Interlude 2

(album: Music, Trial & Trauma: A Drill Story - 2020)

Let's remember we've got a couple of centuries
Of this type of violent youth crime
In predominantly white communities in Britain
The overwhelming majority of murders
Have not been committed by teenage black boys
In 2017 there were 117 or 16 murders, 21 of which were of teenage black boys
In 2018 there were 134, 24 of teenagers in general
When you think that blackness is the most important thing to emphasise
About these young men
Almost half of the young people in prison in Britain
Regardless of ethnicity were in care as children
Almost half of young people in prison in Britain
Were expelled from school as children

When we offer blackness as an explanatory factor
As if we don't need to know anything else
Because let's look at it in the other sense
Where young black boys overachieve
Is race offered as an explanatory factor?
For example, British Ghanaian and Nigerian boys on free school meals
So, the poorest sector academically outperform
And are more likely to go to university
Than similarly poor white mix-race and black English kids
Whose grandparents came from the Caribbean
The four youngest children in Britain to ever take GCSEs are all black
Ramarni Wilfred, a young black boy from east London
Has a higher IQ than Einstein
Young black men are more disproportionally represented
In professional football than any other area of British life
With all of the consequences and implications that has
For their contributions to the tax base et cetera
So it's almost as if a black person does something negative
The entire so-called black community is to blame
A black person does something positive
And they suddenly regain their humanity
And their right to be viewed as an individual
I started carrying a knife when I was maybe 15
I don't say that my own personality is in no way responsible
Most of the young black boys I grew up with didn't carry knives
I made bad decisions, but those bad decisions were made in a context
And unlike a lot of the rest of my friends, because I had good GCSEs
Because I had self-confidence, because I had this pan-African support
When I decided to stop making bad decisions
I had the equipment to progress