Pt. 2 by Shaun Pascal.
More about black leadership and Kick off @3
Drawing in from my own experience, I feel blessed that as a Black Detective I can bring my life experience to the job because I understand the mind-set of young minds who throw their lives away.
My life growing up in London was very similar to theirs and I understand their hopes and dreams, and your expectations being crushed by stereotypes. I quickly became another one of the undervalued young black men and it was not until later in life that I had the opportunity to make some headway in life and becoming a police officer has been a valuable experience in which I have been able to influence change.
For me I knew nothing else but to focus on small opportunities here and there in order to climb through life whilst I watched my white counterparts who had made very little effort at school sail through life and obtain high positioned jobs.
The frustrations, I share with many young people is the desire to succeed or have a role in a respected profession or a role of authority being met by discrimination is something that can cause you to self-implode if it is not met with opportunity.
Prejudice slowly hurts you physiologically and I see it doing the same sort of destruction to many black youths in this country.
The kick of @3 event involved several organisations working with young people, and I want to highlight some of them in this article. Firstly, I am hugely impressed with such organisations as “Father2Father”.
“Father2Father” was created by Courtney Brown without any funding and is turning the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers through mentoring.
Courtney himself along with his team have their own stories to tell and when he explains his story, he is refreshingly brave and brutally honest with guilt as he admits his shortfalls. What impresses me most is that he along with the other leaders I met have used their story to focus on the importance of unlocking young people’s potential, whereby enabling them to strive in life. No easy task but they are passionate in their determination and have devised a formula that I can see works.
I was particularly taken back by the story of a young Black man, Emmanuel; He had been in and out of trouble and was clearly on a path to self-destruction like so many young men in this country. It was only due to the relationship and trust he had built with Courtney, he felt able to turn to him when he was at his most desperate and in need of help, Courtney was able to help him.
What is even more remarkable is that Emmanuel has managed to set his life on a positive path, matured, came back, and is now a mentor young people himself.
The Violent Crime Prevention Board or as they are also referred VCPB was set up in September 2018 with Dr Neville Lawrence as its principal and DR Angela Herbert MBE as its Chair. Its aims are to build and promote change through character building, leadership, conflict resolution, building resilience in the community, connecting with leaders, faith-groups, police, and key service providers. VCP celebrates the many successes that young people achieve every day and works closely with young people and communities in the United Kingdom to prevent violent crime. VCP aims to provide these communities with a voice, opportunities, and role models, in order to inspire success.
Some of the answers many of us are seeking including myself around tackling youth violence really struck home and became so apparent to me whilst I was at the kick off @3 event, the answers were all around me in the young and steely determined faces of the people I had made the embarrassing mistake of assuming were ordinary.
When you learn about their journeys the common theme, I realised, was that they used their struggles as a platform for doing something positive, therefore making what they had been through worthwhile.
These leaders were courageous, passionate and full of self-sacrifice, because they believed in their cause, and they knew something that many of us do not know and understand. It works!
They are the true experts. They are the people living this nightmare and picking up the pieces. Their accomplishments should be what takes up the front pages of newspapers because it is the message we all want to hear, the message of hope.
Hope is what will change mind-sets, hope is what will stop the violence, and hope is what will save lives. Give the people hope.
As a society we have become numb to the stories of stabbings, shootings and murders because that is all we hear.
My personal belief is if we want to turn around this knife crime epidemic and want young people to trust and turn to us, we first need to win their hearts and minds and one way is through building trust in these organisations.
The young people that are being arrested and imprisoned every day I know some of them if given the choice would grab the opportunity to go down a different path if they knew there would be a result.
The young people I met were never bad kids, they were just kids that had been groomed because of their vulnerability, picked up by charities and organisations promising them help and then let down by government funding and thrown back to these gangs.
There has to be a follow through.
The Media displays black faces in a negative context only seeing their faces when they have been charged, accused or convicted of a crime. So seldom are they shown in a positive light outside of sport or music.
They are giving a misrepresentation of young black faces to the ethnicities outside the Black Community and in turn, they are holding back themselves. What the Media must also realise is they are sending a negative message out to these young minds that that is all they can amount to.
This misrepresentation is what is destroying society and dividing communities in this country. It subconsciously moulds less educated minds of the Black Community and even how we perceive our own self-worth and ourselves.
The Black role models that young people need to see are the Doctors, Barristers, Police, Nurses and professionals that play a key part not just in this country but also across the world. These Black role models need to be recognised, admired, celebrated, promoted and then there will be acceptance. These are the leaders of society we want to see more of coming from the black community and being allowed the opportunity to succeed.
At a time when this country is now independent of Europe and looks once again to the Commonwealth, it is time people realised that prosperity already lies within its borders in these young black faces.
Media has the power to drive the change we need but cannot do it without changing its own infrastructure through diversity and inclusion. What society needs to understand is that Diversity is here to stay and the race is on.
The country that embraces this change first will be at the top and will be the foremost economic power. The sooner those resistant to it embrace it the faster our economy can grow.
“We Rise By lifting Others”
Created By Shaun Pascal
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