Bum rap for Jamaicans

Whenever I have a patient who belongs to the first generation of Jamaican immigrants, I cannot help but ask myself what England has done to the Jamaicans. How has such a charming and humorous community been turned into the sullen, resentful people that so many of their children (or grandchildren) seem to be today – particularly the males, possessed as they are of an arrogant sense of radical entitlement that renders them almost extraterritorial both to the laws of the land and the laws of good manners? What has England done to them that they should turn out thus?

Of course, there is still a strong strand of church-going respectability among the Jamaicans. Respectability is a much-mocked quality, and no doubt it has its drawbacks: but its opposite, a kind of bohemian anarchy without culture or intellect to redeem it, has no advantages. Besides, the respectability of poor people is moving to behold, constituting as it does a constructive attempt to overcome the hardship of their lives.