The Editor, Sir:This letter is written in response to the 'Gender Politics II' article by Peter Espeut published on Wednesday, October 24, 2007.
About 20 years ago, The Gleaner published two articles that I wrote on this issue. During that period, Professor Errol Mills also wrote a related monograph.
Mr. Espeut's two recent articles add more factual and historical data that expose a covert, virulent, racist-feminist pattern that has been applied to marginalise Jamaica in general, and black Jamaican men in particular.
How is this pattern racist? This is because it only exists among oppressed racial groups such as black Americans. Why does it marginalise?
It limits the overall educational and economic achievement of non-white groups, destroys their family structure, limits them to subservient roles, and forces them to be dependent on handouts and/or subsidies. When did it become feminist?
Perfect cloak
The 1970s' 'International Decade for Women' provided a perfect cloak and a sustained period to develop and implement racist-feminist schemes.
This pattern dates back to the period (circa 1850) when legal strategies were developed to limit and reverse educational, engineering, political, and scientific achievements made by black people in such countries as the United States and Jamaica.
What was the key strategy to achieve this pattern? Stop them when they are young; that is, take the boys out of the classroom and put them back in the fields - for those that resist, imprison or send back to Africa, declared Napoleon B. Broward, Florida's governor from 1905 to 1909.
The U.S. can afford to marginalise black men, but Jamaica simply cannot, as men make up a huge proportion of the country's population and the gross majority of the labour force.
Racist-feminist polices
If the goal of our country is to increase production, be more self-sufficient, and become more competitive, then we will not achieve this when we perpetuate racist-feminist polices against half of our nation.
A functional illiterate farmer cannot compete against a functional literate one that can use GPS and GIS accessed via a wireless laptop computer, much less one with an advanced degree in agronomy.
As in my 1980s' articles, there is little evidence to say that our boys perform significantly below our girls. In many cases, boys hold their own and often exceed girls. The recent success at Kingston College and other schools contradict those who misrepresent the data to claim that our boys perform markedly below our girls - they did not assess enrolment and test data.
Disparate pattern
As Mr. Espeut demonstrated, this disparate pattern is social engineering driven by systematic, institutionalised, racist-feminist discrimination.
The 82:18 ratio in favour of females at University of the West Indies is a product of affirmative action gone wild, i.e., retributive justice against the innocent. A look at the data reveals that more men than women attend tertiary institutions overseas. So, not only have we artificially limited the academic opportunities for our men, who are still the primary breadwinners, but we are facilitating a brain drain to advanced countries.
Education
As in my 1980s' articles, the solution is not to apply de jure reverse discrimination, i.e., Talibanisation, but to correct the gross imbalance with 50:50 enrolment and hiring, then increase overall educational opportunities such that all of our children can get at least a high-school education.
What you see happening in black inner cities, ghettos, and projects in the U.S. should be an early warning for Jamaica. We must stop talking and take action now to give every child in Jamaica - regardless of gender, race, and class - the same opportunity to achieve.
The positive thing here is that we Jamaicans are resilient, having been taught to struggle despite hardships. However, contemporary, i.e., Americanised parents have been negligent in passing down this important trait to their sons. This must stop now!
I am, etc.,
RICHARD G. Williams
rgwilliams007@msn.com
Florida
Via Go-Jamaica
