Dr Tony Sewell on Fatherlessness, Gangs and Knife Crime
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Summary
Tony Sowell is the founder of Generating Genius, a charity that helps inner-city kids get to top universities in the UK. In this episode, Tony talks about his life growing up in a very white, middle class background in the 60s and 70s, and how this shaped his views on social mobility.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is the
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show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing
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about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our fantastic
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expert guest this week is Tony Sowell, who's the founder of Generating Genius, which is a charity
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that helps inner-city kids get to top universities here in the UK.
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The question we always like to ask at the beginning is,
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Well, I suppose, I mean, my journey is an interesting one
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because I think it sort of defines really, for me, what's happening now.
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And I look back at that past and see a kind of a line going in.
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I think the line was always how do I kind of disrupt what is given for me so for example
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I was given a crap school yeah crap secondary school where all of us were expected well what
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happened was quite interesting the the white kids in the school went and got jobs usually
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with their uncles or whatever or friends and they had those connections and it seemed to be that's
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quite interesting how they got work uh the black boys in the school well we we had a hard harder
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time I mean a lot of us were unemployed but um and and really the way out for us um this is a
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boys school was was harder I would admit that this was back in in the 70s yeah and I think that um
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I think for um me uh the route then became almost how do I how do I now kind of redefine myself
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in this interesting situation where nothing was really happening.
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I remember I used to bunk off school basically to go to the library
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because that was really good to try and educate myself.
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That was my rebellious thing, going down to the library
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But my mother was quite smart on this one.
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So what she did was she, and there was three of us,
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my brother and my sister, and she packed us off quite early
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It wasn't a high Anglican, it was another one.
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And it was, I mean, an Anglican church of England
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and in a very middle class setting, all white setting.
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And so we just went in there and we were the token black kids
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But they were really nice people and, you know,
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But what was interesting was that it changed our perception
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But I always look at this for anybody as a sort of adolescent growing up.
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Your peer group is going to define a lot of who you are and how you work.
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And so, in a sense, we were suddenly given this new peer group of middle class kids and they went off to university and they came back in the summer.
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And so that's what you do now, because in our schools, nobody went to university.
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just all right i want to be like my friends so i better go off to university so we all we all
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we all said about how are we going to do this because we've got to go to these crap schools
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how are we going to get there uh and and so we just i suppose but it it's quite interesting that
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that didn't seem to be that difficult and i i say that because if you're it's sort of so some of
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this stuff is about motivation is about that drive in to do something is there obviously you do need
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to have some of the stuff in place but to be socially mobile a lot of it and that's why I
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began to think about social mobility that a lot of it was quite intrinsic yeah and so therefore
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that set us off on that journey or me on that journey to to sort of go off to university and
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And I think ever since then, I've always had the tension between almost like middle class people trying to sort of work out what I am and who I am and that kind of desire to do something different.
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So, for example, if you, I remember going to, I mean, I'm also defined by my Jamaican background as well.
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My parents were in Jamaica and all of that was very important in the 70s for us.
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I had another part of me, which was, I don't know, just another part of me.
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I love classical music, for example, and I love Bach and things like that.
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Bach was playing in the other, I got my ticket to go
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that you've got to go over to New York because that's where the black
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people are, he didn't actually say that but
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You know, because it might have been something was going to harm me if I was going to, because I was going to be there, I was about 17 then.
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And something was going to harm me if I was going to go in there and listen to Bach music, being the only black.
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But I've got to go and jump up with all the other black people at Ursy Bisa.
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london it just happened that my pa she booked an office which was i mean the three of us are quite
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comfortable here i mean it was a very small room yeah and there was and she brought her intern in
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there so there was three of us in the room and we were talking and i was relaxed as you can see i've
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got a south london accent i i'm i'm i'm hopefully i'm fairly articulate with it i'm comfortable with
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my accent i love my south london background yeah i've got a south london accent and i'm far less
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articulate than you mate so you crack on you're fine anyway um when i read the piece after we had
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done this um her thing was i'm six foot two i mean i must admit i don't think i'm i don't know
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if i'm that kind of intimidating anyway her first comment was um uh we're we're in this cramped room
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the new sheriff is a black guy coming in town
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we have to always set a context for our guests you know the other piece so in this case the
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context was that you're black intimidating and also there was a little there was a little kind
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of working class thing which i think all of working class people get i i i wore a nice suit
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yeah in there because i wanted us i wanted us to get a nice sharp shot for our charity
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and i had some patterned shoes i thought they looked kind of sharp so i was wearing those as
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well and then she pointed to oh he was wearing this posh suit and patterned shoes and it was
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like you know it reminds me of the thing in uh only fools and horses where rodney's always you
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know the drinks thing he has a flash drink as if working class people are trying to be posh you
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know what i mean that kind of so it's kind of slight that that that kind of and that's a dual
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thing you get and it's a very english thing you know you got on the other hand you're a black man
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and they're always current they're always obsessed with your size and whatever and on the other hand
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And there's this whole kind of class thing about your accent and what that tells you about your accent.
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Constantly obsessed with it, you know, which does actually, and I could be wrong.
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I think they're a very English thing that we do with accents.
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And I can see people continually struggling with that at times, you know, and even those people who have made it, you know, you can see them always referring back to that kind of tension.
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That's the most South London thing I've ever heard in my life.
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So, I mean, that's sort of part of the journey.
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But actually, you're someone who who talks extensively about the fact that in terms of educational outcomes and things like that, it's not racism that prevents people from advancing.
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I mean, the thing is, it still is, even though I tell that story because it's not that I'm here to sort of cry about racism or about what is me.
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I actually think that we can talk about that and we can go over that.
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But you have to, you accept the realities that the society has problems, but it's not going to hold you back.
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You know, that's my mother's attitude. And that was that was how we.
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But what I find is in the balance of things, I still would say that what we what we do need is is is is this sort of almost a kind of a kind of sense to tell young people that they've got the age.
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I call it the agency, to actually kind of get over this.
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You shouldn't have to face it, but on the other hand,
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and it's certainly not as bad as it was in the 70s and 80s.
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One of the problems in all of this is that if you don't say that,
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then young people get locked in to a world,
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is because if you surround poor people or people who are oppressed
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with this sort of sense that they can do, yeah?
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Genius is always kind of a sense of it's out there,
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You have to put the things together, the opportunities,
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So what I did is I also wanted to prove to myself
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And so what I did is I found the group that was,
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and that was black boys who were actually underachieving
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the worst in the society at the moment at that time,
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can I get a group all the way through from the poorest backgrounds
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all the way through to, say, Imperial College or Oxford University.
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And let's not do an easy subject like we did English.
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And in a sense, there is a sense, and I say this,
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it pervades the society as well that, you know,
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black boys really are not that bright, really.
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I mean, you even hear it from Watson saying,
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They're basically best at just doing a bit of DJing and stuff like that.
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But they're not really belonging to laboratory discovering stuff.
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So let's find the hardest thing, the thing that isn't even associated with them,
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and let's put them on that track and see what happens.
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So it was almost like a laboratory experiment, really, for myself.
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And I found we started with 10, and then we increased it to 100.
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yes they had to be bright yeah we knew that and had to have an interest in science but they had
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to be the first in their family to university dirt poor backgrounds and certainly none of their
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schools sent anybody to university in fact more of their schools were sending them to jail than
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university wow yeah so that was that was the kind of uh setup we had and and i got them at 14 and
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then really i just worked with them and a part of looking back now i look back at that 100 and
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i would say the vast majority of them now are at top universities they're in our alumni in fact
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last night we uh i say last night a couple of nights ago we had a uh a reception for those
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ones who came when they were 14 now they're 24 yeah so the god and the program how it works is
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you stay with us from 14 to the point that you're at university and we work with you in the out of
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school space in holidays or etc just doing lots and lots of sciences so it was like it was i was
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like the Pied Piper I'd have this group of black boys running around the Imperial College Cambridge
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now what I did is I used all my connections I'd had for my journey I just because I just know a
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lot of people in that sense because I just go everywhere and everybody at that point wanted to
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help so it wasn't as if there was nothing really stopping it happening you know all they needed
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was somebody in the middle to facilitate it and I think that that's the thing in England what's
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happening is that it's not that nobody wants to do anything for poor people or nobody wants to do
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anything for it's just that we can't seem to connect we have a very difficult way of doing
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this somehow stuff's over here poor people are over here and no one's in the middle doing the
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link it's not as simple as that I know but it's some of it is just about that yeah and and that
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I think it's a lack of understanding about the expectations that, in fact, what you can do is you can put some...
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So, for example, some of the universities, some of the colleges genuinely probably didn't think that if you came from a poor part of Brixton in the 70s, 80s, you could get to Oxford.
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So you have this equation of nobody's going to...
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It's what Anurin Bevin said about poverty of ambition
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if you're not surrounded by people who are aspiring to do that,
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And we've got a concept called People Like Me, which is really good.
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It's just a simple kind of thing of bringing the...
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So you can imagine our new cohort of little kids now waiting,
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Once the cycle starts going, it perpetuates itself.
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It sounds like an amazing thing that you're doing, Tony,
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what you were talking about there is the fact that
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you can't seem to get the politicians to actually listen to what you're talking about.
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I think that where I've not been able to engage this
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is because I'm adamant that I have not gone down the route
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of saying that the fault of all this is racism.
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If I'd gone and started waving the flag and said,
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charities, I see it in terms of social agencies
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they say and this is where it gets really bad oh your problems are so complex that they can't be
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solved you know i mean i keep hearing that oh the problem knife crime is too complicated there are
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too many things that we don't we haven't got any solutions the mayor says it's going to take 10
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years to solve it now so so in a sense the the the the salute the people who can come to the
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solutions are just not at the table and i just i don't know why that is i mean maybe we just don't
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know you buddy i don't know i mean but that's been a problem for me and i and i and i want i i try and
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push myself and i'm not it's not me alone i'm thinking that i know other people who should be
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in there you know that place called the house of laws for example where you've got people who are
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strategically overviewing laws and things like that but hardly any of them sound or look like
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me in there and also the answers they're not they're not they're people who might have some
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of the answers and they're not they're not really getting it so in a way we've got to try and
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completely redefine i think something's happening at the moment with brexit where we're really
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questioning and i like that i like the disruption that we're having at the moment people say oh
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this is this is horrible but what's going on is i think people are waking up to the fact that the
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so-called experts this is it are not the experts and that's that's really what's going on here they
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don't know and they've managed to get in their positions but mainly because of who they know
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and I think that's that's beginning to change now and I'd love to see if I had a chance just people
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who do know what they're doing in that position and politically it would be different it wouldn't
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necessarily be a liberal thing as well it'd be different people from different backgrounds coming
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in and really trying to sort this out so I think that's that's where it's been stuck. I mean you
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touched on in the article as well about the lack of positive male role models at home and i remember
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reading that and i read the article in the sunday times and i i sort of gasped when you you know
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when you said it because it's an issue that we took we've tiptoe around i've taught in deprived
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schools in east london and a lot of the children that do go on to join gangs they don't have a
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father figure let me just tell you what's happened in the you know in the in the research sector in
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the university, in the discourse that's been happening, in the people that hold almost
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the power over our knowledge, you would have thought that the issue of boys would have
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been a key thing. In America and other places, they have looked at this issue. In England,
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the literature on this is very sparse. There's hardly anything on it. You get some people
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that we don't understand boys' development. We don't understand what they're doing. Yet
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our prisons are full of them, yet they're the ones that are disrupting most of the society.
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And yet we carry along with this. And I think it's because what's happened is we've had a kind
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of guilt reaction in regard to feminism. And I say that because what's actually happening here is
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that there's a sort of sense that women have been blocked, but they've been blocked by the wrong
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kind of it's not that it's this not it's not these type of men that are really doing the blocking you
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know it's the so they so in a sense these poor boys or black boys are getting beaten up really
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and they're not it's not them that's really in in the way it's you know boys from eton boys from
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these are the these are the boys that are really up there doing all all the oppressing so the me
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too movement should go after them really and in a sense what's actually happening is working class
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boys and black boys are really at the bottom of the rung here and and and and and their only way
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of disrupting the society often is is is by being violent at the bottom so we've got this kind of
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mismatch you see and and i i'm i'm i'm all for the me too movement i think there should be a me too
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movement for black and working class boys and white working class i do think they need and one
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of them one of the key elements for them is they need we need to sort of seriously ask about the
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family and the home and not just accept this idea that fathers are allowed to walk away or be thrown
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out by whoever or or the courts or wherever and not have access to those boys why is it important
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for the for the boys to have father because it's a back to this sort of people like me let me give
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you an example, and that's where the Caribbean community is a very kind of interesting kind
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of development. If you look at the way girls, and girls are doing now really well in the
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science, teenage pregnancy is gone virtually in England. You hardly see it. Those numbers
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are gone. I mean, basically, we've got a society now where the girls are doing very,
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very well. University rates for girls are just high, nearly 50, 60% of the campuses.
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And it doesn't really matter if even if you're homosexual, your sexuality has got nothing to do with this.
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There's just a point in a boy's life where he's going to want to push away from that mother figure and find another another person.
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Yeah, usually that looks to be like the father, hopefully, to carry out that kind of intimate work.
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Now, if the dad isn't there to do that job, he'll find it in other boys.
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Hence, that's why boys like to go around with each other.
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And it's just about identifying with people that look like you
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is that biologically we've got, I don't know if you're left-handed,
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but right-handed, we've got a strong right arm.
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is interesting because that's another thing about the right arm
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in and they restrain those boys yeah i always remember when you you you look at the risk taking
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that a man does with his son you know it's very interesting going out there son yeah especially
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when they're doing riding their bikes you know it's like i've seen it all the time because
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there's a stereotype yeah right you know he thought the boy falls off the butt get up come
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on son get up you just fell off it's a little bruise yeah get on with it you know and i'm
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get that, they get that, they get that difference,
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and that kind of, my dad used to play it, my dad
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Corporal Punishment, my mother used to do all the
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beating in the home and she used to try her best
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we used to beat, I used to give her our time
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that was the kind of thing that held everything
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and you could see there was like a power thing going on
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at night just not who is actually telling them to come in i'm talking about like 12 13 in fact
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sometimes even younger than that wow um on the street at 11 12 at night i mean i don't know but
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not you ask a policeman when the policeman picks up that son and this might be a massive stereotype
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i know but ask any policeman you were in the full they take that boy back home and they're taking
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them back to a single household yeah there's no man in that house yeah so that debate we can't
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have in england because somebody will turn around to you and say what you're doing is you're you're
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really beating up on the single mother and that's become a sacred thing now the single mother
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so and they're looking at us now all these men talking about all the same old thing it's all
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against the women and we're blaming them and that's the it's not that that if you what i'm
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trying to get with you're blaming the fathers for not being there yeah and i'm and i'm also saying
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that the fathers should be allowed back here now some of them say well whoa what's what's going on
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here some of those men are abusive some of them may be but not all of them and they need access
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to that and and the other thing is i think with this is that it's actually we need to be able to
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support those mothers i get calls every week because of what i do from single mothers saying
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they can also raise boys they can do everything so how dare you step over on that line I think
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that's where we are politically that's where we kind of a mature discussion on it um what will
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happen is you'll have a discussion and the women will turn around and say you're just blaming us
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you know or or it's one where it's it it it's not about this it's about poverty or it's about the
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fact that um the boys haven't got um uh you know sort of youth youth center to go to or things like
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that which is not the real reason why they're in this state of of disruption they're in this
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state of disruption because there isn't a restraining element at home and do you think
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a lot of the gang problems and the knife problems that we're seeing in in london and elsewhere in
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the country now is it down to that yeah i know that because i used to work for the youth justice
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board which was the the the arm in in in the society that looked after children who were in
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the youth offending area now to be honest that's only about 800 kids it's not a lot of kids you
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know on the on the on the on the sort of real kind of uh um serious end of it you know um uh and
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those children in the end what i did was i i kind of went round um and just asked those boys to come
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tell me what why are you here why what was the reason for the knife crime and two things
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came out of that kind of interaction um number one uh there was a an admission that that
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a point in their lives the father leaving or not being there is this issue yeah um and i think the
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other one which was which was really interesting about them their morality was and this this
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actually was quite pertinent for black boys was that a lot of them pleaded not guilty for their
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crime so here is a boy he's found the knife is in the hand the police has arrived this is if they
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run away the knife is in the in the hand the blood everything is all over him you're a bang to rights
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yeah he reaches court and he pleads not guilty and and what happens in the in our justice system
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is if you plead not guilty, you get a longer sentence
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If you plead guilty, then obviously the judge will take that into consideration.
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And I was quite intrigued to find out why it was
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because all the boys I met in all those youths in defending,
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every one of them was saying they're not guilty.
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It wasn't that the police had got the facts wrong.
00:31:24.760
Because when the person disrespected them, the original offence for the knife crime, that is what they're referring to.
00:31:34.000
They're saying that that person actually did me so wrong, I was justified to kill him.
00:31:42.240
So what we've got is we've got kids locked up in this situation, men locked up, who haven't got any sense of the morality of what they've done.
00:31:51.020
They actually still believe. No one's done any work on that.
00:32:24.760
right that was the the crime see as you're talking about it now i think back to my childhood
00:32:31.640
i i've i've been dissed in my time as we all have and you go to your dad in my case and you go dad
00:32:40.120
this is what happened like what you know what should i do and he goes well just don't worry
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00:32:43.940
about it the guy's a dick or whatever you know what i mean that's what a father so a father
0.96
00:32:47.960
gives you a sense of where the the limitations are of your retaliation exactly it's the more
0.99
00:32:55.140
it's the moral development what we're going down now is the moral development of those boys
00:32:59.120
the vacuum that's there and and and and i'll be honest that the the the mothers try and and here's
00:33:08.740
another problem with this thing about the mothers there is a significant amount of women who actually
1.00
00:33:15.740
do really well with their boys and take them to the top universities and they do well and so what
00:33:21.080
happens is when you have this conversation they roll out and they say well what are you talking
00:33:26.300
about i had five boys and i sent them all to university super mom you know and um but then
00:33:34.220
i turn around and say well what about the 90 of other women who are not super mom who haven't got
0.85
00:33:41.540
that capacity you know what about them and i think that's that's the problem we have so the society
00:33:47.500
is continually telling us that women can do it all and men are actually useless i mean that's
00:33:54.320
really the message so how do we go about solving this i mean i mean i mean i think i think that
00:34:00.640
the issue for me is that the policies around certainly around some of the settlements for
00:34:08.480
boys when it comes to um uh who has custodies in terms of the breakup of the family we've got to
00:34:16.640
review how this thing works for boys someone's got to kind of talk to some of those judges about
00:34:22.840
that i think there's there's an issue there in terms of because often this happens in the family
00:34:27.720
breakup that happens the other the other the other bit is that i just think that we need to i think
00:34:33.100
that there should be a campaign I think this is the mayor's office should be having a campaign
00:34:38.040
about the fact that um uh you know a lot of men it can be black or white men should be um taking
0.74
00:34:47.560
responsibility of their kids and actually making that more normal thing what what what's happened
00:34:52.400
sometimes in some black community and we've had this in the Caribbean community that it's actually
00:34:56.300
a pride to sort of say I've dropped three or four kids from all these different women a pride of my
00:35:12.720
and those are the people who then fill the prisons
00:36:01.200
But to me, I didn't do the natural thing to do.
00:36:10.720
So I've got to be doing my share, you know what I mean?
00:36:14.180
I mean, I wouldn't even think of anything otherwise.
00:36:18.440
that kind of thing of what does a man look like?
00:36:22.540
So a man would be seen, must be there with his,
00:36:25.040
and I used to meet other guys, you know, it was great.
00:36:30.520
And it was like, and they would say the same thing.
00:36:33.760
People would say, or people would come in and say, well done.
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00:36:42.000
The other thing, another interesting issue, is to do with child abuse.
00:36:48.280
I think that there's a suspicion that men with younger children, it's not natural.
00:36:55.020
so it's kind of I remember when I was in I was teaching a little boy in a nursery a one-to-one
00:37:02.120
the mother wanted me to do a sort of private lessons and and and she was the owner of the
00:37:09.040
nursery and then of course the mothers came in what's this man doing in here you know as if I
00:37:14.580
was kind of so gonna I'm gonna abuse their kids you know and so there's a kind of nervousness
00:37:27.900
should you be seen, I don't know if they're taking
00:37:43.140
the boy just jumped off on me and started to hug me
00:38:16.420
the males back into play here you know and what's been the reaction by you going you know fathers
00:38:22.500
need to take responsibility they need to look after their children there can't be this attitude
00:38:27.360
that you know you just have you know three or four kids from different mothers and all the rest of it
00:38:31.920
has it has it been supportive no i've found it quite even the people i know my own even in my
00:38:37.240
own family but we've had big debates about this they they keep saying to me tony you're just
00:38:41.480
oversimplifying it i hate those words oversimplifying it it's so many the problem around
00:38:47.480
crime is so complex it's poverty it's that they didn't get a youth club they you know it's to do
00:38:54.080
with teachers and they get it's a whole range of things and so what what when people start doing
00:38:59.000
that that long list shopping list what they're really saying is back to our thing again it's
00:39:04.020
experts who don't know yeah see so they're just giving you this long list because they don't
00:39:09.680
Because once the list starts going for us five things,
00:39:18.040
And so what they're saying is that you've just come to this problem
00:39:20.960
and you're just oversimplifying it by just saying it's about fathers.
00:39:25.260
Yet the evidence is clear for me that disproportionately,
00:39:30.440
especially if a lot of black boys are involved in that,
00:39:35.400
and it's not that it might be that knife crime isn't the problem it might be that those boys
00:39:39.720
are just unhappy or they're in that vacuum that moral vacuum that that means that they then commit
00:39:46.960
that crime you know and so we've got to look at the underlying reasons why one of the things that
00:39:52.640
for me is the key to this is the way in which we tackled teenage pregnancy that was a big social
00:39:58.180
problem i don't know about you but in london i used to remember the time i'm sure it's up north
00:40:03.940
all these teenage girls with these buggies
1.00
00:40:09.720
You don't see that anymore. Not to that extent.
00:40:31.940
as well so you know it wasn't cool it's not cool anymore to be a girl with a buggy walking around
0.99
00:40:38.060
town that just doesn't cut it anymore and um the other thing was compulsive compulsive
00:40:45.620
contraceptives are not telling the parents that works that seemed to work as well so you know
00:40:51.840
the injection went in and the girls you know that's just stopped them you know um and i think
00:40:57.540
those two policy things that that we focused on dealt with that problem you know i mean it wasn't
00:41:03.480
too we didn't say oh it's too complicated you know and equally i think with the issue for boys we need
00:41:09.180
a similar kind of thing around how boys and men see themselves our fathers see themselves and
00:41:15.740
making that making it not cool to be a deadbeat dad almost going after them really and and then
00:41:23.580
And then really kind of almost in a sense sort of saying to the boys themselves that, look, here are some positive role models of what you can be like as a man, you know, and putting that around them.
00:41:39.920
So it's a counter narrative to the gangs. You almost got to go counter to what, you know, the other thing. And then you'll get a positive outcome.
00:41:48.240
I mean, it's that kind of policy thing that you need to start engineering around those young people and supporting those single mothers.
1.00
00:41:55.640
I'm not saying to the single mothers, you've got to stay with those men, but at least do what some of the women do.
1.00
00:42:02.100
At least call out for help and don't say you can do it all.
00:42:05.160
You know, that doesn't mean that you're that doesn't put your feminism radar lower.
1.00
00:42:09.760
It just means that it just means that you're saying that, look, I need some support here, you know, and we should be able to support those boys.
00:42:17.300
So I do think that we've done it before and we can do it for young men.
00:42:22.560
And Tony, this is one of the areas that I really wanted to talk to you about
00:42:26.140
because it always rears its head with the police.
00:42:30.580
Now, a lot of people say that it's a racist policy.
00:42:33.520
Stop and search for our global audience is where police stop young men,
00:42:38.240
mainly young black men, and search them for knives and all the rest of it.
0.99
00:42:40.720
Do you agree with it? Do you disagree with it?
0.96
00:42:43.700
I mean, my view on it is quite an interesting area here
00:42:46.840
because it's like we've moved full circle with this.
00:42:53.880
You get people saying, oh, stop and search is bad
00:42:55.820
and it's oppressive, it goes in for one community.
00:42:58.940
But then when there is a knife crime, the police are blamed
00:43:04.400
And you usually get that from the victim's side.
00:43:09.600
and it's more towards saying that, okay, we need more police.
00:43:13.760
So my view on it is I think knife crime does need quite specific policing,
00:43:19.720
but I just think it doesn't need saturated policing.
00:43:22.880
What used to happen in the 70s and 80s was that a crime would be committed
00:43:26.740
and every black man in the radius of about five miles was stopped and served.
00:43:38.240
I think the police have got enough intelligence on this one
00:43:54.800
You know, coming back to the fatherlessness thing,
00:44:01.900
that you're trying to get this message out there
00:44:06.520
And the pushback is that a lot of the white politicians
00:44:13.500
because of fear of being called racist yeah right so how and and i i can't wrap my head around that
00:44:19.860
that doesn't make sense to me yeah i mean i think that it was even worse when i used to come out
00:44:24.640
with stuff around exclusion from schools and boys and say that black boys and say that um look this
00:44:31.700
this issue isn't necessarily about racism but it's actually about some other things going on
00:44:36.620
in the home in the peer group and we've got to tackle this you know um and i think equally with
00:44:52.460
I think there's more willingness, I think, to go
00:44:58.320
disproportionately black boys that are involved in this.
00:45:14.280
He said, you can just go online, just tap in David Lammy, knife crime,
0.91
00:45:19.200
and up will come all these articles about him saying black homes need black fathers.
0.96
00:45:28.120
And yet now it's sort of not politically kind of so correct to do that.
00:45:35.580
So you get that sort of sense that there's a sensitivity around this
00:45:39.680
and nobody wants to come out and state that as an issue.
00:45:46.060
I think it's because there is a focus on the victim.
00:45:49.960
One of these is they're saying that the thing that always helps us out
00:46:04.780
so you know in this particular instance you know what way wait a minute you know we can't we cannot
0.99
00:46:13.000
we cannot blame the victim here it's got to be something to do with with with him or at least
00:46:18.980
his his his measures so it's to do with Tory austerity it's to do with um the fact there's
00:46:26.440
a youth club this to do with the police you know and the way they they see themselves it's to do
00:46:32.220
with white teachers excluding them from schools anything and everything but not the home I think
0.55
00:46:38.600
that's the problem so that's really where it is so but once you start going back into the home
00:46:42.800
then you talk about agency then you're talking about responsibility of those those communities
00:46:48.920
and that's that's the difference you see then nobody wants to take that especially if you're
00:46:53.900
a politician who's who's been kind of almost um put up on on the basis that i am here to protect
00:47:04.140
you from that horrible world the wolves out there that are coming to get you so therefore my my
00:47:09.980
narrative has always got to come back to the fact that you're oppressed not for the fact that the
00:47:15.540
oppression might be something to do with what's going on in your home yeah and or another type
00:47:20.720
of oppression that you might be perpetuating yourself no you can't go there and that's where
00:47:26.120
we that's that's where we've become stuck but what i think this this issue has come up is that
0.95
00:47:31.700
as i said i think that particularly black boys they they they they're a problem for for for that
1.00
00:47:38.720
kind of rhetoric they confound that because they as those boys say look the biggest issue for me
0.97
00:47:45.600
was the fact that my old man left or he wasn't there
00:47:48.720
or downstairs I was busy kind of refitting an air gun
00:48:10.760
um and so so for me that's that's that's where it it lies and so it's difficult for communities to
00:48:19.180
come back and say well we've got to try and sort this out ourselves you see what i don't understand
00:48:23.700
there's a guy in america larry elder i don't know if you're familiar with him right and larry he has
00:48:28.460
some interesting points along the same lines that you make but he he's a guy who just talks right
00:48:33.180
he's a radio host he's very articulate very good but he talks right but you've proven it through
00:48:38.100
the work that you do and still people are afraid to take there should be hundreds of generating
00:48:43.040
geniuses around the country i think that it yeah there should be and i think that people are waking
00:48:47.320
up to it but i think that it's it's it's a harder one i mean what what's also happened is that
00:48:53.340
the and here's another thing about generating genius that makes it a little bit different
00:48:58.580
and people kind of don't get it a bit is that what it's trying to do is saturate the mindset
00:49:04.060
of that community with young people that are doing very well it's a kind of it's almost like
00:49:10.580
a kind of counterintuitive thing because what you usually do in policies is you go you tend to say
00:49:16.120
we're going to stack all our resources on on the very few kids that are causing all this disruption
00:49:22.500
now admittedly that i mean when they kill somebody that's a massive disruption so you've got to do
00:49:26.560
something but what what what we're saying is that actually what you need to do is you need to you
00:49:32.040
need to change the narrative around that group that's what we like what we did with the teenage
00:49:35.740
girls and and so therefore you you actually may be needing to sort of go after um as I say um
00:49:43.720
children who are and making sure that that there is that there is a story for them what's quite
00:49:50.920
interesting is that the the kids on my program come from the same schools that the kids who
00:49:56.140
commit knife crime come from they come from the same schools so it's not like they're going off
00:50:01.060
to Eaton or Harrow or someone like that, the same estates, the same schools, yet they're ending up
00:50:05.600
at the top universities. So that is powerful. You see what I mean? Because you're saying,
00:50:10.740
the same money, the same lack of youth clubs or whatever, austerity, and to a certain extent,
00:50:19.540
same lack of fathers. And that's quite interesting as well, you know, in their homes. And yet one
00:50:26.520
group is doing well another is and the other one that confounds it all is girls at the moment the
00:50:32.980
group that is doing best in London are girls from a West African background and they're doing really
00:50:40.300
well in school so what you've got in some homes you've got the girl upstairs busy doing her work
00:50:46.400
going off to top university and a boy downstairs getting ready for prison and that is happening in
00:50:53.440
a lot of black homes two pathways for the same kid in the same household and so that's that's
0.98
00:51:00.760
what you're what you're saying is absolutely right that in fact what what what you need then is is
00:51:05.900
is is something that's going to tackle the real core of the problem you know not pussyfoot around
0.94
00:51:11.160
it which is really what's what's been happening in the past and it's because we're not allowing
00:51:16.380
ourselves and this is probably i've never had this is the most honest and open conversation i've ever
00:51:51.540
Am I making, you know, just a general assumption
00:51:55.960
Am I going to offend? Am I going to get upset?
0.93
00:51:59.420
one little self-preservation element where you go,
00:52:03.740
because it's just too difficult and too challenging a subject.
00:52:07.700
And I think that bit about it being too difficult
00:52:10.180
and challenging a subject is the one that, to me, gets in the way.
00:52:14.740
There's a lot of guilt running around this thing
00:52:16.540
that's really interesting, and guilt, in a way, is difficult.
00:52:22.900
I'm having difficulties with even films and stories
00:52:28.960
that keep running the guilt story, you know, to the point where...
00:52:33.260
Because, you see, I think that the narrative that says,
00:52:37.420
oh, you know, all these people did this to me, is interesting,
00:52:44.980
I started off by telling you a story of that in that room with that journalist, you know.
00:52:49.880
So I'm not unaware of the kind of difficulties that people have in terms of relating to other groups.
00:53:01.480
This is what is frustrating for me is that where I see women not kind of standing together with me on this
00:53:11.000
is that they almost can, I see their kind of thing
00:53:19.280
and we talked about this in the sense of obsession with the body,
00:53:23.620
the whole thing about surveillance or whatever,
00:53:28.700
and then agency, the ability to sort of see opportunities
00:53:33.760
They have similar problems, and yet they don't have any,
00:53:40.240
Because what happens is they just still go for the default position that, oh, well, you know, in the end, these are boys.
00:53:48.300
And in the end, you feel like they don't even like boys.
00:53:51.420
And I get a sense that that's almost what's going on here, that our society doesn't like little boys.
00:53:57.780
I mean, there's a kind of sense that they get in the way.
00:54:00.960
Remember, if you're a boy, you're going to have, you're likely to have mum at home, her friends.
00:54:07.120
then you go into school you're going to have a female teacher and the whole environment you
1.00
00:54:12.260
heart you you hardly see a man let me give you something that's really interesting you can go
00:54:17.460
to some of the some primary schools now and it's happened to me on a number of occasions you go
00:54:22.540
into the primary school and suddenly all these little boys start running up running up towards
00:54:28.540
you it's it's quite it's quite scary it's almost like you're santa claus you go in there and it's
00:54:33.480
like oh man they haven't seen a man yeah and they think that they secretly think you're going to be
00:54:38.660
their teacher that's it but they're disappointed you're just visiting you know and they're running
00:54:44.980
up to you they're talking to you they kind of cut because if you sit down with some of those
00:54:49.140
they actually do not have any interaction with any um male adult authority yeah none that's crazy
00:55:02.900
it's been a very honest and a very, very interesting chat.
00:55:05.200
We really thank you for coming on, for the work you're doing.
00:55:07.960
And like I said, I hope that as part of this conversation
00:55:12.220
there are a hundred generating geniuses around the country eventually.
00:55:20.740
what is a thing that people aren't talking about
00:55:25.440
Well, I think we've touched on one of the things.
00:55:26.720
it's got to be that the issue about fathers and men really in the society we've got we've in
00:55:33.340
england we've got to have a proper grown-up debate about about that and and and come to terms with
00:55:39.500
that and i think that just just debating it honestly will take us further okay well that's
00:55:44.380
been absolutely wonderful thank you so much for coming on thanks for coming on tony uh as always
00:55:48.820
uh follow us at trigger pod on all the social media uh we're on paypal if you enjoy the show
00:56:31.860
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