THE American Bill of Rights creates some strange bedfellows. A black lawyer named Anthony Griffin continues to cause a stir because he is defending the Ku Klux Klan. Given that the Klan's historic mission is to terrorise and subjugate blacks, many are wondering why on earth Mr Griffin, who is an ardent opponent of everything that the Klan members stand for, would bother to defend them.
The issue is this. The state of Texas is trying to force the Klan to make public a list of its members who are determined to stop blacks moving into mostly white public housing projects. Mr Griffin is defending the Klan's right to withhold the names on the basis of the First Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees freedom of expression and organisation.
The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, America's oldest and largest civil rights organisation, is outraged by Mr Griffin's action and has summarily dismissed him as general counsel to the Texas chapter of the NAACP, a post he had held for two years, citing a 'conflict of interest'. Since the NAACP works constantly against the Klan, Mr Griffin could not be on both sides of the fence at once, association leaders decreed.
Mr Griffin, 49, has mounted an eloquent defence of his actions, in so doing adding his name to the growing list of blacks who, in various ways, are rejecting the limited strategies of the Old Guard of African-American leaders. Wherever you look, there are convulsions in black politics.
Jesse Jackson has recently challenged the self-imposed code of silence among young blacks that protects the culture of violence. While other black leaders pretended - and some preached - that responsibility lay with the white-controlled media or the police, Mr Jackson has been telling black teenagers it is their fight; he urged them to sign a pledge card that they would tell the police if they saw other blacks with guns or drugs. Ratting on comrades could be good, he said.
On another front, the New York elections have stirred black leaders, including Mr Jackson, to intensify their drive to form a new party. More than 90 per cent of blacks voted for New York's Democratic black mayor, David Dinkins, and overwhelmingly supported his two white running mates seeking second positions in city government. Mr Dinkins was defeated, but the running mates were elected, sending blacks a gloomy message: blacks will support white Democrats, but white Democrats will not necessarily support blacks.
Fed up, Mr Jackson and other black leaders speak of giving up on the Democratic Party, which the majority of blacks have supported since they won the right to vote. They talk of forming a new party in time for the 1996 presidential elections.
The temptation for Mr Jackson is to try and revive his own Rainbow Coalition which was formed to advance all minority interests - and especially his own - but the danger is that a new party would dilute the political strength already gained by African-Americans. They could end up isolated on the outside throwing rocks, trying to get in. A frustrated few might throw bombs.
In this context the thoughtful, soft-spoken arguments of Mr Griffin, acknowledging the rights under the Constitution of even white supremacists to organise without government snooping, are a mature step that can only reflect well on the new generation of black professionals.
Mr Griffin recalls his school days in a segregated community in Texas and the words of the Pledge of Allegiance: '. . . with liberty and justice for all'. He began to listen to Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Dick Gregory and Angela Davis. And he read about Dred Scott, the slave who sued for his freedom after his master had moved him from the slave state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois, and then back to Missouri. An even application of constitutional doctrine would make him free, he claimed, but the US Supreme Court of the day justified the enslavement by proclaiming the black man had no rights that the white man must respect.
As readily as the next person, Mr Griffin acknowledges that the Klan is a hate group that has terrorised the black community. But he insists that the Klan, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, 'or you and your garden party' all have a right to assemble, organise and advocate their respective positions, no matter how odious they might be. When the American Civil Liberties Union office in Texas called and asked if he would take the Klan case, he accepted. 'The failure to protect those we hate takes away my protection,' he says.
He notes that the NAACP in the late Fifties fought to retain its membership list in Alabama, and the Supreme Court upheld its right under the First Amendment.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/peter-pringles-america-black-defender-of-the-klan-1502936.html
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Inspirational teenagers: Whoever said the youth of today are just a bunch of feckless layabouts?
Dennis Gyamfi , social activistAge: 19
Dennis Gyamfi was raised by his grandparents in Ghana: "I would have to walk for miles carrying water on my head as a child," he recalls. "From an early age I had to go out to work to support my family." When he was 10 years old, Gyamfi joined his mother and father at their small council flat in Brixton, and his life change dramatically. "In London, my parents were working all day and night; there was no one to look after me and my siblings. I started hanging out in gangs on the streets around my estate, getting in trouble." Until a chance encounter set him on a different path.
At the age of 15, Gyamfi met a man called Soloman who worked for X-it, a programme set up by people who have successfully escaped gang life and which offers inner-city kids and teenagers an alternative to the street. Within a year of becoming involved with X-it, Gyamfi himself had become a mentor, and won a public service award for his efforts. "If it hadn't been for that meeting," Gyamfi recalls, "my life might have turned out very differently."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/inspirational-teenagers-whoever-said-the-youth-of-today-are-just-a-bunch-of-feckless-layabouts-1799804.html
Dennis Gyamfi was raised by his grandparents in Ghana: "I would have to walk for miles carrying water on my head as a child," he recalls. "From an early age I had to go out to work to support my family." When he was 10 years old, Gyamfi joined his mother and father at their small council flat in Brixton, and his life change dramatically. "In London, my parents were working all day and night; there was no one to look after me and my siblings. I started hanging out in gangs on the streets around my estate, getting in trouble." Until a chance encounter set him on a different path.
At the age of 15, Gyamfi met a man called Soloman who worked for X-it, a programme set up by people who have successfully escaped gang life and which offers inner-city kids and teenagers an alternative to the street. Within a year of becoming involved with X-it, Gyamfi himself had become a mentor, and won a public service award for his efforts. "If it hadn't been for that meeting," Gyamfi recalls, "my life might have turned out very differently."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/inspirational-teenagers-whoever-said-the-youth-of-today-are-just-a-bunch-of-feckless-layabouts-1799804.html
Independent Articles..Hoodie UK: A new film about teenagers is set to shock every parent in Middle England
It promises to be the most controversial British film of the year. The Sun has already called for it to be banned and The Times has accused it of pandering to middle-class voyeurism in its portrayal of crime, bullying and sexual abuse. Set among a group of white and black teenagers in west London, from working-class and middle-class families, and based entirely on true stories, Kidulthood claims to be the first feature film to accurately reflect what life is like for urban kids.
There are graphic scenes of drug-taking, violence, casual sex and organised crime. The characters are all 15. The film opens with a middle-class schoolgirl being horrifically bullied in a classroom. When her preoccupied businessman father picks up her from school, he fails to spot the bruises. Ten minutes later, she has hanged herself. In another sequence two girls trade sexual favours with older men for pocket money to spend at Topshop. A young black boy cuts a man's throat to impress his drug-dealer uncle. Running parallel, however, are story- lines about coping with bad skin and how to choose your friends wisely.
Not surprising then that the film, out in two weeks, has divided critics. But is it an unflinching portrayal of teenage life, or a manipulative assault on the paranoid anxieties of Middle England? For one thing is sure - this film is certain to put the fear of God into parents everywhere.
"This is an essential film for all parents to see," says Sandra White, a youth and development manager with the Metropolitan Black Police Association. "You have to shock adults and young people out of apathy, and into action. We can be quite a desensitised society. Every child could be at risk because of all the influences they face, whatever their background."
Noel Clarke, who wrote the screenplay, insists it is the essential truth of his work that makes the film so controversial. "It touches a raw nerve," he says. "It's on the pulse of what's happening in society right now. Kids these days are growing up too fast."
Clarke, 30, best known for playing Billie Piper's boyfriend in Dr Who, is sure of his material. He grew up in the Ladbroke Grove and Harrow Road area of London where the film is set. His childhood bedroom is used in one scene. For a year he collected newspaper articles about teenagers in trouble, then condensed them into a 90-minute storyline, seen from their point of view.
With a cast that includes Clarke, Jamie Winstone - the teenage daughter of Ray Winstone - and Rafe Spall, son of Timothy Spall, and a "hip-hop and grime" soundtrack by Dizzee Rascal, The Streets and Lady Sovereign, Kidulthood is seriously hip. It also looks fantastic: the director of photography, Brian Tufano, shot Trainspotting and Quadrophenia. Some are predicting it will join the ranks of cult films such as City of God and La Haine. But the film-makers are adamant that style shouldn't get in the way of substance.
"You have a bullying storyline, young people coming up against issues of sex for the first time, taking drugs, dealing with teenage pregnancy," says Hannah Jolliffe of the youth website www.TheSite.org, which gives advice to young people on everything from drugs to sexual health. "What is impressive is it doesn't try to moralise."
The highly multicultural film shows that in the new Britain, all kids face the same temptations.
"The good thing about street culture is that it brings a lot of black, white and Asian people together," says White. "Unfortunately they're impressed by a very Americanised, hip-hop take on culture, full of fast cars and women who dress provocatively."
It is the middle-class parents - portrayed as work-obsessed or naively liberal - who come out worst. In one darkly comic moment, a trendy mother stands outside her 15-year-old daughter's bedroom door, blithely reminding her to "use a condom, sweetheart", unaware her daughter is being sexually harassed by a teenage boy on the other side.
In its shocking portrait of "girl-women" selling their bodies for drugs and clothes, the film points a finger squarely at our over-sexualised culture. How are teenagers to think any differently when they see stars such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton posing as jail-bait?
Films that tackle teen gangs or cliques (Heathers, Thirteen, Kids, City of God) are the backbone of modern independent cinema. The best examples of the genre communicate with teenaged audiences in a language that they identify with, while also reminding adults what it was like. They are also a wake-up call to conservative adults.
We may not like the fact that the 11-year-old protagonist of Welcome to the Dollhouse has an under-age affair, or that the two girls in Thirteen embark on a spree of shoplifting and drug-taking, but we can see why it happens. People with nothing to lose - alienated, marginalised - do scary things.
"Bullying, happy-slapping ...whatever you name it, it is happening already," insists Clarke. "The film is highlighting that, not promoting it. It's saying, 'This is going on. Deal with it.'"
"If parents aren't aware what's going on, it's very hard to help their children go through it," agrees Jolliffe. "Films like this which promote communication can only be a good thing."
White thinks it will help adults understand the way kids think. "Many parents do not have a clue what their children are up to." The film closes with a huge teenage party in one of those chichi, double-fronted Victorian London houses we're more used to seeing in Notting Hill. Desperate to impress his peers while his parents are away, well-heeled Blake invites the whole school. In they stream, aping drunken, sexed-up adult behaviour. Violence rapidly ensues.
But for all the scenes of hedonism, Kidulthood can be surprisingly moral. Essentially it's a film about bullying: black kids bully white kids, white kids bully black kids, girls bully girls. The final message is that bullying is always unacceptable.
"Bullies are bastards aren't they?" says Winstone with feeling. "If this film makes a couple of parents go, 'Maybe I should sit down and talk to my son or my daughter more', then I think it's done its job."
'Kidulthood' is released on 3 March
Rough guide: 'I grew up here. I know what it's like'
Saadeya Sham, 21, grew up on the estate in west London where 'Kidulthood' is set
Gun crime, street violence, drug dealing, prostitution, petty theft. This is the real Notting Hill, not the fairytale version Richard Curtis presented. Growing up on a council estate at the top of Golborne Road, I know you're just as likely to brush shoulders with a crackhead stumbling down Portobello Market as a supermodel.
Kidulthood is a deeply shocking film. It reminded me of my childhood in a lot of ways. There were fights in our morning assemblies almost daily. My brother's best friend was suspended for beating up the headmistress's husband. The previous headmaster left within two years of joining. His background was in the Salvation Army but this was one social challenge too far. And this was primary school.
I was lucky that I had both my parents to keep me grounded, but most of my friends were from single-parent families. I remember a friend's mum coming into her room, picking her new jeans out of the wardrobe and hawking them door to door to tide them over the bank holiday weekend. My father's friend owns a local newsagent's and is always having stuff nicked by the same kids. The police don't seem able to do anything.
I moved to another area of London in my teens, but I kept in touch and I hear terrible stories. Friends who became drug dealers. The friend I made at an evening class who confided that he pimped teenage girls in flats near the Tube station. Friends of friends who were stabbed. The plot of Kidulthood may be exaggerated but the heart of it rings true.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/hoodie-uk-a-new-film-about-teenagers-is-set-to-shock-every-parent-in-middle-england-525982.html
There are graphic scenes of drug-taking, violence, casual sex and organised crime. The characters are all 15. The film opens with a middle-class schoolgirl being horrifically bullied in a classroom. When her preoccupied businessman father picks up her from school, he fails to spot the bruises. Ten minutes later, she has hanged herself. In another sequence two girls trade sexual favours with older men for pocket money to spend at Topshop. A young black boy cuts a man's throat to impress his drug-dealer uncle. Running parallel, however, are story- lines about coping with bad skin and how to choose your friends wisely.
Not surprising then that the film, out in two weeks, has divided critics. But is it an unflinching portrayal of teenage life, or a manipulative assault on the paranoid anxieties of Middle England? For one thing is sure - this film is certain to put the fear of God into parents everywhere.
"This is an essential film for all parents to see," says Sandra White, a youth and development manager with the Metropolitan Black Police Association. "You have to shock adults and young people out of apathy, and into action. We can be quite a desensitised society. Every child could be at risk because of all the influences they face, whatever their background."
Noel Clarke, who wrote the screenplay, insists it is the essential truth of his work that makes the film so controversial. "It touches a raw nerve," he says. "It's on the pulse of what's happening in society right now. Kids these days are growing up too fast."
Clarke, 30, best known for playing Billie Piper's boyfriend in Dr Who, is sure of his material. He grew up in the Ladbroke Grove and Harrow Road area of London where the film is set. His childhood bedroom is used in one scene. For a year he collected newspaper articles about teenagers in trouble, then condensed them into a 90-minute storyline, seen from their point of view.
With a cast that includes Clarke, Jamie Winstone - the teenage daughter of Ray Winstone - and Rafe Spall, son of Timothy Spall, and a "hip-hop and grime" soundtrack by Dizzee Rascal, The Streets and Lady Sovereign, Kidulthood is seriously hip. It also looks fantastic: the director of photography, Brian Tufano, shot Trainspotting and Quadrophenia. Some are predicting it will join the ranks of cult films such as City of God and La Haine. But the film-makers are adamant that style shouldn't get in the way of substance.
"You have a bullying storyline, young people coming up against issues of sex for the first time, taking drugs, dealing with teenage pregnancy," says Hannah Jolliffe of the youth website www.TheSite.org, which gives advice to young people on everything from drugs to sexual health. "What is impressive is it doesn't try to moralise."
The highly multicultural film shows that in the new Britain, all kids face the same temptations.
"The good thing about street culture is that it brings a lot of black, white and Asian people together," says White. "Unfortunately they're impressed by a very Americanised, hip-hop take on culture, full of fast cars and women who dress provocatively."
It is the middle-class parents - portrayed as work-obsessed or naively liberal - who come out worst. In one darkly comic moment, a trendy mother stands outside her 15-year-old daughter's bedroom door, blithely reminding her to "use a condom, sweetheart", unaware her daughter is being sexually harassed by a teenage boy on the other side.
In its shocking portrait of "girl-women" selling their bodies for drugs and clothes, the film points a finger squarely at our over-sexualised culture. How are teenagers to think any differently when they see stars such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton posing as jail-bait?
Films that tackle teen gangs or cliques (Heathers, Thirteen, Kids, City of God) are the backbone of modern independent cinema. The best examples of the genre communicate with teenaged audiences in a language that they identify with, while also reminding adults what it was like. They are also a wake-up call to conservative adults.
We may not like the fact that the 11-year-old protagonist of Welcome to the Dollhouse has an under-age affair, or that the two girls in Thirteen embark on a spree of shoplifting and drug-taking, but we can see why it happens. People with nothing to lose - alienated, marginalised - do scary things.
"Bullying, happy-slapping ...whatever you name it, it is happening already," insists Clarke. "The film is highlighting that, not promoting it. It's saying, 'This is going on. Deal with it.'"
"If parents aren't aware what's going on, it's very hard to help their children go through it," agrees Jolliffe. "Films like this which promote communication can only be a good thing."
White thinks it will help adults understand the way kids think. "Many parents do not have a clue what their children are up to." The film closes with a huge teenage party in one of those chichi, double-fronted Victorian London houses we're more used to seeing in Notting Hill. Desperate to impress his peers while his parents are away, well-heeled Blake invites the whole school. In they stream, aping drunken, sexed-up adult behaviour. Violence rapidly ensues.
But for all the scenes of hedonism, Kidulthood can be surprisingly moral. Essentially it's a film about bullying: black kids bully white kids, white kids bully black kids, girls bully girls. The final message is that bullying is always unacceptable.
"Bullies are bastards aren't they?" says Winstone with feeling. "If this film makes a couple of parents go, 'Maybe I should sit down and talk to my son or my daughter more', then I think it's done its job."
'Kidulthood' is released on 3 March
Rough guide: 'I grew up here. I know what it's like'
Saadeya Sham, 21, grew up on the estate in west London where 'Kidulthood' is set
Gun crime, street violence, drug dealing, prostitution, petty theft. This is the real Notting Hill, not the fairytale version Richard Curtis presented. Growing up on a council estate at the top of Golborne Road, I know you're just as likely to brush shoulders with a crackhead stumbling down Portobello Market as a supermodel.
Kidulthood is a deeply shocking film. It reminded me of my childhood in a lot of ways. There were fights in our morning assemblies almost daily. My brother's best friend was suspended for beating up the headmistress's husband. The previous headmaster left within two years of joining. His background was in the Salvation Army but this was one social challenge too far. And this was primary school.
I was lucky that I had both my parents to keep me grounded, but most of my friends were from single-parent families. I remember a friend's mum coming into her room, picking her new jeans out of the wardrobe and hawking them door to door to tide them over the bank holiday weekend. My father's friend owns a local newsagent's and is always having stuff nicked by the same kids. The police don't seem able to do anything.
I moved to another area of London in my teens, but I kept in touch and I hear terrible stories. Friends who became drug dealers. The friend I made at an evening class who confided that he pimped teenage girls in flats near the Tube station. Friends of friends who were stabbed. The plot of Kidulthood may be exaggerated but the heart of it rings true.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/hoodie-uk-a-new-film-about-teenagers-is-set-to-shock-every-parent-in-middle-england-525982.html
Selina stokes a diversity debate that needs addressing..
It will come as a surprise to few but a delight to many that Selina Scott is suing Five over ageism in its refusal to hire her for a maternity cover role and choice of younger presenters instead. It is a delight not because Five is worse than anyone else in this respect, but because it stokes a debate which urgently needs to be taken more seriously. Casual sexism, ageism and racism are the collective dirty secret of the vast majority of media institutions, and they represent as much of an industrial challenge as they do a moral one.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission's Report on Sex and Power, published last week, drew a depressing picture for women in the workplace. In general the progression of women at the highest level in the workplace is pitiful and the media are no exception: only 13.6% of national newspaper editors (including the Herald and Western Mail) are women; only 10% of media FTSE's 350 companies have women at the helm; and at the BBC, which has often been held as an exemplar of diversity, women make up less than 30% of most senior management positions. It puts into context Jeremy Paxman's deranged rant about the white male in television. Ethnic minority representation is even worse.
A couple of weeks ago Pat Younge, former BBC head of sports programmes and planning who left to work for Discovery in the US, caused a stir at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival by saying that diversity targets should be like financial targets - you don't hit them, you get fired. I have to say that as board champion for diversity at Guardian News and Media I would currently be firing myself and most of the board for some missed targets. But Younge is right - because diversity targets are not just a feelgood add-on, they are vital to the health of any media business. The temptation to hire in one's own image for most managers is as irresistible as it is subliminal - which is why there are a lot of opinionated women working in digital management at the Guardian, and why we all need targets to remind us to look beyond the mirror.
On screen, any number of unconventional-looking ageing blokes (Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathan Ross, Chris Moyles, Alan Sugar, Adrian Chiles, Jeremy Paxman, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan) are paid at a top rate for the talent they possess beyond their appearance. For women it is an altogether different story - appearance and age are clearly factors in choosing female presenters in a way that they aren't for men.
The media should be deeply concerned about this un-diversity - not because it represents moral turpitude on our part, but because it represents bloody awful business sense. What is happening to the UK population at the moment? It is ethnically diversifying, and it is ageing. It is also the case that it is, as of the 2001 Census, marginally more female than it is male. And we live longer - so older women, and non-white potential audiences are on the rise. In London, the major urban conurbation and key market for so many media brands, the population is around 37% ethnically diverse, yet this is nowhere near reflected in the management structures of media companies. Or indeed in their on-screen or in-paper representation.
How though, can you hope to address audiences for which you have no instinctive feel, and towards which you show casual discrimination? We are all in danger of becoming irrelevant to the changing demographics of our target audience at a time when holding any kind of audience is key to survival. If white men are so good at solving business problems - and given that they represent well over 80% of FTSE 100 directors we can speculate that this is a skill they must possess in measure - then I'm surprised they haven't grasped this one already.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/08/channelfive.television
The Equality and Human Rights Commission's Report on Sex and Power, published last week, drew a depressing picture for women in the workplace. In general the progression of women at the highest level in the workplace is pitiful and the media are no exception: only 13.6% of national newspaper editors (including the Herald and Western Mail) are women; only 10% of media FTSE's 350 companies have women at the helm; and at the BBC, which has often been held as an exemplar of diversity, women make up less than 30% of most senior management positions. It puts into context Jeremy Paxman's deranged rant about the white male in television. Ethnic minority representation is even worse.
A couple of weeks ago Pat Younge, former BBC head of sports programmes and planning who left to work for Discovery in the US, caused a stir at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival by saying that diversity targets should be like financial targets - you don't hit them, you get fired. I have to say that as board champion for diversity at Guardian News and Media I would currently be firing myself and most of the board for some missed targets. But Younge is right - because diversity targets are not just a feelgood add-on, they are vital to the health of any media business. The temptation to hire in one's own image for most managers is as irresistible as it is subliminal - which is why there are a lot of opinionated women working in digital management at the Guardian, and why we all need targets to remind us to look beyond the mirror.
On screen, any number of unconventional-looking ageing blokes (Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathan Ross, Chris Moyles, Alan Sugar, Adrian Chiles, Jeremy Paxman, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan) are paid at a top rate for the talent they possess beyond their appearance. For women it is an altogether different story - appearance and age are clearly factors in choosing female presenters in a way that they aren't for men.
The media should be deeply concerned about this un-diversity - not because it represents moral turpitude on our part, but because it represents bloody awful business sense. What is happening to the UK population at the moment? It is ethnically diversifying, and it is ageing. It is also the case that it is, as of the 2001 Census, marginally more female than it is male. And we live longer - so older women, and non-white potential audiences are on the rise. In London, the major urban conurbation and key market for so many media brands, the population is around 37% ethnically diverse, yet this is nowhere near reflected in the management structures of media companies. Or indeed in their on-screen or in-paper representation.
How though, can you hope to address audiences for which you have no instinctive feel, and towards which you show casual discrimination? We are all in danger of becoming irrelevant to the changing demographics of our target audience at a time when holding any kind of audience is key to survival. If white men are so good at solving business problems - and given that they represent well over 80% of FTSE 100 directors we can speculate that this is a skill they must possess in measure - then I'm surprised they haven't grasped this one already.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/08/channelfive.television
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
ASA raps 'racist' poster for kids' charityKids Company's advert showing black teenagers harassing a white man reinforced negative stereotypes, watchdo
A poster ad for a children's charity that showed two black teenagers harassing a white man reinforced negative stereotypes and was therefore "racist", the advertising watchdog has ruled.
The Advertising Standards Authority also found that another billboard ad for the Kids Company charity that stated "You are right – kids who can kill really are wrong in the head" beneath a picture of four black teenagers was likely to cause offence.
In addition, this ad made misleading claims about a supposed link between emotional development, brain size and violent behaviour, the ASA said.
Both ads were judged to be in breach of the ASA's code on decency, with the one featuring the claims about brain size also falling foul of clauses on truthfulness and substantiation.
The ASA conceded that Kids Company meant to raise awareness about the children it sought to help, but nevertheless ordered the charity not to re-use the ads, two out of five used in a poster campaign.
In its defence, the charity said the campaign as a whole had used a cross-section of local children from different backgrounds in and around Kilburn, north London.
According to Kids Company, the racial mix was representative of the children from the youth clubs in that area, with 80% of the children that came to it for help from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, a proportion that was again reflected by the ads.
The Outdoor Advertising Association said it had cleared the ads as they contained both black and white children and were spread as evenly as possible across nine different stations.
Kids Company's ads were designed to "confront superficial judgments and prejudices" and challenged the viewer to reject stereotypes, the charity added.
The charity said the ad showing the black teenagers harassing the white man opposed the viewer's presumption – spelled out in the headline "How do you get inside the head of a 16-year-old knife-wielding thug?" – with the charity's point of view, written in italics: "First get inside the head of a 16-year-old bed-wetting boy."
However, the ASA found that this ad "focused on a negative image of black teenagers that was likely to reinforce negative stereotypes and was therefore racist".
The watchdog also said the ad linking violent teenagers to emotional underdevelopment "was likely to cause serious offence because it featured only black teenagers".
Kids Company said two images of the brain it used in this ad – one, larger brain was labelled "normal", while a smaller one was marked "extreme neglect" – had been taken from a US study on child trauma and brain development that demonstrated the effect of sensory deprivation on brain size.
However, the ASA said its interpretation of the study suggested it was referring to factors such as nutrition and children being raised in cages in dark rooms, not just to emotional development.
Moreover, the regulator rejected the idea that there was evidence that brain size had an impact on violent behaviour, as it found the ad had implied.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/26/asa-kids-company
The Advertising Standards Authority also found that another billboard ad for the Kids Company charity that stated "You are right – kids who can kill really are wrong in the head" beneath a picture of four black teenagers was likely to cause offence.
In addition, this ad made misleading claims about a supposed link between emotional development, brain size and violent behaviour, the ASA said.
Both ads were judged to be in breach of the ASA's code on decency, with the one featuring the claims about brain size also falling foul of clauses on truthfulness and substantiation.
The ASA conceded that Kids Company meant to raise awareness about the children it sought to help, but nevertheless ordered the charity not to re-use the ads, two out of five used in a poster campaign.
In its defence, the charity said the campaign as a whole had used a cross-section of local children from different backgrounds in and around Kilburn, north London.
According to Kids Company, the racial mix was representative of the children from the youth clubs in that area, with 80% of the children that came to it for help from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, a proportion that was again reflected by the ads.
The Outdoor Advertising Association said it had cleared the ads as they contained both black and white children and were spread as evenly as possible across nine different stations.
Kids Company's ads were designed to "confront superficial judgments and prejudices" and challenged the viewer to reject stereotypes, the charity added.
The charity said the ad showing the black teenagers harassing the white man opposed the viewer's presumption – spelled out in the headline "How do you get inside the head of a 16-year-old knife-wielding thug?" – with the charity's point of view, written in italics: "First get inside the head of a 16-year-old bed-wetting boy."
However, the ASA found that this ad "focused on a negative image of black teenagers that was likely to reinforce negative stereotypes and was therefore racist".
The watchdog also said the ad linking violent teenagers to emotional underdevelopment "was likely to cause serious offence because it featured only black teenagers".
Kids Company said two images of the brain it used in this ad – one, larger brain was labelled "normal", while a smaller one was marked "extreme neglect" – had been taken from a US study on child trauma and brain development that demonstrated the effect of sensory deprivation on brain size.
However, the ASA said its interpretation of the study suggested it was referring to factors such as nutrition and children being raised in cages in dark rooms, not just to emotional development.
Moreover, the regulator rejected the idea that there was evidence that brain size had an impact on violent behaviour, as it found the ad had implied.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/26/asa-kids-company
The ordinary brilliance of black youths
When it comes to imagery surrounding black youngsters, I'm used to the relentlessly negative – knife crime, underachievement, family breakdown, we've all seen it.
I've just had an evening, though, which was the exact opposite – unremittingly positive. The occasion was the London Schools and the Black Child awards ceremony, organised by the MP Diane Abbott and held at the House of Commons.
It highlighted the academic achievements of black youngsters at GCSE, A-Level and degree level. This wasn't an evening celebrating mediocrity – the plague of the burgeoning awards industry – but a roll call of excellence and dedication. And it wasn't about just one or two exceptional cases (more often than not being subliminally interpreted as "the exception which proves the rule" by those who continue to see black people in entirely negative terms).
The power of the occasion was that we heard one story after another of young people defying the stereotypes, overcoming the odds – and, in many cases, giving back to their community too. Altogether, 24 tales of great achievement. And, even more significant, there were just as many boys represented as girls.
Youngsters such as Keli Dusu, who gained 5 As at A-level but has still found time to work as a volunteer for the Salvation Army Youth Club, and also to coach a group of autistic children. Or Rochelle Balach, who, without parental support, had to work to fund herself through sixth-form college, yet still emerged with three A-grades. Or Hannah Kendall, who has just qualified with a first-class degree from the Royal College of Music, had her compositions performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, and who volunteers at schools in Lambeth. And the story of Lawrence Price, diagnosed with learning difficulties and ADHD as a child, who rejected the extra help he was offered, and who has just graduated with a first in history from Oxford.
We also heard a touching and personal talk from Hollywood actor Naomie Harris about her own mother's drive to get a degree and eventually become a successful TV scriptwriter despite having Naomie when still a teenager.
The significance of all these stories was that, by hearing so many, it made the exceptional appear ordinary, and achievable. As I looked out over the Thames, though, I thought: how do we get these uplifting messages out there, beyond this House of Commons room – where they can challenge the relentless gangsta-rap videos, or negative news coverage? Where teenagers are given the message that blackness is about violence and aggression, and that to show any sign of academic interest is to be some kind of race sellout.
"You're in the media: will you be writing about this?" asked one person of me after the ceremony. And I thought: if a fight had broken out, or if one person had drawn a knife, the event would be front-page news. Such are the news values of my honourable profession.
Ultimately, this is a battle: between the multibillion music and media industries, and people like Abbott, who get on with schemes like this because it's the right thing to do. Waiting for these industries to change will take a very long time. In the meantime, though, it should surely be possible, for example, to circulate a DVD of this event in urban classrooms around the country, where it could have an immediate and positive impact. Can a sponsor can be found to fund such a thing?
For the record: I was outraged when Abbott sent her child to private school; but I have to say that organising an event like this far outweighs her ideologically off-message moment. One day, I hope, Abbott's message will get through; but in the meantime as least she has the pleasure of working with some bright, keen and enthusiastic young hopefuls and giving them huge inspiration.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/05/london-black-children-awards
I've just had an evening, though, which was the exact opposite – unremittingly positive. The occasion was the London Schools and the Black Child awards ceremony, organised by the MP Diane Abbott and held at the House of Commons.
It highlighted the academic achievements of black youngsters at GCSE, A-Level and degree level. This wasn't an evening celebrating mediocrity – the plague of the burgeoning awards industry – but a roll call of excellence and dedication. And it wasn't about just one or two exceptional cases (more often than not being subliminally interpreted as "the exception which proves the rule" by those who continue to see black people in entirely negative terms).
The power of the occasion was that we heard one story after another of young people defying the stereotypes, overcoming the odds – and, in many cases, giving back to their community too. Altogether, 24 tales of great achievement. And, even more significant, there were just as many boys represented as girls.
Youngsters such as Keli Dusu, who gained 5 As at A-level but has still found time to work as a volunteer for the Salvation Army Youth Club, and also to coach a group of autistic children. Or Rochelle Balach, who, without parental support, had to work to fund herself through sixth-form college, yet still emerged with three A-grades. Or Hannah Kendall, who has just qualified with a first-class degree from the Royal College of Music, had her compositions performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, and who volunteers at schools in Lambeth. And the story of Lawrence Price, diagnosed with learning difficulties and ADHD as a child, who rejected the extra help he was offered, and who has just graduated with a first in history from Oxford.
We also heard a touching and personal talk from Hollywood actor Naomie Harris about her own mother's drive to get a degree and eventually become a successful TV scriptwriter despite having Naomie when still a teenager.
The significance of all these stories was that, by hearing so many, it made the exceptional appear ordinary, and achievable. As I looked out over the Thames, though, I thought: how do we get these uplifting messages out there, beyond this House of Commons room – where they can challenge the relentless gangsta-rap videos, or negative news coverage? Where teenagers are given the message that blackness is about violence and aggression, and that to show any sign of academic interest is to be some kind of race sellout.
"You're in the media: will you be writing about this?" asked one person of me after the ceremony. And I thought: if a fight had broken out, or if one person had drawn a knife, the event would be front-page news. Such are the news values of my honourable profession.
Ultimately, this is a battle: between the multibillion music and media industries, and people like Abbott, who get on with schemes like this because it's the right thing to do. Waiting for these industries to change will take a very long time. In the meantime, though, it should surely be possible, for example, to circulate a DVD of this event in urban classrooms around the country, where it could have an immediate and positive impact. Can a sponsor can be found to fund such a thing?
For the record: I was outraged when Abbott sent her child to private school; but I have to say that organising an event like this far outweighs her ideologically off-message moment. One day, I hope, Abbott's message will get through; but in the meantime as least she has the pleasure of working with some bright, keen and enthusiastic young hopefuls and giving them huge inspiration.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/05/london-black-children-awards
Practical Production..
A documentary opening following male teens involved in street crime. (working with Ardit).
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