CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
If you’ve been watching Channel 7’s Sunday Night program, or listening to the Liberal politicians campaigning in Victorian by-elections, you would know that the biggest threat to the people of Melbourne right now is the small percentage of juvenile offenders within the Sudanese migrant community – which makes up just 0.1 per cent of Victoria’s total population, roughly about 6,000 people.
While it appears quite easy to join, or be associated with African gangs, there is obviously quite a lot of African teenagers that aren’t gang members – despite matching The Herald Sun’s description of what a criminal African gang member looks like.
But even for many of those who actually are associated with this criminal lifestyle, the choice to be an African gang member was not made by them.
It was made by the Channel 7 cameras that filmed them hanging out on the St Kilda foreshore and decided to broadcast their faces nationally in a news segment that associated them with carjackings and rape.
Working alongside several youth workers based in Betoota’s prominent Sudanese community in Karruwali Hills, The Betoota Advocate has come up with a list of five tips to help young Black Australians avoid being associated with the African gang crisis which is definitely more of a national concern then what’s happening to our Great Barrier Reef.
1. Don’t commit crimes
While this one seems obvious, it is worth noting that the run-of-the-mill teenager’s idea of what constitutes criminal behaviour isn’t the same as what a South Yarra-based news reporter thinks. Especially if you are seven foot tall and 14.
Stealing a car is obviously not a good life decision for an African teenager, but neither is swearing in public while drinking dark brown coloured stuff out of a sprite bottle. In fact, it’s pretty much the same.
For most working class Australian teenagers, a drunken punch-on in a public park is an integral part of growing up, but for black kids, it makes for an integral part of a video montage that leads into an interview with Peter Dutton.
2. Don’t dress in anti-social clothing
There is not yet any evidence that Melbourne street gangs can be identified by colour – in the same way American street gangs like the Bloods and the Crips are. Unless that colour is black, which is the colour of their skin, which actually is how they are identified.
Some say the lack of a dress code might be because there actually isn’t any organised criminal African street gangs in Melbourne – but others, namely Channel 7, say it is because they are hiding in plain sight.
Well, they aren’t actually hiding, they are far more visible than other teenagers – but they are wearing hooded jumpers and basketball shoes. What do members of street gangs wear? Streetwear.
3. Don’t walk in groups of more than 3 ( or 2 if you are quite physically imposing)
It should be pretty obvious by now that the key to being in a gang is numbers. It’s hard to be in a gang if you don’t have anyone to ‘gang up’ with.
This is why you need to walk in groups no bigger than three. Or two if you and your mate are quite physically imposing.
The man that killed Eurydice Dixon was not in a gang, neither was the 68-year-old John Edwards that shot his two kids in Sydney the other night… or the man that killed and tortured that teenage girl in Brisbane the week before.
Even though these men were obviously criminals, they can’t be in a gang because they don’t have any friends. And aren’t black. Which brings us to our next point
4. Don’t be black
Pretty simple. If you are black in public, you have a pretty big chance of being in an African gang. Even Polynesians have been associated with African gangs purely due to their skin colour. Furthermore, being black on public transport is a sure-fire way of being associated with African gangs, unless you are one of the few black teenagers reading a book and wearing a suit in the quiet carriage.
Any form of laughing and carrying-on is just playing into the stereotype that African teenagers are emotive individuals that stick together. Don’t give them a reason to clutch their handbags any tighter than they already are. Remember that they’ve seen upwards of 32 Herald Sun frontpages about people like you.
5. Make sure you let white people know that you’re one of the good ones.
Do this by wearing vibrant t-shirts like the black people they see on TV, and don’t stop smiling. Always offer to help old ladies with their groceries and try to wear AFL merchandise (but not Collingwood haha).
Be like them, and they will accept you, providing you don’t have any behavioural slip ups like other teenagers do.
Keep this up and you might get through life like that Tamil family in Biloela, and be loved by your entire community right until the moment Border Force kick in the door at 4 am and seperate you from your children, and deport you for an administrative error in their own office.
