Bert Samuels | Why do we want to eliminate ourselves?

Those who explore post-traumatic slave syndrome should find their study of Jamaica a most enlightening case. This is a country not yet 200 years out of chattel slavery, but which has, in those years, produced Bogle and Marcus Garvey in the 1800s, Marley in the 1900s, and in our more recent history, some of the most savage gangsters and criminals.

From Morant Point to Negril, exist hundreds of places of worship alongside island-wide pockets of vicious crime-filled ghettos and garrisons. We are a nation of ominous contradictions, seemingly able to interchange masks of evil with gallant feats of kindness.

A student from St. Lucia once told me that she knows that, should she collapse in Papine on her way to classes at UTech, our people wouldn't hesitate to get her to the hospital faster than any other place in the Caribbean, although she would not arrive with her cell phone or her purse.

Annually, we award citizens at our Heroes’ Day ceremonies for their acts of gallantry, however, this is eclipsed by heinous acts of murder unleashed on our innocent women and children.

BLACK MAN KILLING BLACK MAN

As we seem determined to remain the fifth most murderous country in the world – with 47 murders per 100,000 of the population annually – it begs the question as to why we are so bent on eliminating ourselves.

We are not hurting our tourists, who are as safe here as any other destination. Neither are our killers seeking out our racial minorities.

What we have in Jamaica, in plain language, is Black man killing Black man.

I am no psychologist, but I am convinced that this self-hate has to do with our past. It is noteworthy that, of the 25 most murderous countries in the world, 20 of them are former slave societies, and the remaining five are Africans, all being former colonies of Europe. Europe has no country on the list of 25!!

So, what inferences should we draw from these alarming murder statistics?

I am told that the cumulative loss of life for American troops in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2006 and 2016 was 8,500, while in Jamaica, for the same period, we have lost a whopping 12,700!

Why are we at war with ourselves? We must have learnt very well, like our 20 Central American “partners in crime”, how to hate and carry out the most senseless and cruelest of punishment on each other, murder.

Those who murdered us prior to emancipation were armed with unlimited power and racial hate. As we were non-humans in their eyes, they were unaccountable in law for any crime whatsoever.

We carry out these acts of violence, not only on the people who look like us, but also on our very selves.

Yes, we seek to kill the blackness we have been born with, by the proliferation of skin-lightening chemicals.

Is there a link between our hate of self, and our very high incidence of killings among us, in all these former slave societies? The scar of slavery has beneath it, wounds deeper than we choose to acknowledge.

LOOK INTO MY EYES

The song Look Into My Eyes by Bounty Killer may help us as we search for answers to understand the phenomenon.

People a dead (people are dead, dead)

That's what I said

The blind must be led

The hungry must be fed

 

Ayo, you know

I'm looking through a whole despair, over the years

Nobody cares

Take a look in my house

Would you live in there?

 

Ayo, you know

Look at my shoes

Can you see my toes?

But that's how the struggle goes

Nobody knows

 

Look into my eyes, tell me what you see?

Can you feel my pain? Am I your enemy?

Give us a better way, things are really bad,

The only friend I know is this gun I have.

Listen to my voice, this is not a threat

Now you see the nine are you worried yet?

You've been talking 'bout' you want the war to cease

But when you show us hope, we will show you peace....”

 

 

- Bert Samuels is an attorney-at-Law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and bert.samuels@gmail.com