Birbalsingh

Dear Birbalsingh,

Lodon is a multicultural, diverse city that holds many cultures. I came across your article,”These riots were about race why ignore the fact”. It was clear to see that you weren’t afraid to say the unthinkable and cause controversy amongst the British population. I respect you for that; you fulfilled your role as  a journalist to some extent by voicing the opinion of half of the population at that time. Many journalists didn’t want to do that, for fear of causing a huge media backlash. However, because your article is aimed at a certain type of people, this makes your argument come across as very biased.

The riots weren’t as simplistic as you made it out to be. In actual fact it was far more complex. Yes, Mark Duggan was black; yes, he did have some altercations with the police; yes, he made some mistakes but he was innocent. No matter how bad his past, the police didn’t have the right to kill a innocent man in cold blood. But you didn’t think that at the time of his death when you said, “I knew instinctively black youths once again have set London alight”. Maybe you fell victim to the media’s agenda: to portray all black people as criminals. But I  strongly believe that that’s far from the truth. You already had a predetermined mindset of Mark Duggan, just because of his skin colour in a picture. Even that picture did not tell the whole story. The image released by the media only showed half of him to make him look like a criminal. If you had seen the bottom half, you would have realised that it was a tribute to his daughter and not a gang photo.

You also forget to mention a major factor in why the riots were started in Tottenham. Tottenham has the highest level of unemployment in London; over 50 percent of those unemployed are young people. 40 percent of young people live in poverty. Tottenham is the sixth most deprived borough in London. And council cuts made things worse. The council cut its youth budget by 75 percent; eight out of twelve youth centres were also shut down. Now, I’m not trying to justify the crimes they committed, but there could have been counter measures to stop the riots from occurring. For example, raising employment. Black people aren’t inherently criminals; the riots just took  place in poor places.

Another issue is police involvement. Since 1998, 333 black people died in police custody, and no one has been convicted. This built distrust between  the community and the police in Tottenham. And the tension between them became so much that it came to the point that all it took was a tiny spark to ignite the flame. That’s why the community was angry. They wanted to seek justice, but they did it in the wrong way.

Your argument was just aimed at people who have never lived in the black community or witnessed their struggles, but still make false assumptions of the community. I believe that is the wrong thing to do. You’re a person in power who can influence people to think the wrong things instead of the right. So, please Ms Birbalsingh, think before you make false accusations. 

Yours faithfully,

Dante Williamson