For black Britons, this is not the 80s revisited. It’s worse

For black Britons, this is not the 80s revisited. It’s worse

The Guardian
2011-08-11

Joseph Harker, Assistant Comment Editor

Our MPs are ‘on message’, our media in decline and the Commission for Racial Equality abolished. Who speaks for us?

This is not 1981. Nor 1985. As has been pointed out over the past few days, things have changed a lot since the “inner-city unrest”—as it was quaintly named back then—erupted in Brixton, Tottenham, Toxteth, Handsworth and other parts of Britain.

But with each passing day, the old maxim, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”, has increasing relevance. In the 80s, as now, rioting was sparked by a confrontation between black people and the police and spread to the rest of the country, including to “white” areas. In 1981, the Conservative prime minister dismissed suggestions that the Brixton riot was due to unemployment and racism. Time proved that she was badly wrong. But fast forward three decades, and David Cameron tells the House of Commons that this week’s rioting was “criminality, pure and simple”.

In the years up to 1981, tension had been building between black people and the police over the “sus” laws, which gave officers powers to arrest anyone they suspected may be intending to steal. For them, a black youngster glancing at a handbag was enough. After Brixton, this law was repealed. Today, however, black people are seven times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched. And under the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act—which allows police to search anyone in a designated area without specific grounds for suspicion—the racial discrepancy rises to 26 times. This is symptomatic of the many ways in which, for black Britons, life seemingly improved but has steadily descended again…

…Over the last three decades we’ve allowed ourselves to be fooled that, with greater integration, plus a few black faces in sport and entertainment, things have improved. People gush about the growing mixed-race population, supposedly Britain’s “beautiful” future. Well, Mark Duggan had a white parent but it didn’t make much difference to his prospects…

Read the entire article here.

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