August 9, 2015 marked the one year anniversary of the slaying of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man from Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer. The incident galvanised the African-American community, citing it as another senseless murder resulting from the systematic practice of institutionalised racism carried out by law enforcement. His death revitalised the "Black Lives Matter" mantra, a grassroots movement which has since become a rallying cry to campaign against police brutality.
Meanwhile in T&T, young men die every day. Some by the actions of our own police service, and others at the hands of their own peers. Their mothers are then paraded on the nightly news, sorrowfully bawling over the loss of their sons who they claimed were all "good boys that helped out in the community."
The rest of the citizenry however aren't as sympathetic. If the deceased are young, of African descent, living in the East-West corridor, and labelled a "suspected gang member," then the response is, "Good riddance! One less bandit out there!"
It sounds horrible doesn't it? When we take a step back and reflect on those words, aren't we ashamed to have said or thought those things? Trinbagonians, for the most part, are decent people.
We raise and provide for our children as best as we can. We practise our faith and share in each other's religious celebrations. And we can party like nobody else on the planet. But the years of witnessing both a spiralling crime and murder rate has caused us to abandon some of our humanity. We have forgotten that we are our brother's keeper.
Our acting commissioner of police recently voiced his concern that the majority of murder victims and incarcerated people here in T&T, are of African descent. No one is born a bandit, and if given a better alternative, I doubt anyone would choose a life of crime.
This is not a problem that can simply be solved by putting more police on the streets and having judges impose tougher sentences.
As I did last week, take the US as an example–they have the largest prison population in the world. With African-American males, despite being a minority, comprising the majority of inmates. At the risk of over-simplifying it, their present situation stems from a history of slavery and racism, along with a socio-economic system that hasn't always been fair to them.
Things were not so for us. When we became independent in 1962 our society wasn't set up to oppress Afro-Trinbagonians. There were no laws written to enforce a status quo of racial inferiority, and segregation was never an established social practice. And an Afro-centric party continued to govern our country uninterrupted for the next 24 years. The fact that their staunchest support comes from improvised and crime-plagued communities that have seen no improvement during their tenure is something they have yet to reconcile.
The PNM's policy of fostering economic dependency, which has since been perpetuated by consecutive administrations, has not only succeeded in the creation of a reliable support base, but has rendered a segment of the population incapable of positive aspirations. When those young men come to expect no better than a "ten-days," it isn't long before the desire to be respected leads them to becoming mere foot soldiers in service to some petty gang leader; a path that most likely ends in the grave.
Where is the outcry? What will it take for a community to unite and say, "No more." Our leaders must do more than bemoan the tragedy of the "little black boys" to pander for the sake of votes.
The intellectuals who don ethnic garb and pontificate about the legacy of slavery, they also need to find a way to move forward instead of merely blaming the past. And we as a nation have to accept that this is a shared responsibility requiring all our efforts.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so when the lowest amongst us rises, we all will rise.