Translator: Jeroen van den Broek Reviewer: Leonardo Silva
When I was young growing up in Nijmegen,
I was very afraid of spiders.
I can tell you the first time
I had to give a presentation in my primary school,
the topic, because I was also fascinated, was spiders.
And as a side-effect learning more about these spiders,
about their behavior, why they act like they do,
my fear diminished a little bit.
But growing up in Nijmegen I later learned I had to be afraid of these guys,
working-class white kids from certain neighborhoods.
These were the kids who were more used to like fighting in the street and bullying,
and I was more used to reading books.
And these were the kids that, in my surroundings
were called people who are not "our kind of people."
Of course, when I got my first job
as a dishwasher at the local bowling alley,
also my fear working besides them diminished.
And also my upbringing.
I was taught at home that this whole feeling
of "these are not our kind of people" was wrong.
These lessons instilled me -
if I saw pronunciations of this kind of social inequality -
with a feeling of resistance, maybe even desistance, I don’t know.
Later, when I moved to Amsterdam to study,
I was still told by society to fear working-class kids,
but not anymore white kids;
now it had to be working-class kids of immigrant descent.
In Holland that mostly means Moroccan descent
because they are perceived as the ones who cause the most nuisance,
who are the most intimidating, violent, and maybe even part of some criminal gang.
And this is not my fear.
I think this is a fear that was shared,
and maybe is shared, by many people in our country.
But unlike many people,
I got the chance to make it my job as a criminologist for 20 years
to study these kids,
why they do what they do, and how they do it.
But then during all these twenty years of work, the fear again shifted.
Because now we don’t only have to be afraid
because of the fact that they are Moroccan or Pakistani by background.
Now we also have to fear their religion.
Because of this religion, they might be susceptible
to extremism or fundamentalism.
I want to point out that these kids from different backgrounds,
different socioeconomic backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds,
different religious backgrounds,
they too will feel fear in certain social situations
encountered on terrain that is unfamiliar to them.
Take these bankers in their boardroom, for example.
If you put a kid like that there, he will probably feel:
"How do I behave here?
How do I make myself not look like a fool?
How will I be accepted, or even appreciated?"
And I bet you that the kid will feel a lot of fear -
fear of failure and fear of rejection.
Now, this is important, this point. This is important.
Why?
Because of these dynamics, these exclusive dynamics,
we re-enforce this us-them, parallel society
that everyone of us knows is out there.
Everybody feels it’s like something that’s there, we cannot do much about it,
but spent some nice words on it.
But I know there is an alternative way of relating to these kids.
It came through my work.
Twenty years, I told you.
Twenty years I’ve been doing fieldwork,
mostly in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Netherlands.
But I also got a chance to go to the United States.
I visited Los Angeles, Cleveland,
visited neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
And now I’m also working in Denmark, in Copenhagen,
in collaboration with the Comeback Program.
And of course, I’m still active in many smaller and larger municipalities
in the Netherlands.
And from all this experience, all this fieldwork,
I want to share with you
what this alternative way of relating to these kids is.
But in order to explain what I have learned,
I have to first take you back to this, for some of you, familiar group.
And I’m going to ask you:
Suppose this group is standing in the streets in front of your car,
or maybe they are in the way when you are on your way to work,
making a little bit more noise than you want to,
maybe making a mess, maybe being a little bit intimidating.
Would you feel comfortable walking up to them
and telling them to go out of your way, or to clean up their mess,
or to tone it down a bit?
Or would you, like I did, before all these experiences of mine,
feel fear,
a sense of unease?
Let’s explore that fear a little bit.
What is that fear exactly?
Because if I ask my students, my students tell me
it’s not the fear that they will immediately attack me,
or violate me, or rob me.
These guys aren’t holding any chains or bolt cutters
like the white kids in the first slide.
It’s more a fear of not knowing how to address them,
not knowing how they will react.
And what comes next?
You feel the fear that they will laugh at you,
that they will ridicule you.
They might even insult you or spit at you.
And in the worst case scenario, you will be afraid of intimidation.
And of course, the worst of the worst: violence.
That’s the fear that you feel.
Now, I need to point out that while you are feeling these emotions,
this unease, this fear, and you’re radiating that,
they interpret that in a certain way.
These kids might take that as an insult.
See it as a way of you rejecting them.
I can tell you from experience that in a group of young men,
especially in a group of young men,
this sense of rejection might translate just to the kind of behavior
that you were afraid of in the first place.
We call this some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is very important to understand,
because probably right now you are feeling something else.
You are feeling anger.
Because it is nice that I explain it in this way,
but they are the problem!
They are the ones who are standing in the street, who are in your way,
who are being too loud, too noisy, look aggressive, say nasty stuff,
and maybe, even get violent.
Why should you think about that
and conduct yourself in a different way?
If that’s the position we’re at, we have to ask ourselves:
do you want to be right
and keep feeling fear in these kinds of situations?
Or do you want to learn an alternative way of relating to them
and feeling safer in your environment,
and maybe even contribute to the solution of the underlying problem of exclusion?
Think about it.
What we need to understand is the streets.
And as I told you,
I have had 20 years of experience of being with these kids in the streets,
in the Netherlands and abroad.
What I learned, of course, the world changed in those 20 years, amazingly.
The neighborhoods changed, societies changed, the world changed.
But some things stay the same, especially in the streets.
What you need to understand, what stays the same in the streets for these kids,
is, first of all, it is their living room.
It's a place where they can go and spend their free time.
It’s an accessible place of entertainment for those of little means.
It’s also a place some of them make money.
But not only is it their living room,
it’s also the place they join the group for a sense of safety.
Why?
Because they feel that their surroundings are very, very hostile.
Maybe even very violent, very threatening.
They feel safer in the group
because they think they won’t be easily victimized.
It’s actually a little bit contradictory because being part of such a group
kind of invites situations where you will be threatened and victimized.
But still, it’s the safety in numbers.
But maybe the most important thing to understand about the street
and about the lives of these kids, is that for them the streets, the corner,
is a place where they can achieve some kind of social status,
some kind of meaning, some sense of purpose,
in the eyes of others, their peers.
Where they can get that feeling that they are seen,
that they belong, and that they matter to somebody,
a feeling that they don’t have in larger society,
that very pivotal feeling of being appreciated,
that they may lack at home, in school, or anywhere else for that matter.
Now, if you understand that about these kids and the streets,
then you also see that the solution for how to relate to them
might be self-explanatory.
You have to find a way in your interactions with them
to make them feel acknowledged,
to make them feel like you see them as regular human beings,
to make them feel like they belong to your society,
in your view,
and also to make them feel that they matter to you,
what happens to them, in their lives, in their futures.
Now you might be thinking, "That all sounds very nice."
Some of you might even hear violins right now.
But the point is: how to do it?
How do you do this? How do you make that pivotal connection
that we are talking about here,
that real connection that goes before correction of behavior?
Now, to make it practical,
I’m going to take you back to the very, very first time I met a group of kids.
These were kids of Moroccan descent.
And they hit me with their first question: "What do you think about Moroccans?"
Now I had prepared for this question too.
And I had a very politically correct answer ready.
I was going to say something like:
"Well, in every group, there is good and bad, blah blah blah."
But something came over me. It wasn’t me.
Something really came over me and made me blatantly honest.
And I told these kids, I said, "Well, to be honest, I kind of hate Moroccans."
I started explaining myself off course.
I said, "Well the point is, I don’t know any.
And all I read about you is bad.
Everything I hear in the news or see on the television is bad.
A lot of people in my surroundings, especially girls in the nightlife,
have bad experiences with Moroccans.
So to be honest, I’m standing here with a lot of prejudice."
Now at that point, I expected them to jump me.
Little did I know, because they started to laugh, really loud.
One of them said, "You can come back tomorrow."
Another guy who was laughing loudest said,
"You learned a very important lesson, my friend, about the streets today.
You might think you’re smart coming from the university,
and some of these kids have very low IQs,
but they will read you like a book.
Never ever think you can play them."
So that was my first lesson. Be honest. Be blatantly honest.
I made a lot of mistakes since, but I tried.
The second lesson was a few years later.
By now I’m a little bit part of their community.
I’m like the guy who just shows up so we give him a place.
And Ali who was standing next to me.
Ali was one of the guys in the neighborhood
with the most troublesome family, most troublesome youth.
Ali says to me,
"Well, if you see us later on in the city and we are misbehaving,
if we’re running amok,
you will say something right? You will ask us to behave?"
I was totally taken aback.
I didn’t understand, this kid standing here,
asking me to say something about his behavior.
Later I understood.
To him, now I was somebody who was involved,
somebody who cared.
I was a grown-up guy, with a good job,
and a good set of brains, I hope.
And he expected me to take my duty as that person and correct his behavior,
giving him a sense of, "I care what happens to you."
So that was my second lesson. Be involved. Care.
Now all this is good and well if you know the kids,
like I had the time to get to know them.
But how do you do this with kids you don’t know?
Well I started doing that, too.
One time at the movies there was a group of kids in the back making a lot of noise.
You know. Everybody had trouble with them.
But nobody said anything.
They were bothering everybody.
So I thought, "It’s kind of my job now to do something.'
So I went to them.
I didn’t know them. So I didn’t come like, “Hey, shut up Ali! I told you so!”
I didn’t know them. So I first kind of introduced myself.
I said, “Hey guys, I see you’re having a good time and that’s nice.
But you know what? I’m sitting over there and I also paid for my ticket,
I’m having trouble with the noise.
I’m sitting there with my wife and we can’t follow the movie.
So do me a favor, you know, help me out here. Take it down a bit.”
Never ever, if I step to a group like that,
have I been confronted with insult, or with ridicule, or with violence.
Even if there is a kid in there who is stupid enough
he thinks he has to impress his friends to act like that,
he will be corrected by the guy with more status,
“Hey! This man is showing us respect, show him some respect.”
So my final lesson was: be confident.
Because that confidence that you radiate is respect.
Why is it respectful?
Because you are telling them, "I expect you to behave.
I expect you to be a normal person, to be a normal kid,
so you are part of my quote-unquote normal society."
These are very, very important lessons for me.
But the point is, with all these practical advises,
to make that connection, to be able to level,
to level as an equal human being, even though you are not equal in society -
I was very unequal: I am white, I am educated,
I am from a different socioeconomic background,
I am not Moroccan, I am not Muslim, all that stuff.
But still you connect on an equal level as human beings.
And that takes a lot of practice.
But a difficulty is, you might be asking yourself now,
"OK, practice… but can anybody do it?
Because it sounds so easy if you say it up there."
Well, maybe not. Maybe you need a few things.
To be able to level like that, to become equal like that,
you need first of all to be a little bit brave.
Second of all, you have to be able to fail.
Prepare to fail. Learn from your mistakes.
And I made many mistakes.
But now I know a little bit more.
And third, you might have to have a little bit of talent.
And by talent I mean some level of social intelligence,
in order to connect to people.
But if you have those things and if you make the effort,
make the effort to learn about these young men,
these human beings in their very specific, special circumstances,
and you try to relate to them in that different way,
and you succeed in giving them that feeling,
that you see them, that they belong, that you see them as part of your society,
I promise you, if you master those skills and put your fear aside,
in 99% of the situations that you might fear now, you will feel a lot safer.
And also in the 1% of the situations that you had better avoid,
you will recognize that situation.
Because something or someone is out of the ordinary,
because of substance abuse, mental issues,
or some preceding conflict you dont know nothing about.
But not only are you working on your own safety,
which is nice for you because you feel better;
you are also helping the kids, you are also doing them a favor.
Why? What is their advantage?
Because of the way you are treating them, they feel maybe a little less exclude,
maybe a little less rejected than they normally do in society.
And if they get that feeling that you really see them, that they belong,
that they matter to our global village, maybe their world opens up a bit
and they have a broader understanding than just the streets,
they have the feeling they are part of something larger than just that corner.
And if they have that feeling of being included, being part of something more,
a sense of purpose that may come with it,
that acts as a very strong counterforce for all the peer pressure
that they experience in their group on the corner.
And not only that.
I bet it will also help diminish the kind of behavior
that you were afraid of in the first place.
Thank you.
(Applause)