Hilary Robertson-Hickling
THE NEED to define ourselves in our complexity in the world is urgent as we prepare to take our country to new levels of development. I recently had a discussion with a Canadian visitor whose son is a reggae enthusiast. Her son has got the impression that Jamaica consists of shacks and shanty towns. The popular music videos and image at home and abroad consist of the ghetto as the major backdrop.
We parallel our African-American cousins by glorifying the violence, drug dealing, hopelessness of the 'hoods' or neighbourhoods. As soon as the rappers and other popular musicians can, they escape into the upscale communities to spend their days in luxury. I am pleased at their success but the ghetto communities and hoods left are places which become stigmatised as dens of iniquity.
NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES
Many people from such communities find themselves unable to get jobs and visas and find that even their own countrymen have developed negative stereotypes about them. In the original ghettoes in Europe, Jews and other members of ethnic minorities were forced to live in prescribed geo-graphical areas. Today it is mainly poverty that confines people to communities where urban decay, neglect and alienation are common. Efforts to improve life in these communities must be a priority.
As in a previous era, we had to declare that Jamaica is more than a beach, it is a country. I think that it is time again to declare that it is more than a ghetto. We see pictures of dilapidated housing, raw sewage on the street, children and their parents standing idly beside the road at any hour of day or night. There are some Jamaicans who avoid the capital city Kingston, dubbed 'Killsome', and then some who live in Kingston but never go downtown for fear of violence. Our visitors have been warned about our murderous capital city and we have to change this situation. Neither Jamaican, nor any visitor, leaves his or her home to visit a place of danger. We are losing vital support from members of our diaspora.
I have a fervent prayer that the new housing development in downtown Kingston will not become a ghetto in a few years. In too many communities people have transformed their com-munities into ghettoes. This is happening in uptown and downtown where people break covenants, do not pay the maintenance fees which are due for the upkeep of the place, hang their clothes in the public gaze and generally make life miserable for the law-abiding citizens. Instead of people living better in communities there is increasing friction between those who conform and the others who do not.
GREATER RESPECT
As we move into town houses and apartments it will be necessary for us to develop a greater respect and understanding of what should obtain for purposes of building social capital and harmony. We pay little attention to the work of urban planners and other professionals to our peril. We also need to prepare people to live in communal settings where we have to pay attention to the rights of others.
These new settings might also give persons the opportunity to be more caring for the young people who need supervision, care and oversight in the absence of their parents. Older people could not only play a more positive role but new arrangements for adopted grandchildren and grandparents could be tried. Communal settings could provide homework centres and other places where healthy activities are pursued.
Hilary Robertson-Hickling is a lecturer in the Department of Management Studies, UWI, Mona.
