Behold, our burgeoning underclass

Eighteen years ago, in July 1992, in the now defunct Bermuda Times I wrote a column “The Hidden Army”.

Since then, I had that same column re-printed twice — unchanged. Ominously and sadly, and more recently, I have been excoriated for saying that Bermuda has an ‘underclass’.

But now, with retired Assistant Police Commission Carlton ‘Socky’ Adams giving testimony to the Horton Joint Select Committee on Crime, the idea that Bermuda has an underclass seems on the point of national acceptance.

Eighteen years ago, when I first wrote that piece, Alvone Maybury, recently jailed for gun crime, was a six-year old kid with eleven more years of schooling and twelve more years of parenting and community support ahead of him.

Over the weekend, two men robbed a taxi-driver. Police report that they have taken an eighteen and nineteen year old into custody for that offence. Eighteen years ago, one man was being conceived and the other was a newborn. Following their births, each man has been cocooned within some kind of family and community support system, and a national educating system.

What Bermuda has today is a product of what Bermuda did, and did not do, through past years. In that long-ago piece I wrote:

“When Somebody greatly expanded, improved, and gave new direction to our whole education system, Nobody made a clinical, objective, and honest examination of the real output of the ‘new improved’ system. Thus, Nobody noticed the enormous growth in the rate at which young males were going off to jail (the army training camp).”

Farther on I wrote: “Clearly, all to clearly, and especially over the last ten years [that meant 1982 to 1992] of fighting this army, we have been pursuing the wrong strategic objectives. We have been defending ourselves with the wrong weapons and inappropriate tactics; because over the last decade [1982 to 1992], the silent, hidden army did not diminish or retreat. Instead, it grew stronger. Much stronger.

Our own new, expanded, and strengthened defences are proof...”

In 1992, conspicuously armed Bermuda policemen were not seen. Eighteen years later they’re considered a comforting sight. Gunshots? In 1992? Unheard of! Now we’ve had hundreds and we ho-hum it when we get ‘reports’ of more gunshots.  Now we ask: “Was anybody killed?” With eleven gun deaths since May 2009, we’re even getting used to that.

Up to May 2009, and not dying away until late 2009, my repeated suggestions that Bermuda had an underclass were often publicly excoriated. Now, in November 2010, we seem on the verge of accepting that a real underclass exists. In Bermuda.

The whole process whereby an observation flows into a statement or acceptance of a reality is all part of a standard national process.

But, in this tight little 13,000 acre island, personal and political issues often impede the process whereby an idea — an observation — gets examined, thought about, discussed and then either discarded or acted upon. I have the sense that in larger countries the process, helped by open discussion, usually flows much faster.

The gunshots from the underclass are now with us. We are now inured to serial burials and jailings. We have adjusted. But we are now closer to becoming socially de-stabilized.

New problems are here. Perhaps we can learn from our own past. Perhaps we can now spend more time in thoughtful reflection, searching questioning, and deeper analysis; all followed by honest and open public discussion.