On Friday, Carlton Baths staged a soccer match between local police and Somalis. Again, similar issues were fronted in a report tabled by Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock last November. Anecdotes about racism and police harassment were so frequent they constituted an entire chapter. The report told how young African men and boys get purchase on the social landscape in Melbourne, where young people from other countries and other wars are also competing for a stake. Basically, they act like African-Americans.
Rappers are their heroes, their role models.
In order to develop some sense of belonging, the young people identify with the more aggressive culture of the African-American, to give themselves a feeling of power in a community that to some degree stereotypes them by looking on them as inferior. It's the most significant issue in that research. It's a matter that cuts across all Africans. Most compelling are the voices of the children themselves, especially the young women. In many ways sidelined, certainly from the life created by the African boys, they nonetheless make articulate observers.