Respect Due

Back in 1989, a dancehall deejay from Spanish Town, Janice Fyffe (aka Lady G) had a huge hit with the song “Nuff Respect.” It had a pounding rhythm and a repetitive tag line, and the theme was respect for women. One of the lines was, “True mi live inna di ghetto show mi nuff respect.”  I remember that bass line booming out from passing cars. If you want a listen (it still sounds good) here it is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KfXasASH7Q

Jamaicans still talk a great deal about respect; but do we practice respect for others in our everyday lives? I would say that it is sadly lacking in many areas of Jamaican life. And if we could just think about it a little more, we can see what terrible harm this is doing to us all. It erodes trust; it destroys love. 

“We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.” So said American writer Hunter S. Thompson.

A lady whom I don’t know posted a comment yesterday on my article about the alleged police killing of a young chef, Nakiea Jackson, in Orange Villa, Kingston. She says that she is Nakiea’s sister, but as I say, I have not verified this. But just read her words: “No more lies, no more abuse of the corpse, no more laughing over his blood as it slowly dries in the ground, the ground where he just has his last meal…”  The CVM Television report on Mr. Jackson’s shooting showed a long smear of blood from his cookshop, where he was allegedly killed, out onto Orange Street, where he had been dragged; and a glimpse of Mr. Jackson’s body, apparently thrown sideways and face down on the road.

Is this the way the police are taught to treat a dead body? Is this what they are trained to do at the Police Academy? Is this a respectful way to treat the dead, in front of the man’s shocked and grieving family and community?

As I noted in my earlier post, I was also disturbed by the laughter and joking among a group of policemen with high-powered weapons, whom I encountered after we ran into the scene of the killing quite by chance. Clearly this tragedy amused them greatly. Is this kind of behavior acceptable from agents of the state, whose motto is “Serve, Protect and Reassure” ?

Another report on CVM Television gave me pause for thought. Again, it was a question of the police showing respect in communities where they are carrying out investigations, or searching for a suspect. On Friday a young man, Dwayne Henry, was shot by the police in McKoy Lane, another depressed community off Spanish Town Road in Kingston. His mother alleges he was shot while lying on his back on his bed. Whatever the facts (and INDECOM is investigating), a young man was dead. “How long must we bear this in Jamaica?” asked Mr. Henry’s mother, repeating the standard press release (it is always the same wording) that we hear on the news every time there is such an incident.

The following night, Mr. Henry’s mother lit candles in remembrance of her son, at the food stall he used to run. She said the police came back and kicked over the candles, asking her “if she thought her son was a saint.” Why do this to a grieving mother? Why disrespect the dead, whether a “bad man” or not?

There are much smaller instances of disrespect that do not involve matters of life and death, like those tragic circumstances that I outlined above. On a more trivial and everyday level: How do you feel when someone turns up late for a meeting, and does not apologize? Or when someone is rude to your elderly parent (I remember how upset I was for days when I heard a driver hurling four-letter words at my father, who was driving slowly and feeling ill)?

Nakiea’s sister Shackelia Jackson-Thomas spoke on television about a code of conduct for the police. She would like them to use words like “please” and “thank you.” That would be very nice, but it seems to me that respect is about more than good manners. It’s not only about behavior. It’s about the attitude that informs that behavior. Empathy, caring and putting yourself in the shoes of the other person. Polite behavior will naturally flow from that attitude of mind. 

Is showing respect something your parents teach you? Surely it is something learned. As a child, I was taught not to stare at disabled people; not to consider myself a better person than others who were less fortunate; not to laugh at anyone who was “different.”

The great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in “The Brothers Karamazov”:

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Are we lying to ourselves?  Perhaps we are. So let’s try facing the truth about ourselves, and about those around us. Let’s embrace that truth. Otherwise how are we ever going to learn to live together?

Perhaps, for 2014, Jamaica could try an attitude of respect. You never know, it might become a habit.