The Editor, Sir:

This is my reaction to a rather unflattering and inflammatory cartoon of the Prime Minister in Thursday's Gleaner.

I'm not on any political bandwagon, but I'm concerned about this pictorial portrayal of any Prime Minister.

Nor am I against criticisms of our leaders; they are elected to serve, and the territory goes with criticism, but not at this level!

What could have engendered such a feeling in a talented cartoonist to produce such an offensive picture of the Prime Minister (PNP or JLP)?

As a woman I take umbrage to this picture, but, as a black Jamaican woman of African descent, I felt mortified; the picture jars the memory back to the days of the disgusting and disgraceful display of African enslaved women at the slavers' selling block.

Black History Month

Isn't it ironic that such a picture should appear on February 1, the beginning of the so-called 'Black History Month'?

As we enter the 200th year since the abolition of slavery by the British, it would serve us well to read and re-read some history. A good beginning is In Miserable Slavery - Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750-1786 by Douglas Hall, and A History of Jamaica, by the Reverend W.I. Gardner, also in the 18th century.

This cartoon is loaded, and sends the wrong message to our young people who are desperately in need of good role models, to enhance their self-esteem and to help them to aspire to better things. The black female has too long been depicted and sometimes treated as objects.

I am, etc.,

F.L. SPENCER-STRACHAN

Medical Anthropologist

55A Lady Musgrave Road