Orville W. TaylorLAST WEEK, a number of local and international events occurred. Police killed a reputed Spanish Town don, igniting two days of gunfire, arson and open warfare with supporters in his community. Given the anarchy, the rule of law and governance become 'burning' issues and I cannot avoid asking, "What have we done with our democracy?" We have had universal adult suffrage since 1944 and statehood since 1962. Up to then many black Americans had no de facto freedom to vote and they still have no state. We have completely abused ours.
Anyway, let's learn some history. Rosa Parks was buried on Wednesday with lots of fanfare. For the uninitiated, she is labelled the 'Mother of the civil rights movement' in the United States because she refused to give up her seat to a white man as was required under the racist Jim Crow system which prevailed until the 1960s.
While I don't like creating controversy and challenging sacrosanct images (yeah, right!), I have to place Parks in a more accurate historical context. She refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and subsequently got arrested. Although admitting that she was just tired and needed to sit, she later revealed that she actually was fatigued of injustice and decided to make a 'stand' or rather not to. Whatever happened, Rosa 'Parked' herself in the seat, triggering a series of events. The Montgomery bus boycott by African-Americans that followed is regarded as the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King.
NO ORDINARY BLACK WOMAN
As laudable as her act was, Parks was not an ordinary black woman. She was the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). Thus, like our own Alexander Bustamante who knew that no right-minded police constable would shoot a solidly middle-class mulatto as he led the strikes in 1938, she might have thought that she had some 'blackative.'
Therefore, I rate an earlier act of resistance on public transport by diminutive Ida Wells Barnett as more heroic. 'Towering' five feet and weighing less than a hundred pounds, she refused to leave a segregated train coach in 1883 in Memphis, Tennessee. While being forcibly ejected by a Caucasian conductor, and with no regard for low-cholesterol white meat, she jammed her teeth into him, making him realise that he had bitten off more than he could chew. As an indicator of the amount of fight in this 'midget' it took three burly men to extricate her, and even so, they could not remove her. However, she exited at the next station and later successfully sued the railroad for violating the equal accommodation laws. Ironically, this was overturned by the Supreme Court.
At a time when lynching the kidnapping, torture and murder of black people and their 'nigger-loving' white sympathisers, was rampant in the South, Wells-Barnett publicly opposed the maltreatment of blacks and published a newspaper. For the rest of her life she fought against racism and the social marginalisation of blacks in the USA. Unfortunately, this battle has no end in sight and the blacks themselves are making it worse.
When taken in isolation, social marginality and the criminal organisations that it breeds may seem unconnected. However, when one looks at some of the gang-related behaviour across the USA and Jamaica the picture becomes clearer. In 1969, the Crips gang was founded in Los Angeles by Raymond Washington. Inspired by the Black Panther Party, created by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale three years earlier, it was supposed to be a response to the antagonism faced from the Los Angeles Police. Originally it was an acronym meaning Community Resources for Independent People (CRIP). By 1971, it had descended into a gang now co-founded by Stanley 'Tookie' Williams. To mark their distinction from other gangs they wore blue bandanas.
A year later, a rival gang sprang up. Now the Bloods, whose colour is of course, red, became a bloody rival to them. The influence of these gangs has spread across the United States and it has taken many lives. To date there is the feeling that this feud took those of Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG.
Our Jamaican posses from our inner-city garrison areas are similar products. All of our so-called gangs came from groups of marginalised youth who were by and large discarded by, or at best excluded from mainstream society. Here, there is no difference between the Crips and the Bloods. Nonetheless, there is one great difference in this country. The various posses of notoriety Spanglers, Showa, Clansman, One Order, Bibow, Brookists and Sherlocks all wear colours but none of their choosing. While they may have originated in similar circumstances as the Bloods and the Crips they were facilitated and augmented by politicians.
'DONS' DEVELOPED
RELATIVE INDEPENDENCE
As politicians' influence and monetary support waned, the 'dons' developed relative independence and by their illegal activities were able to do far more than the patrons who supported them initially. True, they rule by fear but they also protect those who bow to their will and feed many from their illegal proceeds. That is why they have so much support.
I agree with Derrick Smith, Opposition Spokesman on Security when he suggests that the Government is not facing the crime problem squarely. But Mr. Smith needs to join with the Government, police and military and have a united front for the first time since the 1970s. After all, he was there on both sides of the fence when the mess was being created.
I bet that if the bus were going to Spanish Town Rosa would not get off 'Ida.'
Dr. Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
