“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.
