LAST month the Bahamas National Youth Council, a non-profit organization representing youth voices in the country, commemorated Caribbean Youth Day with a youth march and forum. President of the council Tye McKenzie publicly associated himself with rational and bold albeit unpopular positions on Caribbean integration and I salute him for doing so. It made me think, regionalism is not dead in the Bahamas after all: It was a thought that gave me hope. In fact, it inspired me, as a fellow advocate of regional integration.
But it also made me think: How unfortunate that supporting a simple idea such as proudly affirming a Caribbean identity, and the “beckoning reality of integration and corporate development as a region” would be a bold action in this age of collapsing borders and social networking.
Caribbean people today are probably more integrated than in any other time in our history. And yet, today, anti-integration sentiments still hold major political currency, and it still seems rationale to assert that regional integration is irrelevant.
In the case of the Bahamas, we continue to resist the idea that the Haitian presence is not in fact anti-Bahamian, but is quintessentially Bahamian. Illegal immigration clouds the consciousness, but in reality, the two nations have always shared a close economic and cultural relationship, not to mention that familial ties are deeply entrenched in the Bahamian identity.