band together and affect their own changes, a panelist at a forum on black role models said recently.

"The fate of the nation is on your shoulders and if you don't stand up God will make you drink your blood,'' said Mr. Jhon Gibbons, a Bermuda College student and aspiring history teacher.

"To me, the only black role model worth mentioning is our community. But where is our community? It is dead, and we must bring it back to life.'' In a fiery address of the North Village Community Club's annual forum, which this year looked at the question of "what has happened to our black role models,'' Mr. Gibbons challenged Bermuda's blacks to work toward a prosperous future by becoming more politically active.

"Elderly people, the middle aged and especially youth -- it's time to stand up and hold your politicians responsible,'' Mr. Gibbons said to cheers and rounds of applause. "If you don't do this, you can't complain about what your leaders are doing.'' While somewhat less heated in his urgings, Mr. Llewellyn Simmons, a fellow panelist and teacher at Sandys Secondary School in Somerset, was equally adamant about the need for the black community to meet its challenges as a unit.

"What unites us is stronger than what divides us -- family, your family, my family, the extended family. This is where children learn morals and values,'' he said.

While he, too, recognised the need for blacks to have their own role models, Mr. Marc Telemacque, a lawyer with Hall and Associates, suggested that young blacks look to the community in general for inspiration and guidance.

"There is nothing wrong with pointing out to a very young child, who knows no difference of colour, a white role model,'' he said.

Mr. Telemacque did stress, however, that role models were not by definition high or mighty.

"There are plenty of people in public life that I would not encourage you to follow. A role model is someone we can point to and say: `This person has done well or this person has done the best they could do with what they had.'' Mr. Tillman Darrell, another panelist and an architect-in-training, agreed.

"These values are not the sole property of the rich or the poor, the educated or the uneducated. If you look around you, you will see these people exist on a daily basis.'' Ms Gaylia Landry, the final speaker of the event and a Public Health Nurse who works solely with HIV and AIDS patients, urged listeners to confront the "totally preventable'' disease that is killing off so many black role models.

In Bermuda, which has the highest per capita rate of AIDS cases in the world, 90 percent of all AIDS victims are black.

"When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion,'' Ms Landry said, quoting an Ethiopian proverb.