Knife Crime and the Issue facing Black People

The issue of knife crime especially in urban areas is over-whelmingly affecting the Afro-Caribbean community. We are both perpetrator as well as victim.

People who say that this is not simply a ’black problem' are missing the point entirely. Without the involvement of disaffected black teenagers this would not garner all the headlines that it has. It is a black problem where the black community needs to first acknowledge and take full responsibility for.

I despair when I listen to the likes David Lammy MP who attributes blame to everybody in society for the rise in knife crime, including police, the judicial system, schools, Tory austerity cuts, poverty, discrimination and white middle-class consumption of cocaine which in his eyes is fuelling Black violence. Like many on the left he attaches no responsibility whatsoever to the teenagers carrying out these cold bloodied crimes or their parents who have raised them. For liberals it is society's fault and not down to perpetrators or how they have been raised. For the Guardian newspaper reader, you would never direct any form of responsibility towards parents for failing to bring up their children to become decent, upright and law-abiding citizens.

This is where I fundamentally disagree with the liberal establishment. The root cause of the searing rise in violence is the destruction of the Black Family. Indeed, other factors play a part on the periphery but unmistakably all the problems facing black people stems from the absence of Black Fathers and the chaos this has inevitably caused in the growth of black children.

I believe the way forward is to embrace education. Even in the most deprived areas young men and women of all races, when they put their minds to it, will see education as an invaluable tool to social and upward mobility.

As Black people we need of course to work in conjunction with the police, the government, schools and other agencies to remedy the problem of knife crime. However, be in no doubt, the problem of gangs, drugs and extreme violence that are plaguing Black communities is of our own creation which we need to acknowledge. No amount of shifting the blame to others and perceived victim hood is going to solve it.

As I have stated repeatedly to anybody who wants to listen is that the biggest problem facing Black people is Black people. Unless you understand that concept you will never solve the problem of violence and mayhem which has become a malignant cancer in too many of our communities across the country.