Many Blacks folks in the UK and elsewhere have a dysfunctional philosophy of parenting. This philosophy is that parents are just meant to feed, clothe and shelter children. Actually guiding children through life is someone else's responsibility. So things like teaching children about personal finances, physical and mental health, relationships and sex, all that is the responsibility of "society." This helps to explain why many Black parents (not all, but a large proportion) never have deep conversations with their children. It's all superficial. They don't take the time to actually know their children, to learn their character, their strengths, weaknesses, their interests, their ambitions, etc. And thus they can't guide them through life's various twists and turns. As a result, children must learn about life from "society." And "society" is what, exactly? It's the streets, the school playgrounds, social media, p*rnography, etc.
As children progress through the education provided in these spaces, they develop different personas. At home, they come across one way - respectful, studious, etc. But outside of home, they have different personalities, different names, different ways of speaking, etc. For too many of them, this other world is an extremely nihilistic and violent one. The crazy thing is, these youths actually tell us about this other world through music. They're actually bragging about all the madness they are engaging in. Something like drill music is basically propaganda. It's PR for these youths, denigrating their rivals, bragging about successful hits against them, etc. And of course, this music gets widely promoted nationally (and internationally) because apparently Black youths killing each other always makes for great music to dance to.
Parents either don't know this other stuff, or they don't care about it. Either way, a large share of the responsibility for what these youths are doing falls on the parents and other elders/caregivers. And I think that the philosophy of parenting is at the root cause of this failure. So I hope to dig into this a bit more in future videos once I've chewed over it a bit more.
Ely Wananda
Many Blacks folks in the UK and elsewhere have a dysfunctional philosophy of parenting. This philosophy is that parents are just meant to feed, clothe and shelter children. Actually guiding children through life is someone else's responsibility. So things like teaching children about personal finances, physical and mental health, relationships and sex, all that is the responsibility of "society." This helps to explain why many Black parents (not all, but a large proportion) never have deep conversations with their children. It's all superficial. They don't take the time to actually know their children, to learn their character, their strengths, weaknesses, their interests, their ambitions, etc. And thus they can't guide them through life's various twists and turns. As a result, children must learn about life from "society." And "society" is what, exactly? It's the streets, the school playgrounds, social media, p*rnography, etc.
As children progress through the education provided in these spaces, they develop different personas. At home, they come across one way - respectful, studious, etc. But outside of home, they have different personalities, different names, different ways of speaking, etc. For too many of them, this other world is an extremely nihilistic and violent one. The crazy thing is, these youths actually tell us about this other world through music. They're actually bragging about all the madness they are engaging in. Something like drill music is basically propaganda. It's PR for these youths, denigrating their rivals, bragging about successful hits against them, etc. And of course, this music gets widely promoted nationally (and internationally) because apparently Black youths killing each other always makes for great music to dance to.
Parents either don't know this other stuff, or they don't care about it. Either way, a large share of the responsibility for what these youths are doing falls on the parents and other elders/caregivers. And I think that the philosophy of parenting is at the root cause of this failure. So I hope to dig into this a bit more in future videos once I've chewed over it a bit more.
6 months ago | [YT] | 186