Lifeisannoying’s Weblog

 Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters.  my afro decendents, i must talk to you,  about our communities. right now they are being torn apart by murderous fiends. in the uk, in the us, in the caribbean and doubtless in latin america too.

We can sit around scratching our heads, but thers is not one moment to be lost. Let me give you the situation here in old blightly. i live in a nice enough large-ish town, 25-40 miles away from london. it’s middle income largely but we have lots of lower income people too ( that is nothing to be ashamed of we are working people  we just don’t have much money).

 in the late 1980’s my west indian community was very tight, upon seeing an elderly black person, even without knowing them or recognising them, you offered your welcome, your welcome depended on your distance, from across the road , you nodded and smiled. yards away you would say hello. if the person was close they may stop you and ask if they knew your family, if they did they would pass on a greeting to your grandparents/ parents and you would have to give that message to them. if you did not your parents would know.( the black grapevine is  faster than broadband, or  any athlete pumped up on steriods.

  You kept your manners a round the opposite sex, because  1. it was quite possible that his/her father knew where you lived and had a cricket bat at home.

2. this was the 1980’s /1990’s and if your grandmother got wind of this she would go out, buy a hat and marry you off before you could say, it was only a dance!

 there were community groups, saturday schools , opperated and run by local black men and women,  helping young black children achieve academic excellence ( or just helping them understand algebra). community cativities, trips to beaches ( i went to the beautiful welsh countryside.) and  picnics etcetera.  it was good and it was sustainable for a lond good while. but  i imagine it existed everywhere until the mid to late 1990’s.

suddenly  in the early nineties the west indian community was challenged by conservative Mp. Norman Tebbit, who claimed that we could never be english  because if at a cricket match, the west indies played england we would all support the west indies. It struck a chord, we would not, at the time the west indies cricket team was so good, we were on fire.  the england team was a fat butch of patsies. so the community took a hard look at itself,  we had started arriving from the caribbean in the 1940’s , it was at that point 40 to 50 years raising families here so there was only one thing on lots of families minds.

we caught that  “integration at all costs” bug. there suddenly was no community to keep people in check. we did not see elders on the street,  thus we did not have to be behave apropriately. the elders did not report people to their  parents because now the parents were not interested in their community, now they were just as “english” as their white neighbours.

the wheels have come off now people.  when you break down a community you create a power vacuum, that boisterous  testoterone filled  lawless men and teenage boys have all too readily filled.  whose fault is it?

IT’S OUR FAULT!  We gave up our community too easily. we so wanted to fit in with our neighbours and now we have made our children their scapegoats!  We stopped disciplining our children in a way we saw fit, we followed the anglo- saxon way and instead of  shouting  ,placing the fear of god into them or giving one well placed slap , we sent them to the naughty step. we did not send them to their rooms for hours on end to think about what they did, we wanted to fit in, so we let them out instead. but we forgot, that it’s different for white people’s children, when they get caught doing something, they get picked up by the police and might get a caution (after all  billy here is an ordinary kid, just look at him, he just got caught up in the wrong crowd.) when your black kid gets picked up, it will be something quite different(look at  joe, so you thought you come out and stir up some trouble, huh?) you child on the basis of skin colour and phenotype is the “wrong crowd” and will be treated accordingly.

 All of us have to start re-building  our communities,  we need the role models that  my peers and i had in the 1980’s and  earlier. If you got lucky on friday and now you are becoming a parents , for crying out loud, BE PARENTS! we have got to stop ignoring our elders and start ignoring  the people who think that they raise your children, I am talikng about supernanny, and her ilk. You did not lay down with norman tebbit, supernanny, mumsnet.com or  any other faceless moron, you a man and you a woman did it.

Children need parents, their mother and their father, they need that i know it’s not politically correct but it’s true. they also need their culture and heritage, make them understand their place in this world, they must understand action and consequence ( if that means  child gives you too much lip, then they get a smacked bottom, so be it) because it is how we all learn.

We west indians have a saying  “if you can’t hear , you go feel !”

so yes when discipling your child yes tell them , no and then warn them, then if they refuse to heed your warning, a well placed smack on the buttocks does the trick.

(ps we are now all english, the west indies cricket team is absolutely rubbish!!!!)