I hope this is not naive optimism, but I sense the beginnings of a slight change in how we look at the problems Jamaica faces, away from the stereotypically one-dimensional emphasis on the economic and political, to a public examination of the psycho-social dimension as well.

And even more significantly, the public is being exposed in a more thoughtful, thorough and honest way, to aspects of our history and culture whose meaning and value have hitherto not been given sufficiently respectful recognition.

By way of context, after decades of applying conventional analyses and approaches to development which characterise societies we accept as the best examples of how to govern and think, this is the situation in which we now find ourselves. Jamaica continues to struggle with poor economic performance, breakdown in social order, a political system that does not fulfil the aspirations and needs of the average Jamaican, a family that is no longer the pillar of society, but a drag on it, and religious practices, beliefs and organisations which fail to come to terms with the challenges that threaten to ruin us.

There is a glimmer of hope in the search for this missing link. It can be seen in the fact that over the past several months a more thoughtful debate on the centrality of the slavery and colonial experience in any examination of our current condition, and in fashioning a response to it has been taking place in public.

Refreshing expansion

Following a visit to Africa last year, Douglas Orane publicly declared in an address to students: "We have tried all sorts of things to solve crime and they are not working. Maybe we can use an understanding of our own history to find the answer." Arnold Foote also had similarly constructive things to say after his own visit to Africa last year.

This refreshing expansion of emphasis also targeted other institutions. The Reverend Al Miller was taken to task for his defence of a "preferred family structure" which seemed to reject systems and practices which differ from some biblical construct. What this aspect of the dialogue does, to my mind, is draw mature and honest attention to family forms in Jamaica, not just homosexual relationships.

As R. Brown pointed out in his letter in one of the newspapers rebutting Al Miller's position, the family is organised differently in time and space, evolving as circumstances change.

Common-law unions, for example, are frowned on in Jamaica by those who set social and legal standards for the rest of us to follow. Marriage is the preferred arrangement, even if bonds are often stronger in the popular home-grown and resilient alternative. Have we stopped to ask if this is justifiable when this form itself has long been the backbone of the community and wider society, and has produced so many of those who have built this country?

Formal preference

Some probably would consider this apostasy, but, in the context of Jamaica's history and sources of cultural influence, one might ask how appropriate is the formal preference given exclusively to a family unit of one husband, one wife. There is the familiar tendency for Jamaican men and women to have multiple partners, of one degree of stability or another. This is not quite polygamy. But might it not be a variant, forced mutation if you will, resulting from the very experience of slavery? Let us not forget that polygamy was, and still is a legitimate "preferred family structure" in countries and cultures to which the majority of Jamaicans owe their ancestry.

It seems to me worthy of debate therefore, that instead of throwing out these tendencies and practices lock, stock and barrel, they should be examined and perhaps refashioned, if there are weaknesses, to make them more socially constructive.

I am, etc.,

H. DALE ANDERSON

hdaleanderson@hotmail.com