled by the comfortability of a Government repeatedly attempting to ban black music as if the ability to make music is a privilege they bestow at their discretion. A ‘we know what is best for you’ approach to public policy that is both racist and fruitless.
Again, the news media has been complicit in perpetuating the myth. When the rapper Dave won the Mercury prize, ITV elected to tweet about his brothers criminal past. As AJ Tracey promoted his album on Victoria Derbyshire, he was forced to answer questions on his involvement with gangs, “I’m not suggesting you’re advocating gangs — but there does seem to be a lot of, you know, guys hanging out. Is that a conscious message or is that just the scene that you’re in?” With a look of dismay that reflected the sentiment of young, black men everywhere, he was forced to respond, “All my videos just have my friends in it — we’re just having a fun time.” The media has eroded the idea of black art as being separate to black criminality unless it fits within the confines of white liberal comfortability. The success of Grime can be, in part, attributable to the self-governance of the artists who saw an opportunity in diluting the raw potency of its lyrics to appeal to white audiences.
Through the media, we have normalised coded language for black criminality. Like mugging, the term ‘black-on-black crime’ has been used to justify invasive police tactics, such as Trident — who focus exclusively on policing black communities. However, the term is a misnomer rooted in black criminality fiction. What is perceived as black-on-black crime is merely a by-product of residential segregation. The only link to black people killing other black people is the proximity in which black people live to one another and not a black criminal pathology. Yet today we continue to search for solutions to black-on-black crime.
‘Gang crime’ is a contemporary equivalent. A 2011 study by REACH demonstrated how, where black people total 3% of the UK population, 7/10 stories involving violent crime featured young, black men, with little context or explanation for the reasons why the crime was committed. The study also found that in many instances, the magnitude of knife crime as a contemporary social problem involving young, black boys were emphasised despite, very often, the circumstances of each story being completely different. Sympathy was also only afforded to one’s social respectability and lack of involvement in ‘gang culture’.
Black communities have adopted the black criminality myth which has created a perceived onus on black people to explain ‘their crisis’. If you are fortunate enough to see a black person speak on the news, it will likely be about crime, and the questions will invariably require some acceptance by the speaker that knife crime in London is a black issue. This expectation on communities, from the media and key institutions, to explain issues through a cultural or racial lens is not uncommon. When a grooming gang comprised of Asian men was caught abusing young, white women, similar ethnically-loaded language reared its head amidst the public hysteria. All of a sudden interviewers required Asian men and women to take stock of their own culture and answer for what many regarded as a perversion unique to Asian men. As Akala explained, “You will never be called upon to explain that not all middle-aged white men are paedophiles… because it’s obvious that not all middle-aged white men are paedophiles.” It is the same forced rumination that requires Muslim leaders to have to answer for international terrorism while we deny the existence of white terrorism. And it is the same forced rumination when we ask for black people to answer for London’s knife crime.
If like Starkey, you are of the belief that black culture is criminal, then it may just make sense to tackle myriad social problems through criminal justice. But tackling crime through a racial lens only prohibits sufficient measures to reduce violence. Not only are we desensitising the country to the challenges these young people face, but we limit the amount of resource that goes into sufficiently addressing them -because they are seen as marginal and cultural. Worst of all it tells young black boys that they have no place in society and that their deaths, which largely go unreported, or covered under the umbrella of gang violence — is less significant than that of their white counterpart.
Now, in the same fervour politicians have taken to address the so-called ‘left-behind’ white-working class after Brexit, it is incumbent on politicians to challenge their assumptions, broaden their understanding and reinvent their relationship with young, black Londoners before they lose yet another generation through indifference and structural racism. Shiny new chicken boxes won’t save young lives.
