The Editor, Sir.

No one should be surprised at the exposure of inner-city youths to violence. What should surprise us, as it has the learned Dr. Claudette Crawford-Brown, is that only a small percentage of these youths display post-traumatic stress syndrome. I argue, unlike you sir, that while this is not normal it is not inherently bad.

If this relatively small survey mirrors the conditions of the general inner city, I propose that the inner city has, or is on the brink of developing a new hybrid. These children, in effect, have evolved a buffer that neither their parents nor the government could give them.

Adaptive and maladaptive survival mechanisms are not inherently bad. Callousness does not directly lead to hopelessness as the editorial has suggested. It is an acceptance of facts in the same way that a bad smell is forgotten once inhaled enough. These adaptations are what keep the youths of the inner city going. Would you have them huddle in a corner and cry? Is it not through ignoring the pain that all great warriors have continued fighting? We should not disable the armour these children have made.

Selection pressures have given inner-city youths cold fitness. They are here displaying a selective advantage over the middle class since, in any case, facing a situation with a cold disconnect is better than hiding in small fortresses. It is hence not the duty of the middle and upper class, who have researched the strength of the inner city, to convert their children into crying babies.

Suggestions for change

First, recognition that the most callous are the most likely to change for better or worse.

Programmes should intensively and extensively recognise and target the most callous for leadership programmes.

These programmes should forge their 'cold armour' into the metal of moral and mental strength.

Moral leadership should be developed with a coldness that has no mercy on the corrupt.

A message should be sent to criminals that justice will treat them coldly.

A central intelligence agency should strive to replace existing dons with those who have been honed from youth to serve the interests of Jamaicans with strength, productivity and cold efficiency.

And to those who would retreat behind high walls and electronic gates, the world belongs to the powerful who can face it with cold resolution. Until you are one of us, your cowardly presence is greatly disdained.

I am, etc.,

PETER CAMPBELL

Glenmuir High