The Perception Deception (From Times Series)

The Perception Deception

12:14am Tuesday 29th June 2010

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‘Never judge a book by its cover.’ The famous quote when googled funnily enough shows an image of Susan Boyle. But how much of this famous English idiom do we implement in are daily lives? From the Hampstead dweller witnessing an ethnic person on a bus and approaching with slow steps of caution resulting in the thought process of ‘omygodwhatifhehasaknife’ which sounds like gibberish but is really a mumbled middle class prayer. Or in contrast, witnessing a Caucasian skinhead with the St Georges flag embezzled as a tattoo on his arm (interestingly St George was a Palestinian Christian) and assuming that this skinhead is a jingoistic, closet racist who associates me with corner shops and blowing things up. The aforementioned stereotypes are a tribute to the cynical nature of the British who lack the ability to muster up some empathy or understanding. We are given injections of subliminal garbage via TV that every black youth is an urban gangster and that Muslims are split into specific pigeon holed sectors of ‘moderate and extreme.’ The tragedy is that are minds are programmed to these stereotypes.

Recently in Barnet, a teen Ashley Manning was given an ASBO for ‘years of lawlessness’ as reported by the Times Series. Now, I do not know the specifics of the case or what problems Ashley was having at the time, so I will reserve judgement on his actions. There is no doubt though that anti-social behaviour is horrible for residents but sharp and frankly rude cynicism is simply counterproductive. It’s particularly rich when with an air of snobbish audacity one human belittles another’s existence simply because of their anti-social actions. The Times Series started the report with the words ‘the teenage yob’ and this kind of language or rhetoric is atypical of the fundamentally flawed approach of eradicating youth crime in Barnet. By no means am I saying society must ‘hug a hoody’ but rather human beings must comprehend the sociological issues of growing up in a tough estate where the dog-eat-dog doctrine rules and street credibility is all you have. Instead, the root cause of this crime must be identified and solved. In Ashley Manning’s case it was mentioned that he can’t throw any ‘stones or hard objects.’ Harsher punishments rambled on by neo-conservatives with no connection to difficulty or struggle in their luxury filled lives will create a further divide amongst the youth and adults.

The youth of today are faced with a huge problem. There is a lack of activities and clubs that appeal to the youth on a wider basis. The crucial word is ‘appeal,’ something that kids really are interested in and this medium can be open to anything. There is also a lack of a positive inspirational role model which is another issue all together. But going back to the issue of how we perceive one another. If perhaps (this may seem an airy fairy cliché to some) we could judge one another through are hearts and personalities rather then any pre-conceived thoughts then we would be on the way to paving a better society for the future. If everyone could read each others minds we would discover an underground neo-Marxist-fascist inspired race driven class warfare (amongst other things.) So I hope that people can strive to create a society where we eradicate the idea of a minority and discount pigmentation or the lack of it. A society where crimes are not simply judged on the spot when the facts and issues from it are not completely understood.