Dawn Ritch, Contributor
"Dear Dawn Ritch,
Thanks for your article yesterday in the Gleaner (May 30, 2004). You have taken-up where Morris Cargill left off; If you were nearby, I would have to come and shake your hand. Very good, keep up the good work; he should resign now a lame duck is too good. I would like you to research this, I heard since he became prime-minister, travelling expenses to overseas cost plenty.
"Any day Patterson resigns, the People's National Party is going to be disintegrated. Too many of them are a bunch of dishonest people. Patterson was a man who condone their behaviour. He never ask any of them to resign, there are many (name deleted) in that Party. In the first place man like that have no right was to represent any one in Parliament.
"I am so glad that he lost his seat at the last election, I hope he never try to get back. It is alleged that a man got a job from the Government, and he just keep sending men on the job, the poor man have to take them on, after he take them on, the man never see them again till Friday they turn up, the poor old man have to pay them. The man say he don't think he will be taking anymore job from the Government. The man was complaining to me, first I saw the man, I am sorry I never take his name and address, so you can see what this politician is up to. However keep blasting away on them. We back you. Right is right. This is one of the best country on Earth to live. People like those spoil it. They have no clue how to run a country. How can you ignore technical education?. Where is the technical colleges that they build?
Yours
R. Francis"
THIS LETTER came directly to me from a reader who is clearly frustrated by the rampant corruption in the country, and about which nobody is doing anything, least of all the Prime Minister.
PUBLIC FRAUD
The reader also misses my late friend Morris Cargill, and so do I. It would have pained him enormously to see the lack of any meaningful response to the litany of public fraud and murder. The horrible facts are revealed daily and there it ends. Except for the next day's dose of empty rhetoric from our rulers.
On the subject of education and technical education in particular, I too have the greatest regard for people who can do things brilliantly with their hands. But the best way to hone these skills is to be an apprentice after acquiring the basic skills in a technical school. Even lawyers had apprentices once. But today nobody wants to be an apprentice at anything, least of all mechanics or carpentry. I have a book case where all the shelves are sagging. And that was made by the son of a craftsman working under his father's direction, but clearly without basic skills.
Whenever I think of what a vale of tears Jamaica has become, I think of Morris who took a load of buckshot in his arse, and I feel better instantly. So far nobody has shot me in mine, and that is cause for celebration. But I think that if he were alive today he would be shocked at both their patience and my own.
The Rev. Mervin Stoddart, ceaselessly pontificating from the safe climes of Altamont Springs in Florida, requires a great deal of that kind of patience. He says I've "raised the scholarly level of (my) column". No doubt because I referred to four books in the article "Black people still slaves to the past". So in reply he wrote a very long letter to the Editor referring to six books.
It seems only fair to say therefore, that of my four, I only read two. Equally I'm quite unimpressed with his six books. The only one of them we have in common is "The Wretched of the Earth", which is a rite of passage for every black person.
He seems unaware of the irony that the black author Franz Fanon was married to a white woman, and that the writer of the Foreword Jean-Paul Sartre, was a Vichy supporter, a collaborator with the Nazi occupiers of France.
RACIAL PREJUDICE
But I'm glad his reading has acquainted him with the similarity between Jews and Blacks from a point of view of racial prejudice. The former United States President Lyndon B. Johnson was well-known for pithy and off-colour comments. One of these was that "Every Jew is a Nigger turned inside out." I once got thrown out of a dinner party for repeating it, and not by the Jews present, but the blacks.
The prejudice of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) against the Jew is as well-known as the Jew against the Gentile. But some WASPs will never be able to get over the fact that it was the Jews who, during the Middle Ages, brought medicine, mathematics and science from the Muslims and gave it to Europe.
WESTERN CIVILISATION
They also funded voyages of discovery and wars for the kings and queens of the age, ultimately becoming the greatest publishers and musical composers. There could have been no Western Civilisation without them providing the thread and stitching up the pieces. They were put into ghettos because their brain power was feared, and indeed most of the Jews were quite happy to keep to themselves and their families.
It must be pointed out however, that the richest and happiest of them for the last 150 years are the ones who assimilated. These are not people who are on the margins of any society. The state of Israel, founded as a theocracy, is therefore the very antithesis of that state of well-being. So it's a good thing that we don't have the money to go back to Africa, and start bombing and quarantining our neighbours.
PERSISTENT HARD WORK
I suspect that Lyndon Johnson was just a little jealous. And of the blacks as well, because we seem to be able to make mega-fortunes out of singing and boxing, and running and jumping. I hope therefore that the reverend gentleman in Florida is trying to inculcate in his black flock, the value of persistent hard work, and not just the quick fix or the glorious spurt.
The admired U.S. comedian Bill Cosby recently addressed a gala of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (the NAACP). In his speech he said "Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 p.m. every day. It's cursing and calling each other nigger. They think they're hip. They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere."
Rev. Stoddart should therefore take a leaf out of Cosby's book. He believes that blacks spend their time griping, instead of taking advantage of the opportunities that are available to them. I think this realisation is long overdue. After all Colin Powell's mother was a seamstress.
