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DIFFERING IMMIGRANT VALUES & CLASS: THE LONDON RIOTS, IMMIGRATION & THE UNDERCLASS
This is what's really happening.
There are good-natured sensible folk living in these communities, who have nothing to do with the riots, and abhor street life. These people are also part of the “urban” London community yet they never descend to criminality and blame government for their abject failures. What do they have that thugs on the same estates don’t? Well let's find out...
Smart people help themselves and each other out, with good values and small-scale community support systems (ie religious groups, ethnic groups, family groups). Those with less smarts AND no small-scale community support system simply don't have what it takes to become well adjusted in society now. For example, immigrant groups from Nigeria, Vietnam, Ireland, Jamaica, Bangladesh and Portugal all do well and succeed when they have; a) The small-scale community support systems and b) The smarts.
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a) The small-scale community support systems.
These systems are incredibly empowering, those within it show enviable self-esteem and unbreakable inner confidence. These systems are also crucial when establishing discipline and purpose. So we must allow communities to discipline their children as they see fit, which means permitting smacking.
b) The smarts
By 'smarts' I mean a broad range of skills; social smarts, cognitive smarts, book smarts, emotional intelligence, future-time-orientation aka delayed gratification, and a few others. Some of these smarts are hereditary, and others can be obtained or incorporated into what one would call - values.
These rioters have neither the above ingredients a) nor b). The youth clubs were merely acting as a state funded substitute to the necessary small-scale community systems, but it clearly isn’t enough to become well adjusted.
State spending for community building should not be the way forward for multicultural societies, after all, different ethnic groups have a range of methods to do this. Individuals need to go through the power process by building their own small-scale community support systems.
Now for an autobiographical but relevant brief.
Personal observations from growing up on a notorious estate near Brixton with my married mother and father. I had the necessary small-scale community support systems; I had the ethnic one - Igbo, the religious one - strict Roman Catholicism, and the extended family support network. With this triumvirate guarding my development there was absolutely no chance of me turning out like some rowdy kids on the estate, who have been in an out of jails, selling drugs and dying over foolishness for what it seems like forever.
Indeed, I never actually stepped foot inside my local youth/community centre, despite it being underneath the flat I grew up in. I never needed to.
11 August 2011 at 19:53
This is what's really happening.
There are good-natured sensible folk living in these communities, who have nothing to do with the riots, and abhor street life. These people are also part of the “urban” London community yet they never descend to criminality and blame government for their abject failures. What do they have that thugs on the same estates don’t? Well let's find out...
Smart people help themselves and each other out, with good values and small-scale community support systems (ie religious groups, ethnic groups, family groups). Those with less smarts AND no small-scale community support system simply don't have what it takes to become well adjusted in society now. For example, immigrant groups from Nigeria, Vietnam, Ireland, Jamaica, Bangladesh and Portugal all do well and succeed when they have; a) The small-scale community support systems and b) The smarts.
----
a) The small-scale community support systems.
These systems are incredibly empowering, those within it show enviable self-esteem and unbreakable inner confidence. These systems are also crucial when establishing discipline and purpose. So we must allow communities to discipline their children as they see fit, which means permitting smacking.
b) The smarts
By 'smarts' I mean a broad range of skills; social smarts, cognitive smarts, book smarts, emotional intelligence, future-time-orientation aka delayed gratification, and a few others. Some of these smarts are hereditary, and others can be obtained or incorporated into what one would call - values.
These rioters have neither the above ingredients a) nor b). The youth clubs were merely acting as a state funded substitute to the necessary small-scale community systems, but it clearly isn’t enough to become well adjusted.
State spending for community building should not be the way forward for multicultural societies, after all, different ethnic groups have a range of methods to do this. Individuals need to go through the power process by building their own small-scale community support systems.
Now for an autobiographical but relevant brief.
Personal observations from growing up on a notorious estate near Brixton with my married mother and father. I had the necessary small-scale community support systems; I had the ethnic one - Igbo, the religious one - strict Roman Catholicism, and the extended family support network. With this triumvirate guarding my development there was absolutely no chance of me turning out like some rowdy kids on the estate, who have been in an out of jails, selling drugs and dying over foolishness for what it seems like forever.
Indeed, I never actually stepped foot inside my local youth/community centre, despite it being underneath the flat I grew up in. I never needed to.
11 August 2011 at 19:53
