Tackle London's empathy

Tackle London's empathy

When we make our way to London after the Inferno in the Grenfell Tower, the class division is on our thoughts

In Greek mythology, the chimera was a fire -breathing creature with a lion's head, a goat body and a snake tail. Today your name describes everything that is made up of very different parts: a collection of things that do not belong together.

It is an apt way to describe how I felt after the university degree. I explained in Checking My Privilege and Asian Girl, English Boy that I had a very simple childhood. My family was poor, but everyone else too. My parents were immigrants, but everyone else too. There was uniformity that excluded envy, tension or confusion about my identity. I was Bangladesh and I was poor. Hey Ho.

Alt = ““ The Balfron Tower in my home district is an example of social housing in London

After the end, however, I entered another world that is only seen by people with social mobility. This elegant world of soft carpets and elegant writings was inhabited by people who were so very different from me: bourgeois, worldly, wealthy. In the middle, my accent, which had been hewn at the university, was further renovated.

Over time, I became a kind of chimneys myself: once poor, but not now, once religious and now insecure. My life stretched over two worlds and from my rocky base I saw the abyss in between.

It is this gap that has caused so much of the tension that we see today on our screens and on our streets. Therefore, there is a lack of empathy. This is the reason why students from the working class throw thoughtless insults against the rich and why the residents of Kensington, after seeing how life was devastated, seem to be most concerned about the price of their property.

"We paid a lot of money to live here and we worked hard for it. Now these people come and don't even pay the service fee."

"I am very sad that people have lost their home, but there are many people here who have bought apartments and will now see how the value drops. It will worsen things. And a can of worms on the housing market opens."

Fortunately, some elites recognize that they cannot really know what the life of the British masses looks like. I was reassured when I read an article by Alex Derber, an old etonian and old colleague of mine a few years ago. In it, Alex recognizes his privilege and admits that he and his colleagues cannot understand how the life of people with low incomes really is.

"When I visited Eon in the 1990s, the students practiced fox hunting on bicycles and went diving in sports. Some dieted with the queen every year. I initiated a Saudi king and gave lessons with Prince William."

Men from Alex ’world may feel theoretical empathy over the lower classes, but this rarely leads to real relatives. They may recognize that life is hard for a working single mother or a poor black teenager, but they rarely understand it. How can you when your paths never cross, let alone connect with those of the "others"?

The task of closing the empathy is clearly deeply complex. The solution includes investments in education, expanding access to elite areas and improving social integration. These are long -term goals that will take years, even decades. So what can you do in the meantime?

I think the "chimeras" among us play an important role in closing the empathy. These chimers have the language and experience that enable them to communicate with people from the entire spectrum. It is likely that Old Eonian and ex-Prime Minister David Cameron can work better than the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan-but would Cameron also work in an inner city school or London mosque?

Sadiq Khan, the son of a bus driver, has a broader life experience and can do so much with it if he is allowed to go to the right rooms.

Alt = "The offices of the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan"Dream timeThe offices of the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

This does not mean that everyone from the working class can be an advocate of change - or vice versa. I recently seen a election blind with the cambridge professor Mary Beard and the night club owner Peter Stringfellow and was upset when the latter was the old saying "I was poor, and when I did it, everyone can represent" was angered. There is a name for this, Peter: Survivorship Bias.

Apart from the restriction, I firmly believe that the increase in the visibility of chimera (if I can name the name) would help close the empathy. This does not mean to only bring differently colored talking heads on TV (there are also browns that were born privileged); It means looking for people like Sadiq Khan who really understand both worlds.

It means to find the formed sons and daughters of workers, seamstresses, cleaning staff and housekeepers and enable them to take on an active role in change, be it through law, politics, journalism or activism.

At a time when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom literally runs away from the worst problems in our city, we urgently need more rulers who understand the real challenges of our multicultural but deeply split country.

Mission statement: Dreamstime

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