Race is key to stopping gang violence, says Trevor Phillips
AN EPIDEMIC of gang violence that thousands of children have been caught up in will only be curtailed if ministers admit it largely affects black youths, the former race watchdog chief says today.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Trevor Phillips calls for an “open and honest” discussion on why a disproportionate number of victims and perpetrators of violent crime are black.
The former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission accuses politicians, police and the BBC of “whitewashing” the issue, comparing the problem to the grooming scandals in which predominantly British Pakistani Muslim men targeted young white girls who were ignored for years because of the fear of being labelled “racist and Islamophobic”.
His comments will add to a growing row on gang violence. Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, said in a report yesterday that violent street gangs had recruited 27,000 children, some as young as nine. Last year was the deadliest in a decade in London, while David Jamieson, the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, described the spate of stabbings in Birmingham and the capital as a “national emergency” after three teenagers died in Birmingham knife attacks in a fortnight. Britain’s second city has seen 97 stabbings since the start of this year.
Mr Phillips, now a senior fellow at the think tank Policy Exchange, writes: “Evidence shows that the wave of killings and maiming are assassinations of black children by black children, often directed by adult drug dealers.
“Yet, to read our newspapers and listen to our media you would imagine that race played no part at all. The BBC in particular is guilty of whitewashing the truth.” He adds: “The daily parade of dark faces in items about knife crime tell their own story.”
Leroy Logan, founder of the Black Police Association, said: “This is a wider issue than race. This is a class issue; this is about urban deprivation.”