PUBLIC RELATIONS can take us only so far. In the wake of the link between the suspected snipers in the United States and our country, the JTB pulled advertisements in an effort to minimise damage by association. The diplomats and several local people rolled into action to convince the American Government and people that Jamaicans and Jamaica are not like that. This routine response is delivering diminishing returns.
It is past time to stop burying our heads in the sand about our international image and trying to use glitz to paper over increasingly negative perceptions of Jamaicans and Jamaica. In the long run, the PR will be no more effective than the diplomatic efforts to preserve the sugar and banana protocols which are dead under WTO rules. On November 5 we carried a story from the Globe and Mail on black crime in Toronto. While blacks make up 8.1 per cent of Toronto's population they are charged for 27 per cent of the violent crimes including murder, sexual assault and gun offences. The data, which in our mode of denial we would prefer not to be confronted with, are showing an over-representation of Jamaicans in these crimes. Jamaican-Canadians make up 2.4 per cent of the population of Toronto but are held responsible for 9.5 per cent of violent crimes.
At home we are an extraordinarily crime-ridden society by any measure. The general murder rate, ranking near the top in the world, and the rate of murder of police officers are two of the most telling measures. Guns and crime have infiltrated the culture to an alarming degree. And it is time to honestly acknowledge that that culture of violence has been exported. The yardie gangs of Britain and the various posses of North America are as much Jamaican as reggae music and sea, sand and sun.
Our migrants and travellers, now facing increasing scrutiny, will face greater exclusion in the future. The tourism industry will suffer further from the negative Jamaican image. Those deportees who represent an ironic back export of crime will add to the local crime wave and provide further links to international crime. The inflow of guns and the outflow of drugs between Jamaican criminals at home and abroad can only exacerbate our domestic crime situation.
The governments of countries facing what amounts to particular Jamaican crime problem on their shores cannot, out of diplomatic nicety and goodwill, a great deal of which have already come our way, continue to refrain from a special response - to our detriment.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
