Dear Ms Birbalsingh,

I recently read the article you write about the London riots, and from that article you made points to do with race and culture that I disagree with and therefore that is the reason I am writing to you.

In your piece, you make the point that you believe the London riots were not due to the anger felt by the shooting of Mark Duggan, but instead that the riots were caused by “black youths” behaving in a purely opportunistic way. I feel however, it was due to the constant injustice and mistreating of the black community.
You  say you “instinctively” knew that it was black youths who had set London alight. This suggests to me that you had already made assumptions about the race of Mark Duggan because of the involvement of crime.
For you it seems that crime is constant theme seen in black people, this is similar to the controversial comments by David Starkey on NewsNight. His argument is that he also believes black people are a violent race, this can be seen when Starkey says: “What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black.” The implication behind David Starkey’s point is that to be black is to be violent or a criminal.

Additionally, you seem to maintain the point that people are over-exaggerating about the problems seen in the police. However the fact that there have been 333 deaths in police custody since 1998 shows that there is a problem which needs to be investigated extensively.
Only a few days after the London riots a recording was publicised of a police officer using racist terms directed at a 21-year-old black male culminating in him saying “You’ll always have black skin. Don’t hide behind your colour.”
The man said afterwards that he was made to feel like an animal and was assaulted by the policeman.
Additionally the action taken by the male to record the incident show the insecurity and distrust felt by the black community towards the police. This is just a part of the problem that has been going on for years, this can be seen as institutional racism throughout the MET police, and stems back as far as the racially motivated murder of Steven Lawrence in 1993, where the report only surfaced in 1999 admitting the mistakes of the police, 6 years after the incident.

Additionally with the recent police shooting of Mark Duggan and the racism recorded, both went without consequence, showing that there is still no system of accountability for mistakes or improper conduct of the police service.This is my problem that you seem to be part of a community that is blind to these problems. It is quite revealing about these problems that in June 2015 Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the MET commissioner, himself admitted that there is justification for allegations of racism in the MET police and that a young black male is still far more likely to be stopped and searched than a young white male, showing the extreme difference in equality in today’s society.

This is why I disagree with the points you have made in your piece, and believe that majority of them are either racist or just plain ridiculous.

With regards,
Thomas Wood