Garth Rattray | Throwing Jamaican culture under the bus

The Gleaner of May 24 had an interesting article titled ‘Made in Jamaica’. It briefly outlined the case of Alex Josephs. He migrated from St Ann, Jamaica, to the United States (US) in 2018, when he was 23 years old. Although his father sponsored him, he was absent during Josephs’ formative years. Josephs grew up in a zinc-roof shack.

He said that his mother had no visible means of support and he was on his own by the age of nine. He said that he was stabbed twice while working on a construction site at the age of 12. Josephs was facing several serious criminal charges in the US. His defence attorney referenced Jamaica’s violent political history. He claimed that it had an impact on the young Josephs. The attorney said that Jamaica’s “violent legacy moulded the behavioural patterns of this intelligent, courageous, and caring young man so that he would develop the skill – though never the enthusiasm – to commit the robberies … of which he stands convicted”.

It was also presented in court that Josephs witnessed the killing of friend because of gang violence; that he had been pistol-whipped during a home invasion robbery; and that Josephs had been around violence his entire life and had been existing in survival mode. The prosecution outlined the violent life that Josephs and his crew led (while in the US), and how “They displayed an unusual level of cruelty and ugliness towards the victims.” Josephs gave them no chance, he committed violent assault and landed at least one of victims in the hospital. But the defence asked for leniency.

The prosecution rubbished blaming the defendant’s criminality entirely on the Jamaican culture. They said, “The [US] government questions the defence’s suggestion that violent behaviour is widely accepted in Jamaica, such that Mr Josephs had a diminished sense that what he was doing here was morally repulsive.” They also said, “Prevalence is not the same as acceptance… nothing in the culture described condones armed robbery.”

Obviously, Josephs attorney forgot that pleas based on violence caused by previous childhood emotional and/or physical trauma get no sympathetic ears unless the ‘victim’ is of a particular ethnic persuasion. And so, Josephs was found guilty, ordered to pay US$298,073 in restitution, and sentenced to 10 years behind bars, following which he will be deported. Heaven help us!

This situation begs the following questions: Is Jamaica’s high level of indiscipline, lawlessness, criminality, and murder attributable to the criminal elements within our inner cities? Does the behaviour of those criminal elements constitute part of our ‘Jamaican culture’? If our inner-city culture is being influenced by criminal elements, negatively impacting our impressionable youth, why isn’t more being done to wrest the grip that they have on our society away from them?

During an intellectually stimulating and exploratory session, a good friend of mine posited that, because culture is so essential to any nation, it must be guided and not allowed to follow an errant path. Essentially, guiding the direction of our culture will involve the intervention of the government or its agents. That may appear dictatorial; however, it really boils down to discouraging or negating negative or harmful influences.

Jamaica is dichotomous. On the one hand, we have a vibrant, expressive, innovative, culture that has and still is influencing the entire planet in a very positive way. But on the other hand, we also have a culture of dependency, corruption, criminality, thuggery, and murder. The amazing thing is that these divergent cultures often emanate from the same root… the underprivileged and often disenfranchised class within our society. Within this class lies the seat of genius, creativity, worldwide athletic superiority, depravity, cruelty, anarchy, and blood lust.

The path in life that most children take is dependent on their family nucleus. Families make or break children; the children are our future, so they make or break our future. Our stars, those who excel, the elite performers all have strong family nuclei or strong extended family nuclei. But Alex Josephs had an absent father, a malfunctioning mother, and no family nucleus whatsoever. His surrogate family was the gang; they attract waifs. In them, the youth find camaraderie, a hierarchy structure, a purpose, a belonging, power, and validation of their actions.

But this is nothing new, Josephs is not unique. These situations occur repeatedly in various communities for generations. Society plucks the high performers from the poor communities and thinks that it can move on by jettisoning the unfortunate ones. But the jettisoned, the discarded youth, discover ways to survive. They do so by developing their own rules, their own morals, their own ‘culture’. And this culture becomes incorporated into the mix that we call the ‘Jamaican culture’…the Jamaican culture referenced by Alex Josephs’ attorney.

We are blessed with the ability to make free choices; but we must also remember that acculturation and the will to survive are extremely powerful influences on developing minds. Josephs’ attorney was reaching. He threw the ‘Jamaican culture’ under the bus in a bid to reduce the sentence handed down to his client, but his argument had some merit. The creeping anarchy evident on our roads, and the monsters that slaughter people with impunity are attributable to the negative (sub) culture within many communities.

The real blame for our woes does not belong solely to criminal elements and gangs, it belongs to our continued lack of adequate and sustained social intervention.

Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com