White Scum?

Can a person be rascist towards those people of the same skin colour who come from the same area of himself? It’s a difficult question to answer. Yet it’s relevant to a story that has been in covered in the media recently

This is the news that social mobility within the UK, the measurement by which you judge how a child progresses through their lives on the social ladder, is poor in comparison within many other countries in the developed world. Add to this a recent piece that discovered that white males in our state schools are often amongst the biggest underachievers in our society it becomes increasingly clear that this group includes people like me. If you have experienced a problem first hand then it’s often the case that you can give a better view about it.

The main theme to the question is to ask why we see so many people like me lagging behind. Conservative instinct points to blaming Government. I believe they must take some of the blame. The current administration has pumped billions more pounds into education which has led to some improvements but not the consistent value for money across the board. They also appear to be misguided by the ways they measure success by pushing through the idea of GCSE marks been the golden standard, whilst moving children through the system who often lack the basic skills of being able to read and write. This is a problem but logic suggests that ideas at the top can always be changed if they offer a better chance of success.

The far wider problem comes in the actual society where people like me come from. When I say society I refer to the places, which include the vast majority of the country, where the wider approach of success has seemingly passed by and therefore led to missed opportunity.

This cultural degradation has many roots, some of which I have experienced and have led to resentment within myself. One is the lack of cultural opportunities to experience events outside their status quo. Fortunately for myself, I had parents who allowed me to witness subjects like classical music and architecture of various periods at a young age. I doubt I appreciated them as a child but looking back there were massively for my benefit and allowed me to reach places that I couldn’t have done by myself. Yet I think I am in the minority in this area. I always remember when I went to places of culture in Stoke like the museum them being pretty much empty. I also remember how you could go and wander five minutes from there and find white males, like me, all over the centre of Stoke doing nothing at best and often causing trouble at worst. I asked then as I do now what makes them different from me? What makes me want to discover about our culture and them to prefer sitting around doing nothing. I certainly had an advantage over them because I had being encouraged to discover these things but surely it doesn’t take much drive to open one’s eyes and want to experience these things. Haven’t the many not gone down that path because they were never shown it or is it because they didn’t want to and therefore rejected that path?

Not that exposure at an early age to the world of arts and culture means that someone can’t fulfil their potential. There are other reasons. One of them is the “it’s not what you know but who you know” system we live under that affects so many industries. It’s a real bitch of a job trying to get anywhere in the law or politics if you don’t have the contacts. Bitterness often stems from this state of affairs and it does take staying power when you see others given a foot up ahead of you simply because they know someone you don’t. People getting on who are neither hard working nor particularly talented on the back of contacts is often an injustice. All this is seen from someone like me with stable parents. Parents, who knew nobody who could help with my fledging career, but help as best they can. Many similar white males don’t even have that. Nobody to encourage their dreams or interests or to give them that help at home when it’s most needed during childhood. We are talking about kids going homes where parents are too stoned or drunk to communicate on a simple level let alone do things like help with homework. Homes where nobody works, nobody has achieved anything, places without a sense of pride. That’s complete isolation of opportunity and backed up with little financial resources is incredibly difficult to go through a period of ten years plus in education trying to forge a career and better standard of life.

What makes this worse is not just the basics described above been wrong but the day to day routine being one which lacks any kind of intellectual stimulation. I think back to my time at school and try to remember when I was encouraged to think about the wider issues in the world. I honestly can’t remember a time when I was. That’s 11 years of schooling when individual thought about the world isn’t tempted into the open. Yet, that’s how we learn and become stronger, from listening to others and putting our own arguments across and reacting to how they are challenged. The bottom line is that you won’t acquire these skills when you never have the opportunity to. If you aren’t given the opportunity to think in a formal setting then why will you ever apply it to your everyday setting for the rest of your life?

This all relates to the title of this piece. I intended to call it White Scum. This was to describe a resentment I felt towards white people who seemed to have nothing in their lives and achieved little. I think you could label this group as chavs. It’s common to think of them as the human rubbish in our society. You can find websites called chav scum and to believe the images in the press that this group is out of control. But with every “who” there is a “why.” That’s why I added the question mark to the title. The kind of ridicule would never be accepted if we labelled people as black scum or paki scum but because these people are white and uneducated it seems in the mainstream to be fine.

This is why, I realised I was looking at the issue from the wrong angle. I resented white males like myself, who I see every time I go into places like Stoke, when I should have aimed that resentment towards the system that has created them. A system, which allows people to be on the same university course as me, not through academic achievement, but because their private school has rung up to reserve them a place. My dislike should be aimed at that status quo and the people who have created it. It has severely disadvantaged people like me and has left many others in a position where they are ridiculed as thick and stupid with no chance of social mobility. Go to any city centre to see the evidence of this nationwide failure.

Something to believe in

"They came from miles around to worship every Sunday and rejoiced at the wonder of 3 for 2 and 50% off. Filling aisle after aisle in praise as they turned to page 243 of the holy summer catalogue with the blessed store manager on the public announcement system proclaiming where the latest divine price cut could be found in this sacred place"

What is the purpose of the above paragraph? It might sound on first reading like an extract from a trashy novel or some sort of alternative advertising campaign. Both of these are wrong. Its purpose is to show that if a society rids itself of religious belief completely it is left with people who believe in very little at all. Not that this opinion is held to be popular with UK society as a whole in 21st century Britain

Since I have spent most of my life outside the majority, I always like to argue against the popular opinions of the day wherever possible. This is not just to be controversial but because I believe many of the concepts we take as fact in the 21st century can be construed as misguided at best and plain wrong at worst. One of these is the rise of atheism and with it the degrading of the Christian culture and religious belief within the UK.

If you get rid of a cultural aspect within a country then a gap is left and something will always come to fill it. This is modernisation. So if religion, through a factual certainty based on atheism, is to be purged what replaces it? Two theories spring to mind both of which are on the increase in modern society. One refers back to the quote at the top of the page and can be seen as increased consumerism and materialism in our modern age. You only need to go to any out of town superstore on a weekend to see the car parks full of people flocking in to try and buy things on the cheap which is what generally these stores offer. There is nothing wrong with this idea in a free society but it's beyond argument to recognise that the less people hold religious belief the more they adhere to a life dedicated, perhaps subconsciously, but dedicated none the less to the collection of material goods. By material goods I don't just mean essential things needed to live but luxuries which most of the time people go to these sorts of places to buy. A significant proportion of these luxuries actually replace other luxuries that people own. As a believer in the free market this in the correct context is not a problem but with religious belief in place, it acts as a strong counter balance in place based on a sense of duty to do something as a person that goes beyond the belief in the collection of goods for oneself and to help the wider community and world.

The other area that in my opinion grows in secular societies is addictions. This can be to alcohol, drugs or gambling amongst other things. How does this develop from the lack of religious faith? Mainly, because an addiction traps the user into a routine. This can be drinking daily or meeting regularly with a drug dealer. This routine is a cancerous one which is incredibly difficult to get out of. Religion provides a solid counterbalance to this. It too provides a routine of regular worship, attendance and most importantly belief. Often this belief rejects outright consumption of substances like drink and drugs in the first place and even when it doesn't it offers support networks for those who do find themselves trapped in the menace of addiction. Away from government, religious groups do provide this sort of social safety net but if you reject religion then you ignore the great public service many of these groups do not just in the sense of social protection but in areas such as public education.

The main rejection of religion seems to be on the idea of control. Of course principles are contained within it but it is never compulsory. The bad side effects of it come from the abuse of it by people. They abuse religion and not the other way around. This is either for profit (perhaps related to the idea of material gain discussed elsewhere in this post) or violence, for example cult Islamic fascism that we see today. Religious texts do never condone some of the shameful behaviour that goes on by people acting under the name of religion from pedophile priests to gross material gain for themselves and nobody else. People who support the separation of church and state miss the point. It's not that religion needs to get out of politics but that politics has become too involved in religion.

Whilst I don’t believe that to be a good person you have to be religious a theoretical argument shows that a religious background provides a stronger argument. This is because a religious person would see the earth as a mere test for the next world where their behaviour is to be judged to see if they are fit to have a prosperous afterlife. This is where the idea of conscience develops from as a belief that there is a presence beyond us which can evaluate what we do whilst those who purely believe in a secular system will realise that only they will know all of their own actions.

In conclusion, any society is a combination of freedom and duty to others. I always support a free market and a free people. There are two ways to balance this through some sense of social justice. One is government and the other is religion. As a conservative who believes in small government religion appears to be the most sensible option as it’s based in individual conscience. The idea each individual questions what they do rather than having someone else doing that for them. Take that away and all that is left is the market and government as well as an unfulfilled and broken society.

Welcome

Thanks very much for taking the time to take a look at this blog. I'm the sort of person who comes to these fads usually later on than most people, so knowing and reading a lot of blogs written by friends I decided to take the plunge and start one myself.


For those who don't know me, my name is Richard Davies and the purpose and thus title of this blog is to try and take a different look at the major issues our country and the world faces in the 21st century. I intend to use it not just to talk about politics directly but also issues of culture in a wider outlook. Personally speaking I would say I couldn’t pigeon hole myself into one particular political theory but I do have a lot of time for neo-conservatism although as a member of the UK Conservative Party it's difficult to relate this to Britain in 2007. I have lived most of my life in Stoke before moving to university in Norwich as well as spending some time living in America. Within the party I am a member in both Stone in Staffordshire and also Norwich South. I was the president of the Conservative Society at the UEA this year and am proud that under my leadership membership increased by 200% as well as the society been left in a better financial position as well as holding more events which was key to encouraging interest.


I will also sometimes copy posts into the blog of UEA Conservatives run by my good friend Paul Wells. That can be found at http://ueaconservatives.blogspot.com/