Beverley Anderson-Manley
IF EVER there was a time for peace and love, it is the Christmas season. However, there must be a basis for peace and love.
All Jamaicans, including the perpetrators of anti-social and criminal behaviour, are impacted by the results we are getting in the society from a spiritual, psychological, political and economic perspective. Everything feeds on everything so that 'everything is indeed everything'.
FORGIVENESS A CREATIVE SPACE
There are several types of behaviour that can give us some degree of peace and love over the Christmas season and beyond. These include the capacity to forgive, as the Bible says "70 times seven". Human beings can and do carry out this type of behaviour.
REPRISAL MURDERS
Statistics show that a high percentage of homicides are as a result of reprisal killings. More than half of all murders in the last three years were attributable to reprisals (30 per cent) and domestic violence (24 per cent).
In addition, 80 per cent of all persons treated at hospitals for violence-related injuries in 2003, were injured during a fight or argument.
Reprisal murders are the results we get when we do not practise forgiveness and when we think that there is no alternative to using a gun to resolve conflict.
Forgiveness provides the space within which healing takes place. In forgiving, we are not condoning peoples' behaviour we are powerfully saying that we will not allow this behaviour to determine our lives.
It is not surprising that unforgiving attitudes give rise to so many murders by persons who see no other way out but guns.
The murder rate is highest among our young men (age group 14-24) who live in substandard conditions in what we, who are uptown, term 'inner cities'.
They are quick to tell us that if they are 'inner city', we are 'outer city'. Hence, there is 'them' and 'us'. No wonder we have problems.
HOUSEHOLD HELPERS
This becomes even more dominant in a situation where most women who work are employed as household helpers, often in inhumane conditions.
Surveys show that the majority of these women do not want this type of work but it is what they can do.
Hence, no matter how we in the 'outer city' think we treat 'them' in the 'inner city' fairly, they know what class discrimination feels like.
Many of these women are among the 45.5 per cent heads of households in Jamaica who live under stress and strain at home and on the job.
Imagine with me for a moment how many persons in the inner city live: in crowded 'housing' conditions; in yards where there is one standpipe where women and men have to wash themselves openly in front of men and children; where toilet facilities are often non-existent; where infrastructure is lacking; where the state agencies are no longer visible; where garbage collection is a thing of the past; where violence is the order of the day; where in many cases, children are being 'brought up' by other children; where children are having children; and where 'inner-city' households are having five times as many children as 'outer city' households.
To sum up, where the moral, social and economic fabric of the environment is not only distorted but in many cases is destroyed.
For respect to be possible and practised, those of us who live in the 'outer city' have to begin by seeing our brothers and sisters as human beings.
We have to begin to seriously blur the lines between 'inner' and 'outer' cities.
THINK ON THESE THINGS
Can we get past our social class and race differences to a place where it is possible to love and respect each other to carve out a creative space in society where everyone has the basic necessities of life? I think we can.
Let us think on these things as we talk about peace and love in our society during this Christmas season. For many people women, men and children it is a matter of life and death.
Beverley Manley is a political scientist, broadcaster and gender consultant. Email address: Bmanley@kasnet.com
EDITOR'S NOTE: Regular columnist Dawn Ritch is on leave for two weeks.
