... Three Articles From The Guardian On Related Investigation ...

Article #1

The ordinary brilliance of black youths

When it comes to imagery surrounding black youngsters, I'm used to the relentlessly negative – knife crime, underachievement, family breakdown, we've all seen it.

I've just had an evening, though, which was the exact opposite – unremittingly positive. The occasion was the London Schools and the Black Child awards ceremony, organised by the MP Diane Abbott and held at the House of Commons.

It highlighted the academic achievements of black youngsters at GCSE, A-Level and degree level. This wasn't an evening celebrating mediocrity – the plague of the burgeoning awards industry – but a roll call of excellence and dedication. And it wasn't about just one or two exceptional cases (more often than not being subliminally interpreted as "the exception which proves the rule" by those who continue to see black people in entirely negative terms).

The power of the occasion was that we heard one story after another of young people defying the stereotypes, overcoming the odds – and, in many cases, giving back to their community too. Altogether, 24 tales of great achievement. And, even more significant, there were just as many boys represented as girls

Youngsters such as Keli Dusu, who gained 5 As at A-level but has still found time to work as a volunteer for the Salvation Army Youth Club, and also to coach a group of autistic children. Or Rochelle Balach, who, without parental support, had to work to fund herself through sixth-form college, yet still emerged with three A-grades. Or Hannah Kendall, who has just qualified with a first-class degree from the Royal College of Music, had her compositions performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, and who volunteers at schools in Lambeth. And the story of Lawrence Price, diagnosed with learning difficulties and ADHD as a child, who rejected the extra help he was offered, and who has just graduated with a first in history from Oxford.

We also heard a touching and personal talk from Hollywood actor Naomie Harris about her own mother's drive to get a degree and eventually become a successful TV scriptwriter despite having Naomie when still a teenager.

The significance of all these stories was that, by hearing so many, it made the exceptional appear ordinary, and achievable. As I looked out over the Thames, though, I thought: how do we get these uplifting messages out there, beyond this House of Commons room – where they can challenge the relentless gangsta-rap videos, or negative news coverage? Where teenagers are given the message that blackness is about violence and aggression, and that to show any sign of academic interest is to be some kind of race sellout.

"You're in the media: will you be writing about this?" asked one person of me after the ceremony. And I thought: if a fight had broken out, or if one person had drawn a knife, the event would be front-page news. Such are the news values of my honourable profession.

Ultimately, this is a battle: between the multibillion music and media industries, and people like Abbott, who get on with schemes like this because it's the right thing to do. Waiting for these industries to change will take a very long time. In the meantime, though, it should surely be possible, for example, to circulate a DVD of this event in urban classrooms around the country, where it could have an immediate and positive impact. Can a sponsor can be found to fund such a thing?

For the record: I was outraged when Abbott sent her child to private school; but I have to say that organising an event like this far outweighs her ideologically off-message moment. One day, I hope, Abbott's message will get through; but in the meantime as least she has the pleasure of working with some bright, keen and enthusiastic young hopefuls and giving them huge inspiration.

Artcile #2

ASA raps 'racist' poster for kids' charity

A poster ad for a children's charity that showed two black teenagers harassing a white man reinforced negative stereotypes and was therefore "racist", the advertising watchdog has ruled.

The Advertising Standards Authority also found that another billboard ad for the Kids Company charity that stated "You are right – kids who can kill really are wrong in the head" beneath a picture of four black teenagers was likely to cause offence.

In addition, this ad made misleading claims about a supposed link between emotional development, brain size and violent behaviour, the ASA said.

Both ads were judged to be in breach of the ASA's code on decency, with the one featuring the claims about brain size also falling foul of clauses on truthfulness and substantiation.

The ASA conceded that Kids Company meant to raise awareness about the children it sought to help, but nevertheless ordered the charity not to re-use the ads, two out of five used in a poster campaign.

In its defence, the charity said the campaign as a whole had used a cross-section of local children from different backgrounds in and around Kilburn, north London.

According to Kids Company, the racial mix was representative of the children from the youth clubs in that area, with 80% of the children that came to it for help from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, a proportion that was again reflected by the ads.

The Outdoor Advertising Association said it had cleared the ads as they contained both black and white children and were spread as evenly as possible across nine different stations.

Kids Company's ads were designed to "confront superficial judgments and prejudices" and challenged the viewer to reject stereotypes, the charity added.

The charity said the ad showing the black teenagers harassing the white man opposed the viewer's presumption – spelled out in the headline "How do you get inside the head of a 16-year-old knife-wielding thug?" – with the charity's point of view, written in italics: "First get inside the head of a 16-year-old bed-wetting boy."

However, the ASA found that this ad "focused on a negative image of black teenagers that was likely to reinforce negative stereotypes and was therefore racist".

The watchdog also said the ad linking violent teenagers to emotional underdevelopment "was likely to cause serious offence because it featured only black teenagers".

Kids Company said two images of the brain it used in this ad – one, larger brain was labelled "normal", while a smaller one was marked "extreme neglect" – had been taken from a US study on child trauma and brain development that demonstrated the effect of sensory deprivation on brain size.

However, the ASA said its interpretation of the study suggested it was referring to factors such as nutrition and children being raised in cages in dark rooms, not just to emotional development.

Moreover, the regulator rejected the idea that there was evidence that brain size had an impact on violent behaviour, as it found the ad had implied.

Article #3

The silenced majority

Since January, the term knife crime has been used more than 1,500 times by the national press - and it is a fair bet that most media images associated with these figures will be of young black men. Unsurprisingly, this is leading to a growing sense of frustration among black community leaders, academics and, not least, black youngsters themselves, over what they see as blatant misrepresentation.

Black youths who fit this media stereotype represent a tiny fraction of the young black population as a whole, they argue, and while negative stories about black teenagers are almost guaranteed headlines, the positive achievements of black youth go largely ignored.

This trend has consequences beyond creating an unbalanced picture. Numerous studies have shown a clear link between media furore and draconian policy-making, says Kjartan Sveinsson, the author of a Runnymede Trust report on the ways in which popular understandings of race and crime influence media reporting, and vice versa. "The tragedy is this can increase racial tension on the street and do little to stem the violence," he says.

Which in turn, of course, leads to further reports of violence, and the circle continues. In April 2007, for instance, after a number of high-profile shootings in south London, Tony Blair made a speech to the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce. Was he perhaps responding to media pressure when he asked: "When are we going to start saying this [gang crime] is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend it has nothing to do with it?"

There was no ambiguity when David Cameron spoke after the death of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool, singling out the media by saying: "Deaths by fists, knives and guns are becoming a regular feature of British news ... these murders must draw a line in the sand."

In Manchester, one group of black teenagers, who believe they should have made headlines for the right reasons, are angry at their treatment by the media. So much so they have published an open letter on the subject

The Reclaim project began as a pilot in the autumn of 2007 at Urbis, an exhibition centre in Manchester, to work with 12-14-year-old boys from Moss Side and other perceived trouble spots in the city. The idea was spawned as a reaction to rising youth violence and the negative portrayal of young people, especially from the African-Caribbean community.

... Articles From The Independant On Related Investigation ...

Number One ...


Inspirational teenagers: Whoever said the youth of today are just a bunch of feckless layabouts?
Here, we introduce six shining examples of young talent at work


By Charlotte Philby
Saturday, 10 October 2009


Dennis Gyamfi , social activistAge: 19
Dennis Gyamfi was raised by his grandparents in Ghana: "I would have to walk for miles carrying water on my head as a child," he recalls. "From an early age I had to go out to work to support my family." When he was 10 years old, Gyamfi joined his mother and father at their small council flat in Brixton, and his life change dramatically. "In London, my parents were working all day and night; there was no one to look after me and my siblings. I started hanging out in gangs on the streets around my estate, getting in trouble." Until a chance encounter set him on a different path.


At the age of 15, Gyamfi met a man called Soloman who worked for X-it, a programme set up by people who have successfully escaped gang life and which offers inner-city kids and teenagers an alternative to the street. Within a year of becoming involved with X-it, Gyamfi himself had become a mentor, and won a public service award for his efforts. "If it hadn't been for that meeting," Gyamfi recalls, "my life might have turned out very differently."




Number Two ...


Jail for gangsters' girlfriends who stash guns


By Elizabeth Barrett,

Wednesday, 30 September 2009



Young women who stash guns for their gangster boyfriends are risking their futures and will face jail, police said today.
The stark warning was issued at the launch of a campaign to help prevent shootings across London by urging young women not to hide weapons .


Black teenagers in the capital aged between 15 and 19 years are being targeted under the initiative, which follows a recent rise in the numbers of young women being arrested and convicted for possessing weapons.
Among a dozen women charged so far this year with possession of a firearm were seven teenagers, including a 16-year-old girl arrested after a 9mm Browning self-loading pistol loaded with one round was discovered in her bedroom.
The series of radio, cinema and billboard adverts - carrying the strapline "Hide his gun and you help commit the crime" - has been masterminded by Trident, the Metropolitan Police's anti-shooting unit.


Police fear more girls are being persuaded to store weapons for male friends and relatives.
Detective Chief Superintendent Helen Ball, head of Trident, said: "We are launching this campaign now because of a very worrying trend that we have noticed has been increasing over the last few years.


"In the years 2004 to 2007 on average we charged five women a year with possessing a gun. Last year we charged 13 women, this year we have already charged 12.
"We've been very worried about the increase in women who are carrying and hiding guns for gunmen. We want to raise awareness of the fact they are equally responsible for the crimes committed with those guns and they will face the same prison sentences as the men involved."
She said if the women were over the age of 18 they faced a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years.


The campaign is targeting Trident's six priority boroughs of Brent, Hackney, Haringey, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark.
Claudia Webbe, chairwoman of Trident's Independent Advisory Group, said: "Sadly whether through lack of self-esteem, lack of confidence or the need for love, we are seeing an increasing number of young women being caught up in the whole nature of gun crime.
"This campaign sends a clear and direct message to young women vulnerable to male peer pressure that if you hide, store, or carry a gun there are going to be dire consequences.
"You will face the same consequences as your male counterparts. This will have devastating effects on your future and the people you love."


One woman at the launch, named only as Rebecca, who was jailed, warned other young females not to succumb to pressure and risk their lives through hiding a gun.
She said: "Nobody, if they say they love you, or if they say they care about you and that is the reason why they want you to hold their weapon, you know they don't. They are doing it to save their own skin. They are only doing it because they know you will face the consequences and they won't. That's not love, that's not friendship, that's manipulation and it's bullying."
She added: "Holding a firearm for someone is something you have to say 'I won't allow in my life'. There are consequences not only to yourself and to possible victims, but friends and family. It's your future."



Number Three ..


Gang rape: Is it a race issue?


A high proportion of such attacks appears to be carried out by young black men, according to Metropolitan Police statistics.

Sorious Samura investigates this horrendous crime – and what it says about Britain today
Sunday, 21 June 2009

In 1999 I witnessed a gang rape in Sierra Leone. I was forced to watch a group of rebel soldiers taking it in turns to rape a young girl in front of an audience of jeering men. It was the height of the civil conflict and rape had become a devastating weapon of war. When I moved to Britain I believed I had escaped such horrific sexual violence. As my Dispatches investigation tomorrow night shows, I was mistaken. Gang rape is happening here – and what I have found most disturbing as an African is that a disproportionate number of these attacks are being carried out by black or mixed-race young men.


Towards the end of last year, police and child welfare experts working on Channel 4's Street Weapons Commission told us of their concerns about gang rape. Then two big cases hit the headlines.
In December, nine schoolboys, some as young as 13 at the time of the attack, were convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl. She was dragged between tower blocks in Hackney where she was threatened with a knife, hit and raped during an ordeal that lasted an hour and a half – some of which was filmed on mobile phones.



In January, three men were convicted of gang raping a 16-year-old with learning disabilities for two hours before dousing her with caustic soda in an effort to get rid of the evidence.


How prevalent is this crime and why it is happening in Britain? Despite the seriousness of the crime, I was amazed to discover that no national statistics exist: gang rape is simply not recorded as a separate crime category. So over a period of several months we set about collating our own.


We approached the Crown Prosecution Service, the Association of Chief Police Officers, all 50 police forces, crown courts, barristers and rape referral centres to try to establish the numbers.
One of the few police forces to have begun recording the figures of reported gang rape is the Metropolitan Police. In 2008 alone, they received reports of 85 gang rapes. Using the Met's definition of gang rape – those involving three or more perpetrators – we began to look at the number of convictions. We tracked down 29 cases, from January 2006 to March 2009, in which a total of 92 young people were convicted of involvement in gang rape.
One fact stood out. Of those convicted, 66 were black or mixed race, 13 were white and the remainder were from other countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
Clearly this is not a crime exclusive to black communities, but I found it impossible to ignore the fact that such a high proportion were committed by black and mixed-race young men. As a black man as well as a journalist, I wanted to understand what lay behind such attacks. So I spoke to victims, groups of black and mixed-race teenagers, youth and social workers and community leaders.


The groups of young men I met in London expressed some profoundly disturbing attitudes towards girls and sex. The boys explained how they make arrangements for "line-ups" in which one girl has oral sex with up to six or seven of them at one time. These arrangements might be made at school or on mobile phones.


Sometimes these girls initially consent because they want to be popular. But these events can spiral into rape because the boys consider that any girl who is prepared to agree to a line-up can be considered fair game. One boy told me: "If she wants to go and meet a bag of boys then she's probably a jezzie [slut], and if she's going to a house it's over – she's going to get beaten [have sex]."


In other instances, as some of the victims in our film describe, girls can unwittingly walk into a trap, innocently visiting someone's house to listen to music or watch a film only to discover that a group of boys are lying in wait. Or they might be hanging out with friends in a park and suddenly realise they have become surrounded by a group of boys intent on sex.



For both boys and girls, the line between this sort of group sex and rape seems to be blurred. A girl might agree to have oral sex with two or three boys but then be ordered to have sex with six or seven. The teenage girls I met told me that boys simply don't understand what rape is. And yet this is a crime that can ruin lives and is punishable by life imprisonment.


Occasionally gang rape is used to punish a girl for minor transgressions against gang members. In one of my most shocking interviews, I met a girl who admitted she had helped to set up girls for gang rape. As the girlfriend of a gang member, she organised these rapes, partly out of fear and partly to fit in.


She admitted she was terrified of being raped herself and had walked away when witnessing a girl being gang-raped at a party because she feared she might be next: "There was just loads of boys and the girl's tights were ripped up, like, she was bleeding as well, because I think she was a virgin, and they were just taking turns on her basically, and she was crying, and I didn't get involved because I thought if I get involved they're gonna turn on me."


The victims' descriptions of their attacks are horrific. One young victim likened her attack to being "pulled and pushed around like a rag doll", while another 14-year-old girl described her ordeal when she was gang raped by a total of nine boys who told her that she was not the only girl they had attacked. In that case, nine boys were subsequently convicted of raping her. The youngest perpetrator was just 12 years old.


I found there was concern among black communities about this violence. The Rev Joyce Daley, from the Black Parents Forum in Hackney, told me that gang rape is not a rare or one-off phenomenon. It is happening on a regular basis. She said: "It could actually explode on our very streets." Steve Griffith, a youth worker in King's Cross, said: "I see too much abuse of young women on the streets."


Gang rape, while constituting only a tiny percentage of all rapes in the UK, is a horrible reality in this country. The nature of the crime is so appalling that much more research needs to be carried out into its causes. But what seems evident from my investigation is that the key to preventing it will be changing the way young men view women and the kind of group sexual activity they are engaging in at such a young age.


Sheldon Thomas, a youth worker in Brixton, said: "We've got a generation that looks at sex as if it's nothing, and treats disrespecting women as if it's nothing. These guys are like 13, 14 and 15, and their actual attitudes towards young girls – towards sex – is mind-blowing. It's actually leaving you asking: where are their morals, where are their values?"


Sorious Samura presents 'Dispatches: Rape in the City' on Channel 4 tomorrow night at 8pm





Number Four ...


Police chiefs worried by rise in gang rapes
Friday, 6 November 2009

Meanwhile the age of victims has fallen with 64 per cent aged 19 or younger in the last financial year compared with 48 per cent in 1998-9.
Police define a gang rape, which they term multi-perpetrator rape, as being a sex attack involving three or more people.


Commander Simon Foy, who leads the Met's homicide and serious crime command, said there is no doubt the "abhorrent" crime is under-reported.
He said: "This is a phenomenon we are all concerned about. We know this is an area that is under-reported.



"There is a substantial amount of this type of offending going on which we do not necessarily know much about.



"The numbers we do have are relatively small. That makes it difficult to understand the trends and behaviours that are going on.



"There is no doubt that the number of multiple offender gang rape offences is going up and we can say there is an increasing number of offences with four or more suspects.



"The greatest proportion of victims of this type of offence are under 19 and there is a very significant number under 15.



"Young people are particularly at risk of this type of offending."



There have been a series of high-profile convictions of teenagers for gang rapes in the capital over the past year.



Two men who assaulted a girl aged 16 and doused her in caustic soda, disfiguring her for life, had their sentences increased on appeal.



In another case a 14-year-old girl was repeatedly raped "as punishment" by nine members of a Hackney gang because she had "insulted" their leader.



A meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), the Met's board of governors, heard levels of gang rape are linked to overall youth violence.


Boroughs with the highest numbers of gang rapes include Lambeth, Croydon, Newham, Southwark, Westminster and Hackney.



The Met has commissioned research from Dr Miranda Horvath, a lecturer in forensic psychology at the University of Surrey.

She is focusing on the "cultural context" of gang rape and speaking to officers from forces across Britain and the United States.
Jennette Arnold, who represents Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest on the MPA, said some offenders are from cultural backgrounds where rape is more common.
She said the crime is seen by some as a "weapon of war" and more work needs to be done to get into the minds of culprits.
Mrs Arnold said: "It has got to be regretted that the increase in black victims has doubled."
Chris Boothman, another member of the MPA, said he remembers gang rapes taking place when he was a teenager growing up in London.
He said it is the responsibility of other agencies to intervene among young men who may be involved in, or are aware of, gang rape.
Mr Boothman said: "There is a massive piece of education to be done in schools and youth clubs in terms of unpicking an area of activity that groups of young men believe is acceptable."



The meeting heard workers trained to work with young people are based at centres for sex attack victims, known as Havens.
Officials based in Whitechapel and Paddington have also visited secondary schools and youth groups across London to dispel myths around sexual violence.
Cmdr Foy said: "What I do not understand is what motivates people to commit this particular type of offence in these particular circumstances.
"It is often clear why someone would carry a gun or knife. What is the propensity to commit these criminal offences and how does it manifest itself?"

Number Five ...

New racism finds a Yardie stick: The idea of a black and white yobbo 'underclass' is dangerous, warns Kenan Malik

KENAN MALIK
Wednesday, 3 November 1993

AT THE heart of the panic about the Yardies, whose mentality the pundits have been having a field day trying to explain, lies a distinction between decent folk and disreputable others.
The Sunday Telegraph noted 'the profile built up by the police of youngsters to whom ordinary standards of social behaviour have no meaning . . . It is a picture of man stripped of all civilising concepts of love, pity, conscience'.

At first sight, this debate looks suspiciously similar to previous panics about black crime. There is a long history of media and police campaigns attempting to associate crime with black youth.
The most infamous was the 'mugging' scare of the early Eighties, when the Metropolitan Police invented a category of crime specifically to propagate the idea that young blacks were disproportionately associated with street crime. Such panics had the effect of criminalising the black community and reinforcing the idea that black people did not really belong in Britain.

The current debate about Yardies has a somewhat different tenor. It distinguishes not so much between black and white as between respectable blacks and an 'underclass' outside 'civilised' society, composed of black and white, whose values and morals seem very different from those of the rest of us. As one black south London resident put it: 'Whether they're black or white, they're a different people. You can't tell them anything, you can't sit down and reason with them, you can't talk to them.'

Contrast this discussion with the debate about the treatment meted out to PC Les Turner by anti-racist demonstrators. Mr Turner was the black policeman hospitalised after suffering what he called a 'racist attack' by demonstrators on the Anti-Nazi League march in south London two weeks ago.
'I wore the Queen's crown,' he said, 'and I was the wrong symbol of authority to them.' At first he 'couldn't understand why there were so few black people on the march'; then he realised that 'decent black folk would not come to a march like this'.

This story has several themes. It emphasises the idea that black people are not only an integral part of British society, but that they are now also in the front line, defending the authority of the Crown. It implies that defence of the Crown includes the defence of equal rights for black people. And it helps to emphasise the distinction between decent black folk (who would no more take part in such a march than they would take crack) and those who are criminals.
Enter John Patten. If decent black folk do not take part in violent marches, deal in crack or shoot policemen, then decent white folk do not vote for the British National Party or riot in Rotterdam. That was the Education Secretary's message when he tried to reclaim the Union Jack from racists and yobbos.

Nationalism was only safe, it was suggested, in the hands of the right kind of people. Middle-class flag-waving, as at the Tory conference, is respectable; but if the national flag is placed in the hands of a working-class lout, its message becomes abhorrent.
Underlying all this is the idea that the racist is a product of the white underclass: a young working-class man with cropped hair, tattoos and DMs, someone who is ignorant and driven by blind prejudice - certainly too stupid to understand that racism is morally abhorrent.
According to popular myth, such people are not simply racist, but responsible for most other vices in society, too. The BNP's ranks, one newspaper has observed, 'are full of drug pushers, gunrunners, thugs, murderers, child molesters'. They are not like us, is the message. White yobbos, like black Yardies, are not part of civilised society. Morally, socially and intellectually, the underclass, black and white, is inferior to the rest of us.

At first sight, this recasting of the notion of inferiority in moral terms seems positive. After all, it implies that biological differences are not important; that the real distinctions arise from our behaviour, values and morals. But worrying consequences stem from these ideas.
First, they obscure the oppression of black people, by attaching racism to an 'underclass' rather than a society that treats black people as second- class citizens. It is easy to blame white yobbos for racial violence; much harder to confront the deep-seated structural causes of black inequality. We should always be wary of easy explanations.
Second, by giving notions of inferiority and superiority a moral rather than biological guise, such ideas are rendered more acceptable.

Arguments such as these not only fail to undermine racist ideas, they also provide the basis for a new form of racism. Talk of Yardies or yobbos being a 'different people' may be simply rhetorical, but it leads to the assumption that divisions in society are permanent or unbridgeable, even if they are not biological.
Victorian society castigated the 'undeserving poor' in terms remarkably similar to many contemporary descriptions of the Nineties underclass. The relationship between 'outcast England' and 'respectable society' provided the model for understanding the relationship between 'civilised' Europe and 'savage' Africa, and laid the basis for racial thinking. We should be wary of treading this path a second time.

.. A More Certain Age ..

A more certain age.

Anne Perkins
Monday 8 December 2008





Let's hear it for Selina Scott and her anti-ageism victory over Channel Five. First, you'll remember, they asked her to replace Natasha Kaplinsky as news presenter while the toothsome thirtysomething was off on maternity leave, and then changed their minds. Instead, they've recruited a 28 year old. Ms Scott, 57, settled out of court for £250,000. Good work.
I certainly don't begrudge her the cash. But the truth is, there has never been a better time to be a fiftysomething woman, and not only because there's a law against ageism now. You only have to look at the reports about student beauty pageants to realise (although you probably already had) that the pressure on young women to look good, and the definition of what looking good is, has eased off not one jot in the past 30 years.

Only now, you're expected to be clever with it.
The joyous thing about being more than 50 is that, at last, none of it matters. You might have spent the previous 35 years telling yourself that it didn't matter what you looked like, but you never really believed it. That made it even more complicated. You felt bad because you didn't look like Madonna, and you felt bad because you cared that you didn't look like Madonna.

For all the exhortation of the feminist movement, the evidence all around was that youth and beauty were the indispensible attributes of success for women. What was inescapable culturally was reinforced by all those men, and quite a lot of the women, at work. I say that with humble apologies to some of the really great women I worked for. Thank you for trying to tell me.

Now, on the sunlit uplands of middle age (and just look at Madonna, to see how sunlit), even those of us who have never been brave enough to thumb our noses at the world feel confident that it just doesn't matter to anyone but us. At last, we are free – unchained from the atavistic compulsion to look like a promising childbearer, beyond (well, speaking personally) the need to pick up a man to reaffirm one's worth.

Barbara Castle was 51 when she became a cabinet minister for the first time, in 1964, and experienced a surge of energy that was all about power – political power, yes, but also the power of autonomy. And as her career slowed down, 10 years later, she recognised it (enviously) in another woman: Margaret Thatcher, aged 49. It didn't stop either of them trading on their femininity. But, in middle age, femininity becomes a mere facet of personality, which entitles you to wear a short skirt and think about climate change at the same time.

..Aegism Debate ...

Selina stokes a diversity debate that needs addressing.

Emily Bell
Monday 8 September 2008

It will come as a surprise to few but a delight to many that Selina Scott is suing Five over ageism in its refusal to hire her for a maternity cover role and choice of younger presenters instead. It is a delight not because Five is worse than anyone else in this respect, but because it stokes a debate which urgently needs to be taken more seriously. Casual sexism, ageism and racism are the collective dirty secret of the vast majority of media institutions, and they represent as much of an industrial challenge as they do a moral one.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission's Report on Sex and Power, published last week, drew a depressing picture for women in the workplace. In general the progression of women at the highest level in the workplace is pitiful and the media are no exception: only 13.6% of national newspaper editors (including the Herald and Western Mail) are women; only 10% of media FTSE's 350 companies have women at the helm; and at the BBC, which has often been held as an exemplar of diversity, women make up less than 30% of most senior management positions. It puts into context Jeremy Paxman's deranged rant about the white male in television. Ethnic minority representation is even worse.

A couple of weeks ago Pat Younge, former BBC head of sports programmes and planning who left to work for Discovery in the US, caused a stir at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival by saying that diversity targets should be like financial targets - you don't hit them, you get fired. I have to say that as board champion for diversity at Guardian News and Media I would currently be firing myself and most of the board for some missed targets. But Younge is right - because diversity targets are not just a feelgood add-on, they are vital to the health of any media business. The temptation to hire in one's own image for most managers is as irresistible as it is subliminal - which is why there are a lot of opinionated women working in digital management at the Guardian, and why we all need targets to remind us to look beyond the mirror.

On screen, any number of unconventional-looking ageing blokes (Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathan Ross, Chris Moyles, Alan Sugar, Adrian Chiles, Jeremy Paxman, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan) are paid at a top rate for the talent they possess beyond their appearance. For women it is an altogether different story - appearance and age are clearly factors in choosing female presenters in a way that they aren't for men.

The media should be deeply concerned about this un-diversity - not because it represents moral turpitude on our part, but because it represents bloody awful business sense. What is happening to the UK population at the moment? It is ethnically diversifying, and it is ageing. It is also the case that it is, as of the 2001 Census, marginally more female than it is male. And we live longer - so older women, and non-white potential audiences are on the rise. In London, the major urban conurbation and key market for so many media brands, the population is around 37% ethnically diverse, yet this is nowhere near reflected in the management structures of media companies. Or indeed in their on-screen or in-paper representation.

How though, can you hope to address audiences for which you have no instinctive feel, and towards which you show casual discrimination? We are all in danger of becoming irrelevant to the changing demographics of our target audience at a time when holding any kind of audience is key to survival. If white men are so good at solving business problems - and given that they represent well over 80% of FTSE 100 directors we can speculate that this is a skill they must possess in measure - then I'm surprised they haven't grasped this one already.

3 Articles Directed to my Investigation Area ...

Number One ..

Joseph Harker
Monday 5 October 2009 14.30 BST

The ordinary brilliance of black youths.

When it comes to imagery surrounding black youngsters, I'm used to the relentlessly negative – knife crime, underachievement, family breakdown, we've all seen it.

I've just had an evening, though, which was the exact opposite – unremittingly positive. The occasion was the London Schools and the Black Child awards ceremony, organised by the MP Diane Abbott and held at the House of Commons.

It highlighted the academic achievements of black youngsters at GCSE, A-Level and degree level. This wasn't an evening celebrating mediocrity – the plague of the burgeoning awards industry – but a roll call of excellence and dedication. And it wasn't about just one or two exceptional cases (more often than not being subliminally interpreted as "the exception which proves the rule" by those who continue to see black people in entirely negative terms).
The power of the occasion was that we heard one story after another of young people defying the stereotypes, overcoming the odds – and, in many cases, giving back to their community too. Altogether, 24 tales of great achievement. And, even more significant, there were just as many boys represented as girls.

Youngsters such as Keli Dusu, who gained 5 As at A-level but has still found time to work as a volunteer for the Salvation Army Youth Club, and also to coach a group of autistic children. Or Rochelle Balach, who, without parental support, had to work to fund herself through sixth-form college, yet still emerged with three A-grades. Or Hannah Kendall, who has just qualified with a first-class degree from the Royal College of Music, had her compositions performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, and who volunteers at schools in Lambeth. And the story of Lawrence Price, diagnosed with learning difficulties and ADHD as a child, who rejected the extra help he was offered, and who has just graduated with a first in history from Oxford.

We also heard a touching and personal talk from Hollywood actor Naomie Harris about her own mother's drive to get a degree and eventually become a successful TV scriptwriter despite having Naomie when still a teenager.

The significance of all these stories was that, by hearing so many, it made the exceptional appear ordinary, and achievable. As I looked out over the Thames, though, I thought: how do we get these uplifting messages out there, beyond this House of Commons room – where they can challenge the relentless gangsta-rap videos, or negative news coverage? Where teenagers are given the message that blackness is about violence and aggression, and that to show any sign of academic interest is to be some kind of race sellout.

"You're in the media: will you be writing about this?" asked one person of me after the ceremony. And I thought: if a fight had broken out, or if one person had drawn a knife, the event would be front-page news. Such are the news values of my honourable profession.
Ultimately, this is a battle: between the multibillion music and media industries, and people like Abbott, who get on with schemes like this because it's the right thing to do. Waiting for these industries to change will take a very long time. In the meantime, though, it should surely be possible, for example, to circulate a DVD of this event in urban classrooms around the country, where it could have an immediate and positive impact. Can a sponsor can be found to fund such a thing?

For the record: I was outraged when Abbott sent her child to private school; but I have to say
that organising an event like this far outweighs her ideologically off-message moment. One day, I hope, Abbott's message will get through; but in the meantime as least she has the pleasure of working with some bright, keen and enthusiastic young hopefuls and giving them huge inspiration.

Number Two ...

Eric Allison
Monday 25 August 2008

The silenced majority.

Since January, the term knife crime has been used more than 1,500 times by the national press - and it is a fair bet that most media images associated with these figures will be of young black men. Unsurprisingly, this is leading to a growing sense of frustration among black community leaders, academics and, not least, black youngsters themselves, over what they see as blatant misrepresentation.

Black youths who fit this media stereotype represent a tiny fraction of the young black population as a whole, they argue, and while negative stories about black teenagers are almost guaranteed headlines, the positive achievements of black youth go largely ignored.
This trend has consequences beyond creating an unbalanced picture.

Numerous studies have shown a clear link between media furore and draconian policy-making, says Kjartan Sveinsson, the author of a Runnymede Trust report on the ways in which popular understandings of race and crime influence media reporting, and vice versa. "The tragedy is this can increase racial tension on the street and do little to stem the violence," he says.
Which in turn, of course, leads to further reports of violence, and the circle continues. In April 2007, for instance, after a number of high-profile shootings in south London, Tony Blair made a speech to the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce. Was he perhaps responding to media pressure when he asked: "When are we going to start saying this [gang crime] is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend it has nothing to do with it?"

There was no ambiguity when David Cameron spoke after the death of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool, singling out the media by saying: "Deaths by fists, knives and guns are becoming a regular feature of British news ... these murders must draw a line in the sand."

In Manchester, one group of black teenagers, who believe they should have made headlines for the right reasons, are angry at their treatment by the media. So much so they have published an open letter on the subject (see below
The Reclaim project began as a pilot in the autumn of 2007 at Urbis, an exhibition centre in Manchester, to work with 12-14-year-old boys from Moss Side and other perceived trouble spots in the city. The idea was spawned as a reaction to rising youth violence and the negative portrayal of young people, especially from the African-Caribbean community.
The project involves six months of intensive mentoring and events, including working with local statutory bodies and creative and sports providers. Self-development, discipline and anger-management courses form part of the syllabus, along with teamwork and respect for legitimate authority. Children on the project have drawn up an advisory document on combating gun and knife crime and presented it to Gordon Brown.

The scheme has been a remarkable success - and Reclaim has become synonymous with a powerful youth voice. Its story should be positive, but some of the young people involved feel they have been either ignored or that when journalists have turned up, most have only wanted to question them on guns and gangs.

In particular, some of the boys were unhappy about their treatment at the hands of a production company filming a documentary. They say they had understood it would be about their involvement with Reclaim, but the interviewer constantly brought up the subject of guns and gangs.
Fair representation?

On one occasion, the boys had been to a formal meeting and were wearing suits. According to 14-year-old Akeim, he and other boys were asked to go home and change into tracksuits and hooded tops and were then interviewed in the park where a 15-year-old boy, Jessie James, was murdered. Another boy, Amari, says the programme, shown on Channel 4 in July, failed to include a single mention of the Reclaim project and "was all about Jessie James". The interviewer asked whether he, or any of the other boys, had ever shot anybody, or been shot at, Amari says.

C4 says the producers "strongly feel" the young men were accurately and fairly represented in the short film, which was shown as part of a season of programmes about gun and knife crime. The boys were filmed where they said they regularly spend their time and were happy to be interviewed in those locations. They were not asked to dress in a way they wouldn't normally, and there was no intention or attempt to portray the young people as stereotypical or negative characters, the broadcaster says.

Professor Gus John, a fellow of the Institute of Education at the University of London, works closely with families affected by violence in Manchester. "When black youths read about themselves," he says, "it goes something like this: you are a persistently under-performing group; you are six times more likely to be excluded from school and be a young offender; you may already be in a gang, or likely to join one. The likely causes of your condition are: absentee fathers; absence of positive role models; and being surrounded by women who cannot control or motivate you. You aim too low and do not believe people like you can succeed."

Yet the reality, John says, is that there are a large number of young black males with high aspirations, who have a focus on learning and who succeed. "Often, these young men come from the same background as those who are underachieving at school, or involved with the criminal justice system. It is a sad fact that we seldom hear about these young people."

Reclaim's open letter
"We are a group of 14-year-old boys from the Reclaim project; since the project started, we have been approached by so many different newspapers, magazines and TV companies, most of who want to talk to us about guns and knives and gangs. We keep trying to explain that we are not involved in gangs and crime; we're black boys doing positive things in this area - and then journalists go away, as they tell us that's not the story people are interested in ...

The project has changed our lives in so many ways. We now consider ourselves reliable, respectable, articulate and creative young black men. We have been set difficult challenges and worked hard to achieve them. We have written a manifesto for our area and given up our weekends to distribute it, display it and explain it to the adult members of our community. We have put on parties for vulnerable members of our community, lobbied the leader of our council and spoken in front of hundreds of people ...

Negative stories of young black boys as criminals, or victims of crime, reinforces the idea that this is the reality for black people. Some young black boys will try and live up to the images they see in the media. Adults constantly criticise teenagers for being irresponsible, but the way the media tries to represent our area as if everyone was a drugs runner or gangster is totally irresponsible and morally wrong."

Number Three..

Alan Travis,
Thursday 30 April 2009 12.42 BST

Black and Asian people targeted in stop and search surge.

Black and Asian people were disproportionately targeted by police in a surge in the use of stop and search under counterterrorism laws in the wake of the failed 2007 London bomb attack, according to official figures published today.

The Justice Ministry statistics showed that the number of black people being stopped and searched under counterterrorism laws rose by 322%, compared with 277% for Asian people and 185% for white people.

Corinna Ferguson, a barrister at human rights charity Liberty, said: "A threefold increase in anti-terror stop and search is the clearest signal that these powers are being misused. Only six in 10,000 people stopped were arrested for terrorism, let alone charged or convicted.
"And the disproportionate impact on ethic minorities is even greater than in previous years. This is why Liberty has been challenging these powers since 2003, and is taking the fight on to the court of human rights."

The Metropolitan police were responsible for most of the increase in the use of counterterrorism stop and search powers, which nationally rose from 37,197 in 2006/2007 to 117, 278 in 2007/08.
The Justice Ministry said the large rise in street searches under the terrorism laws was directly attributable to "the robust response by the Metropolitan police to the threat of terror-related networks in London since the Haymarket bomb in 2007".

The figures also disclosed a 19% increase in the use of what is called "section 60 powers", which give the police the right to stop and search anybody for 24 hours in a designated area where serious violence may take place. The power allows police to carry out the searches without having to have grounds to suspect that the person is carrying a knife or a weapon. The figures showed that there were 53,000 section 60 searches in 2007/08 with most of them in London, Birmingham and Liverpool.
There was a 64% increase in the number of black people searched under this section 60 power compared with a 41% increase for white people. In London over half of those stopped were black.

The rise in the use of counterterror powers fuelled an 8% increase in the general use of stop and search by the police in England and Wales with a total of 1,035,438 incidents recorded in 2007/08 – the highest level for 9 years. The main reason for conducting most stop and searches was for drugs.

The figures published today showed that 10 years after the official Macpherson inquiry report into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence black people are still eight times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. This is actually an increase over the previous year – 2006/07 – when black people were seven times more likely to be stopped.
The number of racially motivated incidents has risen, according to the British Crime Survey, from 184,000 in 2006/07 to 207,000 in 2007/08, but the number recorded by the police fell by 7% over the same period.

The Justice Ministry figures on the representation of black and ethnic minority people in the criminal justice system showed that little progress had been made in the past year in reducing the ethnic bias in outcomes within the police, courts and prison and probation services.
Black people are still four times more likely to be arrested and less likely to get a caution than a white person. They are more likely to be imprisoned on conviction, and black and minority ethnic groups now account for 27% of the 83,000 prison population in England and Wales.
The Justice Ministry said that, however, the police and prison services had increased the proportion of minority ethnic staff they employed, with 7% of all police officers from a minority ethnic group.

My Final Critical Investigation && Linked Production...

Critical Investigation ... An investigation into the UK news media's tendency to create moral panics and reinforce stereotypes when reflecting black teenagers.

Linked Production ... Two cinema adverts, using different methods to attract different audiences, raising different awareness of the dangers of misrepresentation, that reflects different approaches of black teenagers.

Ethnic Diversity in the BBC.

The BBC will only survive by understanding its diverse consumers
A snail could crawl the entire length of the Great Wall of China in just slightly more time than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in parliament. That was just one of a series of striking statistics from the Equality and Human Rights Commission in their Sex and Power report published last week.

It added that women hold just 11% of FTSE directorships, with the judiciary and others also strongly criticised. At the BBC, the figures are a bit better - almost 38% of all senior managers are women - but it does bring into sharp focus the challenge the whole media industry is facing to improve diversity among its workforce.

Tomorrow's Guardian Ethnic Media Summit is a chance to debate what is arguably our most pressing diversity issue - ensuring more talent from ethnic minority communities reaches the upper echelons of broadcasting. The growth particularly of young ethnic minority audiences, is soaring - way above the population average - making them a critical cultural and business challenge for everyone in our sector.

Things are definitely changing but still not quickly enough. The whole media industry needs to look afresh at what more can be done.

So why does a white, middle-aged bloke like me feel compelled to write about this? As the BBC's chief creative officer, overseeing our programme production made in-house, I believe passionately that only by drawing on the talents of every part of society can we best reflect the lives and concerns of our diverse audiences on screen.

We must do more and the BBC is certainly redoubling its efforts. And though ethnicity is very important, it is only one part of this story. We must also think in terms of age, disability, gender, social class and regional difference.

That is why I think the historic changes to move a significant proportion of BBC network production out of London to places such as Glasgow or North West England over the next decade might be key to all this.

We will transfer large numbers of staff from London but we will also recruit many new faces - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to add something substantially new to our gene pool of talent, to change the BBC's DNA a little.

We seem to be moving in the right direction, increasing opportunities for people from ethnic minority backgrounds at most levels.

The proportion of our staff from ethnic minorities is 11.5% - again comparing very well with both public and private sector organisations including the civil service, health service and the police. But as the Edinburgh Television Festival heard, still not enough people make it into senior management roles, particularly as controllers and commissioners.

The BBC has looked closely at the barriers to progress and announced new schemes to tackle them - costing £3m over three years.

Firstly, we need to change the way we recruit. We are dramatically increasing the outreach work we do - in community groups, colleges, schools and through open sessions across the UK - to encourage under-represented groups to apply to the BBC. I recently worked with an energetic bunch of young students, mainly from ethnic minority backgrounds, who were introduced to the BBC by the University of Central Lancashire - from the former mill towns of Blackburn and Preston, not places we'd traditionally think to look for the next generation.

Then we need to be better at retaining talented individuals and supporting them in reaching their full potential and moving into senior roles. Our new mentoring and development programme, which offers greater one-to-one and intensive personalised support, is so important. In addition, our new trainee production scheme, which has just kicked off, and our journalism trainee schemes, have a strong diversity focus, so we are providing clearer pathways into all parts of the BBC.

On screen, we must constantly strive to reflect as accurately as possible the rich cultural mix of the UK.

Earlier this year BBC non-executive director Samir Shah criticised what he called "inauthentic representation" of ethnic minority communities, citing the Ferreira family in EastEnders.

It is unfair to highlight one five-year-old example from a drama series that remains the most popular programme on television among ethnic minority audiences. This example fails to reflect many other aspects of our work, particularly our in-house drama output. Our continuing drama series, including Holby City and Casualty, have led the way in casting diverse talent, in leading roles as well. Though we do not always get it right, overall we have much to be proud of.

The BBC set up the Writers' Academy, under John Yorke, four years ago, increasing the number of writers from diverse backgrounds working on our biggest programmes, including some of our continuing drama series.

In addition, programmes such as Criminal Justice, No1 Ladies Detective Agency, Life Is Not All Ha Ha Hee Hee, Shoot the Messenger, the entertainment series Last Choir Standing and a lot of our children's output have also been praised for the way they have represented diversity or addressed issues faced by communities from different backgrounds.

Part of this is ensuring we get closer to audiences when making programmes. For example, White Girl - part of BBC2's groundbreaking White Season - told the story of a white family relocating from Leeds to a predominantly Asian community in Bradford. Here the production team worked very closely with the community to ensure a sensitive and accurate portrayal.
In an increasingly globalised creative economy where competition will intensify, it is only by understanding our diverse consumers that we can stay relevant and survive. The BBC prides itself on keeping in touch with its audiences - to do so successfully we'll need to keep making changes, and fast.