The respect that Blair and the Queen talk about isn't the kind you find on the streets

On Sunday last, I began yet another televisual journey for Channel 4, this time with the last of my three sons. For the new programme, we enter the dark and bleak world of young black men and investigate, among other things, the fratricide that continually plagues their lives.

Not for me the pontification from without which seems to be the stock-in-trade of many middle-class black people. They bleat on through a forest of statistics about what is wrong with this social group and how to set it right. I aim to penetrate the core of these men's lives and give them the opportunity to speak what they feel, not what they ought to say.

As I write, the Queen, in her address to the new parliament, tells us that the new government aims to facilitate the culture of respect in communities across this land. What an unfortunate abstract noun to use. It throws those of us who are grappling with the phenomenon of black-on-black gun violence into confusion.

For it is in the name of respect that urban black men annihilate each other. Her Majesty's use of the word only serves to strengthen their justification for the use of internecine violence.

Let me draw a scenario or two. A young black woman - we shall call her Shirelle - is swanning her way along Coldharbour Lane in Brixton; skirt short, tight and hip-hugging. Her male equivalent approaches from the opposite direction and whispers sweet nothings in her ear. She takes offence, heads straight for her boyfriend, to whom she relates the incident.

At once his blood boils. His sweetheart has been disrespected and vengeance belongs to him. He arms himself with a pistol and blows away the provocateur's brain. The same can happen if one young man steps on another's trainers at a crowded club and fails to apologise. Death stalks only because one fails to show the necessary respect.

The only difference between our leaders and the "shooters", as they call themselves, is the severity of punishment they exact. Disrespect of a larger import than the kind referred to by Her Majesty and Tony Blair has long plagued the lives of young black men. There is stop-and-search by the police, prejudice in finding employment, exclusion from educational institutions. The time has come when minor examples of disrespect, because it comes from within, generate extreme violence. I wish that Blair and the Queen had chosen another noun.

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