I WAS in the hospital when the news broke about Bermuda's latest shooting and the resultant death of footballer Shaki Cromwell. I thought something odd had happened because I like to listen to the late night reggae show that comes over the radio on Friday nights when listeners phone in with requests for the songs they would like to be played. A number of people called in all asking that songs be played for Middle Town because at that moment there was a cloud hanging over the community.

That was all that was said. But the news was probably already out on the Bermuda grapevine as the host intimated he was aware something tragic had taken place. But he did not go into any detail. Right away, knowing the reputation of the area, I knew something serious had happened. I was thinking along the lines of someone getting killed, maybe one or two people getting killed.

Of course I, like the rest of Bermuda, eventually heard about the shooting death of Shaki Crockwell the next morning, the third black male to be shot down in Bermuda's streets in recent times.

Now we have heard many opinions as to why this particular killing took place. Speculation abounds as to what was behind this and the other shootings that have resulted in the deaths of young black males. As I told someone who was in shock over the latest shooting - and who said she thought Bermuda was still another world - if that self-image we once had of ourselves was ever true, it has long since passed into history. We are not separate from the rest of the world. We are not different from the rest of the world. These days we are just another extension of the rest of the world.

But the problem is that too many people here are living in denial: they want to believe that Bermuda remains another world, gentle, slow-paced and unspoilt by the greed, gangsterism and venality that have blighted so many other communities in so many other countries. These people are deceiving themselves. One can find very few human atrocities committed against other human beings in the world at large that have not occured in Bermuda some time during our lifetimes or at some time during our history in some form or other (except, of course, open warfare or genocide committed by one people or group against another people; slavery exists in a separate category but is an atrocity in its own right).

I have often used the term "fig-leaf mentality" to describe the mindset of too many of my fellow Bermudians when it comes to facing the realities that exist in our country. I have witnessed some of this self-deception first-hand in the aftermath of this latest tragedy. Some have blamed Shaki Crockwell's death on slavery, some on the lack of opportunities for young black males in our community. Few have focussed on what the real causes are.

I have heard some heart felt opinions on slavery in recent days, with some Bermudians arguing that its impact is still with us today.

Some believe that actual economic slavery still exists today in Bermuda and that is what is holding back black people (and the black male in particular). Well, first of all we should not throw around the term "slavery" without having a clear understanding of what the historical reality of slavery was all about. In the Bermuda context in no way can or should we compare what our ancestors experienced as slaves with our lives today. To get a genuine understanding of slavery in the Bermuda context, one should read the late Cyril Packwood's Chained On The Rock or the Lefroy Memorials - unedited historical documents chronicling daily life during the slave-holding period in Bermuda's history.

Or perhaps read the harrowing first-hand account of slavery provided by Mary Prince Mary Prince (circa 1788-1833), a Bermudian woman born into slavery in the Brackish Pond area. The story of her life as a slave was the first account by a black woman to be published in England and the book had a galvanising effect on the anti-slavery movement. Her parents were both slaves: her father was a sawyer owned by David Trimingham, and her mother a house-servant of Charles Myners. When Myners died in 1788, Prince and her mother were sold as household servants to a Captain Darrell, who gave Prince to his granddaughter, Betsey Williams.

When she was 12, Prince was sold again to Captain John Ingham, of Spanish Point, but never took easily to the indignities of her enslavement and she was often flogged.

As a punishment, Prince was sold to another Bermudian, probably Robert Darrell, who sent her in 1806 to Grand Turks, which Bermudians had used for a century for the extracting of salt from the ocean. Salt was a pillar of the Bermudian economy, but could not easily be produced in Bermuda, where the only natural resource were the Bermuda cedars used for building ships.

The industry was a cruel one, however, with the salt rakers forced to endure exposure not only to the sun and heat, but also to the salt in the pans, which ate away at their uncovered legs.

Mary returned to Bermuda in 1810, but was sold to John Wood in 1818, and sent to Antigua to be a domestic slave. She joined the Moravian church and, in December 1826, she married Daniel James, a former slave who had bought his freedom and worked as a carpenter and cooper. For this impudence, she was severely beaten by her master.

In 1828, Wood took her as a servant to London. Although slavery was illegal in Britain, she had no means to support herself, and could not have returned to her husband without being re-enslaved.

She remained with Wood until they threw her out. She took shelter with the Moravian church in Hatton Garden, London.

Within a few weeks, she had taken employment with Thomas Pringle, an abolitionist writer, and Secretary to the British Anti-Slavery Society.

Pringle arranged for her narrative to be copied down by Susanna Strickland and it was published in 1831 as the The History of Mary Prince, the first account of the life of a black woman to be published in England.

Prince remained in England until her death in about 1833, never returning to her Bermuda home.

Sadly, she is thought to have died just a few months before the Emancipation of slaves in British territories, a watershed event her hugely influential book had helped to make possible.

Or perhaps you could even try travelling to the West Coast of Africa, in particular the countries of Senegal and Ghana, where you can view the old slaves depots and sea forts where captured slaves were kept.

If you get a real understanding of the real experience of slavery then in no way would you ever voice the uninformed opinion that what we are experiencing today is in the least bit comparable to the lives our foreftathers led.

The other often-voiced opinion I've heard recently is that our young black males are somehow handicapped when it comes to education.

And even though that would appear to be true when we look at the much higher number of black females who excel and who are picking up the scholarship opportunities that are increasingly available, we need to start asking the question why is this so.

When, if you attend a primary school graduation as I did at the end of the last school year on the occasion of my grandson's school graduation, and you see that for the most part both male and female students pass with distinction and equal honours you have to really wonder what happens between that period in school life and the middle and high school years when males start falling through the cracks big time.

It is clear that before our young males become susceptible to all of those negatives and pitfalls that are waiting to influence their lives for the worse, there most be massive intervention not just on the part of the Government through its school system but by society as a whole.

We must do this because there is no where to run from the consequences of not doing anything. Bermuda is just not big enough; it's not the sort of place where, if you have the wealth, you can live in a gated community with your own private police force and shut out those aspects of life you don't want to experience.

We live on top of one another here, multi-millionaires living right next door to ordinary working folk. Changes that are happening at the so-called bottom of society will sooner or later make themselves felt on your doorstep.

Don't kid yourself into thinking otherwise; don't be deluded by the "Bermuda Is Another World" myth. Because that's all it is these days - a myth.

This debate is not yet finished. In fact it's only just beginning and it only represents one aspect of the many problems we face as a country. It's a debate that is long overdue but at least it has begun.