These days our younger folks have been below heavy hearth. It’s not unusual to listen to, even from mouths lower than fifty years previous, that “our youth are lazy, irresponsible, with out ambition, criminally inclined. They care not a rattling what tomorrow could carry. All they do is hand around in William Peter Boulevard all day lengthy, smoking weed.”
If the apparent hyperbole may be neglected, nonetheless it’s value questioning the statement’s validity? The reply may depend upon whether or not you belief what you hear from the pulpits of our priest-politicians and their acolytes, from our incurable swallowers of their very own vomit, or whether or not you dismiss their spiced-up sermons as additional excuses for their very own apparent shortcomings.
Even the holier than thou neighborhood would agree the targets of their vituperation weren’t born evil. So, I ask: Did the society—by which I imply our skilled fashions of advantage, our tax-funded guardians of the nation’s morality, dad and mom and different soi-disant exemplars—did all of us sit idly by as below our noses harmless infants turned step by step into seemingly irreversible monsters? May the younger ostensible troublemakers be a mirrored image of our judgmental society’s bare soul?
It warrants investigation, the position society could have performed during the last a number of years within the improvement of our youthful residents, their moms and dads after they had been nonetheless youngsters, their thirty-something grandparents. Can we are saying, truthfully, that the authorities have delivered on the alternatives for progress faithfully promised our youth throughout each election marketing campaign? How about employment alternatives? How efficient has been our training system? What exactly was it designed to attain? Has it delivered? Are we producing primarily educated imbeciles whose ego-boosting educational {qualifications} ship little that’s discernible or tangible? That’s related?
If, as so many say, our younger folks have scant respect for legislation and order, that they’re stricken with power get-rich-quick fever, that they lack the endurance of their grossly underpaid farm-laborer dad and mom, then why? May or not it’s the accused younger are literally rebelling in opposition to what they see as modern-day slavery perpetuated by the very individuals who converse the loudest in regards to the sins of colonialism—fellow Saint Lucians in ill-fitting low cost fits, who preach about honesty as one of the best coverage however maintain themselves accountable to nobody? Who successfully are choose, jury and executioner, whether or not or not it’s they who stand accused.
It’s not inconceivable that our much-maligned younger folks, the alleged troublemakers in addition to the annoyed silent, are looking for one thing to consider in. Alternatively, the police evidently think about each dreadlocked Rastaman a possible prison to be brutalized, for use for goal observe. They know prematurely that ought to they be referred to as to account they will all the time depend on hand-picked acquainted juries to ship death-by-misadventure verdicts, whatever the circumstances. It clearly has not occurred to the complainers that if they need to come collectively in opposition to official corruption, in opposition to discrimination on the premise of hairstyles and surnames, in opposition to police brutality, the issues they attribute to the nation’s younger males simply may disappear. Within the meantime, it could be value maintaining in thoughts that after we deny residents their fundamental human rights, the psychically delicate youth particularly, we achieve this on the expense of our nation’s future!
The previous paragraphs first appeared as a part of an article I printed within the STAR of 17 October 1975, shortly earlier than a disgruntled horde laid waste what was then, as now, the nation’s middle of commerce. Since then, we’ve discovered little that may ease the nation’s ache. We proceed to put on the toes of our youth each crime, the particularly grotesque ones specifically, whilst authorities after authorities does nothing important in regards to the dwelling circumstances that produced the presumed killers—and their prey. Guarantees are made with no point out of a supply date. As if the elected authorities had been themselves honorary gang members in complicity with an invisible justice system, little has been heard from them in regards to the 51 residents killed to date this 12 months by evidently unknown gunmen, the bulk shot within the head and left like highway kill to be photographed and disseminated digitally by ghouls with their costly smartphones.
Lately the killings hardly make the night information. Sufferer 49 was a 13-year-old. Invaders broke into his blind father’s residence after he and his household had turned in for the night time and opened hearth with automated weapons. Simply two days earlier than his fourteenth birthday, younger Mellow had his head blown away.
The place our flesh pressers are involved, Julien Alfred couldn’t have chosen a greater time to strike Olympic gold. To talk now of the sooner cited deceased Mellow, or of the two-year-old who was machine-gunned in its mom’s arms on Vieux Fort’s predominant avenue, or of the mom who was hit within the head by a bullet as she and her two younger children ready for mattress, is to supply your self as much as vituperative assaults in your character, your perceived lack of nationwide delight, to be declared a traitor, to have your loved ones’s fame buried on the Deglos dumpsite.
Even long-grieving oblique victims of the unresolved weekly taking pictures deaths seem to have forgotten their troubles as they dance and prance “in honor of our Juju.” There’s a lot unconfirmed speak in regards to the authorities’s plans to reward Miss Alfred—whose estimated value in accordance with Google was, previous to her Olympic victories, over USD two million—with land, a house, a automotive, money and a nationwide vacation to be celebrated yearly. It is usually bruited about that the nation’s predominant airport might be renamed in her honor.
As I write, a suitably proud resident of Ciceron, Julien Alfred’s birthplace, is on TV echoing traces beforehand spoken by at the least 5 politicians: “Our younger folks ought to really feel impressed by what Julien Alfred has achieved. She comes from humble roots however that didn’t cease her from placing our nation on the map. She resides proof that anybody can rise to nice heights. All it takes is dedication. Now we have a authorities that is able to help you.”
I’m at this juncture reminded of the next that appeared within the late George Odlum’s Crusader newspaper the week his long-time good friend Derek Walcott was awarded the Nobel for literature: “George Odlum is much better educated than Derek. Had he not wasted a lot of his time making an attempt to coach Saint Lucians, George may simply have received, not only one however two Nobel prizes.” The quoted writer was a considerably eccentric previous lawyer named Vernon Cooper, whose nom de plume was The Vicar of Bray. Once I questioned the writer about his sycophantic columnist’s try at selling him at Walcott’s expense, Odlum casually dismissed my concern. “Everybody is aware of Vernon’s mad!” he mentioned, and altered the topic. Why achieve this many people get pleasure from making the extraordinary appear commonplace?
As for our wunderkind Julien Alfred, it’s my fervent want than her efficiency in Paris will encourage Saint Lucians to be formidable, to not solely speak the speak but additionally to run it as quick as they presumably can. Perhaps she’s going to persuade our youthful residents that killing each other is the same as killing such future as our nation may nonetheless have. Maybe Miss Alfred will take a while throughout her much-anticipated go to to steer our flesh pressers that potential is nothing if it’s not found early and nurtured to maturity.
There’s a lot our nation wants that may solely be supplied by our authorities. However then, Julien Alfred should by now know a factor or two about miracles. The world remains to be speaking in regards to the one she pulled off on the Paris Olympics. How troublesome can it presumably be for her, together with her plain distinctive abilities, to instill in our authorities and our folks a brand new successful angle!
