Another nauseating read, I forced myself to read it all. Why is it that middle class white people (yes I am one) get all the coverage?
Jihadi Jack’s parent’s struggle, the £7M court case, and their suspended sentence.
Why are we focussing on these privileged people? They look great it in the news! Fighting (not literally like their son) for their child. The lone white kid amongst a sea of brown faces, fighting a cause that wasn’t his. Why did he go? Bad parenting? Mental illness? Stupidity? Coercion? Love? Religion? Who knows? Thankfully, unlike the many less privileged young men (and women) he had his middle class parents to support him and at least try and bail him out.
Jack now in a camp in Syria, his parents trying to get him home. Jack is just one of a thousand British men and women who went to fight illegally for Isis (and others) yet, it’s these white, middle class, faces we see in the paper. We need to just stop and think. Thousands of other parents suffering or rejoicing the same fate of their children. Muslim faces, working class, the people that can really tell the story. The faces and families that don’t have the resources to hand to support their children, defend themselves with experience, money and whiteness.
Where are their stories? If we want to understand about unconditional love for a child, why children make choices that reverberate through families sending them to breaking point – these are the heart breaking stories that should be featured and learning from.
It’s not that Jack and his family aren’t important, they are, they just aren’t more important as everyone else. All they are is a relfection of what our own lives could have been (if you are white and middle class) and a skewed view on the harsh reality of British Isis fighters and their families.
Links: Our son the terror suspect: Jack Letts’s parents on the fight to save their child
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/07/jack-letts-our-son-the-terror-suspect-john-letts-sally-lane-interview?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
