Alfred Dawes | Why I doth not protest too much

By the time this article is published, there would have been a protest outside of the US Embassy as well as a social media blackout campaign supporting the anti-racism, anti-police violence protests in America. I am no prophet, but I can bet that the majority of protesters will be of middle class or uptown background with a history of “activism” on social media.

At the risk of being branded a cynic, allow me to pour scorn on the ones among us with selective outrage and selective empathy for all things foreign while allowing all the worthy causes of Jamaicans suffering in an unjust system to become nine-day wonders. It frankly sickens me to watch the hypocrisy of those who turn a blind eye to the suffering of the poor while they find every reason to be outraged at everything trending on social media.

Of course, the argument will be that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. But why are some ignoring the injustices meted out to their fellow Jamaicans while feeling the pain of people who are different from them and would, in a heartbeat, turn on them because they are from a backward Third World country? Why? Because of selective empathy.

Our ghetto youths who get abused and murdered by the police are not their equals. They are lesser people, and they will not feel their pain. They would never go downtown and join the protests against police killings because they don’t want to mix up with their kind. After all, only criminals live there, right?

When poor people complain about the poor treatment in the health services, there is no outrage, but when it is someone from a different class who complains, they immediately feel their pain and it goes viral.

Nineteen people were murdered last weekend and not a peep out of civil society. But let it be just one prominent businessman or tourist, and watch the desperate cries for the authorities to stop the bloodletting … for nine days (yes, I have checked it repeatedly, and outrage in Jamaica lasts exactly nine days). Again, selective empathy. You can’t identify with the lower-class victims, so their lives don’t matter. But those of foreigners matter more.

Recently, soldiers allegedly beat up a youngster, which resulted in him being admitted to hospital with a broken leg. Susan Bogle, a disabled woman, was allegedly killed by Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) personnel during an operation in August Town. Where were the protests? INDECOM has already commenced more probes into incidents involving the JDF this year than for all of last year. And don’t get me started on the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

Where are the hashtags when the police abuse or murder ghetto youths? Why are some causes better than others? How long will we sit and watch abuse being meted out by our security forces without taking to the streets to demand reforms?

PROPHETS OF PROFITS

I have watched the calls by the Prophets of Profits to reopen the economy from more than a month ago as more people will die of hunger than those dying of COVID-19 if the lockdown continued for more than two weeks. Did that happen? They ignored the possibility that the reason they are able to scoff at only ten people dying from COVID-19 is that the very measures they claimed were unnecessary because of the low death toll were what saved countless Jamaican lives. But their hotels are empty, and the values of their assets have fallen.

Preservation of their humongous net worths is more important than the lives of the poor who would have disproportionately suffered because of the same socioeconomic reasons why more blacks and immigrants die in the US and the UK from the epidemic. The only difference is that we can’t blame racism here. It is not as sexy to blame the White Man for the suffering of poor blacks when it is wealthy Blacks and Browns who run the Babylon system.

Ask yourselves, why is it that political power lies in the hands of the Black majority yet the same redlining of Black communities in the White-dominated USA exists here in Jamaica? Black communities in the US have worse schools, and education as a means to escape poverty is a dream available only to the minority. Yet after 58 years of self-rule, we have the same apartheid education system that sees poor ghetto youths stuck in crime-ridden communities because the schools they have available celebrate the student with two CSEC passes, and their address on a resume has the same effect as an African American-sounding name in America. Just as in the projects in the US, blacks in our ghettoes are at higher risk of being abused or killed by the security forces, less likely to graduate from college, less likely to get bank loans, more likely to have poorer health, and more likely to suffer from violent crime than their counterparts in non-redlined communities.

Go ahead and support the Black Lives Matter movement, but suh wah, ghetto yute lives nuh matter, tuh? Where is their hashtag? When is their march?

WASTE OF TIME

Before we jump on the next bandwagon social media tells us to, stop and think about all the local causes you are ignoring. How are you going to make a change? It can’t be by voting when the lines between the two major political parties are so blurred. Swapping one self-serving set for another will do nothing to change the situation. The system is rotten and needs to be torn down.

The whole Westminster system of Government, while it works in the UK, has no place in Jamaica. Why? Because it has been hijacked by the two political parties, and the power now rests with the delegates and party faithfuls who determine who gets to be members of Parliament and prime minister. Until we can directly elect our commander in chief independent of garrisons and their popularity within the parties, our leaders will forever first serve their party base and special-interest groups, including criminals, who put them in office.

People often ask me why it is that I take prolonged breaks from writing, and I usually deflect by blaming it on work. The truth is, I think writing these articles is a waste of time.

No matter what social injustices are highlighted, no matter how often I attempt to awaken the spirit of the heroes of old within my readers in the vain hope that we will rally around the dream for a more equitable and just society, I end up with kudos about a good piece, and then it’s back to sticking heads in the sand.

So I’ll just continue to vent every now and again and ask, “Are you not entertained?!!!” Because I can’t see one movement that will cause me to leave the comfort of my chair. After all, I have selective empathy for causes.

- Dr Alfred Dawes is a general, laparoscopic and weight-loss surgeon, and medical director of Windsor Wellness Centre & Carivia Medical Ltd; Fellow of the American College of Surgeons; former senior medical officer of the Savanna-La-Mar Public General Hospital; former president of the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association. @dr_aldawes. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and adawes@ilapmedical.com.