COMMENTARY

Disenfranchised Caymanians?

Friday,  February 17, 2006

Why don’t Caymanians value their culture more? 

Why aren’t more Caymanians speaking up for their country/culture/traditions? 

These questions are bandied about on a regular basis, representing an apparent lack of Caymanian involvement in social efforts to educate/preserve and identify things Caymanian – or is it?

Let’s take a look. Years ago, church socials were the centre of cultural happening and therefore preservation.

Caymanians organized, cooked for and welcomed all attendees whether local or a ‘visitor’. 

Back then that was what all newcomers were called. As development picked up its dizzying pace the age-old questions were how to measure whether newcomers cared about Cayman or not. The practice of persons when applying for work permits to demonstrate their caring for our community yielded many ‘visitor’ volunteers in various local groups. 

Human nature being what it is, eventually the groups themselves began to re-organize into predominantly local groups versus predominantly ‘expat’ groups. I guess this was more of an accidental evolution than deliberate. 

However, the prejudice of “everything foreign is better” began to pervade the social consciousness of both local and foreign and support was seemingly more easily given to the latter than the former. 

Many charitable organizations have struggled with this. Are our proposals of a professional nature to inspire and give confidence to potential donors? Is our approach polite and proper? What did organization “X” do to get all of those thousands of dollars donations/government support and yet we can’t seem to garner any?

It is this end result that has disenfranchised so many of us. 

We know that population-wise, Caymanians are overrun and the percentage of our population who are civic minded makes that number even smaller. Therefore it is not too far-fetched to see that you can simply ‘run-out’ of caring Caymanians if they are continually discouraged by this type of treatment and by the way the sentiment out there is that this treatment is coming from their own people!

I have deliberately not named names in this article because that is not the point. 

The point is to shake up those who have fallen asleep at the wheel of supporting each other. Pause before you criticize your own and try to stand in their shoes. How long have they tried to make a difference for X cause?

Do you care? If not, why not? Then ask yourself quietly, “Am I one of those who acts on the belief that everything/ one foreign is better?”

If your answer is yes then you need to change this. Stinking thinking like this is destroying things Caymanian and it starts from within.

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