What­ev­er the mer­its and de­mer­its that have come to be as­so­ci­at­ed with Dr Sel­wyn Cud­joe, in re­la­tion to the var­i­ous frac­tions of our so­ci­ety, I agree with him that the Afro male youth, and more like­ly fe­male al­so, is in cri­sis, and this cri­sis would con­tin­ue to get worse and broad­en un­less some con­cert­ed ef­fort is specif­i­cal­ly aimed at ar­rest­ing it. It would seem that many are caught up?in the flip side of a civilised so­ci­ety and the way out should be of se­ri­ous con­cern and ben­e­fit to all of us, since we all live in the same so­ci­ety. Maybe those un­able to achieve self­hood by le­git­i­mate­ly com­pet­ing and achiev­ing in an or­gan­ised so­ci­ety, re­treat in­to a bas­tion of self, of dis­tort­ed re­spect, rank, gangs, ter­ri­to­ry, bling and such street val­ues as crim­i­nal sub­sti­tutes for the re­al re­spect, rank, groups, ter­ri­to­ry and bling con­ferred by so­ci­ety, via po­si­tion and wealth, on those re­gard­ed as suc­cess­ful in the so­ci­ety.

This is what I meant by be­ing caught up in?the flip side of civilised so­ci­ety. Deal­ing with the prob­lem is not go­ing to be easy and could be, quite frankly, dan­ger­ous for those who ven­ture in­to their world, even with the best of in­ten­tions. Per­haps many are the off­spring of a gen­er­a­tion lost even be­fore now but were not in suf­fi­cient num­bers to be recog­nised as a so­cial prob­lem. And per­haps a younger gen­er­a­tion has al­ready been lost but has not yet tak­en its place in the crim­i­nal hi­er­ar­chy. That we must do some­thing if we are to en­joy the ben­e­fits of so­ci­ety and civil­i­sa­tion is not in ques­tion. The ques­tion is what can be done and what do we do? First we must put aside par­ti­san­ship in deal­ing with the prob­lem since it stands to make all our ef­forts to build a bet­ter so­ci­ety for our­selves and our chil­dren worth­less. It may not be easy, it may not be smooth, but we may not have a choice or op­tion in the mat­ter. We are afraid to walk our streets, even dri­ve in cer­tain places, open our gates, go to recre­ation ar­eas, run our busi­ness­es. The pris­ons are over­flow­ing and our schools are fast be­com­ing train­ing grounds for crim­i­nals. Our se­cu­ri­ty forces are al­ready out­num­bered and un­able to cope. We must do some­thing, and do some­thing good, fast.

I sug­gest, along the lines of Cud­joe, that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment sets up a com­mit­tee, with sub-com­mit­tees, com­posed of lead­ing Afros con­sist­ing of, but not re­strict­ed to, Jack Warn­er, Cud­joe, Dr Sel­wyn Ryan, Makan­dal Daa­ga, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Leroy Clarke, and oth­er such promi­nent Afros, NGOs, com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists in the ghet­to, psy­chol­o­gists, judges, po­lice, UWI aca­d­e­mics, etc–peo­ple who have come out of the per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence of the chal­lenges faced by Afro youth in achiev­ing suc­cess–and al­low this com­mit­tee to make rec­om­men­da­tions, and pos­si­bly im­ple­ment so­lu­tions, to deal with the prob­lem. In this re­spect hav­ing oth­er rel­e­vant min­is­ters or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives would be help­ful in im­ple­ment­ing so­lu­tions. Oth­ers can be in­vit­ed to make sub­mis­sions. Some have said suc­cess or fail­ure, wealth or pover­ty, crim­i­nal or law-abid­ing is a cul­ture, based on the re­la­tion­ship–our be­liefs de­ter­mine our val­ues, our val­ues de­ter­mine our at­ti­tudes, our at­ti­tudes de­ter­mine our ac­tions–which may in turn lead to suc­cess or fail­ure, crim­i­nal or law-abid­ing, wealth or pover­ty. As such we must be con­scious that suc­cess in deal­ing with the Afro youth prob­lem may bor­der on chang­ing the cul­ture that un­der­lies their fail­ure to be­come suc­cess­ful in our so­ci­ety. In this re­gard there may be no im­me­di­ate suc­cess in deal­ing with the prob­lem this way, but more a longer-term ben­e­fit which pre­vents oth­ers, and pos­si­bly our­selves, falling vic­tim to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

At least our chil­dren may have a place to call home.