The pair discussed the impact of race on the spate of stabbings across London and the UK
Rapper, author and activist Akala and Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan took part in a strong debate on Monday morning over the matter of knife crime.
The discussion took on the impact of race in the growing issue and led to Akala being praised for his clarity and explaining of the issue.
Morgan had told the London-based rapper that: “Statistically it looks like in London, right now, that this is predominantly a problem of young, black teenage boys almost exclusively in gangs attacking each other.
“The perpetrators and the victims appear to be almost exclusively young, black men. Do you think there is a racial element to that in terms of any cultural issues, racial issues?”
Akala stated that black people have not been historically more violent than any other race during the course of human history, also highlighting the disparity in how crime is reported depending on who commits it.
“There are several regions of the country, let’s just look at the facts, that have higher murder rates than London does,” he said.
“Clearly throughout human history, black people have not remotely had anything resembling a monopoly on violence. Over the last few years some of the most horrendous knife attacks, both the victims and the perpetrators have been white and they’ve not been from London.”
Akala stated his belief that the black-on-black violence “paradigm” is used to give the “ridiculous impression” that all black people are at an equal risk of crime.
“When both the perpetrator and the victim are white, race suddenly becomes unimportant,” he continued.
“There is one limited sense in which race may be important. You could argue that only a very particular demographic of young, black boys, only at a very particular stage in the lives, feel a degree of psychological self-hatred or contempt for themselves that they project that onto other people who most remind them of themselves.”
#Akala is the only one who bothers to do any research before going on #GMB pic.twitter.com/QhCnwHs1wx
— Dope Black Dads (@dopeblackdads) March 18, 2019
After the discussion, Morgan admitted that Akala had a “valid point” and the 35-year-old compared how different communities face different questions following terrible incidents.
“You will never be called upon to explain that not all middle aged white men are paedophiles, despite the fact that hundreds maybe thousands of them are convicted of sex offences every year,” he told the presenter. “Because it’s self evident that not all middle aged white men are paedophiles.”
