http://www.jamaica-star.com/thestar/20080328/cleisure/cleisure1.htmlYou know, for the most part we have truly become a violent nation. That we are considered the most murderous country in the world is not even an issue anymore.
Violence has so permeated our culture it has become an integral part of the way we speak, even the very way we live.
I remember watching the Stanford Twenty20 cricket finals earlier this year and as the Chris Gayle-led Jamaicans folded embarrassingly under the spotlight of the final, Beenie Man and Machel Montano were interviewed by a roving reporter who wanted to know which team they thought was going to win.
Montano replied that he thought Trinidad was going to win, arguing that it was Trinidad's time because they had lost to Guyana in the previous final. There was nothing wrong with that. After all, he is Trinidadian and he was supporting his home country.
However, when Beenie Man spoke, a very cold chill ran through my body because, aside from his inability to adequately articulate his thoughts to the tens of millions of people watching worldwide (yes, Jamaica is not the world), he kept singing with glee statements like "Murder! We a go murder dem!" Each time the words left his mouth I flinched because here was perhaps one of our most popular entertainers, reinforcing to the world that we are not satisfied with beating opponents at sport, we have to murder them too. And then we turn around and wonder why people like the New Zealand netball team are afraid of coming here.
In an earlier match in the Twenty20 competition, I don't recall if it was during the quarter-final match, or the semi-final against Guyana, a bunch of violent-looking Jamaicans were seen hoisting a mock coffin into the night sky. It might have seemed harmless to many of us, but to people living outside this country, that coffin can conjure up images in the minds of millions that visiting Jamaica is tantamount to attempting suicide.
Bit by bit we're sending the message to the world that not only are we surrounded by the spectre of death, we celebrate it.
And when you hear the reasons why people are killed in this country you really have to wonder what the heck is going on. The most recent story that jumped at me was one about a woman who was killed because she refused to have sex!
Are you kidding me? What next? Do we go into a supermarket and find that the prices are too high and we shoot the manager? Do we shoot the loan officer at a bank because he or she turned down a loan application? Have we completely lost our minds?
It seems these days that our interpretation of dispute resolution is murder. You and someone can't agree on something, it's best just to kill them and get it over with. It's absolutely crazy!
This latest case is even worse than the one a couple years back, when two teens killed a cab driver so they could steal his money because they wanted to buy sneakers. When that story first broke, I remember doing a double take because I could not believe I had just heard that these kids killed a guy because they wanted to buy shoes. This latest one, though, made me sick to the stomach.
What sickens me even more is that I am sure I am not the only one who experiences these feelings of revulsion in response to what is going on. But do we plan to do anything about it? We would rather run away.
