On Self-Esteem (22 April 2004)

There is much talk these days about productivity and quality. In the House of Assembly, parliamentarians are debating a Bill to govern standards in the marketplace. Pundits who are following the state of Bahamian education worry themselves about the performance of our students in our schools. Our Prime Minister expresses much concern on a regular basis about the quality of the work and the training of Bahamian workmen, and so on.

The general consensus appears to be that we Bahamians are not productive enough, that we don't perform to the best of our abilities in the workplace, that our standards are lax, that what we produce is not of the highest quality.

The concern is not misplaced. It's a global economy in which we exist, and we Bahamians have got to learn to be competitive to survive. But the concern is misdirected.

You see, the real problem we face is not that we don't value productivity or quality. We understand both extremely well. One need only examine the average Bahamian's wardrobe and shoe collection to know that we recognize quality, and are willing to pay for it; and we are quick to notice (though not as quick to complain) when the service we are receiving is less-than-adequate. If you disbelieve me, you stand in any line — especially ones in government offices — and count the times you hear someone say to his or her neighbour, or even to the person behind the counter, "Yall gotta do better than this."

The real problem is that we don't think we're worth it.

You see, I believe that it's wonderful to talk about productivity, quality, standards. I've done it myself. But it's a bit like preaching about morality. We can talk about it and sing about it, and praise the Lord about it — as we do — but until we take it in and make it mean something to us, we will never live in a society that is safe and loving and moral.

Because the problem is that while we can say the right words, and nod our heads and listen and even say a few Hallelujah, Lords, a few Amens, unless we esteem ourselves enough to take action, they are going to mean nothing at all.

And it's the esteeming ourselves that's hard.

Now I'm not talking about self-protection, or self-preservation. Even the person who hates herself is capable of both of these; in fact, many people who don't think very much of themselves are very good at self-preservation. It gives them a chance to compete with other people, and when they win they have a momentary sense of value, they feel good for a little while because they have proven their own worth. (They have to prove their own worth because they're not terribly convinced of it.)

I'm talking about self-esteem.

The word esteem has a number of meanings. Among them are things like the condition of being honoured, a feeling of delighted approval and liking, and to regard highly. To have self-esteem is to honour oneself, to regard oneself highly. And it's not just a feeling; you can tell the people who have esteem for themselves apart from those who don't because of the way in which they behave.

You see, our productivity, our attitudes, even our aspirations and our desires reveal how much we esteem ourselves.

Let me give you an example.

Once, long ago, I had the great fortune of teaching one of the brightest and most interested group of young people I have ever come across. I first met them in ninth grade. They were intelligent, exuberant, and a lot of fun to be around (they also had the reputation of being the most difficult class of students in the school). But what was most interesting about them was that of the ten students who placed at the top of the class term after term, nine of them were girls.

I knew this was not because the girls were substantially smarter than the boys. It was a dead heat, actually; and the best questions and the best answers I got from the class consistently came from a group of boys who were making barely passing grades. I asked why they weren't working harder, and they told me that however well they did, they just knew that the girls would beat them. So they decided not to try.

Their problem: a failure of self-esteem. They were barely passing because they didn't want to try to excel. And they didn't want to try to excel because they had convinced themselves that they were never going to excel; somewhere in their minds they had already categorized themselves as not-good-enough, not-smart.

Where did they get that idea from? It's too much to go into now, but let me generalize a little and say that the lack of self-esteem is very common in societies that have had a history of oppression or subjugation. Part of the strategy in keeping the conquered down is making them believe that they aren't good enough to rule. We have changed our rulers, changed our names, changed our economics, and changed our lives; but we have not changed our minds about this. Too many of us still believe that we're not good enough.

Now I'm happy to say that these boys have almost universally grown out of that sense of not being good enough, and are excelling in all the fields they find themselves. But I'm afraid that there are far too many of us, male and female alike, who keep the fear of not being good enough with us for all our lives.

And it's that, more than anything else, I believe, that affects our productivity. It's that that affects the quality of our work. It's that that affects our attitudes and our output and the standards to which. Water rises to its own level, they say. And as long as we believe that we aren't good enough, that we've gone as far as we can go, that we are doing the best we can with what little God gave us to work with, we are setting that level very low.