How We Perpetuate Our Own Pain
On the trauma of crime and community healing.
As a 14 year old girl, it might perplex you as to why you may have found me replaying the soulful outros of grime albums at 2 am on a Friday night. At almost 18, here I am, drafting this article to the sound of Ghetts’ latest album, Conflict of Interest, vividly picturing the jail cell he sat in at 16 or the one too many funerals he’s been to. Why I think grime and the culture of it resonates with me so much is because of how it allows me to vicariously live through a reality I’ve always known existed but was indirectly told I didn’t exist in.
Most of my experience of youth crime is largely peripheral. I’ve never been arrested let alone excluded or suspended; my temperament and my only daughter syndrome wouldn’t allow it. But I quickly learnt that my own respectability didn’t shelter me from the trauma of a police raid an hour before period 1 or ‘getting searched by a golden retriever in a Cat. A prison while I’m standing on an arrow’.
I say that to demonstrate how being on the periphery surrounds you with the debris of youth crime and the prison system. In this regard, the experiences of friends and family is oftentimes an afterthought. On a more granular level, the conversation around police brutality, the prison system and particularly youth crime in polyethnic, inner city communities- particularly the Afro-Caribbean community, is alarmingly androcentric. Whilst this is a crippling reality that mostly involves young men, it does not exclusively effect them nor does tackling this issue begin and end with them as the sole victims and perpetrators. To some, this is just a running joke between young people wherein girls should just stay out of boys’ business and that the beef between young men has nothing to do with us.
It has everything to do with us.
Perhaps I’m being overly scrupulous with this analysis of ‘hood’ politics yet this persistent exclusion of black girls’ experience of violence occurs when we don’t look beyond the sensationalised headlines and the campaigns to free[insertgenericgangstalias].
Portrayal of women in street culture
Whilst many people flocked to condemn Top Boy and others like it for its supposed glorification of crime, few spoke of the depiction of black women in these environments and the ramifications of violent crime is on us. From the very first episode of the revival, it was depicted that we were dispensable props in the glamour and gore of ‘the streets’ with Jamie’s brief love interest being shot in the neck in crossfire during the first episode. Similarly, Leah played by Karla-Simone Spence in Rapman’s Blue Story was another casualty in the altercation between once best friends Marco (Michael Ward) and Timmy (Stephen Odubola). Little Simz playing the dark-skinned love interest in the latest season of Top Boy was a welcomed depiction of black love in such a poisonous reality but this also made me wonder how the effects of Dushane actions would have on say his daughter in the same way we saw the effects of this environment on Jamie’s little brother and his friend. This is more than just the subplot a kidnapped girlfriend or mother but the recognition of the sister who loses a brother, a father, a cousin or the mother who loses a son and how the changes to her household dynamic effect her life and psyche thereafter.
To an extent, youth violence is inherently patriarchal, compounded by the age-old tropes of even young men being providers, aggressive, competitive and tribal. However, these are tropes that have already been identified and attributes that may correlate with but do not solely cause crime whereas almost no light is being shone on where that leaves women. Healing communities and families affected by crime requires sustaining a conversation that is nuanced and sensitive to all types of victims and how far one persons actions reverberate.
The role of the State
Whilst lockdown may have reduced the likelihood of the numerous murders and attacks we saw in years gone, almost all young people’s lives have been ravaged by the pandemic; a record number being at higher risk of depleting mental health, educational disparities widened and welfare provisions exhausted. Amongst all this strife, ‘well-intentioned young people’ still found the courage to protest against the state in matters of systemic racism and the abysmal blunders effecting our education. The summer of 2020 was bleak but a world away from the summer of 2017, 2018 or 2011 for that matter- our progression as a generation and demographic should be recognised as such and we simply cannot afford to loose more lives to a system that doesn’t give a damn about us. A system by which 20,000 extra police officers, IPP sentencing supposedly abolished in 2012 yet 2,223 people in prison are still serving the sentence, an additional 10,000 prison places with a 2.5 billion pound fund yet £500 million allocated for youth services to which is £380 million less than in 2010 clearly dosen’t give a damn about the young men who meet the quota let alone the women who suffer as a result.
‘The toxic stoicism of young black men and the strong black women caricature that transcends generations compounds the adverse effects of trauma and violence. I don’t write this out of a desire to wallow in my own pity party but to challenge and categorically reject the idea that violence, emotional restraint and struggle is a natural part of the inner city experience.’
These effects become one of many explanations for adultification of black girls who survive and thrive in these environments whilst their perspectives and emotional needs are left unacknowledged and untreated. The stoicism of young black men and the strong black women caricature that transcend all generations compounds the adverse effects of trauma and violence. I don’t write this out of a desire to wallow in my own pity party, but to challenge and categorically reject the idea that violence, emotional restraint and struggle is a natural part of the inner city experience. Maybe I’m pitifully naïve but I think it is lazy and regressive to believe that things will never change and youth crime amongst ethnic minorities will always exist, or rather come and go in waves. What’s to dispute the fact that in 5 to 10 years from now, many of us in these communities will have been displaced via gentrification, supposed ‘crackdowns’, or better yet, voluntary repatriation. While it’s great to empower us on the premise of our skin, beauty, talents and potential, as a community and we need to empower each other to be emotionally astute in regards to mental health, to recognise grooming, glorification and mostly trauma before the state does it for us.
I’m not going to be idealistic and say that the pandemic has magically erased territorial lines and decade long rivalries now that we have a new found appreciation for life. However, I hope it has has matured our perspectives on how we see our communities and our peers. With the anticipation of June 21st and a ‘return to normalcy’ lets not forget how normalised counting the number of stabbings in the news once was and how crime ‘waves’ resurface. Ultimately, crime is the very last product in the entire equation that constitutes the experience of many multi-ethnic communities in the Britain’s densely populated cities. We owe it to ourselves to totally shift our focus on how we approach the conversation of crime, to illuminate the experiences of young women in these environments, of immigrant mothers, of overworked and underpaid solicitors, of survivors of abuse and other very specific realities. We ought to broaden our scope in order to both heal and prevent more generations being claimed by the cycle of crime and psychological deprivation.
