My pen is angry today because my heart is grieving the loss of seven young people to tragedies that need not be. Life is a result of cause and effect; there are reasons for why and how humans act and react under stress and duress. It is not arbitrary behaviour; rather, it is coded in our DNA. Samples of how we behave can be seen in all mammals; we humans are no exception.

Role model is not a fancy psychological terminology or cliché, but is an essential component of social engineering that sustains its survival generation after generation. Any break in that chain would result in the destabilisation of the subject population. Bermuda for 60 years took deliberate aim at Black male role models, whom we may refer to as the influential Black middle class.

In its attempt to curtail the Black middle class, the White political elite used its vast machinery and network to squeeze and limit credit and opportunity for Blacks to maintain its market dominance in all areas of commerce — to such an extent that after 30 years of economic re-engineering, almost all traces of Black enterprise were gone.

Compounding the matter of Black role models, the political machinery of Blacks in its early stages and beyond took an ideological stance that disparaged the Black merchant class and is now mushroomed between the overarching system predicated by local racism and the Cold War that stifled any move towards self-determination.

The Black merchant became subjugated with no identifiable status other than as a puppet for the White establishment, and was banished and defaced as “Uncle Tom” among an influential subset of the Black community.

Now welcome to the new world: the influential middle-class Black males have vanished and the cry is the young men who have now gone wild have no fathers.

Of course, they have no fathers; it’s no accident their grandfathers were beaten to the ground, their legacy and traditions destroyed for political expediency. Our former workmen's clubs have become unemployment clubs and in some cases have been funded by drug dealers — the new role models.

Churches are led by thieves — not all — and as for the Government, the analogy is that the “busboys” are running the bar and the “bellmen” are running the hotel. The quality or even ethical leadership is out the door.

The proverbial statement by the Reverend Martin Luther King, a repeat of a quote by James Russell Lowell — “Truth for ever on the scaffold and wrong for ever on the throne” — is a visible reality in Bermuda.

Is there a way out?

There always is, but it will take a massive capital injection and project. Not a political project, but an economic enterprise. The present political crop will only destroy whatever opportunity exists for little other than self-gain. These recent murders are only symptoms of a larger cause and will continue until everyone takes a deep look in the mirror.