The importance and challenges of role models from a UK perspective

This keynote speech was given at this year’s Top 10 Winners Event on Role Models. It offers an intercultural perspective on positive roles models for young people from a UK and Norwegian perspective. The event was organised by the Leadership Foundation and supported by the British Council. The three central areas covered in the talk are: • Who are role models? • What is their importance? • What are some of the major challenges for role models in a multicultural society? Who are role models?  Or phrased a different way who inspires me the most and why? For me, role models have presence, but are not always visible. We find our role models in places me do not always expect to see them. Our loyalties and aspirations are sometimes challenged, which sometimes mean we cannot outwardly speak of our role models for fear of condemnation or ridicule from the people close to us. We need role models in times of doubt in our lives… when we need to make difficult decisions in order to bridge the future. So role models do not have to be the usual suspects, nor must we see role models as perfect beings, or restrict ourselves to only one. My Story Before I go any further and unpack the importance and challenges of being a role model I want to dwell for a short moment on my own personal experience of finding a suitable role model in my youth before becoming a Sociologist and hopefully inspiring others to dream and achieve. I am first generation Black British. In the 1960s my maternal grandfather came from Jamaica followed shortly afterwards by my mother (as a child), and around the same time my father on his own separate journey (as a young man) to build better futures for themselves here in the UK. Whilst I have always been surrounded by positive adults I have struggled to find the right role models. They have all had one leg in Jamaica and one leg in Britain and a mixed set of values and beliefs that did not always sit comfortably with me. They held an understandable apathy or unease towards British society. To be ‘black’ when I was growing - just as MTV started broadcasting - was to either shelter one’s self in the Christian church or identify with a counterculture on the margins of society. Away from these two avenues there was no space for any free expression of blackness in the UK. Britishness up until the mid-80s was narrowly defined on racial terms. To be British was to be ‘white’. So I did not come across individuals that touched my soul until I reached university – most of which were dead and found only in text books or very unique and special individuals. I found myself attracted to lecturers, critical thinkers and activists because of their passion and strength, not the course. I also found the experience of the lecture theatre exhilarating and libraries a sanctuary. The people and space validated my day dreams, my sense of reality, my being. I studied their ideas and read their biographies, which helped me to imagine the person I am today. I remember my own slow and difficult process of becoming and the role played by role models. I never forgot this experience and carried it with me - till this day - in the hope that I can touch another person’s life for the better. Significant adults are important to young people in their process of becoming - as resources. Young people need adults in their lives in order to model behaviour and acquire life skills and strategies. Even more so for visible minority youth who are told ‘home’ is not where they necessarily ‘belong’. This is by the tone, a certain look and even through well intended actions by members of the host community. For instance, separate classes for children where English is not their first language in UK schools serves to alienate and hampers integration. Equally, at home where parents or legal guardians may feel suspicious of the country where they live and (un)wittingly transmit their anxieties and fears onto their children. That is part of the British experience. The outsider/within is the bind or tension many minority youth find themselves trapped in and are still expected to go out and develop reliance and make decisions in order to build liveable loves in the UK. For any young person, regardless of their background finding positive role models is difficult but with the added burden of not feeling as if one belongs finding the ‘right’ role model becomes that bit more difficult and urgent. Do you seek out role models that reinforce and rationalise your alienation or role models that force you to deny and repress defining aspects (or anchors) of your identity in order to fit in? This is not easily answered… nor should it be. Each person must negotiate having split loyalties and fluid and at times contradictory identities that reflect the spaces in which we inhabit. These continue to be the challenges that persist for young people in the UK today along with weariness and rage that fairness is not a reality for all. Identities are complex, yet still young people have different aspects and contours to their identities that need to be resourced to aid their personal development. For instance, attention needs to be paid to their ethnicity and ‘race’, religion, sexuality, linguistic, cultural and national identities. None of these features are fixed or essential (inherent but narratives we collectively construct and gather around as points of identification we share with others. For example, look at the history of Norwegian national identity and its ties to Sweden we can see how national identities have shifted and are features of imagined communities defined much less by geography and genetics but constructed in our collective imaginations of who is the ‘other’ in order to help define who ‘belongs’.  All groups do this. Who are role models? We can find anchors to our identities in our family, community and wider culture. In Britain this layering hasn’t always been straight forward or equitable. For visible minority youth, role models have featured mostly in the home due to external hostility and negative stereotyping.  If we walk through the British story over the last fifty years we can see critical moments highlighting where and why positive role models have been indispensable for minority youth.  The sociocultural context in 50s Britain was marked by the post-war recovery and the call for workers from the hailing empire. They came thinking they would be welcomed! The British Nationality Act of 1948 guaranteed all colonial subjects British Citizenship. However, on the ground there was widespread hostility, mistrust and discrimination against blacks and other ethnic minority groups. The systematic ghettoization of black folks led to the Notting Hill race riots sparked by white working class youth. In this period positive role models were your peers. They were young men and women who on the surface battled-on, feed, housed and orientated new migrant workers to the UK. Has a result of the Race Riots the first race relation legislation came into force that afforded black people limited protection from discrimination. The sociocultural context of the 60s took a drastic leap forward from the earlier decade. The pill afforded women greater freedom and control over their reproduction system, air travel for the masses meant ties with ‘home’ could be better maintained. Most alarming was the change in attitude and lack of reverence towards the British class system. This was the people’s decade! However, entertainment was the only visible sphere in which to see black people. Blackness in the UK was subversive and became one of the central counterculture reference points for youth. Liberal (upper class) and open minded (working class) white youth gathered around signifiers of blackness. Yet, more and more black children and young people were failing in the school system and had limited job opportunities. Remember this is against the backdrop of segregation in the Southern states of America and apartheid South Africa. Role models for black youth were transmitted over pirate radio stations or captured sights of black freedom fighters on TV.  However, the unshakeable renewed pride in ‘blackness’ was infectious and acts of resistance was being played out on the streets which often conflicted to what was happening at home. The sociocultural context of the 70s was dominated by the economic downturn. Widespread industrial action, the three day working week and fuel storages destabilised British society. Appeasing voices from the right the 1971 Immigration Act slowed down the flow of immigration into the UK and stripped away former rights to citizenship. With the exception of the Partiality Act which welcomed old commonwealth citizens Britain had turned its back on the people it had previously ruled.  The Act was devised on racial lines and ensured whites with connections to Britain in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South African etc where able to return ‘home’ but not people-of-colour. The one exception was the East African Asians fleeing Uganda. This was also the decade in which equal opportunities law was created in the UK and black and ethnic minority communities became even more inward looking.     The sociocultural context in the 80s was marked by a period of rapid prosperity for the few and acute hardship and civil up-rest for many. Race riots in Brixton, Manchester, Liverpool, and Bristol typified this decade, which resulted from heavy handed treatment and harassment by police officers against Black youth. This was exacerbated by widespread discrimination in housing, education, health and employment and alienation from mainstream society. No wonder then that there were hardly any public role models available for black youth. Black people were only found in the narrow fields of sport and entertainment. Home was a refuge. The one or two black professionals in medicine or business were labelled as sell outs as they needed to adopt the walk and talk of white Britain in order to get on. However this period did lead to reinforced race relation legislation and the coining of the term multiculturalism (e.g. respect for diversity). The sociocultural context in the 90s switched to one of hyper-consumerism.  However, in the background there were new race riots but this time in Oldham (Manchester) among Asian and working class white youth. White working class from the North East of England blamed Asians for draining local resources and creating ethnic enclaves. The government saw that family elders could not or would not learn English. The young person was the interrupter and sole link to mainstream society. As a response, English language was seen as imperative criteria to settle in the UK. Without good facility of the English language Asians were seen to have self-marginalised themselves from the British way of life and economy. In the 80s asylum seekers (or economic migrants) were seen as brave people fleeing persecution but now attitudes had shifted where asylum seekers were blamed for abusing the system. But against this context more and more positive role models could be found. Black and Asian people could be seen at all levels and in all corners of British society - if you looked hard enough. Ironically, the British national dish became curry. The sociocultural context in the 00s can be symbolised best by reality TV, eco-politics, the expansion of the EU, international terrorism and the economic downturn.  Multiculturalism is said to have failed in the British experiment. Critics of multiculturalism suggest that communities were left to fend for themselves and did not integrate well enough into the common culture. More recently, the British Government have tried to legislate for positive role models in the case of black youth (e.g. to reduce crime and raise aspiration) and Muslim youth (e.g. in the detection and prevention of extremism). The government have funded initiatives to create a national body of black role models. This is problematic and a bit naïve since there is an assumption that there are no positive role models in the lives of black youth - uncles, grandfathers and other relatives etc are ignored. This is due to the high number of one parented households. However, if black men are not raising their own children they are often raising someone else’s. Equally troubling is how the government seek to promote moderate role models for Muslim youth to gather around. However, it is not an open and frank discussion but only ever awkwardly uttered. The problem here is with policy makers stipulating who are the ‘good Muslim’ and the ‘positive black man’ to act as role models for minority young people. It all feels a bit artificial and non-sustainable to me. For the bulk of black and Asian youth in Britain consumerism shapes their identities and the cult of celebrity frames morality. Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame. Reality TV personalities become role models overnight. This has met role models have become more ubiquitous, diverse, less about merit or talent and more about exposure and less likely to be politicised. Modern Britain is about physically de-racialising oneself and achieving immediate gratification. Almost all the young worship at the same alters – shopping malls, TV set, internet and tabloid press – and share a common cultural malaise. The flip side to all of this has been greater integration that appears to work on the surface.  This is evidenced in the fastest growing group in the UK, people of mixed parentage. To conclude, the central argument here is that young people need a range of role models to inspire them. But be cautious of role models found in social policy. Encourage young people to take personal responsibility and not to model themselves on only one individual because we all possess imperfections. The British experience illustrates how  role models are an effect, cause or catalyst to external sociocultural factors, so be clear in your own mind that we need to aim for active citizenship and better futures for visible minority youth.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 27 May 2010 )

This keynote speech was given at this year’s Top 10 Winners Event on Role Models. It offers an intercultural perspective on positive roles models for young people from a UK and Norwegian perspective. The event was organised by the Leadership Foundation and supported by the British Council. The three central areas covered in the talk are: • Who are role models? • What is their importance? • What are some of the major challenges for role models in a multicultural society? Who are role models? Or phrased a different way who inspires me the most and why? For me, role models have presence, but are not always visible. We find our role models in places me do not always expect to see them. Our loyalties and aspirations are sometimes challenged, which sometimes mean we cannot outwardly speak of our role models for fear of condemnation or ridicule from the people close to us. We need role models in times of doubt in our lives… when we need to make difficult decisions in order to bridge the future. So role models do not have to be the usual suspects, nor must we see role models as perfect beings, or restrict ourselves to only one. My story Before I go any further and unpack the importance and challenges of being a role model I want to dwell for a short moment on my own personal experience of finding a suitable role model in my youth before becoming a Sociologist and hopefully inspiring others to dream and achieve. I am first generation Black British. In the 1960s my maternal grandfather came from Jamaica followed shortly afterwards by my mother (as a child), and around the same time my father on his own separate journey (as a young man) to build better futures for themselves here in the UK. Whilst I have always been surrounded by positive adults I have struggled to find the right role models. They have all had one leg in Jamaica and one leg in Britain and a mixed set of values and beliefs that did not always sit comfortably with me. They held an understandable apathy or unease towards British society. To be ‘black’ when I was growing - just as MTV started broadcasting - was to either shelter one’s self in the Christian church or identify with a counterculture on the margins of society. Away from these two avenues there was no space for any free expression of blackness in the UK. Britishness up until the mid-80s was narrowly defined on racial terms. To be British was to be ‘white’. So I did not come across individuals that touched my soul until I reached university – most of which were dead and found only in text books or very unique and special individuals. I found myself attracted to lecturers, critical thinkers and activists because of their passion and strength, not the course. I also found the experience of the lecture theatre exhilarating and libraries a sanctuary. The people and space validated my day dreams, my sense of reality, my being. I studied their ideas and read their biographies, which helped me to imagine the person I am today. I remember my own slow and difficult process of becoming and the role played by role models. I never forgot this experience and carried it with me - till this day - in the hope that I can touch another person’s life for the better. Significant adults are important to young people in their process of becoming - as resources. Young people need adults in their lives in order to model behaviour and acquire life skills and strategies. Even more so for visible minority youth who are told ‘home’ is not where they necessarily ‘belong’. This is by the tone, a certain look and even through well intended actions by members of the host community. For instance, separate classes for children where English is not their first language in UK schools serves to alienate and hampers integration. Equally, at home where parents or legal guardians may feel suspicious of the country where they live and (un)wittingly transmit their anxieties and fears onto their children. That is part of the British experience. The outsider/within is the bind or tension many minority youth find themselves trapped in and are still expected to go out and develop reliance and make decisions in order to build liveable loves in the UK. For any young person, regardless of their background finding positive role models is difficult but with the added burden of not feeling as if one belongs finding the ‘right’ role model becomes that bit more difficult and urgent. Do you seek out role models that reinforce and rationalise your alienation or role models that force you to deny and repress defining aspects (or anchors) of your identity in order to fit in? This is not easily answered… nor should it be. Each person must negotiate having split loyalties and fluid and at times contradictory identities that reflect the spaces in which we inhabit. These continue to be the challenges that persist for young people in the UK today along with weariness and rage that fairness is not a reality for all. Identities are complex, yet still young people have different aspects and contours to their identities that need to be resourced to aid their personal development. For instance, attention needs to be paid to their ethnicity and ‘race’, religion, sexuality, linguistic, cultural and national identities. None of these features are fixed or essential (inherent but narratives we collectively construct and gather around as points of identification we share with others. For example, look at the history of Norwegian national identity and its ties to Sweden we can see how national identities have shifted and are features of imagined communities defined much less by geography and genetics but constructed in our collective imaginations of who is the ‘other’ in order to help define who ‘belongs’.  All groups do this. Who are role models? We can find anchors to our identities in our family, community and wider culture. In Britain this layering hasn’t always been straight forward or equitable. For visible minority youth, role models have featured mostly in the home due to external hostility and negative stereotyping.  If we walk through the British story over the last fifty years we can see critical moments highlighting where and why positive role models have been indispensable for minority youth.  The sociocultural context in 50s Britain was marked by the post-war recovery and the call for workers from the hailing empire. They came thinking they would be welcomed! The British Nationality Act of 1948 guaranteed all colonial subjects British Citizenship. However, on the ground there was widespread hostility, mistrust and discrimination against blacks and other ethnic minority groups. The systematic ghettoization of black folks led to the Notting Hill race riots sparked by white working class youth. In this period positive role models were your peers. They were young men and women who on the surface battled-on, feed, housed and orientated new migrant workers to the UK. Has a result of the Race Riots the first race relation legislation came into force that afforded black people limited protection from discrimination. The sociocultural context of the 60s took a drastic leap forward from the earlier decade. The pill afforded women greater freedom and control over their reproduction system, air travel for the masses meant ties with ‘home’ could be better maintained. Most alarming was the change in attitude and lack of reverence towards the British class system. This was the people’s decade! However, entertainment was the only visible sphere in which to see black people. Blackness in the UK was subversive and became one of the central counterculture reference points for youth. Liberal (upper class) and open minded (working class) white youth gathered around signifiers of blackness. Yet, more and more black children and young people were failing in the school system and had limited job opportunities. Remember this is against the backdrop of segregation in the Southern states of America and apartheid South Africa. Role models for black youth were transmitted over pirate radio stations or captured sights of black freedom fighters on TV.  However, the unshakeable renewed pride in ‘blackness’ was infectious and acts of resistance was being played out on the streets which often conflicted to what was happening at home. The sociocultural context of the 70s was dominated by the economic downturn. Widespread industrial action, the three day working week and fuel storages destabilised British society. Appeasing voices from the right the 1971 Immigration Act slowed down the flow of immigration into the UK and stripped away former rights to citizenship. With the exception of the Partiality Act which welcomed old commonwealth citizens Britain had turned its back on the people it had previously ruled.  The Act was devised on racial lines and ensured whites with connections to Britain in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South African etc where able to return ‘home’ but not people-of-colour. The one exception was the East African Asians fleeing Uganda. This was also the decade in which equal opportunities law was created in the UK and black and ethnic minority communities became even more inward looking.     The sociocultural context in the 80s was marked by a period of rapid prosperity for the few and acute hardship and civil up-rest for many. Race riots in Brixton, Manchester, Liverpool, and Bristol typified this decade, which resulted from heavy handed treatment and harassment by police officers against Black youth. This was exacerbated by widespread discrimination in housing, education, health and employment and alienation from mainstream society. No wonder then that there were hardly any public role models available for black youth. Black people were only found in the narrow fields of sport and entertainment. Home was a refuge. The one or two black professionals in medicine or business were labelled as sell outs as they needed to adopt the walk and talk of white Britain in order to get on. However this period did lead to reinforced race relation legislation and the coining of the term multiculturalism (e.g. respect for diversity). The sociocultural context in the 90s switched to one of hyper-consumerism.  However, in the background there were new race riots but this time in Oldham (Manchester) among Asian and working class white youth. White working class from the North East of England blamed Asians for draining local resources and creating ethnic enclaves. The government saw that family elders could not or would not learn English. The young person was the interrupter and sole link to mainstream society. As a response, English language was seen as imperative criteria to settle in the UK. Without good facility of the English language Asians were seen to have self-marginalised themselves from the British way of life and economy. In the 80s asylum seekers (or economic migrants) were seen as brave people fleeing persecution but now attitudes had shifted where asylum seekers were blamed for abusing the system. But against this context more and more positive role models could be found. Black and Asian people could be seen at all levels and in all corners of British society - if you looked hard enough. Ironically, the British national dish became curry. The sociocultural context in the 00s can be symbolised best by reality TV, eco-politics, the expansion of the EU, international terrorism and the economic downturn.  Multiculturalism is said to have failed in the British experiment. Critics of multiculturalism suggest that communities were left to fend for themselves and did not integrate well enough into the common culture. More recently, the British Government have tried to legislate for positive role models in the case of black youth (e.g. to reduce crime and raise aspiration) and Muslim youth (e.g. in the detection and prevention of extremism). The government have funded initiatives to create a national body of black role models. This is problematic and a bit naïve since there is an assumption that there are no positive role models in the lives of black youth - uncles, grandfathers and other relatives etc are ignored. This is due to the high number of one parented households. However, if black men are not raising their own children they are often raising someone else’s. Equally troubling is how the government seek to promote moderate role models for Muslim youth to gather around. However, it is not an open and frank discussion but only ever awkwardly uttered. The problem here is with policy makers stipulating who are the ‘good Muslim’ and the ‘positive black man’ to act as role models for minority young people. It all feels a bit artificial and non-sustainable to me. For the bulk of black and Asian youth in Britain consumerism shapes their identities and the cult of celebrity frames morality. Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame. Reality TV personalities become role models overnight. This has met role models have become more ubiquitous, diverse, less about merit or talent and more about exposure and less likely to be politicised. Modern Britain is about physically de-racialising oneself and achieving immediate gratification. Almost all the young worship at the same alters – shopping malls, TV set, internet and tabloid press – and share a common cultural malaise. The flip side to all of this has been greater integration that appears to work on the surface.  This is evidenced in the fastest growing group in the UK, people of mixed parentage. To conclude, the central argument here is that young people need a range of role models to inspire them. But be cautious of role models found in social policy. Encourage young people to take personal responsibility and not to model themselves on only one individual because we all possess imperfections. The British experience illustrates how  role models are an effect, cause or catalyst to external sociocultural factors, so be clear in your own mind that we need to aim for active citizenship and better futures for visible minority youth.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 27 May 2010 )

By Dr Darren Sharpe

http://www.leadershipfoundation.no/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=1