The Responsibilities of Freedom

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This final of four installments in the presentation of the new Federation of the West Indies discusses the challenges the new nation faces. The logistical challenges include a large population of three million crowded onto ten primary islands, each different from the other in many ways, such as culturally. But that overcrowding has led to one major problem, that of poverty, relative in that while there is no famine, there is hunger and malnutrition among the poor, which is more evident juxtaposed against the wealthy minority. Another cause of poverty is the history of the black family, and what has been borne out of slavery where black people and other people of color, and including their children, were property of the owners who controlled what they could or could not do. Changing such attitudes and emigration are two solutions, but the populace must be given opportunities, including education, both formal and informal, to allow them to get out of that cycle of poverty.