DRAMA CRISIS

The article ' much drama out of a crisis', last week fell just short of the greater picture.

It was very interesting and made poignant points.

Aml Ameen is wrong. The idea that street drama cannot define a whole race is one of the most problematic issues woven into our community.

For one because it does and two because a participant cannot see it

Not long ago I was stopped by the police at night because my car

was 'not registered from this area and could thereby have been stolen’ as I had dropped off a girlfriend in Brixton

When in New Zealand where black faces are remote, I gave directions to two American tourists to a restaurant that was effectively from Piccadilly to Kensington, one of them exclaimed "oh he's not going to send us through the hood ?!"

Or when my request at work to change the background music to classical is interrupted with "Oh he wants something more ghetto", I realise that being forty four will not exclude me from contemporary mainstream definitions

My dry witted retort about music of Warsaw in World War 2 brought on a damp silence to a tone of 'spoilsport'.

My nephew in his 20s is a single father, a law courts clerk, has an evening clubs promotions business and is in a mortgage. Where is his dramatic stereotype?

The programme to assassinate the character of and thereby dis-credit the black man began with the first slaves, to justify slavery .Heathen cannibal savages who cooked white men in massive pots.

When that became illegal he was the classic bogey man, rapist and thief and innately uncivilised.

Centuries later he claims society's niche of the poster boy for rebellion, marginalisation, and sociopathic behaviour, maintaining the undertone of savage. It has to date run a consistent course. (Hey, 'if it ain't broke.....), perpetuated in popular culture

and celebrated in pop culture

A tarnished figure will make no headway