A different script
If the Finsbury Park mosque attack (when, targeting a Mosque on 19 June 2017 in the ethnically diverse North London neighbourhood of Finsbury Park, which was over 300 miles away from his home in Wales, Darren Osborne acquired a van and drove it into Muslim worshippers during early-morning Ramadan prayers) showed us one thing, however, it’s that we can change the prescribed narrative surrounding this pattern of behaviour. According to the existing script, the enraged mob at the Finsbury Park mosque, fuelled by fear and a desire for revenge, should have then butchered this lone assailant, fuelling more fear and mistrust. But that’s not how it happened. Mohammed Mahmoud, the imam of the mosque, calmed and reasoned with the crowd and protected the terrorist from attack until the police arrived to make an arrest. Mahmoud was later dubbed a ‘hero’ by the British press and was personally thanked by Prince Charles when he visited the mosque days after the attack. Thousands of Londoners would also show their solidarity with the Muslim community by participating in a flower march the following evening and delivering thousands of bouquets to the mosque.
This is a prime example of how extremism can be fought. This was homegrown terrorism that failed to divide society because good Muslim men were prepared to stand up for compassion and the rule of law, and because the people of London came together in support of this ‘other’ community. Where radicalization is concerned, there is more than one side involved. The conspirators show no sign of quitting, so neither must we in fighting for the values we hold dear.
It’s clear that we can no longer sit back and ignore the disintegration that is brewing in white working-class communities both in the UK and US; it’s their values that for centuries have been the bedrock of British and American society, after all. The traditional values of the white working class are translatable into any setting: loyalty to a cause, hard work, and a grim determination; they are attributes that we want not only in our employees and citizens, but in our leaders and bosses, our friends and family. If we can harness these qualities, equip these men with the education and skills they need to contribute to this new globalized world, and show that they are valued, then the damage that is currently being wrought at every level can be prevented and reversed. Now that’s a cause worth pursuing.
ACTION POINT: Find out how many university degrees are open to applicants without A-levels.
DISCUSSION POINT: What job do you instinctively think of a white working-class man doing?
‘If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.’
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you are one of the ‘other’ men reading this, then I thank you for persevering in the face of life’s obstacles. I hope I have given an accurate account of your plight – generalizations notwithstanding. To the rest of us who regard these ‘other’ men as ‘them’ rather than ‘us’, I would say this: there is another way.
To create a new normal, each of us must change the way we see, treat and include the ‘other’ man – to break down the stereotypes that we ourselves have created based on nothing more than outward appearances. Equally, we must turn our attention to class: in a report entitled ‘Elitist Britain’ by the UK Government’s Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, it was concluded that elitism was so ingrained in British society ‘that it could be called “social engineering”’. Too often, this is at the expense of the ‘other’ man.
And across all three of these ‘other’ groups, we must reassess our understanding of ‘masculinity’ in the round. As we’ve seen, these men inhabit their respective subcultures where their own rules and norms apply, which will often conflict with mainstream values – particularly the acceptance of violence as being part of a man’s DNA. If we can help change the script within these subcultures about what a man ‘ought’ to be, then we can surely help to stem the flow of violence that often spills out into the world as a result of their frustrations.
On a wider scale, the issues society has with its ‘other’ men are ingrained and complex, and we require effective leadership to fully address them. We need politicians and policy makers who are not just driven by self-interest, but are willing to make tough decisions and take the long-term approach needed to fix these problems. Our ‘other’ men trigger three of the toughest issues that society is yet to reconcile: race, religion, and class. However, there are countless examples of regeneration and integration programmes that have been proven to work (go to www.Diversify.org to see the remarkable case study of Braddock, Pennsylvania, where Mayor John Fetterman is spearheading a fantastic regeneration drive of this ailing steel town). What they show is that it’s only by turning our attention to marginalized groups such as the ‘other’ man that we can reach our full potential as a society, and that when we get it right, we all benefit.
THE OTHER MAN:
The Numbers
Disparities in earnings and unemployment in the UK and the USA *
Disparities in rates of incarceration *
Facts and figures
• 15%: the proportion of Muslim prisoners in 2015 up from 8% in 2002.
• The Young Report of 2014 found that ‘Most of the prisoners we met with all said that they experienced differential treatment as a result of their race, ethnicity or faith. Black prisoners felt that they were stereotyped as drug dealers and Muslim prisoners as terrorists’.
• 50%: according to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates as whites, today’s prison and jail populations would decline by a half.
• 12%: the percentage of drug users in the USA who are African American, but 38% of arrests for drug offences and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offence are African American.
• Twice as likely: the Pew Research Center finds that, in the USA, blacks are twice as likely to be in poverty as whites.
• 50%: the percentage of Muslim households in poverty in the UK, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, compared to the national average of 18%
THE FIRST DEGREE OF INTEGRATION
‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’
James Baldwin
We all have so many ‘isms’ that keep us apart; isms that are buried so deeply within us that we are unaware of them and their ramifications on ourselves and others: race-ism, sex-ism, class-ism, sectarian-ism, age-ism … the list is endless. And all of us are guilty, myself included (mine, of course, being tattoo-ism).
If you had asked me five years ago to name my ism, I would genuinely have told you I didn’t have one. This, in fact, was one of the things I prided myself on the most: my self-perceived ‘open-mindedness’. For most of my life, I have happily revelled in this bubble of