Black and white Bahamians are locked in a shame game that could seriously affect the way the country is governed.
In a controversial report, Dr David Allen has insisted that our society is still split on racial lines and that the sins of the past hang like a specter over the political landscape.
“White Bahamians became shame based in operating a regime of discrimination of black Bahamians,” he explained in a Renascence Institute International report, entitled, Shame: The Bahamian Challenge.
“With the emergence of majority rule, many white Bahamians followed their shame core and withdrew from the mainstream of Bahamian life,” he added. “Similarly, black Bahamians became shame based in a revenge approach.”
This drive for vengeance, Dr Allen said, has resulted in black Bahamians eradicating all traces of white existence from national symbols.
“Sadly white Bahamians were left out of the Bahamian flag and most recently the removal of Sir Stafford Sands from the $10 note was shameful,” the 60-year-old psychiatrist and sociologist said.
Dr Allen believes the challenge facing The Bahamas, is whether whites and backs will continue to react and live separately or choose to admit that they are both shame based.
But he warned that unless the two sides worked together, the country would continue to suffer. “Unless we come together in a proactive relationship, our country will suffer,” said Dr Allen, who has lectured at Harvard and Yale in the United States. “If we can be Proactive in creating a non-racist society we will become a leader in the global community.”
The president of the Renascence Institute is world-renowned. Dr Allen was voted as one of the “most outstanding” psychiatrists in America in 2003. The Royal Society of Art in London also awarded him the prestigious Barret prize, for his work in the field of cocaine.
Never one to duck controversy, Dr Allen is quick to point out that the country’s illegal immigration problem can be traced to shame.
“[We are] unable to be proactive because of our shame based attitude,” he said. “We have allowed the situation to get out of control.
“Now threatened, we are forced to be reactive. A proactive approach does not mean we have to be cruel or rigid,” he insisted. “But it does mean having a balance of boundaries and proper integration.
“A country without boundaries is similar to a person without boundaries οΎ– they are psychotic and integration is hopeless,” he added.
Shame plays a major part, according to the chairman of the Bahamian Forum Think Tank, in the country’s lack of a coherent plan in dealing with a hurricane disaster.
He highlighted the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and warned that unless Bahamians deal with their ‘shame complex’ it could happen here.
“Last year we had two major hurricanes which caused extreme damage,” he said. “We are still shocked by the massive damage [caused] by Katrina, which devastated New Orleans.
“After visiting the storm ravaged islands a comprehensive report was written emphasizing the need for strong hurricane shelters to be built on the higher parts of each island, including New Providence,” he continued in the report.
“Equipped with satellite-phones, rubber rafts, ropes and first aid supplies, the shelter could help us become more proactive in dealing with the most serious of hurricanes. But our shame-based behaviour prevents us from being proactive, leaving us to be reactive.
“As a result, only when another worst Hurricane hits we will prepare ourselves. Sadly, it may just be too late,” he concluded.
Dr Allen linked our “shame based attitudes” for preventing the development of government-run schools.
“[These] attitudes block us from developing a simple proactive approach to have our schools ready at the beginning of the school year,” he said. “And so year after year we find ourselves reacting by rushing to do patch work, irritating parents and teachers.”
With this approach, children from poor backgrounds are “shackled” by “bureaucracy”, Dr Allen added.
“Sadly, poor children are frustrated in getting an education,” he continued. “Isn’t this a shame. The private schools are open when the poor children and their parents become held captive by the shackles of bureaucracy.
“Even the most socialist of countries have kept open their elite schools for academically motivated poor [people],” he added. “But our shame based reactions led to the closing of the Government High School, which existed for 45 years.”
According to Dr Allen, the government-run school was the only “elite” institution for the academically motivated “poor” student.
In fact, the lack of quality schools is one of the main reasons why male Bahamians will be forced to take a backseat in society.
“Exchanging our colonial masters we have settled for more destructive oppressors such as drug abuse, drug trafficking, drug executions, burgeoning traffic accidents and inadequate education for our poor children with wide spread marijuana use and gang warfare,” he said.
Dr Allen called these social ills a by-product of the shame game which must be eliminated from society. “Shame is only eliminated when one of us makes a decision to make an inward journey to work through our pain and hurt in our hearts,” he said. “Self-reflection produces awareness which destroys shame.”
By: JASMIN BONIMY, The Nassau Guardian
