Lately our young people have been under heavy fire. It’s not uncommon to hear, even from mouths less than fifty years old, that “our youth are lazy, irresponsible, without ambition, criminally inclined. They care not a damn what tomorrow may bring. All they do is hang out in William Peter Boulevard all day long, smoking weed.”
If the obvious hyperbole can be overlooked, still it’s worth questioning the observation’s validity? The answer could depend on whether you trust what you hear from the pulpits of our priest-politicians and their acolytes, from our incurable swallowers of their own vomit, or whether you dismiss their spiced-up sermons as further excuses for their own obvious shortcomings.
Even the holier than thou community would agree the targets of their vituperation were not born evil. So, I ask: Did the society—by which I mean our professional models of virtue, our tax-funded guardians of the nation’s morality, parents and other soi-disant exemplars—did we all sit idly by as under our noses innocent babies turned gradually into seemingly irreversible monsters? Might the young ostensible troublemakers be a reflection of our judgmental society’s naked soul?
It warrants investigation, the role society may have played over the last several years in the development of our younger citizens, their mothers and fathers when they were still teenagers, their thirty-something grandparents. Can we say, honestly, that the authorities have delivered on the opportunities for growth faithfully promised our youth during every election campaign? How about employment opportunities? How effective has been our education system? What precisely was it designed to achieve? Has it delivered? Are we producing mainly educated imbeciles whose ego-boosting academic qualifications deliver little that’s discernible or tangible? That’s relevant?
If, as so many say, our young people have scant respect for law and order, that they are afflicted with chronic get-rich-quick fever, that they lack the patience of their grossly underpaid farm-laborer parents, then why? Could it be the accused young are actually rebelling against what they see as modern-day slavery perpetuated by the very people who speak the loudest about the sins of colonialism—fellow Saint Lucians in ill-fitting cheap suits, who preach about honesty as the best policy but hold themselves accountable to no one? Who effectively are judge, jury and executioner, whether or not it is they who stand accused.
It is not inconceivable that our much-maligned young people, the alleged troublemakers as well as the frustrated silent, are searching for something to believe in. On the other hand, the police evidently consider every dreadlocked Rastaman a potential criminal to be brutalized, to be used for target practice. They know in advance that should they be called to account they can always rely on hand-picked familiar juries to deliver death-by-misadventure verdicts, regardless of the circumstances. It obviously has not occurred to the complainers that if they should come together against official corruption, against discrimination on the basis of hairstyles and surnames, against police brutality, the problems they attribute to the nation’s young men just might disappear. In the meantime, it might be worth keeping in mind that when we deny citizens their basic human rights, the psychically sensitive youth especially, we do so at the expense of our country’s future!
The preceding paragraphs first appeared as part of an article I published in the STAR of 17 October 1975, shortly before a disgruntled horde laid waste what was then, as now, the country’s center of commerce. Since then, we’ve learned little that might ease the nation’s pain. We continue to lay at the feet of our youth every crime, the especially gruesome ones in particular, even as government after government does nothing significant about the living conditions that produced the presumed killers—and their prey. Promises are made with no mention of a delivery date. As if the elected authorities were themselves honorary gang members in complicity with an invisible justice system, little has been heard from them about the 51 citizens killed so far this year by evidently unknown gunmen, the majority shot in the head and left like road kill to be photographed and disseminated digitally by ghouls with their expensive smartphones.
These days the killings hardly make the evening news. Victim 49 was a 13-year-old. Invaders broke into his blind father’s home after he and his family had turned in for the night and opened fire with automatic weapons. Just two days before his fourteenth birthday, young Mellow had his head blown away.
Where our politicians are concerned, Julien Alfred could not have chosen a better time to strike Olympic gold. To speak now of the earlier cited deceased Mellow, or of the two-year-old who was machine-gunned in its mother’s arms on Vieux Fort’s main street, or of the mother who was hit in the head by a bullet as she and her two young kids prepared for bed, is to offer yourself up to vituperative assaults on your character, your perceived lack of national pride, to be declared a traitor, to have your family’s reputation buried at the Deglos dumpsite.
Even long-grieving indirect victims of the unresolved weekly shooting deaths appear to have forgotten their troubles as they dance and prance “in honor of our Juju.” There is much unconfirmed talk about the government’s plans to reward Miss Alfred—whose estimated worth according to Google was, prior to her Olympic victories, over USD two million—with land, a home, a car, cash and a national holiday to be celebrated annually. It is also bruited about that the country’s main airport will be renamed in her honor.
As I write, a suitably proud resident of Ciceron, Julien Alfred’s birthplace, is on TV echoing lines previously spoken by at least five politicians: “Our young people should feel inspired by what Julien Alfred has accomplished. She comes from humble roots but that did not stop her from putting our country on the map. She is living proof that anyone can rise to great heights. All it takes is determination. We have a government that is ready to support you.”
I am at this juncture reminded of the following that appeared in the late George Odlum’s Crusader newspaper the week his long-time friend Derek Walcott was awarded the Nobel for literature: “George Odlum is far better educated than Derek. Had he not wasted so much of his time trying to educate Saint Lucians, George could easily have won, not just one but two Nobel prizes.” The quoted author was a somewhat eccentric old lawyer named Vernon Cooper, whose nom de plume was The Vicar of Bray. When I questioned the publisher about his sycophantic columnist’s attempt at promoting him at Walcott’s expense, Odlum casually dismissed my concern. “Everyone knows Vernon’s mad!” he said, and changed the subject. Why do so many of us take pleasure in making the extraordinary seem commonplace?
As for our wunderkind Julien Alfred, it is my fervent wish than her performance in Paris will inspire Saint Lucians to be ambitious, to not only talk the talk but also to run it as fast as they possibly can. Maybe she will convince our younger citizens that killing one another is equal to killing such future as our nation might still have. Perhaps Miss Alfred will take some time during her much-anticipated visit to persuade our politicians that potential is nothing if it is not discovered early and nurtured to maturity.
There is much our country needs that can only be provided by our government. But then, Julien Alfred must by now know a thing or two about miracles. The world is still talking about the one she pulled off at the Paris Olympics. How difficult can it possibly be for her, with her undeniable unique talents, to instill in our government and our people a new winning attitude!
