in common: no father at home.”
SOCIAL EXCLUSION
Camila Batmanghelidj, founder of The Place To Be and Kids Company charity, wrote in the Independent: “It’s not one occasional attack on dignity, it’s a repeated humiliation, being continuously disposed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto want an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped. Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it.”
WEAK POLICING
An editorial in the Sun stated, “[Prime Minister] David Cameron spoke for most of us when he said police were initially too thin on the ground and misjudged their early response.”
ANIMALISTIC BEHAVIOR
Conservative columnists Max Hastings, writing in the Mail Online, charged: “They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong. They respond only to instinctive animal impulses – to eat and drink, have sex or destroy the accessible property of others. Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.”
SPENDING CUTS
London mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone told the BBC: “If you’re making massive cuts, there’s always the potential for this sort of revolt against that.” Marian FitzGerald, visiting professor of criminology at the University of Kent, noted, “The full implementation of the cuts to local authority services that will have the biggest impact on these areas will not be fully felt until next year. However, it may be that because there’s so much talk about police spending cuts, the rioters may have internalised the message that they’re less likely to be caught.”
CONSUMERISM
Zoe Williams, in the Guardian, offered what she called a pragmatic explanation: ”This is what happens when people don’t have anything, when they have their noses constantly rubbed in stuff they can’t afford, and they have no reason to believe that they will ever be able to afford it.”
I knew the rioting in England had taken on an American flavor when I looked at a quote from a reader replying to a BBC story. The reader said, “I agree there are many reasons for this situation. However, I put poor, uninformed, and unexperienced parenting at the top of the list. You have babies trying to raise babies.”
George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached on his website www.georgecurry.com and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.
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