The Tribune

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

Our silence to abuse and inequality is amazing, yet we choose to speak up when we see that someone is being ‘abused’ if that somebody is related to us.

We hold our tongues if other people’s children are being pulled over, detained, roughed up and slapped around by an overzealous system. Let it happen to someone close to us, and the indignation becomes audible.

We often talk about needing to be tough on crime, but not when it comes to our family members. It is not strange that our own biases create some serious social problems for us. We lament and bemoan the disintegration of the supposed nuclear family, yet we claim no responsibility for it. We refuse to discuss the level of violence in our own lives.

We are quick to condemn others’ shortcomings, without any compassion, yet we are as susceptible to making the same mistakes, but are indignant when we are ridiculed. We are the first to throw the stone, but the last to accept any responsibility. This leaves us in a nasty social place.

We often hear mothers say, ‘not my good son’. Meanwhile, know that ‘yes, it is her good son’ who inflicted extreme suffering on those around him and saw no reason to flinch. She was, in fact, living off the spoils of his actions. She bought her $300 hair from those proceeds, paid her $500 bill and went out to the club with that money. And then she screamed innocence and ignorance!

Innocent is the judge who has sentenced the man to jail for what appears to be a crime, yet the sentencing comes nine years after the offence. The crime was being in the wrong place at the right time. Innocent is the system that has produced this problem. This is a system that claims to be blind to social status, gender and colour. Yet, it is a system that steals from those who pay their bills and rapes those who it sees as worth less than itself. It is also a system that we encourage because we often think that we will never be the one to get raped or be thrown into Fox Hill, it will always be someone else.

That lack of inclusion, empathy, human identification, research tells us, is increasing in The Bahamas. As more and more people seek solace from disaffection in disassociation, society continues to spiral out of control. Much like the mother who sees her good son as beyond reproach, the leaders of the country see themselves as beyond reproach. Yet their lack of regard for the law, flagrant illegality, encouragement for exploiting inequalities and consummate contempt for anyone other than themselves, speaks a language other than the one they claim to be speaking. Their ability to use the bodies under their control to further their own careers is not surprising.

There is a dearth of humanity that allows those who assume they are better, who are treated as if they are better, who may have a certain amount of privilege to behave as if they deserve the spoils of the land. A great deal of the lawlessness we experience springs from this absolute disregard for honesty and humanity.

When the top is only concerned with self-empowerment and widening the gap through increased taxation, non-transparent national development and bogus nationalism, that sounds great because of its jingoistic, professionally-carved and well-manicured image and voice, that hides further exploitation and disempowerment, then there are bound to be social explosions ‘at the bottom’ where the answer is always more violence, more visibility through force and more insistence on respect. When society thrives on inequality and disregard, it fills people with hate and contempt.

We often talk about values, yet we never really examine the value system we inhabit. We talk about the Christianity of the nation, but it is a Christianity founded on deception and consumption. Furthermore, it is a Christianity that, much like the jingoistic national pride we foster, is built around exploiting those less wealthy, less powerful, less strong, less audible. We have built a society on inequality, and poverty only worsens that inequality. As poverty deepens so too does crime and with crime comes violence.

We scapegoat all those young, poor black men and women who cannot access voice because the system has chosen to silence them, with utter disregard for their humanity. We scapegoat them by arguing that they are all violent, inferior, nation-destroying criminals. Yet, when the Progressive Liberal Party took the centre stage in the 1950s, some young, black upstarts were seen with contempt by the authorities of the time, they would have been deemed inferior by a rigidly entrenched patriarchal, paternalist system that favoured a particular group over all others.

When the Mace and the Hourglass went out of the window, it was the persons with less power demanding a change in the status quo.

They would have been viewed as uncontrolled, ungodly, black youth who were intent on bringing the system down. Now that they are in power, that tool to overcome exploitation, exclusion and marginalisation may no longer be available to those who are excluded because those particular symbols of power have been locked down, but the system, now run by a different group of people, has redeployed the same language and tools in ways that allow them to dominate no matter how flagrant or blatant their disregard for the law may be.

They have the power vested in the law and they refuse to allow it to be wrestled from them. We now stop young people in droves on Bay Street, line them up against walls and frisk and search them, because, as we all now know. This makes society feel safe. All young black people are dangerous, according to leaders of the country, just as the economy of the country is recovering and Baha Mar will be opening soon. The language of nation building has become empty discourse used to hide rent-seeking paternalism that seeks to render its population, especially the young, poor black men and women they represent invisible to all but abuse.

Sadly, we all know this, we simply choose to remain silent to our own exploitation and abuse, because, as long as it does not hit me directly, I don’t feel your pain. That is the national discourse of 2015 and we are happy to make women less equal and young black men dangerous. What happens when they grow up?

Tragically, they will become even more dangerous because they will have survived the vagaries and exploitation of a dangerously paternalistic state that does all it can to retain its currency, even if it means pedaling hallucinations of success and empowerment through employment.