Is equality an illusion?
Published:Monday | June 9, 2025 | 12:06 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Equality is a sought-after ideal but as Bob Marley said: “... a fleeting illusion to be pursued but never attained”.
There however should be continued silence for it is the right of the owner of a household to refuse entry to any guest or even family. Who anywhere can call that “injustice or discrimination”.
Our own people are barred and banned from active participation in many spheres of official life. Their ‘protest’ litters the streets with wares from sweeties to stereos.
They are stereotyped to be “nasty, uncombed, needing a bath”, cursed by those who stole their pensions, family land and homes.”Me nuh know if ah yuh clothes are ah yuh smell bad, Yuh fi teck care ah yuh self. Me should ah neva meck yuh drive enna mi car”. “Licked, (liced) washed up for years, merely surviving because of “pride”. Insulted, injured by the thieves of their estates. But for the grace of God, saved from committing as Cliff was tempted “some dreadful crime”.
Scoffed in commercial advertisements like the ‘Uncle Jimmy’ who has lost his way forgotten by family. Those who kotch on our pavements of course, have no family. But when they are blazed to ashes` and compensation is to be parcelled out, there are many bawling recipients.
There is no response on serious concerns of the people even as they lay down their bodies on cardboard outside the annals of supreme courts. Edicts and decisions that emanate are welcomed crumbs.
Ants after all create castles out of crumbs. That is the beauty of the Jamaican people packing up in rattled ram shacked coasters making exquisite tourist destinations at rivers, a friend’s wooden stilted house, yet enjoying nature without the expense of a credit-card five-star hotel. Crosses are transformed into crowns even as they cannot step a foot into our north or south coast high-rise paradises ever.
The ‘no-subject’ adolescence with street smarts boards a plane to scrub floors internationally. They may not play the right rules but succeed despite the hazardous, victimised scenarios they now escape from ‘home’. The grit to even return and invest and be robbed still carving dignity, shows a knave to be a knight.
The university of life is great teacher. The ‘new’ rules could level the playfield after an understanding of the unpaved road, that donkey sey ‘no level’.
CATHERINE NEIL