Go Lean Commentary
“Black men and boys” …
… this is a special group in the population of the New World, the Americas. This group has been victims and villains. To the point that academicians and clinicians alike can conclude that “hurt people hurt people”.
Societal defects within this group are higher than normal, compared to other populations groups. This includes violence, delinquencies, incarceration, repression and hopelessness.
It is hard to be a “Black man or boy” … in the Americas.
This statement could have been echoed from the 1600’s all the way up to today.
One of the greatest advocates for Black causes, abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895), was right when he said:
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
However, we say:
“For there to be victory, there must be a struggle; for there to be victory, there must be losers.”
The New World experience for people of African descent is one of struggle; but our people have made a lot of progress over the last 2 centuries especially; that means we have “ruffled a lot of feathers” along the way. Caribbean music icon Bob Marley worded it perfectly in a song that was released posthumously: “Buffalo Soldier”. The lyrics say:
Fighting on arrival; fighting for survival.
That fight though, was not always successful.
The experience of the Black men and boys in the New World is that these ones have often been hurt. Consider just the US experience with Lynchings in the Appendix A and Appendix VIDEO below, where “a total of 4,733 persons had died by lynching since 1882”; (Black men and boys were almost always the victims, with a few sprinkling of women here and there).
There is no excusing, rationalizing or minimizing this injustice. This “hurt” was state-action, state-sponsored and extra-judicial via mob-violence. (Other countries in the Americas also had lynchings, not just the Southern States of the US).
With this above introduction, is there any wonder that the crime rate is higher for Black men and boys than any other sub-group in the population? This is the accepted premise that “hurt people hurt people” – see Appendix C below.
This fact causes breach in society. How do “we” repair this breach in societal dynamics?
This question was posed by an academician, Dr. Donald McCartney of the Bahamas. He composed a White Paper to address this question of “How to repair this breach?” and identified some viable solutions, not just for the Bahamas, but for all the Caribbean. Considering that 29 of the 30 countries that caucus with the political Caribbean possess a majority Black (or non-White) population, this is an apropos discussion for this movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. See that full White Paper here, and an Excerpt as follows:
White Paper Title: Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean – EXCERPT
By: Dr. Donald McCartney…
As we approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the same questions, regarding Black men and boys, are being raised again.
These questions are being revived because many, too many Black men and boys are not a part of the economic structure or the body politic. Upon close examination, it becomes clear that many of them are not in community with their ethnic group.
For the most part, Black men and boys live in isolation, better yet, they are marginalized. They find it difficult to connect with society in general and the significant persons in their lives in particular.
The spiraling murder rate and other acts of violence (particularly against young men and the elderly), makes it clear, that many Black men and boys in the Caribbean, pose a serious and critical problem of interpersonal violence in every corridor and thoroughfare that Caribbean peoples and residents must cross. Consequently, Black men and boys in the Caribbean are feared, demonized and vilified.
…
See the full White Paper here: http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14392
The Caribbean has some work to do. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for effecting change in the Caribbean; it introduces the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as a vehicle to bring about the desired change in the region’s societal engines (economics, security and governing).
Our situation is bad, a crisis even! Some of our communities can even be categorized as Failed-States. But the Go Lean book asserts that a “crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. Thusly, this movement has formulated a roadmap to elevate the societal engines in the Caribbean. The book confesses that “this” is a Big Deal – heavy-lifting – but lays out the Way Forward with best-practices, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies, so as to conclude:
Yes, we can!
The first step in Repairing the Breach must be the recognition that “hurt people hurt people”. Rather than throwing these people away, we need to work to reconcile them into Caribbean society. This is the modus operandi of the foregoing White Paper by Dr, McCartney.
But throw away, run away, flee away and outright abandonment is exactly what has been happening; this is the current disposition of Caribbean youth. Too many people leave, and their absence damages the fabric of Caribbean society. The region is suffering a debilitating brain-drain rate estimated at 70% with some countries reporting up to 81%. This alarming abandonment rate is due to “push-and-pull” factors.
- “Push” refers to the overbearing deficiencies in the homeland that forces people to seek refuge.
- “Pull” refers to the lure that the “grass is greener on the other side” in foreign lands like the US, Canada and EU countries.
The next step to Repair the Breach therefore is to work to keep our people here at home. The quest of the Go Lean roadmap in lowering these “push-and-pull” factors is therefore paramount.
This Go Lean/CU roadmap is designed to provide better stewardship (governance), to ensure that the failures of the past, in the Caribbean and other regions – like the US – do not re-occur here in the Caribbean homeland. The book posits that the United States should not be the model for us to follow in the Caribbean – consider the atrocities in Appendix A; that country has racism embedded in its DNA and it still re-surfaces. No, we must NOT fashion ourselves as parasites of the US, but rather pursue a status as a protégé, benefiting from their lessons-learned but molding our own better society.
It is what it is! We cannot go backwards and change the past; no, all we can do is change-improve the future.
Therefore, the Go Lean movement advocates for Black Caribbean people to stay in the Caribbean, positing that it is easier – after the required reformation and transformation – to “prosper where planted here” than to emigrate to foreign shores.
The book Go Lean … Caribbean posits that America is plagued with institutional racism and Crony-Capitalism. It is therefore not the eco-system for the Caribbean to model. Rather the roadmap designs more empowerments for all of Caribbean society.
In general, the CU will employ better strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate internal and external threats.
- Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.
Early in the Go Lean book, this need for careful technocratic stewardship of the regional Caribbean economy was pronounced (Declaration of Interdependence – Page 12 – 13) with these acknowledgements and statements:
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.
xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.
The Go Lean book presents 370 pages of instructions for how to reform and transform the Caribbean member-states. It stresses the key community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to shepherd a better society.
This commentary commences a 4-part series on Repairing the Breach; using the foregoing White Paper by Dr. McCartney as the premise. This entry is 1 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of solutions to assuage the plight of Black men and boys. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:
- Repairing the Breach: ‘Hurt People Hurt People’
- Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
- Repairing the Breach: One Option – National Youth Service
- Repairing the Breach: Image Impacts Economics
All of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage the Caribbean failing dispositions among our Black Men and boys. We recognize that something is wrong … today, as has been the case ever since Black men and boys were first brought to the New World. Yes, this problem dates back to slavery and the original Slave Trade.
The Go Lean roadmap declares that “enough is enough” with the Failed-State statuses and societal abandonment in the Caribbean region. Why should our people leave for an uncertain future, when it could be easier for the average person to remediate and mitigate defects in the Caribbean homeland? This is better than submitting to institutional racism of a foreign land, i.e. USA. That is equivalent to “jumping from the frying pan to the fire”.
It is time for the proper empowerments in the Caribbean! It is time to build a better society. The strategies, tactics and implementations proposed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean are conceivable, believable and achievable. We can do these! We can be better.
Everyone in the Caribbean are hereby urged to lean-in for this Go Lean roadmap. 🙂
Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
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Appendix A: Lynchings in the US
Statistics for lynchings have traditionally come from three sources primarily, none of which covered the entire historical time period of lynching in the United States. Before 1882, no reliable statistics are assembled on a national level. In 1882, the Chicago Tribune began to systematically tabulate lynchings. In 1908, the Tuskegee Institute began a systematic collection of lynching reports under the direction of Monroe Work at its Department of Records, drawn primarily from newspaper reports. Monroe Work published his first independent tabulations in 1910, although his report also went back to the starting year 1882.[109] Finally, in 1912, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People started an independent record of lynchings. The numbers of lynchings from each source vary slightly, with the Tuskegee Institute’s figures being considered “conservative” by some historians.[57]
Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, defined conditions that constituted a recognized lynching, a definition which became generally accepted by other compilers of the era:
“There must be legal evidence that a person was killed. That person must have met death illegally. A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing. The group must have acted under the pretext of service to Justice, Race, or Tradition.”
The records of Tuskegee Institute remain the single most complete source of statistics and records on this crime since 1882 for all states, although modern research has illuminated new incidents in studies focused on specific states in isolation.[110] As of 1959, which was the last time that Tuskegee Institute’s annual report was published, a total of 4,733 persons had died by lynching since 1882. To quote the report,
“Except for 1955, when three lynchings were reported in Mississippi, none has been recorded at Tuskegee since 1951. In 1945, 1947, and 1951, only one case per year was reported. The most recent case reported by the institute as a lynching was that of Emmett Till, 14, a Negro who was beaten, shot to death, and thrown into a river at Greenwood, Mississippi on August 28, 1955…For a period of 65 years ending in 1947, at least one lynching was reported each year. The most for any year was 231 in 1892. From 1882 to 1901, lynchings averaged more than 150 a year. Since 1924, lynchings have been in a marked decline, never more than 30 cases, which occurred in 1926…”[111]
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The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama reported 3,959 American victims of “racial terror lynchings” in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950.
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Most, but not all lynchings ceased during the 1960s.[21][31] The murder of Michael Donald in Alabama in 1981 was the last recorded lynching in the United States. [Though many Hate Crimes have been recorder and/or prosecuted since then].
…
Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – retrieved March 1, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#Statistics
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Appendix B VIDEO – The Origins of Lynching Culture in the United States – https://youtu.be/hPdh46k7b38
Published on Apr 7, 2015 – How did the practice of lynching begin and evolve in American history? How did Ida B. Wells, a black female investigative journalist, start to challenge some of the entrenched practices of the South? Watch Paula Giddings, professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College, explore one of the most challenging topics in U.S. history: the history and origins of lynching. Find out more: https://www.facinghistory.org/mocking…
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Appendix C – Book: Hurt People Hurt People: Hope and Healing for Yourself and Your Relationships
By: Dr. Sandra D. Wilson (Author)
Summary:
“Hurt people hurt people” is more than a clever phrase. Hurt people hurt others because they themselves have been hurt. And each one of us has been hurt to one degree or another. As that damage causes us to become defensive and self-protective, we may lash out at others. Hurting becomes a vicious cycle.
Review:
“Dr. Sandy Wilson knows why people hurt, where they hurt, and how to heal those hurts. She gets right to the heart of these matters in her very insightful and provocative book. It is a must read for anyone who wants to break free from the bondage of unhealed personal hurts.” -Dr. Chris Thurman, author of The Lies We Believe
Source: Posted September 21, 2015; retrieved March 2, 2018 from: https://www.amazon.com/Hurt-People-Healing-Yourself-Relationships/dp/1627074848