ON the night of January 5, 2023 I watched a documentary called Scammed on local television.

Produced and executed by local media professionals, Scammed tracked the development, impact, and responses to Jamaicans defrauding US nationals via telemarketing and lottery scams. Having watched the programme, I was deeply troubled by the thought that there is something seriously wrong with many of the people in this Jamaica, land I love.

I watched Television Jamaica (TVJ) journalist Archibald Gordon interview victims and family members of victims who were very old people, many of whom suffered from cognitive illnesses, such as alzheimer’s and dementia, while others were merely people desperate to give their children a better life before they returned to the dust from which they came. One victim shared how her entire life savings were depleted because of her falling prey to a lottery scammer from Jamaica. Another was the brother of an old man who was convinced that someone was stealing his money. After investigations, it was revealed that a Jamaican was scamming him, but due to memory loss he could not even remember that he had initiated those transactions.

At one point I thought that could never be me. I pondered how anyone could fall into this kind of trap. But Scammed gave me a fresh perspective. After all, I could be a potential victim. These were individuals who, by virtue of the natural process of ageing, lost their ability to remember simple things and struggle with diminished ability to make good decisions. The impact is so devastating that a daughter recounted how the relationship with her mother was never mended after she played a part in forcibly stopping her aged mother from continuing to throw away her savings to the open accounts and mailboxes of scammers.

Considering all this, scammers are evil vermins who have infected our society.

Interestingly, though, my thoughts led me to the following conclusion: In this matter, the route of all evil is not necessarily the love of money, but rather the inability to think critically.

A few days prior to watching the documentary a good friend and myself had a conversation in which we expressed mutual conviction that crime in Jamaica is partly encouraged by selfish and bad business philosophies. We reflected on reports that business leaders bemoan the short supply of skilled labourers in the Jamaican workforce and hypothesised that if these very same influencers considered better salaries for tradesmen and women, it is very likely that more people, including some criminals, would invest in acquiring those skills.

We are convinced that not every criminal or scammer engages in illegal activity for the misguided love of it. A large contingent simply wants a better standard of living, and if that is the case, then they are likely to engage in legitimate work that pays well. Thus, the shortage of labourers and the motivation to become a scammer because of the need to live well could arguably be seen as narrow vision and poor thinking on the part of business leaders.

Tragically, though, the public is not immune to this kind of “sickness”. Recall how polarising scamming was in the initial stages, with many Jamaicans being of the view that it was justice, retribution, or karma being served on white people who were enslavers of blacks. What? At the heart of the evils of the triangular trade was the thought that some people were worthy of being taken advantage of by virtue of a perceived level of inferiority to the enslavers who would profit from that misfortune.

How, then, can anyone justify a scammer profiting from taking advantage of an elderly person suffering from memory loss who they have specifically targeted because the victim appears to be inferior to the scammer? How do we justify financially “raping” (a term used by an interviewee in Scammed) people who were not even responsible for the enslavement of our forefathers? In fact, I contend that it makes the scammer and those sympathetic to scamming just as cruel as former slave masters.

At this juncture I would like to extend the argument to the matter of reparation, which I am also convinced is fundamentally flawed in some respects. Certainly, repaying someone for wrongs done to them is justifiable; however, in the context of reparation, it is not that simple. We seem to conveniently ignore aspects of our history when we talk about reparations; facts such as Jamaica once being a financial and produce powerhouse in the region, to the extent that even the great Uncle Sam was dependent on our island for certain commodities such as bananas. Evidence of our former regional prowess could be deduced from the concern that Trinidad’s withdrawal from the then West Indies Federation would effectively mean Jamaica would be the sole financier of the federation. How conveniently we have forgotten that our very own African ancestors played a part in the triangular trade by selling their own people into slavery.

Yet it was not the British, Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch who made Jamaica’s currency slide from $1:US$1 to $152.58:US$1. It was corruption and mismanagement of resources on the part of our own Jamaicans.

While the enslavers did travel to Africa in search of slaves, the blacks who brokered the sales are not absolved of the crime of slavery. So even if reparations for slavery were quantifiable, who should pay on behalf of the Africans who played a part in making slavery possible? It certainly cannot be the British, and if it is the African Government, to whom would they pay? Should the African Government repay itself for its part in slavery?

If Jamaica were to be compensated, what should convince me that we have matured fiscally and will not, yet again, squander those resources? Will reparation fix the recurring problem of politicians rising to power only to entangle themselves in some financial scandal? Will it encourage us to fix our roads properly and discontinue the sickening practice of patching and repatching until we can patch no more? Will it make the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) consistent with the dissemination of the pensions of our retirees? Will it motivate the scammers to put down the phones, magic jacks, and lead sheets, and turn their lives in a moral direction? Will it solve the problem of violence, which has been closely linked to reservations to invest in our economy?

If we do not fix this problem, then if we do get reparation for slavery, we will waste it. If we do not address this problem, the students in our classrooms who refuse to exert themselves and think to solve problems will continue to rely on the teacher to merely tell them what to do and later when they are older expect that society should simply give them what they want. In a worst-case scenario, they will illegally and forcibly take from society what they want. If we do not fix this problem, we will certainly remain on the route to more evil.

These issues are not caused by lack of money and, thus, won’t be solved by reparation. They are caused by a lack of critical thinking — a sickness plaguing Jamaica.

Kevonn Grant is a mathematics teacher and debate coach. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or kevgrant20@gmail.com.