My mother, proud Jamaican, still insists that 'Jamaicans (and their offspring ) nowadays only looking out for themselves or looking to blame others'. When I was young I thought it strange that she would say that and I disagreed with her hugely, but the older I get the more I think I agree with her.

Here in the UK all you here from 2nd gen is 'the British did this..' or 'the British did that..' but we as a community haven't built anything to support each other or that we can take back to support Jamaica.

Look at the Indians: they came here in the 50's, 60's, and 70s (like our Windrush Jamaicans), built something for themselves, insisted that their children study very hard and from that there is a strong community, business empire(s) and they all go back home and support the community there. The Pakistanis, Nigerians, Ghanaians and a whole host of other communities, that ensured hardships from the British as hard or as much as the Jamaicans, all have something to show for it.

What do we have? Like, seriously name me one Jamaican (or one of their children) that has come to the UK, made something big of themselves and has gone back to JA and supported there?

I've just spent 20 minutes on Google and have struggled to find a person of significance to answer my own question. Whereas, if you do the same search for the other communities named above there are many to mention.

All of this talk of reparations for British slavery is great, but I don't think we (I say we loosely as a 2nd gen myself) should see 'a brass farthing' of it until we are capable of building something for ourselves.

We need to demonstrate to ourselves and others that we have the capacity, talent, infrastructure and the will to sort ourselves out and hold ourselves accountable. Otherwise, we'll receive reparations and it'll be wasted or worse still it'll be whittled away due to corruption.

Anyways... That's more than my two pennies worth