THE EDITOR, Sir:
I MUST express my overwhelming relief that the elections are over and we are going about the business of life in Jamaica as usual.
Congratulations to both sides of the House for the fresh young faces in the Senate and I must express personal pleasure at the continued inclusion of Prof. Trevor Munroe in the Upper House, albeit as a Government Senator, as his keen and insightful contributions, backed by rigorous research, has served and will continue to serve us well.
Now to that business of the Jamaican sniper. As a Jamaican living in Virginia I have experienced firsthand the kind of negative feedback that Jamaicans must deal with individually in the immediate vicinity of the capture of these two individuals. The issue of violent Jamaicans is no laughing matter and demands intense damage-control from the local power-brokers.
Indeed, everyone in this area, Jamaicans, Americans and other ethnic groupings, have all suffered from intense fear and paranoia and overwhelming relief at the capture of these two individuals. And we all as Jamaicans unite in expressing our regret for these actions and passing on our condolences to the families of the individuals.
Yet while I do agree with Garth Rattray's treatise in The Gleaner, he has missed out one of the most important points in this ongoing fiasco. The young Jamaican boy, John Lee Malvo is the victim of poor parenting and the lack of a key figure in his life at a most vulnerable time in his development - his father. We can spend time belabouring the fact that these people are all criminals and scream for the implementation of a terrorist law, but we must deal with our own problems in our own way.
Too many of our young men are being left to fend for themselves way too early and without the requisite skills and qualifications that could give them a firmer footing in whichever society they may be. Where is John Lee Malvo's mother? Why was he taken out of the country and then basically abandoned as an illegal alien in the USA? Doesn't he qualify as a child until he is 18? Whose responsibility is he?
We have lost John Lee Malvo but we do not need to lose another young Jamaican man. Our society must come to grips with the imperative need for relevant social systems and structures that seek to address the fall-out that characterises the lives of so many of our young men (moreso than women) whose lives become corrupted at a very early age and who simply descend into the mire of gun violence, prison sentences and death penalties.
John Lee Malvo is a victim of a series of circumstances which have resulted in his being reified in the sniper issue as "The Jamaican Sniper." Very little mention is made of the fact that this 17-year-old young man had no prior ill-record before leaving Jamaica or that the 41- year-old adult, involved in these horrible acts, John Allen Muhammad, is a full-fledged product of a different society with different values.
It remains our perpetual curse that the majority of Jamaicans can only make international headlines when they commit some great atrocity in a crescendo of deviance.
Let us not, for one single minute lose focus and condemn so many other young men to the charms and wiles of charismatic, criminally intentioned men here and elsewhere. We must address the issue of parenting and early socialisation if we intend to stem the tide. We must get the real or surrogate parents involved with the lives of these young me. Indeed, we must be willing to put our money where our mouth is and leave the ghettos of gossip behind. We have to begin at the beginning. So I ask in closing where, in heaven's name are the parents of these young men?
I am, etc.,
DONNA P. HOPE
dhope@gmu.edu
M.Phil. Doctoral Student
George Mason University
Fairfax
Virginia
Via Go-Jamaica
