“When I
was a child, I acted like a child. I thought like a child: I reasoned like a
child.” –
1 Corinthians 13:11
The Paris
Brown Fiasco, as it has unfortunately become, has gone too far. Since when did
it become acceptable for a child – which at a mere 16 years, she is – to be
tried by the nation?
It doesn’t
take an expert to realise the major difference between someone who’s never held
accountability, and the majority of us - who have. How indecent, to facilitate
the witch hunt of a mere child. It might be worth noting, for those who haven’t
realised, that the supposedly heinous tweets, were made long before assuming
the responsibility of Youth Police Crime Commissioner (YPCC). IF, and only IF,
the comments came during her role as YPCC, then we may have had grounds to call for
her resignation.
Fundamentally
true of Paris’ critics, three things are drastically under-addressed:
1) They are firstly incredibly myopic
in extending and contrasting their finely honed rationale with that of someone
in their mid-teens; never a valid correlation.
2) Secondly the tweets that have been submitted
are exaggerations - typical of many teenage kids - and have thus been grotesquely
mis-contextualised; and,
3) Finally, (arguably to youngsters' detriment), the Facebook-Twitter age, has come to bear more significance than
some of the critics could have ever considered. Until we understand this, we
will NEVER be in the right starting point to critique a 16 year old.
Through City Year London I mentor
young people on a daily basis, and I can assure that what they say, is not what
they mean, and by and large their exchanges are often exaggerated. Particularly true when their intended
audience are fellow youngsters on Twitter, a medium that has come to define
Paris’ age, infiltrating every teenage move, be it through Blackberry or iPhone,
or when they arrive home to their laptop or computer. With this new age, a
barrage of unfiltered, politically incorrect or less than moral thought sequences,
qualifies for a Tweet or status update. It doesn’t matter how detached this
exterior may be of their actual day-to-day selves: it’s Twitter - which has
come to represent the unregulated opportunity for alter-egos, exaggeration, and
ultimate cool, for children, and adults.
At 16, and
in many of her own cases, younger, Paris would of course been susceptible to
this vacuum. This is something which I believe the perpetrators of Paris’
attack, really still haven’t quite
understood.
In my
experience mentoring, even typical playground trash talk, which Paris isn’t too
old to remember, bares little substance. I hate to break it to The Mail, and
others, but some of the closely related thug-esque and nonsensical rhetoric,
are just that – nonsense. The hurtful
stereotypes they use, something Paris is accused of falling short of herself -
they throw past one another without thought or meaning. On the playground, the
next minute friendships are restored, after all. Even in severe cases when things get
physical, you find that there tends to be few friendships that cannot be
reconciled.
Yet the
reason I continue to do what I do as a youth mentor, is simple: they are still
kids. They are still developing their thinking and rationale to morals. And for
as long as they exist in the school environment, they are still being taught
right and wrong, and not to be given up on. It is these ages after all, when the juvenile tweets were made. Just how
have those with the audacity to condemn someone so young, failed to realise
this?
Perhaps
most absurd if not the beautiful irony of this situation, is that only young
Paris, who many perceive naïve, makes the distinction. On the computer as a mid-teen
foregoing morals, yet years down the line realising it was time to grow up, and
delivering a sterling application for Kent Youth Police Crime Commissioner
(YPCC). Perhaps after all is said and done then, we could actually learn a
thing or two from Paris how to make the distinction between youth and adult.
The utmost
tragedy is this transition to maturity, as we might have seen it, would never
come to fruition. What a missed opportunity both for her, and us. We’ll never know
her capability to deliver efficiently as Kent YPCC – the first of its kind. All
would be curtailed by an unquenchable desire to sell words. Just how is that
for morals, exactly?
Ultimately,
those who hound her need acknowledge that the tweets are a portrayal of her
teenage past. Would those who ousted her, ever see Paris fit for redemption? By
such indecent virtue, perhaps she will never be fit to fulfil any prospective
job, (yes, however absurd this may seem to the rest of us).
It is most
important for us who do genuinely know better to ensure that Paris, for all her
youthfulness, understands that such Twitter contributions are wrong. Let her understand
now as she approaches an age of responsibility, she need exhibit role model
behaviour. And more crucially, that having stepped up and been condemned, must
not be tempted to regress to any behaviours - written or otherwise – less worthy
than herself.
It may seem
most perverse that the themes of sex, alcohol and drugs can be fantasised by
children. This is a societal flaw, not the flaw of an individual youngster. If
anyone holds error for this, it can only be the generation that’s paved the
way. Perhaps then, when the critics point the finger, they might, as in the
literal expression, find three fingers pointing back prompting them to
encourage the youth back on track.
This is
what Kent Police’s Ann Barnes PCC took the initiative to do in hiring a Youth PCC:
Bridging the gap between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Perhaps likewise, the fingerpointers
might try and understand the young
before casting judgement, and do the same.
