By Nyan Reynolds

News Americas, NY, NY, Mon. June 1, 2026: When people hear the word segregation, they often think about White America and Black America.

They think about separate schools, separate water fountains, separate lunch counters, and separate entrances. They think about politicians standing on courthouse steps declaring that segregation should exist today, tomorrow, and forever. They think about police dogs, fire hoses, marches, protests, and brave men and women who challenged a system that told them they were less than human because of the color of their skin.

That is the segregation we teach in our classrooms. It is the segregation we see in documentaries. It is the segregation we remember every February when conversations turn toward civil rights and racial justice.

But there is another segregation that we rarely discuss. It happened inside the Black community. And if we are honest with ourselves, it is still happening today.

Before going further, it is important to understand what the Brown Paper Bag Rule actually was.

The Brown Paper Bag Rule, sometimes called the Brown Paper Bag Test, was an informal social practice that emerged in parts of the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and became most prevalent during the Jim Crow era. The concept was simple and troubling. A person’s skin tone was compared to the color of a brown paper bag. If their complexion was lighter than the bag, they were often viewed more favorably in certain social circles. If they were darker, they could face exclusion from clubs, organizations, churches, social gatherings, and other spaces where complexion influenced acceptance.

It was never a law. It was not practiced everywhere. Nor did it represent the beliefs of all Black Americans. Yet it became a symbol of a deeper issue that scholars today call colorism: the preference for lighter skin tones within communities of color. Its roots stretched back to slavery and the racial hierarchy that elevated whiteness as the standard of beauty, intelligence, and social worth. By the time America entered the twentieth century, some of those beliefs had found their way into Black communities themselves, creating divisions among people who were already facing discrimination from the outside world.

The Brown Paper Bag Rule reminds us that segregation was not only something imposed upon Black Americans. In some ways, segregation also became a lens through which Black Americans were encouraged to view one another. Think about that for a moment.

While America was telling Black people they were not good enough because they were Black, Black people were sometimes telling other Black people they were not good enough because they were too Black.

How does something like that happen? How does a people struggling against segregation become divided among themselves by the very thing being used against them?

The answer is uncomfortable. Segregation did not simply separate races. Segregation taught lessons. And some of those lessons were learned far too well.

To understand this reality, we must go back further than the Civil Rights Movement. We must go back to slavery itself.

For generations, America has established a hierarchy based on race. Whiteness represented power. Whiteness represented beauty. Whiteness represented opportunity. Whiteness represented acceptance. Blackness was placed at the bottom of that hierarchy. These ideas were reinforced everywhere. They appeared in politics, education, employment, entertainment, and social customs. They shaped who was considered worthy and who was not.

Over time, those beliefs did not remain outside Black communities. They found their way inside.

Many lighter-skinned Black Americans were descendants of the very system that oppressed their ancestors. They were often the children of slave owners and enslaved women, born from relationships that frequently involved exploitation and violence. In some instances, lighter-skinned enslaved people worked inside plantation homes while darker-skinned enslaved people worked in the fields.

Both groups were enslaved. Both groups lacked freedom. Both groups suffered under the same institution.

Yet, differences in treatment created social distinctions that survived long after slavery ended. When emancipation arrived, the chains were removed, but many of the attitudes remained.

Opportunities were often distributed unevenly. Lighter skin sometimes translates into greater access to education, employment, and social acceptance. Darker skin frequently carried stereotypes that had been created by a racist society. The result was a hierarchy that persisted within a community already burdened by discrimination.

The Brown Paper Bag Rule became one symbol of that reality.

It was never merely about complexion. It was about value. It was about acceptance. It was about proximity to a standard that Black Americans themselves had not created.

Perhaps that is what makes the issue so painful. The struggle was never simply against external segregation. The struggle was also against internalized beliefs that taught people to measure themselves according to someone else’s definition of beauty, intelligence, and worth.

Even today, many Black Americans recognize remnants of these conversations. Listen carefully. The evidence is everywhere.

How many times have we heard someone describe a person as attractive primarily because they are light-skinned? How many jokes have been made about dark skin? How many songs, movies, and television shows have reinforced the idea that certain features are more desirable than others?

How many young girls have stood in front of a mirror questioning whether their complexion makes them beautiful enough? How many young boys have been teased because they were considered too dark?

We often laugh about these things. We package them as harmless jokes. We turn them into memes. We build entire social media conversations around them.

But jokes have histories. Ideas have origins. And many of those origins can be traced back to a period when America openly taught that the closer one was to whiteness, the more valuable society considered them to be.

The laws changed. The attitudes did not always change with them. Some of those beliefs settled into families. Some settled into neighborhoods. Some settled into the culture. Some settled into us.

I remember growing up hearing conversations about complexion that seemed normal at the time. People often discussed skin tone as casually as they discussed height or eye color. Yet beneath many of those conversations was something deeper. There was often an assumption about attractiveness. An assumption about social status. An assumption about desirability.

The comments were not always intended to be harmful. That is what makes them so dangerous. Prejudice often survives not because it is openly celebrated but because it becomes normalized.

A child does not need to hear hatred to develop insecurity. Sometimes all it takes is hearing that lighter is prettier. Sometimes all it takes is hearing that darker is less desirable. Sometimes all it takes is a joke repeated often enough that it begins to feel true.

For many Black children, complexion becomes one of the earliest ways they learn how society evaluates appearance. Long before they understood history, they understood comments. Long before they understand segregation, they understand comparison.

That reality deserves more attention than it receives. We cannot spend decades teaching children about the damage caused by racial segregation while ignoring the ways similar ideas continue to influence perceptions within communities today.

This conversation is not about assigning blame. It is not about creating division where none exists. Nor is it about suggesting that all Black Americans think the same way.

The overwhelming majority of Black families reject these ideas entirely and celebrate the beauty found in every complexion.

The purpose of this discussion is understanding. History matters because it explains why certain conversations continue long after the laws that created them disappear.

History helps us understand why some wounds remain sensitive decades later. History reveals that prejudice is rarely satisfied with dividing one group from another. Eventually, it teaches people to divide themselves.

That may be one of segregation’s most enduring victories. Not the separation of schools.

Not the separation of buses. Not the separation of drinking fountains. Its greatest victory may have been convincing generations of people that human worth could be measured by physical characteristics.

That is a lesson America taught repeatedly. And unfortunately, it is a lesson that echoes far beyond race.

When society teaches people to rank one another according to appearance, everyone loses. Communities become fractured. Self-worth becomes conditional. Human dignity becomes negotiable.

THE BROWN PAPER BAG RULE

The Brown Paper Bag Rule serves as a reminder of how dangerous those ideas can become. It reminds us that oppression does not always operate from the outside. Sometimes it finds ways to live within the communities it once targeted. Sometimes it survives in conversations, assumptions, preferences, and jokes long after the original system has been dismantled.

That is why confronting this history matters. Not because we wish to dwell in the past. But because we owe honesty to the present.

A mature society does not hide uncomfortable truths. It examines them. It learns from them. It grows beyond them. The next generation deserves that honesty.

Young Black boys deserve to grow up knowing that their worth is not determined by how dark or how light they are. Young Black girls deserve to know that beauty is not measured against proximity to whiteness or any other manufactured standard.

They deserve freedom from insecurities they did not create. They deserve freedom from hierarchies they did not invent. And they deserve a future where complexion is viewed as a characteristic rather than a ranking system.

As we turn the pages of history, we will find countless examples of America struggling with race. We will read about segregation, discrimination, and the long road toward equality. Those stories are important, and they must continue to be told.

But we should also tell the whole story. We should talk about the segregation that happened between races and the divisions that sometimes happened within them.

We should talk about the visible scars and the invisible ones. We should talk about the laws that separated people and the ideas that persuaded people to separate themselves.

Because the Brown Paper Bag Rule was never really about a paper bag.

It was about identity. It was about belonging. It was about value.

And until we fully confront the legacy of those ideas, we risk allowing them to quietly survive under different names, jokes, and conversations. History asks whether we recognize that reality.

The future depends upon what we choose to do with the answer this Caribbean American Heritage Month and beyond.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nyan Reynolds is a U.S. Army veteran and published author whose novels and cultural works draw from his Jamaican heritage, military service, and life experiences. His writing blends storytelling, resilience, and heritage to inspire readers.  

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By Staff Reporter | NewsAmericasNow.com

News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Sun. May 30, 2026: On Monday June 1st, the USS Nimitz – one of the largest and most powerful naval vessels on the planet – will drop anchor at the Port of Kingston, Jamaica. Ninety miles away, Cuba is watching. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier’s arrival in Kingston Harbor marks the final stop of Southern Seas 2026 – an 11th iteration multinational goodwill deployment announced by US Naval Forces Southern Command that has taken the carrier throughout South America and the Caribbean. The United States Embassy in Jamaica has framed the June 1 to June 5 visit as an exercise in maritime cooperation and people-to-people connections.

But the timing, the context, and the fractures it has exposed within the Caribbean Community tell a far more complicated story.

A Goodwill Visit – Or Something More?

The USS Nimitz is not a goodwill vessel in the conventional sense. It is a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier – one of the largest warships ever built, capable of carrying dozens of combat aircraft and projecting overwhelming military force across an entire ocean. Its arrival in Kingston comes at a moment of extraordinary tension between the United States and Cuba – the most dangerous escalation in US-Cuba relations since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, according to analysts tracking the situation.

In the weeks leading up to the Jamaica port call, the Trump administration unsealed a superseding federal indictment charging former Cuban President Raul Castro with the alleged murders of four Americans in the 1996 shoot-down of unarmed civilian aircraft. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly described Cuba as “a failed state 90 miles from our shores run by friends of our adversaries” — while standing at Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida, approximately 180 miles from Havana. The administration expanded secondary sanctions targeting foreign entities doing business with Cuba. And US Southern Command confirmed the Nimitz carrier strike group’s deployment to the southern Caribbean.

The carrier is now coming to Jamaica, and Cuba, which sits between Florida and Kingston, is watching every move.

Jamaica: Partner, Not Launchpad – For Now

The United States Embassy in Jamaica was careful in its framing of the visit. Chargé d’Affaires Scott Renner described it as underscoring “the depth of the US-Jamaica bilateral relationship and the importance the United States places on its enduring partnership with Jamaica.”

“The visit of a US aircraft carrier to Jamaica marks an important milestone in the longstanding partnership between our countries,” Renner said, as quoted in the Embassy announcement. “Beyond strengthening maritime cooperation and regional security, this visit creates opportunities for meaningful people-to-people connections and economic benefits for local communities.”

The language is deliberate. Diplomatic. Carefully calibrated to frame a nuclear-powered supercarrier docking in the Caribbean’s third-largest island as a routine partnership exercise. Whether Jamaica – and the broader Caribbean – accepts that framing without question is another matter entirely.

Jamaica Government Moves Quickly To Frame The Visit

As questions swirled about the timing and implications of the USS Nimitz’s arrival, Jamaica House – the Office of the Prime Minister -moved swiftly on May 29th to frame the visit in decidedly civilian terms.

In an official press release, the government noted that the Nimitz had previously visited Panama, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil as part of its Southern Seas regional tour – and had hosted government officials from Guyana and Suriname while in South America. The statement emphasized people-to-people activities during the Jamaica visit – including the beautification of four schools in collaboration with the Jamaica Defence Force, youth sporting activities on June 4, and opportunities for Jamaican students to be exposed to world-class maritime operations and infrastructure.

“Jamaica and the United States have long shared common interests in regional stability, maritime cooperation, disaster response, trade, education, and security,” the statement read, as quoted in the Jamaica House press release. “The visit of the USS Nimitz provides a further opportunity to reaffirm these bonds and to strengthen mutual understanding between both nations.”

The carefully calibrated statement made no mention of Cuba, the escalating US-Cuba crisis, or the broader geopolitical context in which the carrier’s Caribbean deployment has taken place.

CARICOM Fractures – Guyana And Trinidad Break Ranks

The arrival of the USS Nimitz in Caribbean waters has exposed a fault line within the Caribbean Community that had been building quietly for months – and this week it cracked open in public. CARICOM foreign affairs ministers expressed their “profound concern” regarding the ongoing and intensifying economic, commercial, and financial measures imposed upon Cuba by the United States – a statement that reflected the longstanding regional consensus in support of Cuba and against the US embargo.

But two of CARICOM’s most significant members – Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago – reserved their positions from that statement. They did not sign on. The reason is significant. Both Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago are official members of the US-led Shield of the Americas alliance – a security pact signed by 17 Western Hemisphere countries in March 2026, focusing on countering transnational organized crime, drug cartels, and illegal migration through enhanced intelligence sharing and military cooperation.

In practical terms, two of the Caribbean’s most economically powerful nations – one sitting on one of the world’s largest oil discoveries, the other a major natural gas producer – have chosen alignment with Washington over regional solidarity with Havana.

For CARICOM, which has built its diplomatic identity on consensus and the principle of a Zone of Peace in the Caribbean, the public fracture is deeply significant. The regional body that has consistently called for an end to the US embargo on Cuba now cannot speak with one voice on the issue – because two of its most influential members are standing with the country imposing that embargo.

Cuba’s Warning To The Region

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla has not been subtle in his message to Caribbean governments watching this unfold. Addressing the United Nations Security Council last week, Rodriguez warned of an impending humanitarian catastrophe and issued a direct appeal to the region. “I call upon Latin America and the Caribbean to act in order to preserve their condition as a Zone of Peace and to avert adverse consequences that would destabilize the region,” he said, as reported by AFP.

Rodriguez also challenged the logic of the US pressure campaign in terms the Caribbean understands viscerally – the logic of a small island nation facing the full weight of a superpower. “Cuba is a small island – 100,000 square kilometers and 10 million inhabitants,” Rodriguez said, as quoted by Fox News. “Based on what logic, what would be the common sense behind the idea that Cuba could threaten a nuclear superpower?”

The question resonates across a Caribbean made up almost entirely of small island states that have historically understood — from their own colonial experience — exactly what it feels like to be on the wrong side of a great-power confrontation.

The Congresswoman From Jamaica’s Diaspora

As the USS Nimitz prepares to dock in Kingston, one of the most prominent Caribbean-American voices in the US Congress was making herself heard in Washington. Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke – the daughter of Jamaican immigrants and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus – wrote directly to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rubio last week, demanding an immediate end to the oil blockade on Cuba.

“Under the administration’s oil blockade and tightening of sanctions, Cubans are dying,” Clarke wrote, as quoted in her letter. She cited reports that Cuba’s infant mortality rate has more than doubled since 2018 as a result of sanctions – with food shortages leaving pregnant mothers and newborns unable to survive.

“Enough is enough,” Clarke wrote. “The Congressional Black Caucus will not stand by and allow this administration to continue this barbaric policy that generates unimaginable human suffering in Cuba. We are demanding that you end the oil blockade, lift the sanctions on Cuba, and allow the Cuban people access to the most basic resources they need to sustain life on the island.”

The letter came from a congresswoman whose political roots are in the Jamaican diaspora community of Brooklyn – the same community that will be watching the USS Nimitz dock in Kingston Harbor on Monday with deeply mixed emotions.

What Comes Next

The USS Nimitz will be in Kingston from June 1 to June 5. During that time, US sailors will interact with Jamaican communities, maritime cooperation exercises will take place, and the Embassy has promised economic benefits for local businesses. earlier ?

But the questions that the visit raises – about Jamaica’s role in an escalating US-Cuba confrontation, about CARICOM’s fracturing unity, about the Caribbean’s capacity to remain a Zone of Peace when the world’s most powerful military is parking a nuclear carrier in its waters – will not be answered in five days.

The Caribbean has been placed at the center of a geopolitical confrontation it did not choose, between two powers whose conflict has defined the region’s political reality for more than six decades. The USS Nimitz arrives Monday. Cuba is watching. And the Caribbean – fractured, uncertain, and caught in between – is watching too.

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By Ron Cheong

For much of the modern postcolonial era, the Caribbean has lived inside a permanent contradiction. Its small states speak the language of sovereignty, solidarity, anti-imperialism, and regional fraternity. Yet they survive in a world dominated by overwhelming asymmetries of power – economic, military, and political. No contradiction illustrates this more painfully than the Caribbean’s present dilemma regarding Cuba, Venezuela, and the United States.

At one level, the issue appears binary: remain loyal to Cuba, the region’s long-time friend and benefactor, or align more closely with the United States, the hemisphere’s dominant superpower. But the reality is far more complicated because Venezuela sits at the center of the equation – economically, ideologically, geographically, and militarily.

The Caribbean today is caught between gratitude, fear, morality, and survival.

Cuba: The Loyal Friend

For decades, Cuba did what few larger nations ever bothered to do for the Caribbean.

Cuban doctors staffed rural clinics across the region. Cuban medical brigades appeared after hurricanes, epidemics, and disasters. Thousands of Caribbean students received scholarships to study medicine in Havana when Western education was financially unreachable. In many islands, healthcare systems became deeply dependent on Cuban personnel.

Cuba’s relationship with the Caribbean was never merely transactional. It was rooted in a shared history of colonialism, race, vulnerability, and resistance to external domination. And nations, like people, remember loyalty.

The relationship deepened further through Venezuela’s PetroCaribe initiative. Cheap Venezuelan oil purchased on concessionary terms provided fragile Caribbean economies with breathing room during periods of debt, energy shocks, and fiscal crisis. PetroCaribe was not simply economics; it was oil diplomacy – the conversion of energy wealth into political influence and regional solidarity.

At the center of this arrangement stood the close political partnership between Cuba and Venezuela. Caracas supplied subsidized oil. Havana supplied expertise, intelligence, and legitimacy. Caribbean states benefited from both. For many governments, this was not ideology. It was survival.

When Survival Changes Shape

But survival has changed shape.

As Venezuela descended into economic collapse, political authoritarianism, and increasingly aggressive regional behavior, the moral equation shifted dramatically – especially for Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

Guyana now faces an existential territorial threat through the Essequibo dispute with Venezuela. Trinidad, sitting only miles from the Venezuelan coast, confronts the dangers of instability spilling across its borders: migration pressures, organized crime, and strategic vulnerability. This transforms the Caribbean dilemma entirely.

The region is no longer simply choosing between friendship and power. It is choosing between historical loyalty and physical security. And in moments of danger, moral philosophy itself becomes uncomfortable.

The Archbishop And The Chambermaid

The dilemma resembles William Godwin’s famous thought experiment from An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: “The Archbishop and the Chambermaid.”

Godwin asked whom one should save from a burning building – a brilliant archbishop whose survival benefits humanity, or a chambermaid whose death affects far fewer people. His answer was coldly utilitarian: morality requires saving the person of greater social value.

But critics raised the devastating counter-question:

What if the chambermaid is your mother? Your wife? Your lifelong benefactor?

That is the Caribbean’s Cuba problem. Pure strategic logic may point toward alignment with the United States. Whatever the inconsistencies or moral contradictions of American foreign policy, only the United States possesses the military and economic power capable of deterring Venezuelan aggression against Guyana or wider regional instability.

But Cuba is not an abstract geopolitical actor to the Caribbean. Cuba is the friend who came when others did not. To abandon Cuba under pressure from Washington feels, to many, less like diplomacy than betrayal.

“One Thought Too Many”

The philosopher Bernard Williams sharpened the dilemma even further when he argued that if a man pauses to calculate whether morality permits him to save his own wife first, he has already had “one thought too many.”

His point was that human beings cannot live morally while treating loved ones as morally interchangeable with strangers. Loyalty itself is part of what gives life meaning. Yet, governments are not private individuals.

States carry obligations not merely to friendship or historical gratitude, but to the survival of their citizens. In moments of crisis, nations often behave according to a brutal form of triage: preserving what has the greatest chance of survival, even when the choice feels morally wounding.

This is why the Caribbean’s predicament cannot be resolved through abstract moral rules alone. Immanuel Kant’s ideal that we should act only according to principles we would wish universally applied becomes difficult to sustain when the very existence of small states may be at stake.

Absolute loyalty can become national suicide. But pure self-interest destroys the trust and solidarity upon which small nations themselves depend.

America: Protector And Problem

The final irony is perhaps the cruelest.

The United States itself often behaves in ways that undermine the moral clarity of its demands. Its history in Latin America and the Caribbean includes interventions, embargoes, covert operations, and deeply inconsistent commitments to democracy and sovereignty.

And yet Caribbean states understand an uncomfortable truth: if Venezuela truly threatens Guyana’s territorial integrity or wider regional stability, only the United States possesses the credible power to deter it.

Not Cuba.
Not CARICOM.
Not international law alone.

This is the tragedy of power politics. Moral discomfort does not eliminate strategic dependence.

The Caribbean’s Burden

Large powers often speak in the language of principle because they possess the luxury of abstraction.

Small states rarely do. For the Caribbean, every diplomatic choice carries existential consequences. Choosing Cuba may jeopardize security and economic access. To choose America may feel like abandoning a loyal friend. To oppose Venezuela risks retaliation. To accommodate Venezuela, risks future coercion.

There is no morally clean path because the Caribbean does not control the structure within which these choices are made. And perhaps that is the deepest lesson of all: Ethical theories are easiest to defend when one’s survival is not at stake. For small nations living beside great powers and unstable neighbors, morality is never abstract. It is lived under pressure, memory, fear, necessity, and the constant calculation of survival. The Caribbean’s challenge is no longer simply balancing principle against power. For some states, particularly those facing immediate security risks, it has become a matter of reconciling longstanding political solidarities with pressing concerns about territorial integrity, stability, and national security.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ron Cheong is a frequent political commentator and columnist whose recent work focuses on international relations, economic resilience, and Caribbean-American affairs. He is a community activist and dedicated volunteer with extensive international banking experience. Now residing in Toronto, Canada, he is a fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto.

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King Kong And The Island: America’s Moral Collapse And Cuba

By Dr. Isaac Newton 

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Weds. May 27, 2026: Guyana stands at one of the most unusual moments in modern history. It is a nation where record-breaking economic growth and everyday struggle are happening at the same time. In one Guyana, oil wealth is transforming budgets and global rankings. In the other Guyana, families are calculating survival one week at a time. The true challenge is not growth. The challenge is unity. The task of this generation is to turn two Guyana’s into one shared destiny where national wealth becomes lived dignity for every citizen.

The first step is to tie every dollar of national resource wealth directly to visible human outcomes. Guyana must adopt a national transformation contract that legally links oil revenues to education results, healthcare access, housing delivery, food affordability, and job creation. Citizens should not need economic reports to understand progress. They should see it in shorter hospital lines, stronger schools, lower food prices, and safer communities. When people can see where the money goes and feel what it changes, trust becomes national stability.

The second step is to fix the cost of living with urgency and precision. Growth means nothing if daily life becomes harder. The government should remove taxes on essential food items, strengthen local food production through guaranteed farm purchasing programs, and reduce import dependence through agricultural expansion. At the same time, wages for teachers, nurses, and public workers must be adjusted to match real inflation, not delayed statistics. A country is not successful when its workers are employed. It is successful when its workers can live.

The third step is to build a people owned economy, not only a resource driven one. Every major sector connected to oil, construction, and services should prioritize Guyanese workers, suppliers, and entrepreneurs through enforceable local content laws. Young people should be given direct pathways into ownership through low interest business financing, national entrepreneurship hubs, and technical training linked to real industry demand. A nation becomes powerful when its citizens are not only job seekers but job creators.

The fourth step is radical trust building through transparent governance. Every major government contract should be publicly visible on a digital platform that shows cost, timeline, contractor, and progress. Performance dashboards should track hospitals, schools, housing, and infrastructure in real time. Leadership should be measured by delivery, not speeches. When systems become visible, corruption loses its hiding place and public confidence becomes stronger than political division.

The fifth step is to bring Guyanese talent home and keep it home. Competitive salaries, housing support, professional development, and leadership pipelines must be created for teachers, doctors, engineers, and civil servants. At the same time, the diaspora should be actively invited into national rebuilding through structured return programs. A country does not lose its people because of distance. It loses them because of doubt. To keep its people, it must restore belief.

Guyana now faces a simple but historic choice. It can become a country where wealth is visible only in national accounts or a country where wealth is felt in every household. The difference between those two futures is not economics alone. It is leadership discipline. If Guyana aligns its resources with fairness, its systems with transparency, and its growth with human dignity, it will not just be a fast growing economy. It will become a fully united nation with one shared destiny.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Isaac Newton is a leadership strategist and governance expert educated at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Oakwood University. He advises leaders and institutions across the Caribbean on ethical leadership, organizational culture, and transformational change. He is the co author of Steps to Good Governance.

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