I wondered if he was from a village or a district, because young men who have grown up in this city without pity are not normally so open or friendly these days. Everybody is guarded, almost suspicious in the city, especially our younger, street people. Ours is an urban environment which is dominated by a drug trade/industry which has given rise to violent gangs. So our children grow up learning to be careful before they are friendly.

Anyway, my gas attendant friend really admired the vehicle, and he wanted to know how much it cost. He seemed to think that I was one of the wealthy big boys.

I tried to put things into perspective for him, explaining that this was a vehicle I had driven while I was chairman of the university, and that I had been able to buy it at a discount after my university tenure.

I saw where he still thought I was a ranking millionaire. So I told him that when I was a young man, I used to have to pack punctured tires with grass to make it from one place to another on the highway. I was referring to my time in UBAD between 1969 and 1971 travelling between Belize City and More Tomorrow, and between Belize City and Dangriga. I know about a lot of old vehicles in my youth, I said.

?How old are you?? I asked.

?Twenty,? he replied.

He was just a baby. Would you give up your youth for a vehicle like this, I asked. He was quick to say no, and I was glad to hear that the material world had not totally overwhelmed him.

I?m thinking about joining the police, he said.

In the neighbourhood where I work, I never hear young men talk about joining the police. Again, I had to think this young man came from a village or a district. In my ?hood?, a young man generally feels like a traitor if he joins the force (now called the department.)

I asked him if he had high school. His answer was negative. So I proposed to him that he should think of going to high school through night classes, thus allowing him to continue working during the day.

I thought to myself that this innocent young man was employed in a dangerous job, especially with Christmas around the corner. Gas stations have been favorite targets for jackers the last few years. There is no way he could realize how dangerous his job was, and I didn?t get around to discussing it.

The thing is that whichever jackers came whenever to attack his work site, would be young men just like him where age and color are concerned. As our young men grow up, the majority of them are ?streamed? into the law and the lawless. Some young men become policemen and soldiers: the rest become gangsters. And once they make their career choice, then each group is embarked on a collision course with the other.

We who are in mainstream society, we then say that those who join the police force and the army are good, and those who become gangsters are bad. But for me, it?s not that simple. Almost all our young people, their value systems dominated as they are by American television, want the same thing ? material comforts, material luxury, bling bling.

I am a member of the legal world, but there was a time in my young life when an unjustified attack upon me by the legally established government, drove me into a rage which provoked retaliation. The legal government concocted a bogus charge of seditious conspiracy against me in February of 1970. This was a Supreme Court matter, and I thought they were going to put me in jail. I believed myself to be an innocent man, and I decided to go down fighting. The decision that I made at that point, could have led me to destruction, even as we say today that when these young men choose the gang life, they are choosing destruction.

When our young men who do not have education or skills training, make career decisions, they are making these decisions from positions of powerlessness. As a people, we are in an oppressed state, and that is why we find our young people too often facing each other across the barrels of guns. Somewhere out there behind the scenes and behind the executive desks, are the rulers, and they represent white supremacy. All of us, both the law and the lawless, are employees of the white supremacists. The difference between us employees is that some of us are docile, and some of us are rebellious. The common denominator is that all of us are black.

Those with eyes to see, Jack, please let them see.