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There is a media perception that black-on-black youth crime in the UK is exploding in alarming proportions. This perception has caused great anxiety among many black leaders, their communities, and the country as a whole. This paper seeks to explore the underlying issues at hand, exploring the reality, unearthing the unconscious, unexplored aspects of the perception, thus reconfiguring the issue within a broader and, one hopes, more grounded social context.
I lived in the UK twice in my life, once as a child while my father was studying, and the second time while I read for my PhD at the University of London, Heythrop College. My perspective on the issue is shaped from this limited immersion in the British context and informed by my own intervention in the troubled Trinidadian East Port of Spain village of Gonzales, where I had the privilege of being the parish priest from 2003 to 2006. I was appointed to Gonzales in January 2003, and by May that year there were five murders in six weeks. All black-on-black. All gang related. The response of the church was to call the leaders of the community and begin a process of citizen participation that is now known as Pride in Gonzales.
Trauma, fear, and unstated, unconscious perceptions dominated, and thus paralysed the leaders and the community. Participation of the citizens in re-visioning the community, together with tangible collective action, changed the landscape of the 300-acre village and the 5,650 people who lived there.
As we explore the facts, the unstated assumptions, and the unconscious projections, we will find new eyes to see the reality and, I hope, the possibilities that it throws up for the leaders and the communities involved.