Is BLM a trojan horse?

[Thingybob]

Am I the only one feeling uneasy about the BLM movement?

We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead

We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise)

blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

NonnyMouse1337's video covers addresses socio economic factors, i enjoyed it, the participants were so relaxed and articulate, no telling anyone to shut up!

That's what I found refreshing about it too, Wbeezer! People putting across their viewpoints without being aggressively interrupted or with adversarial undertones. Articulate arguments put forward by all the speakers. A great example of how to potentially change minds or get people to engage with a different viewpoint. No intellectual snobbery.

I also like the way that they were able to explain their points in a way that was comprehensible to ordinary people. There was no jargon to it.

It also addressed the issues faced by people at different points in their lives - kids, young men, older people who have seen big changes in their lives.

It really looked at how people’s lives could be transformed long term rather than just short term reactions.

whereas three generational unemployment is a complete fabrication designed to spread myths of a feral and feckless underclass

I don't think it really is a fabrication at all. In Liverpool, where I live, and in schools at which I've taught there are generations of families who are either chronically unemployed; dependent on benefits of one sort or other, and also some who continue to claim benefits while working in the black market. And lawless and feral is actually quite a realistic description of the lifestyles and habits of quite a number.

you can go down roads in some parts of the city and there will be youths on scrambler bikes using to roads as their personal race track. Total lawlessness Families in involved on the fringes of crime; drugs; dangerous dogs trained for fighting or killing wild animals in local parks......and neighbours cowed and scared and not wanting to be a grass or a snitch.

I sat through a rather gruesome murder trial once...and the cast of characters in the witness box was something to behold, and revealing of a culture and life that was indeed totally alienated and immune to mainstream values of most kinds. Family 'loyalty' and conspicuous material acquisition, excepted.

chronically unemployed or under-employed

Another aspect is how small, geographically, many people’s worlds are. It is not uncommon for people to simply not travel any distance - and by that I mean a couple of miles

For certain. there are beaches all around the Liverpool area - really nice, sandy beaches, and some lovely parks and gardens, but you can guarantee that many children will never have been to the beach, or to any park other than their immediate local one.

Obviously a lot of that is down to not having a car, or the money for public transport, but a lot of it is about very limited horizons and expectations of life; and about not being engaged with the wider life of the place in which you live.

@Stripesgalorethe school leaving age is still 16 in Scotland and i think you must be thinking of generations differently as 16, 35,52 counts as three generations to me, are you counting the years between the people as two generations or the people
as three (mind you even then if the teen had a baby that would add another)? I will look at that report though.

As I said, the fsm rate at our local secondary hovered around 93% for several decades. That implies a high proportion of parents who are unemployed or in low paying, insecure jobs.

I would also agree with people staying within very small geographical areas. This happens in London. I can think of one young person (early 20s) who lived near Battersea Power Station who have never been as far as the South Bank. They were not unique.

Wbeezer, the original statement was:

‘I remember local teacher in our inner city bit of London saying the biggest predictor of low achievement in schools was not race but three generational unemployment.’

Your family of three generations of 16, 35 and 52 can’t have a child old enough to be in school to measure the underachievement of. Even if the sixteen year old had a child at 13, they would only be 3 years old.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation could not find a single family with three generation unemployment. So there is no way that enough three generation unemployment families were found to make a claim that it was the biggest predictor of school achievement.

Again, even if the sixteen year old had a small child, children are not unemployed and so are not one of the generations. What is this attitude to the poor that we are counting their small children as an unemployed generation? Would you prefer it I sent my daughter when young up a chimney? In a cotton mill?

In your example the 16 year old is the person whose recent school achievement is measured, the 35 year old is the parent (generation one), the 52 year old the grandparent (generation two) meaning you would have to add in a great grandparent.

A year ago my daughter was still at school and did not have a job. I have been in low paid, insecure work all my life. By the judgements on this thread we are two generations of unemployed, since unemployed has been used interchangeably on this thread with insecure badly paid work and a young person in education.

These are not trivial points. The three generations argument is completely fabricated and was made up by the government and repeated many times. It was used as a justification for austerity and draconian benefits measures, which pushed more families into poverty and unemployment.

I have a full time job. Until the government increased benefits under the pandemic, after paying my rent, electricity and bus fares to work I lived on £35 a month. These kind of wage levels and benefit cuts are caused by people repeating these myths about poverty. And I have to carry on working during the pandemic, in work that puts me at risk, but people like me on this thread are being treated on this thread as the cause of the problem, rather than the people the problem is being inflicted upon.

Stripes. People have different experiences and have come to different views. It's fine. It's part of societies debate. You may be right, others may be right. The very important thing is to consider appropriate solutions.

What do you think needs to be done.

It isn’t about different experiences. It is about a poster introducing a lie on to this thread.

A lie is not an experience. A lie is not a different point of view. A lie is particularly dangerous when it was initially promoted by the government to achieve a particular goal.

There a great many things that could be done to tackle poverty - most importantly a project of building huge amounts of housing association properties with affordable rents so that families had stability and the support of their local community.

The next would be to introduce the Union’s proposed new deal for workers. The points being £10 minimum wage for all, minimum 16 hour contract, average earnings sick pay, specific crime introduced of worker abuse from the public, social security system reform, improved rights for unfair dismissal, closing down of employers who break health and safety rules.

Interesting video about BLM by Tim Pool.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=dZFywjklTBI

Thats why i was asking, to me 16, 35, and 52 ARE three generations who have been through school, three people = three generations, weve been talking at cross purposes. When you have a group photo of a granny, mother and baby do you not title that 3 generations? Confusing, a bit like when Americans call the ground floor the first floor. I did not mean to seem pedantic, the confusion was distracting me, i don't approve of myths being presented as facts either, evidence based all the way.
Im not being judgemental about claiming benefits or ranking one type of claimant above another, just discussing demographics in the context of deprivation. The benefit trap is a real thing and can lead to situations that are proven to affect childrens educational attainment but i have never agreed with a Tory Home Sec about how to deal with it. Im more interested in the idea of a universal basic income. The trials thst have been done are a bit disappointing in regards to increasing employment significantly but they have been shown to improve peoples quality of life and mental health.
Again no judgement implied by me, your reading that into it, its the system thats letting individuals down.
You can't fix a problem without naming it and collecting statistics but that can seem hard hearted because talking about numbers ignores peoples personal stories.
Its difficult on anonymous forums when you dont know peoples stories, debating can feel like a personal judgement.

To paraphrase:
Three generations never working may be a lie but:
Unfortunately lots of people, some out of lazy thinking, some for political reasons, fail to differentiate between being dependent in benefits, never having worked or being long term unemployed. I was reflecting this rather than my personal judgement.

16, 35 and 52 are three generations.

They are not three unemployed generations who are ‘the biggest predictor of underachievement in schools’ because the 16 year old cannot have a child old enough to measure the school achievement of.

No such families have been found to exist.

‘You can't fix a problem without naming it and collecting statistics but that can seem hard hearted because talking about numbers ignores peoples personal stories.’

I absolutely agree and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation could not collect statistics on three generation unemployment families because they couldn’t find any.

Two generation unemployed families were 0.9% of the population but there was no statistic that those families had yet had school age children.

I agree with you about universal income, particularly as women’s jobs are more at risk from increased automation and AI.

Ah i get what you mean now, so you'd have to add ten years to everyones age and add a child of school age, sorry i was a bit slow putting that together, not sleeping well at the moment and a bit of a fuzzy brain as a result. However that survey may have disproved the never working myth but the scenario i suggested of three generations on benefits (not necessarily unemployed) at any one period in time does exist and can significantly affect the life chances and educational attainment of children and young people, thats all i was trying to say.

You said "never worked" at the beginning and then unemployed later, is the 0.9% never worked or unemployed? I should just go and read the report, after ive had a good nights sleep.
Of course i would never trust the governments unemployment and benefit statistics, they do not count people who do not sign on or apply for various reasons.

As an ex-teacher I know that deprivation and the cultures which often surround deprivation can run counter to the values that are required for education and the classroom.

The semantics/precise details of two/three generations is neither here nor there, really. What is a fact is that many children come into the classroom with a deficit, and by the time they get to secondary school they've often missed out on some key developmental learning milestones. What's more, the culture of the classroom can also be alien.

Households in which there are no books. Households in which parents do not engage their children in conversation, and so their language skills are stilted. Often harsh environments, and often chaotic. Boys with no positive male role model. Parents who come into schools and have a go at teachers for disciplining their children; who don't support the ethos of the school.

I did some of my teacher training in a school in Gloucester. There was a new head of department - a powerful, vivacious black woman called Dr Bloor. One day one of the year seven pupils came in and told her that his parents had said to tell her "That if I have to call you Doctor, then you have to call me Mister". Now you could easily see this as not only utterly disrespectful, but even racist. Now I wasn't entirely sure, at the time, it was a race thing...more one of utter defiance....but looking back it could well have had an element of racism to it too.

This boy was also a casual arsonist in his spare time, and his literacy seemed to have frozen at about the age of 4.

Ah, even if you wanted to not count a 16 year old, three generations of unemployment/underemployment could mean a 32 year old, a 52 year old, and and a 72 year old. I'm not seeing the issue.

If no one can find where that statistic supposedly comes from I am content to think it was made up, but I disagree with anyone saying generational poverty isn't a thing, and isn't a predictor of educational problems.

None of that implies agreeing that the best way to combat those kinds of problems is gutting the social security system or anything similar. If we have to dismiss facts because someone has used them to support policies we don't like we aren't going to get very far.

@Goosefoot I had never heard of Adolph Reed until you quoted him. He is fantastic.