Traits Bahamians Need

Are we a society that adores violence? If we were to take a look at Bahamian history from the 80’s and a look at it now we would see that over the years the Bahamas has made a drastic change in statistics of becoming a more violent and less caring society. By the way things are looking; it makes us begin to question whether this Bahamian society is safe for our children. To know that there has already been 67 murders on an island this size is rather frightening. Everywhere we turn in the Bahamas, we see violence taking place. We witness gang violence, street violence, violence in the schools, domestic violence, and even drug abuse just to name a few. In Raquel Lightbourn’s essay entitled “Confessions of a Tar Baby”, she portrays evidence of name calling as well as racial matters which clearly show how violence is commenced. In her essay she explained the insults and racist remarks she endured as a child from the cruel hearted children in her school. Mrs. Lightbourn said in her essay “What is seen by some as merely childhood teasing, was actually the manifestation of a misguided mindset that continues to crush the self-image of many women and men”. Evidently, treating someone in this manner can undoubtedly cause them to become violent. We might not count this as a form of violence more, verbal abuse which will at some point escalate to violence. This kind of treatment tends to hurt one’s feelings and brings out the emotional and unfortunately violent side in an individual. This is our Bahama land and therefore we need to make a few changes and develop more positive rather than negative values and character traits to make it a more caring and less violent society. Personally, I feel that in the Bahamas, we need to develop more love in our hearts for our people, a higher tolerance level (patience) for all the temptations that comes our way daily, we need leaders who are bold enough to stand up and decline to negative influences, but most importantly, we all need to...