Social Commentary - Do not blame poverty

Chester Francis-Jackson, Contributor

Dears, can we talk? Now, is it me, or there are others who have grown sick and tired of those in the society - members of the political class and the 'mouth-a-masseys' who have been going around asking us to treat the poor is if they are a special class, akin to a group suffering from some kind of disability and, thereby, deserving of some special kind of treatment?

Indeed, the society in general, and that includes the Church, some charitable organisations, waggonists and the politicians have all so mollycoddled the poor, the industrious have now created an industry around being poor, and are now aggressively advancing their state of poverty as a case for entitlement.

Indeed, there once was a time when the genuinely poor took no pride in that awful state of being and saw their position as being a temporary one, from which they hoped to work their way out of. Today, because of the sense of entitlement created around the so-called poor, being poor is now a badge of honour for some. A rank they gladly throw in your face, usually in an attempt to extort sympathy and alms from the unsuspecting and/or, worse yet, victimise the targeted into thinking that their success is the primary reason for the poor being poor, and so, the successful must now subsidise them (the poor).

Today, the crudest manifestation of the so-called poor attempting to extort from the unsuspecting is evidenced by the many sick and/or afflicted who come out to our town squares and thoroughfares and publicly display their disfigurement, open sores, amputation, and/or her six or seven unwashed, wide-eyed and hungry-looking supposedly fatherless children in an intimidatory manner to elicit sympathy and the almighty dollar as a reward for their supposed affliction!

To be sure, there are the genuinely poor among us, but we do not help their cause when we elevate them to some kind of special status where they embrace a culture of entitlement as the ointment to their chronic economic depression.

It is this sense of entitlement which has seen a woman, without a job, and presumably without the educational wherewithal to qualify for a job, mothering seven or more children in abject poverty to the point of squatting, and when evicted, has the temerity to voice the notion that she and her children were now the responsibility of the Government.

Note, no mention of her baby's father, or fathers!

That sense of entitlement is also put on public display by those who capture plots of land on gully banks, build expensive homes on those gully banks, and use the gully banks as their garbage dump, clogging up the gullies, and thus making it impossible for the free flow of water during heavy rains, resulting in the gullies overflowing their banks, or worse, degrading their retaining walls and thus threatening the foundations of their very homes of the entitled, and when these walls are breached and threaten their homes, they file in front of the complicit TV cameras to demand to know: "Weh di Government a goh do fi wi?"

And then, sadly, there are those who are so desperate to be relevant that they chase down these 'news' stories to add their two-pence worth. And here they compound the problem, not by seeking to educate those complicit in their own state of despair about cause and effect, but by supporting their ignorant positions.

Dears, it's not rocket science!

If you are poor, undereducated and do not possess the requisite skills to feed, clothe, educate and/or house yourself, if you mother or father five, six children, or more in that state, you are compounding the problem, not solving it!

When marauding young men go rampaging and rape and otherwise victimise women and children, the question cannot be: "What the Government is going to do?" The question must be, "Where are their parents?"

We cannot continue abrogating parental and or communal responsibility to Government(s), and expect our children not to behave or become the monsters they are! For every rape victim, every victim of a robbery, every family who has to confront the loss of a loved one due to the dastardly act of murder, every lotto scammer, there is a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a community, harbouring the perpetrator!

And, yes, there is a connection between our misogynistic music and the violence against women and violence in the society, in general. And the sooner our womenfolk recognise this link, and stop glorifying and revelling in music that demeans, belittles and objectifies them, the sooner the healing/recovery.

When an elderly man's throat is cut during the pouring rains on Sunday by emotionally retarded young men who value their ability to steal some television sets, over the life of a hard-working man, and cut his throat in order to facilitate that theft, there is a family, a lover, a companion a community somewhere using that television, or benefiting from the proceeds derived from selling them. In this respect, the murder was not only perpetrated by the individual wielding the knife, but by the family and community who remain silent, content by reason of their sense of entitlement, to enjoy their 'New TV'.

Where I find common understanding with those who see Government as the panacea for all the ills and travails of the poor is the congenital failure of governments to connect the dots for the socially and educationally deprived, in that Government's mandate should include the education of the masses, and that education should and must include birth control/family planning.

In the '80s, there was a very poignant advert on television promoting the notion that two is better than too many. It is time that concept be revisited, and aggressively. Those who cannot afford children must be made to understand that children will not be their "old age pension", if they are not educated enough to even provide for themselves!

Let us stop blaming the Government for our ills as a people, and start taking individual and collective responsibility for who we are and where we are.