By: Dr. Garth A. Rose
Jamaican entertainer Vybz Kartel (Adidja Palmer) has made news in recent months, not for his unique dancehall songs, but unfortunately for serious criminal charges and more recently for co-authoring the book, "The Voice of the Jamaican Ghetto" with his compatriot, businessman Michael Dawson.
This book makes interesting reading. It isn't a book promoting Palmer's music, although each chapter focuses on a title of his recordings, nor is it meant to defend his problems with the Jamaican legal system. Rather, it's a book depicting the pain, frustrations, inequalities, and injustices of the poor residing in Jamaican Ghettos. Palmer and his co-author have succeeded in holding up a mirror to society's collective face indicating something must be done about poverty.
The pain and injustices of poverty addressed in the book are nothing new. Poverty has been the scourge of mankind for ages; a problem that has befuddled various forms of governments and different leaders. Leaders like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Michael Manley, Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere have tried valiantly to cope with the problem of poverty but for the most parts failed for varying reason.
The scourge of poverty has not only persisted throughout the ages, but has grown worse, despite the advancements in education and technology. The modern problem of poverty is centered in unbridled population growth in almost every country. This is a problem highlighted from the 19th century by classical economist Thomas Malthus, in his essays on population growth, who wrote, "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man."
Simply put, there are too many people in the world, in Jamaica, the U.S., wherever, for the available resources, including jobs, food, housing or healthcare to be equitably distributed. Through various means, some not justifiable, some members of the society are able to secure more of the scarce resources than others, leaving those who lost out to live in impoverished communities, ghettos. Unfortunately, these ghettos wherever they exist are characterized by inadequate housing and sanitary conveniences, high unemployment, low wages, high teenage pregnancies, crime, frustration, and hopelessness.
Despite all that has been written and spoken about poverty, the problem persists because some people, in particular society's leaders and those who aspire for leadership in denial. Mostly, this denial is based on the inability to find meaningful solutions to poverty and the grappling problem that afflicts ghetto communities. So if the problems of the ghettos are denied, there's no need to implement policies to fix them.
There are others while recognizing the problems of poverty in the ghettos are often riddled by guilt. This guilt encourages them to make guilt-coping contributions to charities for the poor, and fill food and gift basket for the poor at Christmas, only to disappear the rest of the year.
However, poverty cannot and will not be solved by denial, or attempts to remedy the guilt some feel by living in relative wealth side-by-side with poverty.
Poverty will never be solved, especially as population grows, but governments must seek and implement policies to narrow the gap between the "haves and the have-nots." Governments will need this financial means to seriously reduce this gap.
Poverty is the single most serious problem that plagues societies, a problem possibly worse than terrorism, and must be addressed wherever it exists, in Jamaica, the U.S. and globally. Long before Vybz Kartel, writers like Martinique-born, French philosopher, and revolutionary, Franz Fanon, author of "The Wretched of the Earth" warned of the perils of poverty. Some may not like the lyrics of Kartel's music, but there are serious social messages in "The Voice of the Jamaican Ghetto."
