The Tribune

By DR IAN BETHELL BENNETT

THE status quo is an important aspect of a society. It makes people feel safe.

When we go against the status quo, we begin to feel that perhaps we are doing something wrong. Then other people in our communities tell us that we should not challenge the way things are.

They fill those who challenge with fear of what will happen if.

Yet, they want things to change. They want to feel safe on the streets and in their homes.

They currently do not feel safe. At the same time, they do not want to challenge the way the system works. They are much happier giving control over to the police. Hoping that the police will pull everything into order through strong-armed violence and hard anti-crime policies. However, when we lock down ‘crime hot spots’, as so many high commanders wish to do, we actually make the crime move to other areas.

Studies have shown that there has to be a more holistic approach to dealing with violence, as psychiatrist Dr David Allen has pointed out.

Dr Allen’s points are not strange, they actually fall in line with all the research on violence and inequality that is coming out.

Over the last few weeks the government has announced countless times that police will be protecting the status quo. They will be ramping up vigilance and swift reaction, but what about the pre-crime changes?

When a young girl gets killed by her boyfriend do we stop to ask how could this have been prevented? Perhaps not. We more likely think: a) she provoked her man; b) she probably deserved what she got; c) he was reacting as any hyper-masculinised male would do: he protected his property.

His woman was his property. When he got together with her, he showed her that she was his, and she liked that.

However, she never thought, perhaps, like other women before her, that his possession could result in her death. The road has been paved before her, yet each girl seems to think that she is unique when it comes to a jealous, hyper-masculine boyfriend.

She wants him to dominate her, and society tells him that this is what he should do. He gets a prize for being crazy, but who is really crazy?

Is it the two young sons who recently got killed within weeks of each other or is it the community/society that created them? The problem is that this society is coming apart and the status quo is too afraid to act in order to prevent or even retard the unravelling.

We are too concerned about appearing to be that hyper-masculine male who has all the women and all the power. Is it not ironic that leaders in communities are often the felons that run the illegal weapons and drugs rings? However, they are the most attractive prospects to many young women. This behaviour and mentality come with a price tag, though.

Prime Minister Perry Christie glibly offered this a few weeks ago:

“We have to, as a country, find the answer to this, otherwise we are going to continue to have our economy and our way of life negatively impacted by countries putting out advisories for tourists to be concerned about their safety. Now we see Canada has joined in this and is saying be careful.”

Is it really an us against them situation?

They have asked us to protect their citizens and to implement policies that would also mean that our citizens are better taken care of and treated more equally.

Yet, we seem to still use language of them telling us what to do.

CEDAW and all the other international agreements the government has signed onto are indicators that we have agreed to do these things, yet when the pedal hits the metal, there’s ‘this us against them’ mentality.

It would have seemed that stemming crime and violence would actually benefit us more than them; we live here. However, the status quo seems too laissez-faire to worry; government will do it.

Canada has joined the ranks of the US in complaining about the way we treat tourists, yet we cannot seem to get our act together and realise that the way we treat each other is the most important factor in all of this.

Again, if children are born into a home with domestic violence, known locally as normal life style, a drug dealing father and a community of men that respect the ‘Don’, coupled with the popular music videos and films that show they must be these hyper-masculinised thugs who run tough and live intense, though short lives, their tough guy dads who are happy to shoot a fellow’s head off to protect their turf, all this will have more impact on them than the light lessons we say we offer in school.

The subtext of many school lessons is that men must be rich and powerful – hyper-men, who can kick the crap out of anyone who comes in their vicinity. So the school violence increases. We put a few police in the school and expect that to change the way we behave. Why? Police societies only learn how to get tougher in response to the oppression and subjugation they perceive has been imposed on them.

Have we actually sat down and thought about the ways we protect the status quo?

The society we live in is a tough, violent, care-worn, calloused place where a woman cannot take a lift from a man without fear of being violated or a man cannot unpack his shopping without the fear of being shot to death. It’s not about murder, though. It is about how we see ourselves. We often say that we have the best standard of living anywhere.

If this is so, why are we so afraid to go out at night? Why are there so many people quick to break our car windows in the five minutes we are out of the vehicle dropping the kids at school?

Why are we encouraging the sexual assault of tourists who provide the money that feeds us by ‘bigging up’ the dread on the jet ski? Yes, Canada has joined in with the US to warn its citizens about travel to the Bahamas, but what are we doing about the senseless violence that we live in every day, where we are constantly under pressure because of the stress of being afraid?

Do we think to give peer-counselling to the kids of drug dealers? Do we trace violence back and realise that these youngsters are not the first to be bad guys, but come from a line of tough, hyper-masculine leaders in their communities? Do we even care, or are we too busy believing in the status quo?