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From:TheBahamasWeekly.com Letters to The Editor
The first and most pragmatic reason would be economic. Admittedly the government and the garbage economic policies adopted by successive administrations play a big part in this, but it's also influenced by the private sector (in addition to international trends, influences and occurrences). There's not just a lack of jobs in the Bahamas, but a lack of well paying jobs (Particularly outside of the tourism industry). Combined with the high cost of living that comes part-and-parcel with life in an island nation that has to import most everything it makes it next to impossible for young Bahamians to be financially independent. To use myself as an example (It's anecdotal evidence so take it with a grain of salt, though I'm sure many other young Bahamians will have similar sentiments) I went off to a four year college, graduated with a bachelor's degree, went on to do an additional four months of specialized training in my field, and when I returned home to Freeport the best offering I could find for an entry level position was $7 an hour full time. The worst was an unpaid internship. To contrast when I was a busboy in college I was earning $8 an hour plus tips part time, and depending on whether it was tourist season or not I was able to work part time, go to school part time, and still meet my financial obligations without any help from my family. That was an impossible feat when I moved back to Freeport where between rent, electricity, food, my obligation to pay off my student loans, vehicle insurance and gas for the vehicle my $7 an hour would've been devoured before even half of those needs had been met. The only way I could make ends meet was to live with my father. Many would say the obvious answer would be move to New Providence where my chances would be better, but that presents it's own problems; namely (Going to lapse into railing against the government here) that the heavy emphasis on centralizing everything in the country on New Providence is a large part of why the Bahamas is facing many of the problems it's now having to come to grips with. Going by 2013 figures published by the Bahamian Government the country's population is around 367,000 (http://statistics.bahamas.gov.bs/download/098797200.pdf). They don't break that down to how many people live on any given island, but there has never been any question that most of the Bahamian population resides on this tiny 80 square mile island. Even being conservative and saying that 70% of the population resides in New Providence that's still 256,900 people, which works out to 3,211 people per square mile. For a country with a population of 360,000 that's an obscene number, and when added to the overall lack of jobs gives us this massive, long running crime wave (Another disincentive to moving to New Providence to do battle for the few good paying jobs that there are). For those young Bahamians who are able to, moving abroad is simply the most practical solution to their economic woes. The biggest reason (for me at least, others may have prioritized economics) though is quite simply the Bahamian people themselves, my fellow countrymen and countrywomen. This is not a problem that can be changed by a simple shift of policy or changing of administrative personnel, and to be honest the Straight Up Talk group itself broadcasts many of these cultural issues and attitudes that have driven myself and other young, educated Bahamians away. I'll start with the rampant anti-intellectualism that permeates Bahamian culture. To many, being educated and rational is the worst sin one can commit. I have honestly lost count of the number of times I and other young Bahamians in this group have had our intelligence used as an insult in an attempt to discount either factual evidence we've presented or our own opinion on issues. The icing on the cake, of course, is that many of these individuals who try and use an individual's intelligence as an insult can often be seen un-ironically lamenting the D average of the Bahamas. Many of us were raised being told that a college education was the key to our success as an adult, and especially in the case of families where the young Bahamian in question is the first in their family to go to college (Whether abroad or locally). It is, quite bluntly, damned discouraging and frustrating. Feeding this anti-intellectualism is a general, knee-jerk aversion and wariness to new ideas, behaviours and ways of thinking. This aversion to “new” extends to a strange breed of xenophobia, but I'll get to that in a little bit. For a nation that boasts of it's tourism product and despite the cultural cornucopia of visitors we attract the Bahamas remains very insular in it's thinking, a mindset that going abroad for college or university has a habit of destroying. The young Bahamian goes from a monocultural environment to (oftentimes) a very multicultural environment, and for those who stick it out and remain there is simply no going back to that previous monocultural way of thought. Even if it's not a a large level, returning to a monocultural environment after having adapted and accepted multicultural is like trying to push a round peg through a square hole. They simply don't fit, and that agitates them even if just on a subconscious level.Let's take, as an example, the recent hubbub over gender equality and the issue of marital rape. These aren't and shouldn't be a difficult or abstract concepts: The first is the recognition that legally men and women are equal and are entitled to the same rights and protections under the law (Including the ability to pass citizenship to their children), the second that any action that takes place after the denial of sexual consent, no matter the relationship between the individuals, is rape. However because these ideas run against longstanding Bahamian thought and cultural belief these ideas that modern first world countries have long ago accepted as basic principle are having to slog through a quagmire of opposition that is often wrapped in dogmatic gibberish. And while we're on the subject of anti-intellectualism let's go on to the Bahamian tendency to cling to conspiracy theories even in light of evidence that proves said conspiracy theory false. Any time something big happens that is beyond the ability to understand, it is always chalked up to some shadowy and sinister conspiracy. Ebola, vaccines, pseudoscience, global elites that secretly control the world and are trying to keep the global population below 1,000,000, the secret Haitian/foreigner conspiracy to take over the Bahamas, these are just a handful of the inane, flat out false things I've seen vomited out by people in this group, and these people cling to these false ideas even when evidence to the contrary is presented. Hell, people often cling more vigorously to the respective silliness when presented with a contrary fact. And this trend isn't limited to the uneducated; Even many educated individuals from previous generations hold onto these nonsensical beliefs, and personally when someone who should know better suddenly starts rambling about how the recent Ebola outbreak was America testing a new biological weapon it makes me worry. What if someone running the country believes this kind of madness? I don't want to stick around for the fallout that would result from the Prime Minister suddenly basing any kind of policy on tinfoil hat nonsense. Moving on now. I'm going to touch on the xenophobia and biggotry many Bahamians hold. While there are many unabashed xenophobes who openly and loudly blame foreigners for all of the country's woes, most are more subtle in regards to it. They don't mind foreigners so long as the foreigner comes, spends their money and then leaves, and they will often tell those same foreigners “It's better in the Bahamas!” But when that foreigner believes them and decides they want a piece of the pie (Live, work, gain residency and/or citizenship, raise a family), all of a sudden the Bahamian goes cold and treats the potential citizen like an unwelcome guest. Even the children of this hypothetical immigrant are always reminded that their parents aren't from the Bahamas and therefore neither are they. And for many Bahamians it won't matter how long that family stays, they will never be “real” Bahamians. This is part of a wider cultural belief of many Bahamians that “If it isn't black it isn't Bahamian”, and to hear many of these individuals brag about their family trees being in the Bahamas for so many generations you get the impression that the only reason they aren't boasting of their ancestors being there when Columbus landed is that Columbus and the Spanish didn't leave any survivors. I myself faced this kind of bigotry when I lived in Freeport after college, where I worked with this one young “lady” who told me to my face that it didn't matter how long my family had been in the Bahamas or what it had done, we weren't real Bahamians because we were white. And that sentiment isn't limited to non-black Bahamians but also to black Bahamians with lighter skin tones, nor is it limited to the younger generation (As several other members of the diaspora can attest to). In the end it boils down to a sizable and loud cross-section of Bahamian society that takes pride in and revels in it's ignorance, lack of education and bigotry, and refuses to accept one basic fact: that the world is rapidly become smaller and more interconnected, and that the best response to this more interconnected world and bring as much of it's profits as we can to the Bahamas we have to become more multicultural, open minded and tolerant. Many young Bahamians learn and/or realize this while at college or university, and as often as not they recognize too the obstacles to this vision of the Bahamas. But for every one educated, world savvy Bahamian there are five others to shout them down. Combine this with economics and compound it with inefficient/incompetent/corrupt government and there isn't much choice but to go abroad to greener pastures.
Author's notes/disclaimer: This was written in response to a Facebook post by Dr. Donald M. McCartney in the Straight Up Talk group, on the topic of why many Bahamians, particularly the younger, better educated generation, are venturing out into the world and then not returning. I've drawn primarily on my own reasons and experiences, and while I've heard many others of my own generation express these same ideas I only ever purport to speak for myself. This essay in particular focuses primarily on reasons that have nothing to do with the Bahamian Government and the corrupt, inept school of Governance that has been the operating ethic of successive administrations, whether PLP or FNM, as such reasons are an essay unto themselves and one that I'm reluctant to touch upon for my own reasons. I would also like to state for the record that this does not come close to addressing all of the reasons young and educated Bahamians are staying away; there are several others I was tempted to touch upon, but the topics are fairly divisive and would treat the sensitivities of the average Bahamian with all the gentleness of an angry bull in a porcelain shop. So, for the sake of the work as a whole, I left them out (Though I'm likely to touch upon them at a later date). As a final disclaimer, I want it known that there are conditions that would bring me back to the Bahamas to do more than visit my family, but they're bleak and wretched conditions that would mean the Bahamas has hit a very loathsome low point. I will return if those conditions are met and it won't be a happy day for anyone, because I will be returning with a massive chip on my shoulder.
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