The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

I read with a mixture of nostalgia, disappointment and actual hope that very significant reflection by Diane Phillis in Thursday, April 4 Tribune, entitled: STOP SELLING OURSELVES SO CHEAPLY. She spoke eloquently about the continuous degradation of Downtown Bay Street. Coming from Long Island as a boy of 14, I have seen over these 63 years as she so pointedly expressed, the rise and fall of the majesty of Bay Street.

Arriving in Nassau at the tender age, when segregation was still alive and practised, especially on Bay Street, I was not able to venture into some of the highfalutin establishments, including the Savoy Cinema. Actually, coming from a mixed union, my mother a white woman and father a black man, I was just a bit too dark brown chocolate colour to enter that cinema; my accommodation was at the over the hill cinema, where my white mother could accompany me.

All that aside, as I grew older and segregation became a thing of the past, I was able to enjoy all the marvelous amenities of Downtown. I had places of splendor, magnificent night clubs, exquisite places to dine and dance until the wee hours of the morning. Bay Street was safe any hour of the day or night; well, so was the entire island of Nassau back then.

Yes, we have indeed become a nation selling ourselves even below the level of cheapness. We seem to lack any sense of deserving power, and thus falling into the clutches of any demeaning element which rewards us with the cheapest trinkets in exchanges for the wealth, dignity and golden heritage of our people. We continue to sell ourselves cheaply and that self-imposed debasing characteristic fosters and prospers the mediocracy at almost every echelon in this Nation. And now our once world-famous Bay Street is fast becoming the epitome of our demise.

Let’s then take a good and serious look at the timely piece by Diane Phillips, and see whether with a bit of brain and wisdom we could resurrect ourselves from this quagmire of mediocracy. The dignity of this so very special place in God’s earthly kingdom needs a little bit more of Solomon’s wise stewardship.

JOSEPH DARVILLE,

Freeport

Grand Bahama

April 5, 2019