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Nov 29, 06, 11:04 #16
Varsovian. I read the article you mentioned today and it set me to thinking.
I'd like to have a go at explaining how the street mentality and violence we see amongst juviniles prevails, through both external forces such as music and film. As well as historical features within certain ethnic minorites cultures, that set a precedent for violent behaviour.
The following is written as observations and not written as a racist rant.
If we look at specific issues separately, we have to investigate firstly youth violence, immigration, world history and the pschology of youth media.
Youth Violence.
Young people have always been the warriors, specifically males. Men have to be young and fit to survive as history shows, in Darwinian terms it is survival of the fittest.
If we look back to the origins of football, now a sanitised game, in medieval times it was a bloody battle between local villages with a piece of dead pig. No rules, just get this "football" from one poll to another. The main tatic was violence.
Violence within UK society
As UK society matured violence was a way of life all the way through to modern times, it just moved into different realms. From burning witches, to burning catholics, to brutally killing Scotish and Irish rebellions. From beating children in the workhouses, to shipping convicts (economically deprived people) to Australia.
Violence and subjegation abroad.
Abroad, the British equiped with a mature and knowledgable navy, exported its concept of civilisation and imperialism across the world. The same violent temperament within the indigenous population was honed and targeted at various poor unfortunate, underdeveloped nations across the world. So successfully that England owned and governed approximately 1/3 of the world. Until the beginning of the decline in Empire.
From Hooligan to hoodie.
The word "hooligan", was they say coined after a man name Patrick Hooligan, who during the mid 19century terrorized his local neighbourhood in the East end of London. He and his followers would beat people up and rob them (sounding familiar), and his nationality?
Catholic Irish, who in Victorian London held the same status as many non-caucasian ethnic groups today. Again he was found in the ghettos, which with poor socio-economic factors are a breeding ground for violence.
So stepping forward into the 20 century and 21 century.
The Two world wars experienced throught Europe, effectively decimated the young throughout Europe. This joining with disease and economic collapse and imperial decline, changed the status quo amongst young and old, the respect elders which had previously been given erode, because a). There were less of them and b). The previous elders of state had made such serious blunders that they were viewed with mistrust. Faith in the state and state infalibilty was questioned.
1950's Teddy Boys.
1960's Mods and Rocker
1970's Skins, rudeboyz, football firms
etc etc.
All the way to todays Hoodies.
The immigrant question.
To begin to answer this sticky wicket, we have to look outside the UK to its Colonial past.
Specifically The West Indies, India and Africa.
The major differentials between these three areas are many, but the essense of todays irritations is found not in India or in Africa, but in West Indies, and specifically Jamaica.
Jamaica suffered terribly from legacy of slavery, perhpas more so than the other Islands the denigration of the inviduals and base levels to which humanity sunken are ledgendary.
If you beat and torture a child if it survives through to adulthood he/she will be one mean son of a gun. This effectively is what happened to jamaica as a nation, it was an abused identity free country. Peopled by differing tribes that had been severed from there roots.
So these poor down trodden souls some sort an escape to the UK, for them a suregate mother/fatherland. This Windrush did not bring with it violent Yardie gunman, it brought forward hard working Jamaican trying to escape poverty and to make a better life. Their identity came from being BRITISH CITIZENS, something then people identified with strongly.
Generally they were accepted by British mainstream culture, the no blacks no Irish sentiment decreased, although never totally.
These first genration immigrants mixed with some of the young white working class and this is ironically enough where the original tenants of the Skinhead culture developed. Northern Soul and reggae, weed and beer and blue bombers. Toxteth, Brixton, these were the hubs of this new youth culture.
However towards the end of the 1970's after the oil crisis, the accendance of Thatcher and captialist economic practise, disenfranchised the working class even more. Britian was no longer "pulling together" as we had in the post war years, the explosion of youth awareness in the pretty Pop world of the 1960's had passed through the 1970's summers of love and the 1980's comedown was upon them.
Youth culture divided more and more into subcultures each vying for ascendance so as to dominate youth identity. The punks, goths, metallers, ravers, rockers, bikers, skins, hippies, mods etc
Football terrace violence was massively prominent in the 1970's and 1980's so much so that our reputation as a country for "football violence", is as famous as Lady Diana.
Football was then still affordable and again it help working class youth define themselves.
I support Chelsea, I live in Chelsea. I support Everton, I'm a catholic Liverpuddlian.
Basic, simplistic, perhaps but better than nothing. These basic tribal instincts were exorcized.
So football gangs, like youth fashions provided identity. The older generations identified themselves through class and employment. Whilst the immigrant class prided themselves on the fact they were immigrants, they were proud because they were different and trying to make a difference.
Political independance, emancipation, civil war and the struggle for identity.
The struggle for Political independance for many ex-colonies truely began as late as the 1950's. A bankrupt Britian could no longer justify these colonys and the indigenous population had after years of occuption decided to change the status quo.
The political turmoil of the 1970's in Jamaica, a by product of the cold war and increased independance led to several mass exoduses of hundreds of undesirables, political gunmen and enforcers. Who fled are several bloody election battles. This exodus hit the US and the UK.
Meanwhile, Bob Marely was wooing the West with his songs and popular culture rightly knighted him as a modern day hero poet. So we have one side of Jamaica, the let your hair down smoke grass and right on emancipation, liberation side. And the I'm going to ******* shoot you side, because I'm a lion and your are a lamb. Full circle to the survival of the fittest senario.
If we look over to the US, whose youth culture with some differences essentially matured side by side with the Uk was subjected to the political turmoil and civil liberty issues which were dealt with differently in the UK, during the 1960's and 1970's.
The black underclasses in the USA, still dealing with their own horrific legacy of slavery championed heros within the civil rights movement and with JFK leading the pact everything looked positive. We all know what happened next.
The two fold results were similar to the disenchantment of the UK youth in the late 1970's and 1980's, the establishment had lied horrendously and everyone knew it. Secondly drugs, specifically heroin began to arrive onto the streets and gain popularity.
Heroin destroys individuals and individuals are society.
The drugs of course entered the deprived areas firstly providing another underground economy and breaking the working class down into subsectors. Obviously gambling, prostitution, alcoholism were already well entrenched; their particular evils having been promenantly battledover in the previous centuries. Particularly through relgious lobbies. But God died in Europe in World War 2, having been badly wounded in World War 1.
Back in the good ole USA thousands of vets came back with opiate addictions so the gateway to drug expansion had it seeds sown here.
[b]So are we going off course here? NO[/b].
Concepts of the Western cowboy in Jamaican popular culture and the transfer of celluloid fantasy into active bloody reality.
In brief the majority of cinemas in JA showed cowboy films. Which were very popular, the poor embattled JA could identify with the cowboy. And the true cowboy is one hard son of a gun. The gun, being the essence of his power. The fleeing gunmen/political enforcers took their violence to the UK and especially the US during this time.
The whole Boyz n the Hood, this gang culture which is so recognisable today, can date its true emergence with the arrival of the posses or yardies. They took over by force from indigenous gangs the street level black economics.
I'm sure by this point people are wondering where I'm heading towards.
Stay with me.
We will come back to violence in a momment, we have to look briefly at music. From the early days of Jazz, black music has effectively overtaken the classical and folk forms which used to influence the masses. The ascendance of black music began really with rap and then end of the 1970's and 1980's. Disappointment and anger was now being vocalized for all to hear. It was and is a democratic art form you need nothing but a brain and a tongue to rap. (and seemingly not even that sometimes).
Popular culture had changed. The East coast gangsters and the West coast began their verbal battles, the films Boyz in the hood, Juice etc visualised the events and this spread throughout the states and into the UK.
So the Jamaican cowboy gunman, had morphed into the American gangbanger. Whilst the kids in the UK looked on.
In the UK the Jamaican community had been resident now for over 30/40 yea
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