PROFESSOR Rupert Lewis has called on Jamaican men to take control of their sexuality and refrain from having sex with their daughters, having cited incest as a major obstacle for black Jamaicans in the quest for economic empowerment.

Speaking at the latest in the seminar series ‘Season to Come Reason’ – started by late journalist Eric Macko McNish and put on by the Jamaica Foundation for ‘Headucation’ and Social Change – Lewis chided men with irresponsible sexual behaviour.

“If this gathering thinks that Jamaica and black people’s problems are outside of their conduct, then we’ll be making a sad mistake,” he said at the Hope Gardens function.

“Very often we talk outside of ourselves. We blame political parties, development of the business class. But there is an area that each and everyone has considerable power over. And that power that we have is the power over sex.”

Sex, he lectured, is an extremely powerful instrument that can create and ‘mis-create’.

“I’m all for the Jamaican movement to maintain heterosexuality as the central place for our sexual right, that’s where I stand. But I also know, that too many African men in Jamaica are committing incest and getting away with it because there is no stigma attached to it,” said Lewis.

“Jamaican men are responsible for a whole heap of incest. We all have whole heap of talk, whole heap of noise. Stop sleeping with your daughters.”

Turning to the theme of the forum “How to Defeat Willie Lynch Before 2012”, Lewis, addressing the area of economic empowerment, said Jamaicans should also take control of their economic power, noting the heavy consumption of foreign goods produced by entities that have no interest in local welfare.

“Tommy Hilfiger is a good example of this, and the whole range of brand items that we label ourselves with,” said the professor.

“The economic question of black people in Jamaica, over which we have control, needs to be in the forefront of our discussion – the question of how we eat, where we live, how we organise our environment – in ways that we eliminate the huge gaps that exist in our society.”

– waltersb@jamaicaobserver.com