The Block Is The Stock Exchange

BY THE TIME a sixteenyear- old in Laventille or Denham Town can strip an assault rifle blindfolded, he has already done the numbers. The formal economy will pay him minimum wage for maximum patience and effort, while the block will pay him maximum respect for a minimum of paperwork.

Why sit for a CSEC exam when the gang offers a faster route to cash and a man’s reputation?

In my last “Eye of The Needle” column I wrote about female achievement.

This week I turn to male issues, my argument last was, she earned the credential and the seat but not the chair. This week I argue that he skipped the exam but kept the chair or found the gun.

Male Corporate Leadership: Eudine Barriteau told us that the men still rule, and the data supports her. The ILO reports that on average 75% of board members in the Caribbean are male. The data says that more than 75% of Caribbean companies have a majority of male board members.

The Education Achievement Gap.

The IDB’s cross-country work (Barbados, Jamaica, T&T) finds only about 65% of students completing primary school qualify for tertiary education via CSEC, that females outperform males in post-secondary enrolment, that males are significantly more likely to be NEET (not in education, employment or training), and that the female advantage holds at primary, secondary and post-secondary levels across the entire socio-economic spectrum.

Primary School-exit mathematics data from Barbados and Dominica (2015–2021) shows a marked over representation of boys among the lowest- performing students.

The 30% male enrolment at UWI seems a logical consequence of male under- achievement at lower levels of the system.

The Homicide Rate.

Caribbean nations are consistently in the top 10 countries with the highest per capita murder rates. We are not only the carnival and beach capitals of the world. The UNODC’s 2024 report on Caribbean gangs, drugs and firearms covering Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Guyana shows that roughly 80% of homicide victims are males from the 15–34 age groups, and their killers mirror them.

The Current Situation: We can dig into the ILO data and see the elite hierarchy intact. Men dominate boardrooms because they still monopolize capital.

However, at the other extreme young Black men are over represented in homicides both as victim and perpetrator and the prison rolls. Across the Caribbean, men are opting out of the credentialed, salaried path. UWI’s 70% female enrolment is the undeniable proof. How did we reach this impasse, and what keeps the status quo so stubbornly intact?

The historical floor.

There is a rich tradition of Caribbean research on these issues, well more like a war of words. Errol Miller argues that “boys are failing”, because the colonial ruling minority with its patriarchal mindset deliberately channelled Black men away from credentials, because a credentialed Black man was viewed as an existential threat to the power structure in a way an educated Black woman was not.

Mark Figueroa’s counter argument of Caribbean male privileging is a sharp analytical tool. Figuero argues that boys underachieve in the education system because of gender privilege. While Caribbean girls are socialized into being disciplined, boys are privileged. The girls are protected, told to stay in the yard or now the house and they are (some say were) required to do chores around the house. Boys are granted the freedom to roam the streets, exempted from domestic chores, and taught that obedience, neatness, and studiousness are girl things.

The socialization of girls provides the discipline and deferred gratification that facilitates success in the formal school system and economy. Caribbean boys underachieve in education because they are raised to believe school is beneath their manhood. The formal labour market places a premium on discipline and credentials, especially for those lacking privilege, which are precisely the qualities black Caribbean boys are raised to reject and girls to embrace.

Peter Wilson argues that Caribbean societies run two parallel value systems.

There is Respectability which is earned through church, and school and formal employment. Caribbean girls are pushed to value respectability. Then there is Reputation which is comprised of wit, performance, sexual prowess, generosity and toughness. Reputation is earned among male peers and is nurtured and displayed in the rum shop, the street corner and now the gang.

Academic qualifications are a classic signal of discipline and respectability which the formal economy values, while the block is the stock exchange of reputation. When the girl pursues academic credentials she knows she is accumulating respectability capital that pays dividends in the formal economy. When the boy cuts class for the block and the gang he is accumulating reputational capital to reap dividends in the informal “Gang Economy”. The gang is the reputation economy fully monetized and armed. Rank, respect, territory, name, reputation’s whole portfolio, now with a payroll and an arsenal the local police cannot match.

The Gang as a Firm

I see the gang as a business. It recruits from a labour pool the formal economy rejects or offers only low pay work. The formal economy places a premium on credentials and discipline which are the very qualities Figueora’s privileged, and Wilson’s reputation focused boys are raised to reject. The gang offers immediate returns that enhance reputation instantly. The formal economy requires credentials, discipline and a capacity to defer gratification with its long hours of work and career ladders that take fifteen years to climb. Our girls are raised for this economy, but our boys are not.

The gang operates in an illegal market. In this market business risks cannot be insured, assets cannot be protected by the police and disputes cannot be settled in court. As a result, gun violence is both risk management and contract enforcement. The homicide rate is partly the business expenses of an economy operating outside the law.

We treat the homicide rate as a security problem, but it is actually a payroll problem. The gang doesn’t recruit lost boys, it hires rational actors from a labour pool that cannot fit into the formal economy.

Until we stop asking “Why are they violent?” and start asking “Why they can’t function in our legal markets?”, we will keep funding the morgue.

The region owes its sons more than a choice between a board chairmanship they’ll inherit without the exam or a graveyard they’ll enter without a trial. Count the chairs, then count the guns and the coffins. The same sex holds both.

_ Professor C. Justin Robinson is Pro Vice Chancellor and Campus Principal, UWI Five Islands Campus