Katharine Birbalsingh
Katharine Birbalsingh is the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative Party conference last year. Katharine has been teaching in inner London for over a decade and plans to set up a Free School in south London to help to serve underprivileged children. Her book, To Miss with Love, is out now. Follow @Miss_Snuffy on Twitter to see what Katharine's doing now. Katharine's personal website is www.katharinebirbalsingh.com.
These riots were about race. Why ignore the fact?
A burnt-out carpet warehouse in Tottenham (Photo: Getty)
What colour is Mark Duggan? Mark Duggan is the man who was shot dead by the police on Thursday in Tottenham. The Tottenham riots last night were sparked when people protested his death. This morning, I first heard of the riots on the radio, then on the television. I read articles on the internet. But oddly, no one would say what colour Mark Duggan was. No one would say the unsayable, that the rioters were, I suspect on the whole, black. Then, finally, Toby Young’s Telegraph blog post on the riots was published. Is Toby Young the only journalist out there who will dare say that these riots are about race?
Still, one paper did carry a photo of Mr Duggan. When I saw the photo, it confirmed what I knew instinctively: black youths once again have set London alight.
Some of the black kids I used to teach will tell you that the riots are absolutely justified. A number of adults would agree with them. Everywhere I read that the protest was understandable because “people are very angry”.
I’d like to know what they’re angry about. Mark Duggan is dead. He was shot by the police in a shootout. Duggan was in a minicab and shots were fired from both the cab and the police elsewhere. A police officer was hurt in the incident and a bullet was found lodged in a police radio. Either Duggan was shooting at the police or the driver of the minicab was. Either Duggan was in the wrong place at the wrong time and his death is a terrible tragedy – he was caught in the crossfire – or he shot at the police and the police defended themselves. Whatever the explanation, the police did not kill this man in cold blood.
Yet, a friend of Duggan who gave her name as Niki, 53, said marchers had wanted “justice for the family” and “something had to be done”. She said some of them lay in the road to make their point. “They’re making their presence known because people are not happy. This guy was not violent. Yes, he was involved in things but he was not an aggressive person. He had never hurt anyone.”
I wonder what “involved in things” means? I also wonder whether the police officer who was hurt at the scene believes Mark Duggan never hurt anyone. “Something had to be done”? She makes it sound as if the police are killing black people every other weekend and finally someone decided to take a stand.
At school I remember watching a presentation given to the kids by Trident, the Metropolitan Police Service unit set up to investigate and inform communities of gun crime in London’s black community. I didn’t know what Trident was then, and it struck me that all of the photos of people shot (the idea was to scare the kids) were black. So at the end, I approached one of the policemen and asked him what percentage of those involved in gun crime were black. I kid you not, but my question made this thirty-something white man who was, after all, trained to deal with the black community and its issues, turn pink.
He explained that about 80 per cent of gun crime took place in the black community. I smiled uncomfortably. But no, he said, it was worse than that. Then he told me that 80 per cent was black on black gun crime, and that of the remaining 20 per cent about 75 per cent involved at least one black person: black shooting white, or white shooting black. I pushed to know more. While he kept saying his stats were crude and he didn’t have scientific numbers, on the whole the whites who were involved in these shootings tended to be from Eastern Europe.
Was any of this ever mentioned in their presentation? Of course not. Just like the news about the Tottenham riots doesn’t mention race either.
Problems cannot be addressed unless people are willing to tell the truth. As with so many other things in this country, we stick our heads in the sand and refuse to speak out about it.
If Brits had a right to concealed carry, many wouldn't be having their clothes stripped off along with their belongings.
ReplyDeleteIf they had armed shopkeepers like the Koreans in LA, many of those buildings would still be standing.
In the pictures I've seen there were a good number of whites getting in on the looting action, so I don't think this affair is totally racial.
The gun crime stats speak for themselves.
We need John Lott (More Guns, Less Crime) to look into this in depth.
UK has this big welfare system and free medical care, still not enough.
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They are yobs, whatever color they be.
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2% committing 80%
ReplyDeleteSpeaks for itself, all right.
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On this very subject, nothing has been said about the race riots over the weekend accompanying the Wisconsin state fair.
ReplyDeleteNot only Wisconsin but other areas in our country as well.
ReplyDeleteSooner or later there is going to be a big big reaction to all of this.
I hope just electorally.
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Truth be told? This "type" of identity politics mass/flash protest is not that new...
ReplyDeleteIt's just starting to migrate from "afflicted" populations centers...
Dont forget France's thousands of burning cars
Dont forget the israeli arab violent protests
Dont forget the anarchists...
that whole answer coalition, jesse jackson, la raza, cair cultists wing....
Look for the rise in sw western American violence "free the occupied lands" is coming to America...
Thanks to the Palestinians, the leftists and the commies....
Ah, shit, the world is absurd.
ReplyDeletePatty Murray has a new job on the Super Committee.
I'm going to check in to the U of I Forced Laughter Clinic, as things are getting serious.
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Patty Murray has a new job on the Super Committee.
ReplyDeleteThat's like putting Ross Perot on a mental health task force.
ReplyDeleteMr. Reid (D., Nev.) named Sens. Patty Murray of Washington, Max Baucus of Montana and John Kerry of Massachusetts. Ms. Murray will be co-chairman of the committee. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) will name the other co-chairman.
...
Defense hawks are pushing Mr. Boehner to pick a Pentagon advocate, hoping to protect the military from further cuts.
Defense advocates may be more likely to come to a deal, because the automatic cuts that take place absent an agreement are designed to fall heavily on the Pentagon.
Or Larry Widestance Craig on a Sexual Proprieties Committee.
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Who'd have thought?
ReplyDeleteS&P balks at SEC proposal to reveal rating errors
The Turks and Kurds, living in London, protect their property from the miscreants.
ReplyDeleteGood things those Muslim immigrants were there, to maintain civility and order on the streets of London.
In the north London neighborhood of Dalston, rioters were held in check Monday night—but not by the police.
Hundreds of Turkish and Kurdish men, many armed with broken billiard cues, poured onto the streets to protect their businesses and homes from the kind of mayhem that was laying waste to other parts of London.
"They created a barrier and chased the kids back," said Burcu Bay, who works as a waitress at Tugra, a Turkish sweet shop and cafe on Dalston's main thoroughfare.
London Neighborhood Drives Off Miscreants
ReplyDeleteFrom the WSJ.
More evidence of multi-cultural success, in London.
ReplyDeleteNotably, boroughs where Indians or Indian-origin people are largely settled have been relatively peaceful. West London suburbs of Southall and Hounslow, Harrow and Wembley in the north-west and Leicester in the East Midlands of England did not report any violence.
Indian-majority areas isles of peace
Yobs
ReplyDeletePhotos of yobs.
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Seems the Kurds and turks were protecting their own. Not much more than human nature. Guess the have nots think they should tear shit up.
ReplyDeleteThis blog would be shut down in England. Ive realised nearly everywhere (100's if not 1000's of places) where
ReplyDeletethere is a black\ethnic population there have been riots\robbing. just
down the street in Westminster A 1MINUTE WALK FROM SCOTLAND YARD 2
shops got smashed in and looted at night by hoodies and it hasn't hit
the news anywhere!
It explains why in devon/somerset for example where it is 98%+ english nothing has been hit!
we were allways heading this way where else was immigration on this scale ever going to lead?
i also saw the pics of a white woman forced to strip naked on this streets by blackmen in public , this is warfare!
It called 00 buckshot.
ReplyDeleteIt'll calm mothfuckers down in a hurry.
John Enoch Powell, MBE (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) R.I.P.
ReplyDeleteIf liberals had even a passing interest in reality, it might occur to them that the prejudice and inequality they attribute to all the world's ills was much worse before the 1960s when their ilk rode the rescue of Western civilisation. And yet back in this dark benighted time, people were well-mannered, considerate and restrained. They didn't riot, loot, smash shopfronts, torch cars, piss in doorways, brawl in the streets, wallow in self-pity, treat others with contempt, or blame the government for not giving them enough of other people's money.
ReplyDeleteIf liberals took a moment to reflect on the astonishing change in public attitudes they might, just might, conclude that it has something to do with the rise of their bullshit social theories.
Obama was expected to lead a delegation of senior US officials -- including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and top Navy, Army and Air Force leaders -- in saluting the flag-draped caskets of the service members, National Journal reported.
ReplyDelete...
A short ceremony for the fallen was conducted at Bagram Airfield north of Kabul before the bodies were placed onto the planes and flown back to the United States, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Pentagon officials announced Monday that they would not allow any media coverage of the arrival of the remains because the troops technically are unidentified. Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Tuesday that there were not yet any plans to release the service members' identities, FOX reported.
Unfortunately, there is an ideal of liberals now masquerading as some moral absolute that society should swallow.
ReplyDeletePeople in real life cannot avoid use of helpful stereotypes - the famous Jesse Jackson example of walking at night and looking at 3 people he heard coming up to him from behind and feeling relief they were white teens and not black teens.
The teacher worried about her merit based pay based on sstudent testing that feels enormous relief when she is assigned the white and Vietnamese-American class in Tampa vs. the Haitian refugee one down the hall.
While culture is contributory, rates of violence and educational attainment do follow race and ethnicity in very different cultures.
Overseas Chinese in Panama, the UK, Nebraska, Capetown SA tend to have the same low crime rates and good educational attainment.
Blacks in various globally dispersed cities have similar violence and educational attainment levels. Even in lands with no "legacy" of treating blacks differently than any other person. Problems in Jamaica, Brazil, the USA - but similar behavior and achievement levels in Sweden, Russia (which wants to get rid of it's black 'guests'.)
Classical political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo never used the term “economy” by itself. They always used the term “political economy.”
ReplyDelete...
As we all know, the origin of the current financial crisis was the subprime mortgage meltdown in the United States. To be more precise, it originated in a financial system generating paper assets whose value depended on the price of housing.
...
The sovereign debt question also created both a financial crisis and then a political crisis in Europe. While the American financial crisis certainly affected Europe, the European political crisis was deepened by the resulting recession.
Political Economy
However That May Be We Owe Much Of Our Immune System To The Neanderthals
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China's Trade Surplus Surges to $31.5 Billion
ReplyDeleteSheesh.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, China? -
ReplyDeleteShit, Pick One, maybe Two.
But, trying to support'em ALL?
Cain't do it.
Somethin's gotta give.
A crucial element of the long retreat of law in sections of society has been our drug policies. By giving criminal gangs a major source of cash and at the same time creating a situation where large sections of the population regularly break the law it has led to the breakdown of law and order. The rise of criminality during the prohibition era in the US was due to much the same laws.
ReplyDeleteMost of the areas where rioting took place in London are hot spots for criminal gangs and the culture that surrounds them. Those gangs are maintained by the cash flows from drug dealing. By continuing with drug policies that most people realise have failed we are in effect subsidising criminals.
British foreign secretary William Hague welcomed the opposition to London, saying it underlined the Transitional National Council's status as the sole legitimate governmental authority in Libya, AFP reported.
ReplyDeleteAllowing the opposition to staff the embassy "marks very clearly the fundamental change that is taking place in Libya," he said.
However, the Khadafy regime was attempting to use anti-squatter laws in a legal bid to evict the opposition, The (London) Times reported.
braap braap, init bruv
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