JAMAICA at 45 years old is a society in its adolescence, despite its many achievements nationally and internationally, which include sports, politics and music.

This is according to urban anthropologist and university lecturer, Herbert Gayle.

“At 45, this is a very young country. It is young in the sense of our maturity as a people, and in the way we still look to others rather than to ourselves,” Gayle, who has done extensive research on youths and life in the inner city, told the Sunday Observer.

“It is one of the drawbacks of immaturity – you are not confident, nationally speaking. We spend a lot of time looking at what the US does or what Europe does.”

Sociologist Dr Orville Taylor was of a similar opinion. He noted that many Jamaicans still lacked a sense of what it means to be Jamaican, despite the struggles that we had to overcome, among them slavery and the battle for independence.

“I think we have not resolved this whole conflict about ‘Jamaicanness’, and, therefore, we are not quite settled on what it means to be Jamaican. There is no real national consensus as to what it means to be Jamaican,” Taylor said.

“When people are united around this idea of ‘Jamaicanness’, then the possibilities are endless. But remember, it is only 45 years of independence, and since we have had the right to vote as a nation. So we are still trying to resolve issues.”

There is also, Taylor said, the matter of the society’s plural nature to be addressed.

“It is a ‘trifurcated’ society, meaning it is divided into three main segments – a large culturally-black minority at the bottom; the brown middle class; and a very small minority of lighter-skinned or white people. There is so much discomfort about the race issue that we have failed to confront it, even though it ‘colours’ almost everything we do,” the sociologist said. “We pretend to be colour-blind although we really are not. Racist-type behaviour is even internalised by the black themselves, and is exacted against themselves.”

Gayle noted that one of the manifestations of this failure to address the divide between the groups in the society was the expansive gap between the moneyed and the poor.

“The problems we have had is a lack of balance. I agree that we need infrastructure to push people ahead, but while some are ahead there is a frustrated bunch that are not able to benefit from these developments,” Gayle said. “We have to ensure that the vast majority of people go to bed with food in their mouths. Agency cannot function without some basic needs being fulfilled.”

Dr Christine Cummings, a lecturer in political sociology at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, did not agree that Jamaica was in its adolescence. According to Cummings, the achievements in such areas as sports and infrastructure development were too great a feat to have been achieved by a country in its adolescent stages.

“I think we are very strong. We have more freedom of the press than in the United States and Germany. In terms of our sports, we are light years ahead of many countries. The achievements of Jamaicans overseas are many,” she told the Sunday Observer.

Cummings, however, conceded that the island had a way to go to cement its maturity, particularly as it concerns respect for each other.

“Jamaicans need to show a little more love and respect for one another in terms of race and class and gender. The fundamental problem as I see it is a lack of respect for each other,” Cummings said.

At the moment, she said television was exerting too great an influence on the culture of the island’s people.

“The arrival of the television and guns has created a problem. Our culture is informed by television and that is not a good thing. They (people) are a looking at violence, at crime, at stupidity basically. There are not that many people looking at TV for education and there isn’t that much education on television anyway,” Cummings said.

In addition, she said there is still the matter of language to be addressed. Cummings said too often people were communicating in different languages – English and Jamaican.

“We have a communication problem based on our inability to understand that people are speaking Jamaican, and then we demand that they be bilingual,” she said. “In a very real sense what it means is a lot of people have an inferiority complex because they are literally only speaking Jamaican.

And then you have others who are weak in the language, and it is affecting business (and critical areas of social life).”

Cummings proposed the teaching of English as a second language, to get over this problem.

But Gayle maintained that Jamaica is a society in the throes of its adolescence, pointing to the way the island’s politics is conducted as a clear evidence of this.

“If you look at the kind of politics we have, you see how young we are. People still come and say ‘free education’, ‘free health care’, and make sweeping statements, and people do not sit down and assess them. That tells you how really immature we are,” Gayle said. “We get the manifesto about a month before the election, which tells you it is not about issues. It is really adolescent.”

Beyond that, he said the fact that attention to youth development has only in the last decade or so began to take off, was another.

“Youth programmes are usually used to measure how mature a country is. We have a child advocate who is three years. We have an under-18 health care programme that is three months old. PATH (Programme for Advancement through Health and Education), that is what, five years old,” he said. “Basically, the mass of the framework for youth development is just in the last 10 years. In terms of the Ministry of Education and Youth operating with a solid framework it is 2001/2002,” Gayle added.

Nevertheless, he and Taylor, like Cummings, said there was no contesting the achievements of Jamaica, an island of just over $2.6 million people over what is a relatively short time.

“Yes, we have one of the most powerful youth cultures in the world, and yes, the best sports and yes, we are spoiled.

People say that the Caribbean is a parish in Jamaica – that is how spoiled we are,” Gayle said. “It also tells you that we have achieved the heights. We have one of the richest men in the world – (Michael) Lee Chin.”

And if Lee Chin is not enough, he said there were also men the likes of Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart – owner of the Appliance Traders Limited (ATL) group of companies – and the Azans, among others.

All of this, he said, is underscored by the infrastructural developments of recent years, which sees Jamaica with world-class highways and a communication system comparable to the best in the world.

In the same breath, the anthropologist said wherever in the world one travelled, if there was one person who had managed to break through barriers, he or she would more than likely be a Jamaican.

“Everywhere you go, if you see one person who has broken through the walls of prejudice and all of these things, it is more than likely going to be a Jamaican because of our youthfulness and brilliance,” Gayle said.