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Our young people have come under heavy attack lately. Even people under fifty often hear things like: “Our young people are lazy, irresponsible, unambitious, and criminally inclined. They don’t care what tomorrow will bring. All they do is hang out on William Peter Boulevard all day, smoking marijuana.”
If the obvious exaggeration can be ignored, is it still worth questioning the validity of this observation? The answer may depend on whether you believe what you hear from the pulpits of our pastor-politicians and their followers, from our incurable swallowers of their own vomit, or whether you view their exaggerated sermons as further excuses for their own obvious shortcomings.
Even those who consider themselves sanctimonious would agree that the people they reviled were not inherently bad. So I ask: Did we as a society — I mean our professional ethicists, our taxpayer-funded guardians of national morality, parents, and other so-called role models — stand by and watch innocent babies transform into seemingly irreversible monsters before our eyes? Do these seemingly troubled young people reflect the naked soul of our judgmental society?
It is worth investigating what role society may have played in the development of our young citizens over the past few years, including their parents when they were teenagers, and their grandparents when they were in their thirties. Can we honestly say that the authorities have faithfully delivered on the development opportunities that the young people have been promised in every election campaign? What about job opportunities? How effective is our education system? What exactly is it designed to achieve? Does it achieve it? Are we producing mainly well-educated fools whose self-inflated academic qualifications bring nothing perceptible or tangible? Does it matter?
If, as many claim, our young people lack respect for law and order, are chronically obsessed with getting rich quick and lack the patience of their underpaid farmworker parents, then why? Are these accused young people actually rebelling against what they see as modern slavery perpetrated by those who loudly preach the evils of colonialism – those Saint Lucians who wear ill-fitting cheap suits and preach that honesty is the best policy but are accountable to no one? These people are effectively the judge, jury and executioner, whether they are accused or not.
It is not difficult to imagine that our much-maligned youth, the so-called troublemakers as well as the frustrated silent ones, are looking for something to believe in. The police, on the other hand, apparently think that every dreadlocked Rastafarian is a potential criminal who can be abused and used for shooting practice. They know in advance that if they are called to account, they can always rely on a carefully selected and familiar jury to return a verdict of death by accident, no matter what the circumstances. The complainants apparently did not consider that if they united against official corruption, against discrimination based on hairstyle and surname, and against police brutality, the problems they blame on the nation’s youth might disappear. At the same time, it is perhaps worth remembering that when we deprive citizens, especially psychologically sensitive young people, of basic human rights, we do so at the expense of our country’s future!
The above paragraph was originally part of an article I published in The Star on October 17, 1975, when a disgruntled mob destroyed what was then and is now the commercial centre of the country. Since then, we have learned little to alleviate the suffering of the nation. We continue to blame our youth for every crime, especially those that are particularly gruesome, even as successive governments have failed to take any significant action to address the conditions that create life for these suspected murderers and their prey. They make promises but mention no delivery date. As if the elected authorities themselves were honorary gang members in cahoots with the invisible justice system, they have barely shed any light on the 51 citizens who have been killed so far this year by apparently unknown gunmen, most with gunshot wounds to the head and left tossed aside like roadkill, photographed and digitally disseminated by ghouls with expensive smartphones.
Today, the killings barely make the evening news. Victim 49 was a 13-year-old. After he and his family went to sleep, intruders broke into his blind father’s home and opened fire with automatic weapons. Just two days before his 14th birthday, young Mello’s head was blown off.
As far as our politicians are concerned, Julien Alfred’s Olympic gold medal could not have come at a better time. To talk now about the late Merlot mentioned above, or the two-year-old child who was machine-gunned on the main road in Vieux Fort, or the mother who was shot in the head as she and her two children were getting ready for bed, is to subject you to a vicious attack on your character, to have you deemed lacking in national pride, to have you declared a traitor, to have your family honour buried in the Degros dump.
Even the collateral victims, long grieving over the unsolved weekly shootings, seemed to forget their troubles, dancing and cheering “in honor of our witchcraft.” Many unconfirmed rumors said the government planned to reward Miss Alfred – who, according to Google estimates, was worth more than $2 million before her Olympic title – with land, a house, a car, cash and a national day to be celebrated annually. There were also rumors that the country’s main airport would be renamed after her.
As I wrote this, a resident of Cicerone, Julian Alfred’s birthplace, went on television to repeat what at least five politicians had said earlier: “Our young people should be inspired by what Julian Alfred achieved. She came from humble beginnings, but that didn’t stop her from putting our country on the map. She is living proof that anyone can achieve great things. All it takes is determination. And we have a government that’s ready to support you.”
At this moment, I am reminded of the following article published in the late George Odlum’s Crusader newspaper the week his long-time friend Derek Walcott won the Nobel Prize for Literature: “George Odlum is far more educated than Derek. If he had not wasted so much time trying to educate the people of Saint Lucia, George could have easily won not one, but two Nobel Prizes.” The author of the quote is a somewhat eccentric old lawyer named Vernon Cooper, whose pen name It was The Vicar of Bray. When I asked the publisher about his sycophantic columnists trying to promote him at Walcott’s expense, Odlum casually dismissed my concerns. “Everyone knows Vernon is crazy!” he said, and changed the subject. Why do so many of us take pleasure in making the extraordinary seem commonplace?
As for our wunderkind Julian Alfred, I fervently hope that her performance in Paris will inspire Saint Lucians to be ambitious and not just talk the talk but act as quickly as possible. Perhaps she will convince our young citizens that killing each other is tantamount to destroying any future our country may still have. Perhaps Ms. Alfred will take some time during her much-anticipated visit to convince our politicians that potential means nothing if it is not discovered early and nurtured to maturity.
There are many things our country needs that only the government can provide. But Julian Alfred must know something about miracles by now. The world is still talking about the miracle she performed at the Paris Olympics. With her undeniable unique talent, how hard will it be for her to instill a new winning attitude in our government and people!
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