Immigrant Son

Londonstani deals a lot with the seemingly irreconcilable differences between first and second-generation immigrants. My personal experience is nowhere near as extreme as that of the rudeboys, but I think some of that probably has to do with being part-white. My parents both immigrated to the States, and they brought with them pretty solid beliefs and ideas about how to live. Of course, anyone who immigrates to a new home has the desire to change and make things better, so they can't be all passive. That's what I think the desis don't understand about the first-generationers. They have an incompletely-inherited culture and a poorly-acquired one as well, but the two are always at odds because they can't comprehend that their parents came to London for a reason - the act of doing so should be grounds for understanding. The parents were probably pretty rebellious in their own way as well.
And then there's the whiteness thing. Jas makes himself the outsider because his identity is also fractured. He finds himself in the white minority, with no recognition of what the previous generation experienced. So he, lost in London society, identifies with the adolescent search for tough cool, and because white is the status quo, the favoured majority, he is able to "drop" to the ethnic level and put himself at the foot of the desi ladder instead. Worship the Bang-Bang youngblood ideal instead of the struggle-less white one.