'Society must embrace differences'

The War Cry, 04 June 2005

Earlier in the year the head of the Evangelical Alliance, the Rev Joel Edwards, spoke to The War Cry about the need for the values hope, trust and respect to be more prominent in society. The War Cry invited a number of people to expand on these values. DOREEN LAWRENCE, co-founder of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, writes about respect.....

The world is changing, and so are the people. When I was growing up I was taught to respect my elders, whoever they were.

The first nine years of my life were spent in the Caribbean. As a young child growing up there, I did not have any concept of colour or racism. Upon arriving in Britain, my only awareness of difference was how close together the houses were.

For black parents in British society, the notion of respect has proven to be complex in relation to values. What I would interpret as black values, one might say, harks back to days of slavery. Here I can only refer to the Caribbean value of respect, and my understanding of it.

Within Caribbean society, respecting elders is paramount no matter who they are. Children would know their boundaries.

In the past, parents from the Caribbean always trusted people in authority. Parents and children had faith and total confidence in teachers. Teachers and pastors were held in high esteem by all in the village community, and respect was evident. Parents would gain and rely on, feed-back from teachers on their children's development, without questioning whether there were any underlying problems.

Black parents expected to find the same values within British society when they arrived here in the 1950s. It took at least ten years for the reality to come to light, that the education system and society as a whole were failing their children.

Parents began to lose respect for teachers and the schools when they realised both were letting their children down. This failure by the entire education system led to their distrust of British society.

It is not only in regard to the care of our children that I see a lack of valuing and respect towards the black community. I also see it in the treatment of black servicemen and servicewomen who fought in both world wars. I don't believe that there is any appreciation of the sacrifices made, or due respect given to these people.

I believe the black community can only be, or feel, British if the whole of society accepts, values and respects us as members of the human race, and embraces the differences in our cultures that we bring with us.

I believe it will be the next, or even the following black generation who will feel more comfortable with being referred to as British. We have come a long way, but I believe we still have further to go before people from the black community can feel fully integrated into society. 

Doreen Lawrence, co-founder of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust