The blind eye of society

I am so angry, angry at the velocity at which we have allowed our threshold and tolerance for ‘wrongs’ to widen; so much so that a 16 year-old boy could be butchered in the public’s eye without a single person even trying to help him! 

Our failure to stand for something in Jamaica, especially in St. James has given us a record- breaking murder rate. Most times when a crime is committed, there is at least one witness but on record, no one ever sees anything. 

We simply turn a ‘blind eye’ to it, until inevitably it’s at our doorstep. Young Matthew Reid lost his life while everyone at Bay West Mall and Centre Point Plaza turned a ‘blind eye’ to his cry, as he ran with his throat slashed from a bathroom at Bay West to the side of Island Grill then to the staircase of Centre Point Plaza. I am so angry at us. Matthew’s death is not the first as a result of our failing to act or standing up and saying stop. 

I am begging you: Jamaica, St. James, Clarendon, St. Catherine and all those other places, let’s use Matthew’s death as the impetus to stand for something because at present we are standing for nothing. 

We have failed miserably as a state, burdened by moral deficit. Where do we go from here? Do we continue to watch our sons, brothers, and fathers die? 

While our women are raped, or fall to a similar faith as her opposite sex as we turn a ‘blind eye’. We need a ‘social revolution’, where we strategically re-define the tenets of socialization. We can’t continue going down into this man made abyss.    

I am etc.,

Richardo Smith

Teacher of Chemistry 

Cornwall College

smithrichardo@hotmail.com