It was not the absence of a fire escape, nor the lack of adequate street lighting that killed Nikita Belgrave, Pearl Cornelius, Kellisha Olliverre, Shana Griffith, Kelly Ann Welch and Tiffany Harding! No! These six young and beautiful black Barbadian women were killed by the conscious, pre-meditated and deliberate actions of two young black men!
The robbery of a store in the heart of Bridgetown is not a haphazard event. Rather, it is a pre-meditated, planned enterprise.
And so, when those two young black men exploded that incendiary device and set the Campus Trends store alight, they had to know that there were young women in the store who might suffer severe injury or death – but they just did not care!
Clearly, they had no sense of there being any connection between themselves and these young daughters of our nation – they had no empathy, no human feeling! They were totally self centred and self consumed, and the fate of these innocent young women who had caused them no offence, meant nothing to them!
And what is particularly troubling is the fact that last Friday’s horrific event is by no means an isolated happening.
Indeed, for some time now we have been witnessing a number of brutal and callous murders carried out by people who are manifestly alienated, atomized, self-consumed, and lacking in human empathy and feeling.
The recent casual execution of a young Pinelands basketball player is a case in point, as well as the February 2010 gunning down of Fabian Antonio Greaves at an open air street party in Waterhall Land.
So, this is where we have now reached in Barbados! We now live in a country in which a growing number of our fellow residents are demonstrating that they are capable of coldly, callously and remorselessly destroying human life. What does this mean, what does this say about out nation?
Barbados is such a small and intimate country that we should be existing and functioning like a family – a humane and well ordered family in which we share our collective resources, look out for each other, set individual and family goals, and take pride in assisting each other to attain such goals.
How could we have fallen so far from this ideal? Why have we degenerated to such a stage that we are now producing people who are so alienated from their fellow citizens, and so bereft of a collective national or family interest.
And most importantly – “Who or what is to blame?” Should any blame be ascribed to the politicians, the political parties, the pastors and priests, the educators and their schools, or the profit-seeking businessmen and women?
And what about us, the ordinary citizens of Barbados – why have we allowed the continued existence of a social structure marred by deep pockets of poverty and deprivation amidst a vista of comfort and plenty, and a capitalism-based culture in which the American dominated media inculcates negative values of selfishness, individualism, lack of compassion and contempt for those who are considered to be different or unsuccessful?
Clearly, a major national effort is required to retrieve the situation – a major effort in which highly motivated and committed citizens come together to target and to reform a number of social sectors and institutions, including our Barbadian family life, our neighbourhoods and communities, our national political behaviour and policies, our Barbadian business system and culture, our educational system, the national mass media and the internet and violent video game culture, and our churches and religious sector.
