Shaun Bailey AM proposed, and Keith Prince AM seconded, the following amended motion:
“This Assembly is concerned that despite making up only 13% of London’s total population, black Londoners account for 45% of London’s knife murder victims, 61% of knife murder perpetrators and 53% of knife crime perpetrators. This means black Londoners are disproportionately more likely to be victims and perpetrators of knife crime".
Yet some people on here despite the overwhelming statistics above, still scream 'racist' because stop and search is being carried out on more black people than white ones. It’s not racist. It’s proportionate.
I wouldn't disagree with the facts, however I start to get slightly uneasy with some of the rhetoric re how we solve these challenges. Forgetting other countries and thinking only of the UK, and focusing on black people, the UK has welcomed them for decades, often to fill gaps in various employment sectors (sound familiar?)
I don't have the stats and I'm too lazy to source them, however I think I've seen mention on various tv documentaries and news articles that there
is an issue with broken homes when it comes to black families e.g. no father on the scene, lack of stability at home and so on. What I don't know is how this compares to other nationalities in terms of percentages. It would also be interesting to know (these stats will be unobtainable) how many black households per 100 are and always have been crime free with law abiding citizens and again how this compares to other nationalities.
Tbh I don't know how you solve this, just as I don't know how we solve challenges like the small boat people. What makes me uneasy is when these debates stray into the area of 'we should be sending them back!' because my follow-on questions would be 'who are they?' and 'how far back generation wise do you go?' For example I come from a white Scottish mother and a brown Indian father, mixed race. I was born here. Should I be 'sent back' to India?
And of course as we all know, if the UK became exclusively white overnight, there would be zero issues. No crime, full employment, no waiting times for the NHS, perfect education, no potholes etc etc.
www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk
