The Underclass

Self-Propagating Violence

The underclass is alive, growing, and powerful.  It is self-perpetuating.  And here's the thing about the underclass--no matter how prosperous or how sophisticated the house in which we were raised, anyone can fall right down to the lowest of the low within months, if not days.  All it takes is a little P, and hey presto, a life of theft, blackmail, violence--even murder--awaits.

Once in the underclass, sexual liaisons occur.  Children are born.  Most are raised consistently within the underclass's culture.  Violence in the underclass is a way of life.  It is the normal way to live.  Once that happens, the Underclass becomes permanent; like a bacterial disease it self-perpetuates and multiplies.

Author Alan Duff understands this.

Bad Behaviour All About Race, Class and Culture

Alan Duff
NZ Herald

Seems I'm lumped again with stating the obvious: the dairy robbers, the brawling schoolgirls, the bank robber, the bungling non-alcohol wine thieves, are all brown. If we're open about this then everyone can start addressing the problem knowing what we're dealing with.

I'll next say what should be said, that not a Maori or Pacific Islander I know behaves like these lowlifes. This is as much a class as race issue. Just we have to be honest about it. It's also about education - not the formal kind so much as home education. It's about culture.


These amoral hoods and incompetent robbers have never been taught to aspire to owning a dairy. No parent ever told them it is wrong to steal and more so from hard-working people just trying to make a living.

The fighting girls have never been taught about femininity; taking pride in one's appearance, taught certain behavioural standards. Females brawling touches a nerve with me: I grew up with it. There is nothing uglier, or wrecking of a child's sense of self-worth, than witnessing his/her mother brawling.

Just these girls caught so regularly on mobile phone video don't know it. They think they're just surviving in their do-eat-dog world when it is no such thing. Violence is destroying them long before they reach adulthood. The culture of violence is a cancer.

Once the underclass starts reproducing itself "normal" interventions usually fail miserably.  A stint in police cells or prisons simply reinforces the patterns of criminality and of violence.  Contrary to the normal interventions, the cycle can only be stopped one life at a time.  To be successful, it requires an army of volunteers to stop the life-cycles of the underclass and break the patterns of degradation.  It requires changes to hearts, minds, actions, thoughts, words, motives, and deeds.  In many cases it requires breaking away from whanau, or families--and all other networks connecting to the underclass.

Alan Duff attempts an explanation of why children are captured in the violence-cycle of the underclass:

As someone with life experiences of being on the wrong side, I've had a long time thinking about why some people behave like this. Seems to me it is anger first; of the direct kind growing up suffering abuse. The unconscious kind where you lash out without knowing why.  Kids grow up in homes where violence is a big part of conversation, who gave who a "good hiding", who got "smacked over", "got the bash for being too lippy". They know the terms. You, average good reader, probably don't. What, are they headed for university, to join the police force, become a teacher, get into business?

Nah, man. "Dunno what I'm gonna be when I grow up. Prob'ly in jail." This is the type who walks into an Indian's dairy brandishing a knife, a baseball bat, even a gun. He's there, in part, because leadership failed him by not making parenting courses compulsory. That's the Maori and Pacific Island leadership, and a bit of Government culpability, too. The latter a lot less guilty.

Where will the army of volunteers come from?  There is one institution ideally placed: Christian churches.  But all too often they are not welcome.  Why?  Because everything official must also be secular, or ought to be secular.  That's the way New Zealand is these days--fiercely, militantly secular in state schools, institutions of government, and the bureaucracy.  That's why the State prefers dolling out taxpayers' money to solve the problem of the underclass, rather than encouraging an army of volunteers working with lawless, violent youth.  By dolling out money, the State can control or reinforce its secularist messages.  But by encouraging volunteers, it loses control.  What it also loses are some of the key truths or "messages" which those caught in the underclass need to be confronted with, if they are to climb back out of the sinkhole.

You know, simple messages.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind.  And you shall love your neighbour, as yourself.  Along with all the more common helps--such as learning to read, write, think, and speak properly.  But these things are only effective when they are transmitted face-to-face, life-to-life, heart-to-heart, and soul-to-soul.  It takes hours, both of structured and unstructured time.  That's why an army of volunteers is required.  The State simply cannot afford to pay for what is required.  And if it could pay for it, miserable failure would result.  The culture of bureaucracy does not mix with the regeneration and retraining of souls.

Yeah, nah.  The gummint knows best.  Back off, you Christian God-botherers.