Recently, we've been thinking a
lot about how perceptions of young people affect their everyday lives. From
what young people think of themselves and their peer group to the impact on
their aspirations and behaviour, stereotyping has a big impact.
In the last two weeks of 2012 the
ReachOut! Academy Year
11s watched Plan B’s
Ill
Manors. On first viewing, the boys thought it
was merely a gritty portrayal of life on an East
London estate. Did you think that too?
Next, we watched
Plan B talk about the film on
Ted Talks. We discovered that he meant
for Ill Manors to be a satire of the stereotypical ‘chav’.
‘You could hear
a pin drop,’ one mentor commented, as
the Year 11s listened open mouthed as Plan B spoke
about the “demonization of the working class.” He went as far as to say ‘chav’ is a word just as prejudiced
as the racist, sexist and homophobic
terminology we all know shouldn’t be used.
After the silence, the debate
began. Born and raised in Hackney, it’s fair to say the boys know what it’s
like to live here. Taken on face value, Ill Manors gives an impression of
Hackney as a bleak no-go zone. Dangerous, hopeless, rotten. Plan B wanted to
satirise this stereotype – but how many people didn’t get the joke?
This raised the question of what
people might think of Hackney, its communities, its people, and its youth. And,
alternatively, what might they think of other, more highly respectable areas
and people.
In the next session, we asked
the boys to link up positive and negative behaviour with some well-known faces.
Not a single person guessed that it was
ShakaHislop who studied Mechanical Engineering at NASA and
Boris Johnson was in a
‘gang’ who smashed up restaurants in Oxford.
So who did the Academy boys pin
stereotyping on? The main culprits: the media, teachers, the police,
politicians. But as mentee
Noah said, “we all do”.
There are some people able to
give a realistic assessment of our community. We ended the session on a
high as watched George the Poet’s
My City. Young people and mentors enjoyed the clever and
poignant lyrics - George
the Poet doesn’t see the community through rose tinted glasses. His message
could be understood a bit more clearly –it’s harder to miss his jokes. Sadly,
most people don’t know about his work.
We wanted the boys to join in
the debate on how they and their community are portrayed and understood by
others, and they did. But what really impressed us was their desire to
articulate their ideas, get their point across and be heard. As Boris Johnson
shows, everyone stereotypes and is stereotyped. What’s important for us is they
boys are aware of it, care about how they are viewed, and don’t feel the
pressure to live up to low expectations.
