"The
demands of the "black" middle class are not the demands of those that
occupy the public imagination as criminals and drug dealers. I do not
believe that people think that the public intellectual Ekow Eshon is a
criminal or that Oxford educated UCL academic Nathaniel Coleman is
styled as a gang leader on a regular basis or Cambridge educated lawyer
Kevin Bismark Cobham considered a coke dealer. I do not believe that
they are excluded from consumption; so they struggle to speak to this
politics. I appreciate that they have risen to the highest levels but I
don't think that an excellent education alone makes one a credible voice
on the issues that those in the "black" poor experience. I do not
believe that left-wing academic conversations about "structural racism"
do anything but add some nice theories to the canon of left-wing thought
to sit on the shelf so the next generation of "race" men can sit down
and pontificate on them; in libraries, lecture halls and at
Pan-Africanist intellectual gatherings.
The
urban "underclass" need politics and policy that is realistic and
improves their day to day lives like the raising of the threshold on
personal allowance; prison reform; legalisation of cannabis and
decriminalisation of drugs; an overhaul of stop and search; funding for
legal aid; mental health funding; large scale investment in social
housing; digital inclusion and living wage jobs in our inner cities. We
are not interested in another ideological; theoretical fairytale but
some intelligent policy that tackles the issues rather than a simplistic
request for positive action that will fundamentally expand the gap.
"Race" politics is the home of the "black" middle class and not those
down to earth folk struggling on the breadline from one day to the next."
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