We Have Become Selfish And Macabre No Concern For Those Dying/​shameful…

For the past (20) years after leav­ing my native Jamaica, I oper­at­ed two small busi­ness­es in a small city in New York State, one a bar­ber­ing busi­ness and the oth­er an elec­tron­ics busi­ness, both of which serve the com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing Jamaicans who live here. Those two busi­ness­es still serve the com­mu­ni­ty today.
Over the years, I have had arguably thou­sands of con­ver­sa­tions with my native coun­try­men and women, some more informed than oth­ers. I would like to think that we have learned from each oth­er. If noth­ing else, I have learned that it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to con­vince us Jamaicans of truths once we already hold an opin­ion on a par­tic­u­lar subject.
We have a dif­fi­cult time allow­ing facts to get in the way of our opin­ions. We argue with each oth­er and lit­er­al­ly say, “nu bady can’ tell me nut­ten.”

In one such con­ver­sa­tions a *friend* (*used loose­ly) of mine returned from Jamaica and began telling his tales of, “bway Jamaica nice nuh rass”. There are sev­er­al take-aways from these pro­nounce­ments, not the least of which are that they are the only Jamaicans who are true Jamaicans, or that they went, spent some time, ate some cur­ried goat or jerk pork and drank some rum and did­n’t get killed, then “nu weh nu bet­ta dan yard”.
Of course God for­bid that any­one should men­tion that Jamaica lit­er­al­ly has one of the world’s high­est mur­der rates and in fact the high­est homi­cide rate in Latin America and the Caribbean sur­pass­ing vio­lent nations such as Mexico, Honduras, Guatamala, Nicaragua and others.
Because that results in the oblig­a­tory , peo­ple a ded every weh.
The idea that homi­cide rates would be a part of the con­ver­sa­tion , at least with me is that it seems that peo­ple who are still alive seem to have no con­cern about the high mur­der rate in our country.
In fact, my *friend* spared no effort in detail­ing to a cou­ple of us that the peo­ple who are dying in Jamaica are respon­si­ble for their own deaths. You know the drill, “bway sup­pen inna sup­pen” , .….……me rolling y eyes.
So by that mea­sure the so called bad peo­ple who do some­thing are deserv­ing of the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment.…. to be gunned down.

My con­cern prompt­ed me to ask whether he was at all con­cerned about the inno­cent peo­ple who just hap­pened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? He told me if he goes into a bar and sees cer­tain peo­ple he walks out. I asked, since you know what to look for, <rolling my eyes again> what about the peo­ple who do [not] have a clue what to look for, peo­ple just pass­ing through who mere­ly stopped to get a drink of water?
Naturally he had no answer for that.…..
My ques­tion still stand for my *friend* and the oth­er Jumekans who con­tin­ue to advance the asa­nine the­o­ry that peo­ple are dying every­where as if it is rea­son to be tol­er­ant of Jamaican’s intol­er­a­ble mur­der rate.
What about the nine peo­ple who were shot at an event in Spring Village Saint Catherine result­ing in three dead, are we sat­is­fied that its okay for peo­ple attend­ing an event to be mur­dered because some­one stand­ing next to oth­er peo­ple has a beef with some­one else?
When we get to the place where we only care about our­selves and our own self­ish plea­sures includ­ing that it isn’t yet our time in this russ­ian roulette style exis­tence we have cre­at­ed for our­selves, you know we are lost.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.