Hilary Robertson-Hickling

As the world comes to terms with the 19th school, college or university shooting in the United States of America, and the senseless death of 33 people, at the last count, at Virginia Tech University, we recognise that, according to the great thinker Albert Einstein, the thinking that got us here will not take us forward.

Here in Jamaica we have embraced the American gun culture and are seeing the effects in our schools and communities. The movie and the music industries are prime platforms for the promotion of guns and killing; the gun manufacturers are among the greatest beneficiaries of this situation. In the U.S.A., some of the most talented rappers have violent pasts and have been killed in gunfights or will face a violent future. Their music is filled with violence, self hate and loathing, and a profound disrespect for black women.

We have embraced the worst aspects of American culture, especially that which represents the worst of the African American culture where 'hos and pimps' are celebrated. That means that black women's greatest aspiration seems to be that of selling their bodies, with their pimps collecting the money from the sale. That reflects such a tragedy; imagine we who have been bought and sold are now buying and selling ourselves. Willie Lynch has definitively put a curse on some of us since 1712, and the curse has lasted for nearly 300 years.

Lynch is immortalised in the American practice of lynching which saw hundreds of thousands of mainly African American men killed by cross-burning American Christians and having their bodies hung on trees. This practice was to keep these people in their place in fear, trembling and subjection, and to make them unwilling to fight and die for their freedom if necessary. Billie Holiday's song, Strange Fruit, mourns this terrible practice.

Words to lynch

Don Imus used words to lynch the high achievers and student athletes who make up the Rutgers basketball team, whom he described as 'nappy-headed hos'. Eventually he lost his job after the sponsors of his shock jock radio show withdrew their money. As a self-respecting black woman, I am about to propose that we need to confront the African American and the African-Jamaican men and their backers who rake in billions. They demean us in daily life and in their music, and we must utilise the most powerful tool we have - the withdrawal of support, especially our financial support. We need to 'womancott' the shows, withdraw our emotional support and confront those women who are in support of this behaviour, who by their conduct reduce us to the gutter. We are colluding with those who treat us with contempt and disrespect, and will encourage future generations to be satisfied with the scorn that they heap on us.

A lion-hearted friend of mine confronted a woman she observed who was wearing a dress that was so short that her genitals were showing. She asked her if she was a mother, if she was aware that her private parts were 'out a door', and if she had really left her home like that. Freedom for this woman and her musical cohorts is destruction to me and the millions of women who fight to wrest ourselves from the degradation of history. How can we foster high self-esteem in people who see themselves at the lowest place on humanity's ladder? We cannot demand respect from others when we do not respect ourselves.