Race in TT and rising criminality

Most everything that happens here that is important enough to attract public attention or outrage is immediately framed within a political and therefore ethnic paradigm.

Personally, this tendency has become so sickening that I begin to wonder at times whether we are wasting our time financing the education of our people.

As soon as something atrocious or out of the ordinary happens here, the first question we hear is: “What kinda people involved?” The answer to that question provides the vindication to indulge in the bigotry of racial profiling and irrational cultural generalisations.

So, as is expected in these types of issues, we have begun to believe the ethnic caricatures we conjure are the truth. Professionals at the highest echelons of their professions exhibit the same bigotry which is generously distributed across our entire cultural spectrum.

This perverse ethnic and cultural conditioning begin to manifest itself in pre-adolescence in this country. If you think I’m wrong, I invite you to listen to any radio talk show.

We falsely proclaim that we are a rainbow people. That is only a veneer. Many foreigners who have lived here for significant lengths of time have remarked that we are just about the most racist society that they have encountered.

Negative racial profiling has been cited as a definite cause of individual indiscipline among minority groups in schools in the US. Racial stereotyping surprisingly often enough emanates — at times innocently — from teachers, whether of the same or different race.

The psychological burden imposed upon the child is pretty weighty considering that his/her home situation might be stressful as well. This type of “stress” frequently leads to alienation and delinquent behaviour.

The shift from delinquency to deviance to criminality is almost natural. The further grouping of “like-minded” individuals into gangs is not too far-fetched.

It is long past the time that we explore this issue scientifically in our environment so as to preemptively curtail the excessive social pathology that plagues the country.

A proactive approach such as this might find greater success in the medium to long term.

Surely, our “reaction” to rising criminality thus far has been a failure. There is a need to explore the education system to eradicate “system-related” issues that foster negative ethnic and cultural conditioning as a vital means of tackling existing escalating social pathology and criminality.

STEVE SMITH via email