COMMENTARY: Gangsta Cultures
By Dickson Igwe, Contributor
This Investigative writer was reluctant to comment on this particular matter of the recent murder of another native son.
The healing of wounds from another tragic shooting death of a native son is going to be very traumatic for loved ones, and all who loved the young man. It should also be traumatic for every citizen of the Virgin Islands. As this writer has asserted over many years, our sons are at risk.
This was a son and member of the Road Town elite. This writer alluded to this tribe of Virgin Islanders in a satire he penned a few days ago.
Ok, culture is very difficult to change if not impossible as it entails re-educating the national mindset. Changing the behavior of a society is a hugely difficult task. It is analogous to turning around a massive ocean liner with manual effort, as opposed to modern technology.
The mafia type cultures of Virgin Islands young men and youth is terribly destructive. But this writer believes that at this time the idea of changing the mindset of our youth to detest and quit this sub-culture is fairy tale. The ‘gangsta’ is romanticized in the Virgin Islands: he is a hero.
Changing the GANGSTA culture is not possible at this time: this is a culture driven by guns, gunmen and associated criminal elements in the drugs trafficking and arms dealing micro-community. Its tentacles spread and are found everywhere.
This is certainly not to imply that the two recent murders were drugs related. However, the fact that guns were involved in these deaths links the deaths to the perverse culture of criminality and the gangster that in this Ole Boys view is the greatest challenge the Virgin Islands faces.
Now like in many world cultures, crime is a historic fact.
Here in the Virgin Islands, the British had forts in strategic locations overlooking the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
The seas surrounding the islands were ruled by pirates, swashbucklers and privateers and their vessels. Early literature in Britain depicted men such as Francis Drake and Horatio Nelson as heroes. They were in reality gangsters who commandeered ocean going vessels in search of loot.
Smuggling and illegal activity was a fact of life. These were men who were in the employ of the landed gentry back in the Kingdom where the Kings and Queens of England ruled.
Post slavery and the plantation era, we all know of tales of rum smuggling, from which the trade in marijuana, cocaine, and guns evolved. So, the culture of criminality is an entrenched sub culture that is part of the wider culture. It is hundreds of years old.
If our native young men are to be saved from destruction by the culture of the GANGSTA the only option is better data collection, forensic type investigations, proactive exertions by law enforcement, and so on and so forth, that will be assessed in a following story.
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What monkey see, monkey do!
Re-educating the national mindset has to start at the top. In the words of Thomas Hardy:
We would establish those of kindlier build,
In fair Compassions skilled,
Men of deep art in life-development;
Watchers and warders of thy varied lands…
Spare the rod spoil the child.
Gangsta culture is too entrenched to change?
If culture cannot be changed, then how can the problem be solved? Rather than accepting change as impossible, shouldn’t we focus on better parenting, where children are taught respect, accountability, and nonviolence from an early age; greater school involvement through mentorship programs, conflict-resolution training, extracurricular activities, and positive role models; as well as a bigger push for economic opportunities and targeted government interventions such as youth development initiatives and mental health services?
Prevention, opportunity, and positive role models may ultimately do more to steer young people away from violence than enforcement alone. The question should not be whether culture can change, but how we help change it.
An interesting thesis that there’s been an omnipresent culture of gangster activity that has persisted for centuries, but it’s flawed because of its facile simplicity. It’s also historically inaccurate about Nelson; we was neither a privateer or a pirate. Rather, early in his career in the West Indies, he strictly enforced state navigation laws and seized unauthorized merchant vessels, acting as a naval authority rather than a privateer.
Drake and Nelson had to operate under certain rules and laws. Unlike Nelson, Drake was indeed a privateer, and as flawed as the system of privateering may have been, it was sanctioned by the government as a lawful activity. In fact, privateering was pursued via a commission of war (also known as “letters of marque”) granted by the sovereign and directed at a particular enemy
Conversely, what we see now is young men with zero impulse control who operate under no set of rules or constraints whatsoever. Thus, when the author states that “the only option is better data collection, forensic type investigations, proactive exertions by law enforcement, and so on and so forth. …” he’s wrong except for the role of law enforcement’s “proactive exertions” (which is the CERTAINTY of punishment).
Rather, it’s a lack of values being instilled by parents, and reinforced by the schools (the latter being the approval of corporal punishment in the classroom). Absent proper parenting that demands their children behave themselves after leaving the house, all of the data collection and forensic type investigations are just so much foolishness.
Have a zero tolerance for violence, and while you’re at it, first and foremost, shun from state-sponsored festivals “musical artists” that seek to perform and profit from “entertainment” that denigrates women. Right behind that is to eschew any so-called “artist” that exalts violence as something to be admired and revered.
Well said and while we are at it anyone who thinks it cant be changed look at El Salvador. Now whether that can be sustained and if the change is more than surface remains to be seen but its a start. We by no means need to be as harsh as El Salvador but extreme actions calls for extreme measures.
Bukele (El Salvador El Presidente) is a truly fascinating phenomenon. A quintessential “benign despot) with an approval rating ranging from 85 to 92%).
There’s an old saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin, out of context, that he opined “Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither” but people will indeed willingly make that trade when their government fails in its fundamental responsibility to ensure the safety of a country’s law-abiding citizens.
Bukele has dramatically improved El Salvador’s physical safety by reducing the homicide rate to roughly 1.9 per 100,000 people, down from 105 per 100,000 in 2015.
Good intelligence gets to the crime motive and may even have prevented this young man’s death. Poor policing and poor investigative techniques- the result of underfunding- has led to too many unsolved murders that encourage gunmen who believe they will never be caught.
You sound patronizing: I bet where you come from there are mass shootings every week- hypocrite- oh I forgot the Virgin Islands is predominantly black LOL
I find it interesing those of you that deny the obvious racial breakdown of violent crime by justifiying it a) by a pointing to mass shootings and b) using bad behaviour to justify your own bad behaviour . Instead of looking for root causes and solutions to course correct (as Capitalist did) .You are more upset at the “tone” of his comment, than the actual crime taking place. That is why what Bukele did/is doing is so important .He could have found many excuses for his own people and let things continue as is . Instead he took action.
Only waits for someone to expose whats really going on to jump on it and capitalize on it with sarcasm as a front / like some ah U wannabe historians ( he who think he knows , knows not he knows nothing •
Name a place with less crime and murder than the BVI.
Per capita half the world.
Didn’t he have a gun possession conviction himself?
Everyone wants to be a gangsta until they’re serving 20 to life in the states. Most people grow out of it once they realize you either end up in three places broke poor, locked up, or in a box.
Black lives don’t matter to Black people. Sure fact is no whiteman took his life. It be our own people and the sad part. They are among us, eating, laughing, smiling and getting the community treatment. Yet we talk about racism and privilige. Whoever killed that native son has no morals.
You’re missing something, Mr Igwe. What fuels this gangsta mentality is a pure, unfettered worship of the god Mammon.
Money, money, money, money – it is EVERYTHING to many BVIslanders. The ONLY thing that matters, that means anything, that directs people’s lives.
Until we shed the addiction to drip and bling, we won’t stop gangsters from gangstering. It is the fast track, the heroic track, to getting the adulation of those who love a Gucci link more than anything else about being human.
It is sad and it is sending us all, the islands themselves, down a road to nowhere.
Instead of looking at other countries, and pointing fingers, think of ways we can all help to clean up the BVI
1: It takes the effort of all nationalities to work together
2 The political leaders have to be clean and transparent. In the first place that is why COI ended up here
3. Loon at the Premier press conference on Friday?
He tell tha to a fowl, it will pick him
We are not ad foolish as you think
A All government checks have to follow a procedure
They give you a little 5,000.00’dollatd you
have to show an invoice its description how the funds will be distributed
BS Mr
can an attorney general move such large sum of money
Procedure
Premier has to sign off on it
Financial Secretary
Accountant
Clerk of the House
Treasury
Top
Persons in these position must know
Shame on
You tomlet the AAG take the rap
He!He! It must be hide away to bribe voters for election
Shameless leaders all of you
There is no justification for this outrageous action
What will happen when we get INDEPENDENCE???
I shudder to think