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“The idea that sex is something a woman gives a man, and she loses something when she does that, which again for me is nonsense. I want us to raise girls differently where boys and girls start to see sexuality as something that they own, rather than something that a boy takes from a girl.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Who failed our boys? The system or the society?




They say the Jamaican system is built to crush the dreams and desires of the poorer class by instilling mental
Suppression and fear which keeps the poor even the educated few in lower end jobs. The poor always blames the system, this imaginary dictorial network seems responsible for the transgenerational failures of the inner city community
Youths and their inexorable pursuit of crime  and violence as a means of livelihood. 

Some will say JAmaica's Education system has failed the youths. This education cannot get them a job because there are no
Jobs. Truth is we have an education system that is post colonial, a classroom formula designed to create workers to turn over the cogs of an industrial society. We have people going into the teaching profession because it is the easiest or cheapest faculty, teachers without creative abilities, frustrated with their jobs and in the end the student loses out. Children should
Be encouraged to use their imagination and creative knowledge instead of rote memorization and pumping their heads with information that may not help them
In day to day survival. 

It's a miscondition of thinking brought on by uninformed parents who tell children born into poor families that "the system" is perpetually against poor black people in Jamaica. From their formative years these young men are under the impression that very few of them will ever amount to nothing. Parental socialization has a lot to do with the notions that these boys embrace. So they grow up seeing successful people and rich people as oppressors. I think its wickedness because they often prey on people in the same fragile, conditions like them who are hustling to make a living like them. Something I am writing about in my new book. I am not saying that the government is not responsible for failing to produce new jobs for its growing youth population or that we have a backwards education system that was geared at providing workers for a thriving sugarcane, banana and small business industry but if you tell a child from the get go to see others in the society that he lives in as constantly fighting against his upliftment then you will create a social menace.

The people are in Darkness... Most of what happens here could never happen in other countries where enlightenment of the masses is central. I don't understand how we do not see that it is unintellectuality combined with superficiality and savagery that are the main cause of our problems why we can't solve our differences and conflicts amicable and why we have no qualms about taking someone's life over triviality. We are all ate up by nothingness.

We like to move from one good experience to another without effort or responsibility got what is lost to
us along the way. I am still trying to decipher how one can justify killing unarmed people or innocent children. 

Parents in Jamaica have kept up with too much almshouse with their children, subtlety encouraging deviant behavior until it brims over into the killing of their own. I often wonder if people do not consider the children who are left without
Parents when they decide to take the life of another. Who is going to take care of those children? Is it ok for those children to suffer and to be denied a relationship with their parent?whatever long suffering you brook upon a next family shall
be extended tenfolds upon yours. 

I have brothers and innumerable male relatives in my extended family and truth is we were never socialized to be violent. We had to go to church every Sunday and I know despite the gun fingers that they put up to a Tommy Lee song that none of them are really dangerous people at least not that we know of. We know that they only push badness to ease off the step pon them attitude of men from other communities who exhibited consistent aggression towards them. I remember a particular time my cousins were afraid because other hostile males often challenge my kins. because they knew that none of them were essentially
bad men. They are largely pacific, it was painstaking when Gussy was murdered by the police because we knew Gussy was more afraid of violence than anything else. His death pointed to the vague idea that many young men have of placing confidence in the protection of outlaws than in the Police Force. It is for this reason why he is lost to us forever.

I am upset with his killing but I know that his death is not solely the responsibility of external forces. He choose to associate with certain elements and was killed by association. He had a choice and he chose in my estimation when the clouds of grief and sadness passed, he opted for death. His death was as much his choice as it was that of the individual who decided to take his life that dreary Thursday morning. 

Boys are socialized different from girls. My sisters and I were encouraged by my father to seek an education so that we could escape the fate of so many pregnant peers. Gussy's sisters were also educated including a sister who is a teacher. We don't pay much attention to the education if our boys. Most mothers are more concerned with ensuring that their daughters have a better bargaining power in a relationship and bigger pool of men to choose from so they emphasize female academical pursuits and not male. They claim men will find a way to fend for themselves. We need to
 pay more attention to our boys because for too long as parents we have neglected and ignored the
Emotional development of our male child. We have to be careful about who our boys associate with because they won't listen to what we say but adapt the behavior of other male role models on our communities. We must emphasize that our boys must never put themselves in a position that their lives become indispensable. 

Parents don't have conversations with children so that they can understand what is going on on a child's mind. Children are mostly physically abused until they reach a certain age when parents realize they are too big to be beaten to conform and disregard their behavior. Our biggest issue is not that the system has failed our children but that our families, the collective values of our communities, the media,music and matriarchal family has failed our boys. 

Sometimes I wonder if we were a more morally inclined or educated society if we would have the issues that we are facing today. I think " almshouse" as one blogger stated it thrives in Jamaica because everybody in Jamaica loves the "almshouse business". How can we
encourage our boys become good citizens when their is a pervasive idea being reinforced among them
that only money crimes brook profits in our country. 

I sat recently with some little boys who my family and theirs do not get along. As I stared into their faces I concluded what I have always believed that our children are born a blank state. These boys were not afraid of me but more
Concerned about what their
  Parents might say if they saw them talking to
Me. Their parents had
already chosen sides for them. Parents create enemies for
Children on the basis that are more
Interested in winning an argument than acknowledging truth and doing what is obviously right. 

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