Thursday, 11 June 2009

Is racism increasing among young people?

A colleague and I have been puzzling over a level of racism among young people that we've come across recently. Complaints about racist behaviour were offered to us by workshop participants on several occasions, and we witnessed openly racist comments among the young people in a racially mixed school class and among a group excluded from school. These examples appeared to us to be crude and unreflective reiterations of unfiltered prejudices, in contexts where no challenge was expected.

Now I just came across a post by a youth worker on the CYP forum, claiming that racist attitudes have not only vastly intensified but they have also become calculated and covert.

Over the last couple of months I have been shocked by the hostile nature of the racist attitudes displayed by young people - supplemented with many references to support for the BNP... I have worked with disaffected kids for over 15 years and not one single young person has ever shown any self-motivated interest in any political party but now they know the names of their local BNP representatives.

The problem is out there, unseen and festering.  Whilst I roll up my sleeves and prepare for what is going to be a complicated challenge I cannot help but feel utter frustration for the damage caused by the hysterical “moral police” who have succeeded in driving this social cancer underground.

And disturbingly, when it came to reflecting on the recent elections:

Support for the BNP was very open throughout the day with young people joining in the revelry of “their” party.

This problem has been brewing, and I'm thinking about a paper published last year by Carolyn Gaskell on 'young people's experiences of (dis)respected citizenship and the New Labour Respect Agenda'. She pointed out how hard it is for young people to assume a role as an active citizen when the state does not reflect a sense of respect and worth to them:

'feeling disrespected by the state, living in insecure and often dangerous environments, without the voice, power or belief that change could be enacted, many young people subvert their citizenship, creating an alternative framework of respect for themselves.'

[Children's geographies, 6(3), 2008]

11 Jun 2009 19:36:41 | Cohesion and diversity

3 Comments

LOL you social scientists just don't get it, do you? Sigh...

Posted by: AngryPerson | Wednesday, 07 July 2010 at 13:59

Love it, I'm a 'social scientist'? If only I'd stayed on at school, I'd have learned what one of those is. Angry Person, can you tell us? Do social scientists use their real names, for instance, when they comment on t'interweb?

Posted by: Kevin Harris | Wednesday, 07 July 2010 at 14:24

Diverse societies are generally less healthy and more prone to internal strife and conflict than integrated, unified ones, as a brief glance at history ancient and modern, as well as increasing volumes of formal sociological data demonstrate. The UK should not be pushing towards a multicultural/multiracial society.

Posted by: Jame | Friday, 09 August 2013 at 11:58

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Community involvement in planning Wholly sensible article on Planning Resource by David Tittle, noting that it's now five years since the requirement for statements of community involvement (SCIs) in planning was enshrined in statute: The best engagement develops residents' capacity to understand and plan the future of their place. If planners' and urban design officers' time is not invested early to talk with local people and argue for positive design, it will only have to be spent later on trying to dig residents and councillors out of entrenched positions.
PREVIOUS POST
Found difficult and left untried? Perspectives on participation and engagement For me, one of the recurring puzzles in participation and community engagement is how little attention is paid to the benefits experienced by those who participate. I wonder if the widespread uncritical use of the C word has something to do with this: if you go round assuming that 'community=consensus' I suppose you expect the benefits to the individual to be somehow self-evident. But they ain't. We've found that people do have views on the 'wifms' (what's in it for me), you just have to ask them. Bev Carter and I asked young people in Milton Keynes what sort of benefits might ensue to those who were active on the local issues. Among the responses: Power Diserplin Make friends Be popular Have fun Showing off Right decisions Achievements New things Get more respect Feeling happy Helping people Express talent... Among the perceived barriers to participation for these young people: Getting into trubble Age diffrence Bitchieness Bullying Parents get worried Racism... If we are to understand the difficulties in establishing a sustainable culture of participation and involvement, surely we need to have a serious appreciation of the identifiable benefits at the individual level? Over a year ago I noted that community engagement was starting to get some negative press, suggesting a need to distinguish its principles from managerialist practices in the public sector. If nothing else, that might mean that when we speak about engagement, we don't always adopt the service-centric view. I'm revisiting these thoughts because JRF have just published a 'round-up paper' reviewing the evidence on citizen involvement in local governance. It's a clear and useful summary of JRF's work in this area, but guess what, it considers involvement from the perspective of service provision and decision-making. If we always do that, then this kind of conclusion is what we're going to get: 'Community involvement costs public services significant time and money. Communities volunteer their scarce time and limited resources, taking away their energies from other activities in their community. If neither providers nor communities are clear about the objectives nor perceive any impact on decisions, on service quality or on citizen satisfaction, the policy is not sustainable in the face of tightening finances and difficult decisions about resource allocation.' This suggests, to paraphrase G K Chesterton, not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it will have been found difficult and left untried. I can't help wondering if a different perspective might find community involvement economically, socially and morally indispensable.

Kevin Harris

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments