Letters to The Editor
"Lightbourn’s fault is being white"
Aug 14, 2016 - 12:19:21 AM

Dear Editor,

For the past forty years in this country, the complaints have been that too many teenaged girls were having babies, that they had too many children and that they had them for too many different men who did not contribute to their maintenance and took no part in their upbringing.

Over the past forty years and continuing today, too many of these children born to unwed mothers have become the scourge of criminality, who have clogged and backlogged the court calendar, are seen daily doing the famous “Bank Lane Shuffle" and have caused an overcrowding at the prison in Fox Hill.

The government over the years has thrown millions of taxpayers’ and borrowed dollars at the problem with no clear solution in sight.

These are some of the things highlighted by Richard Lightbourn on the platform at the Free National Movement Convention on Thursday, July 28. However, Mr. Lightbourn’s greatest fault in bringing that message was the fact that he is a white man, the audience was predominantly black, and the majority of Bahamian women are black.

Richard Lightbourn said in the public's ear what is privately discussed in “polite circles” by people seeking solutions to all the ills plaguing the Bahamian society, including crime, education, health care and unemployment.

He will get no kudos for verbalizing what could be a solution to a pressing problem. Instead, we will castigate him because he is white in a majority black nation and we are in the political season. If those statements had come from a prominent black citizen, I’m sure the headlines would be completely different.

I say that Editor, because when a black MP stood on the floor of the House of Assembly and bragged about beating a former girlfriend until his hand hurt, there was laughter from his party colleagues. Asked by the Speaker if he was speaking in jest, the member insisted that he was “dead serious”.

Mr. Lightbourn cannot change that he is white nor can he change that sometime in history black people (including Bahamians) were slaves. That is not something for which he needs to apologize or to refrain from speaking out on the ills that threaten to destroy the Bahamian way of life.

Anthony Capron

Nassau Bahamas

August 13, 2016

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his/her private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of TheBahamasWeekly.com