If you were looking for a role model island to help Bermuda get to grips with its escalating gang violence problems, Jamaica probably wouldn't be top of your list.

But the character of Jamaicans puts the Caribbean island right up there for Antoine Bean.

Despite a murder rate of 1,000-plus per year, race relations volunteer Mr. Bean says Jamaica has something sadly lacking in today's Bermuda: love, honour and unity.

He has returned to this island and joined Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda after seven years soaking up different cultures in the Caribbean gave him a fresh outlook on where things are going wrong here.

And it was Jamaica that offered perhaps the most surprising insight.

"When you think of Jamaica you think of crime and violence and murders. I realised I was in the lions' den," Mr. Bean, 40, told The Royal Gazette.

"I had to forget about what I knew and what I learned. I had to recognise who I was and where I was at the time. In doing that, I came to respect Jamaica in the sense that I looked up to Jamaica and went with the flow.

"Jamaica gave me an insight into something that I believe is not as prevalent in Bermuda: the love, the honour and the unity.

"There are things that go on in that country that are tied to the economic situation. But people will do what they have to do in order to survive because they are tired of being hungry."

"If you show a reason to be respected, you will be respected to the end."

Mr. Bean believes that while Bermuda's problems are rooted in the way society was set up hundreds of years ago, the country's leaders are going about changing things the wrong way.

Instead of finger-pointing at whites and the United Bermuda Party, he says black people need to look at themselves and deal with problems in their own community — like solving an identity crisis in which young people respect material goods more than their own families.

This view may not find favour with everyone — and when Mr. Bean stood up to say it at last Friday's Big Conversation meeting he drew grumbles from an audience which had lapped up finger-pointing at whites and the UBP all evening. But Mr. Bean is not afraid of saying things which may upset some.

"We need people to point out that we have issues within our own backyard," he said. "If you work in a company you don't go around pointing out what the other department is doing. If you do, your own department will continue to get worse. You have to deal with your own department.

"You have to be honest with yourself, get away from this 'not my child syndrome'. We have to get away from this thought that the more we point out something, the more we look bad.

"The young people are angry. They are struggling. We (blacks) are the ones who are stabbing each other, standing out there with guns shooting our young people."

"I'm not saying that doesn't happen in any other race, but the issues are our issues. We have an identity crisis. We are confused. We are being told one thing but another thing is going on."

"We are being told to work hard and take care of your family — that's not the true identity of a male. Everybody wants to blame it on the youth, but it's more like we've lost focus."

"They say go to work, work hard, take care of your family. But what about loving yourself, loving your neighbour?"

"We take care of our family in the material sense, but what about the values?"

"A child must be brought up in the way a child needs to be brought up. Don't give him PlayStations, $600 cell phones, all these material things, and then when he's older throw him out on the street. Of course he's going to be angry. He's not going to beat up mom and dad who he's angry with. He's going to take it out on someone else."

"We have to deal with social ills in this country. We have to figure out how they got to where they are. That's a solution not by one person, or just Government, it's going to take a tribal council. Bermuda is a tribe. We need to sit down and stop looking at: 'You are black, you are white, you are from St. George's, you are from Somerset. Your mom's cousin did something to my mom's uncle three years ago.' "

"The Big Conversation has been about race. How can that be the big conversation? There's more to life than race. Our social issues do not just stem from race."

Mr. Bean left Bermuda seven years ago when he found it impossible to get a job after being accused of a crime, even though he was exonerated of the alleged offence. He says he was the victim of Bermuda's rumour culture.

His travels have included stints in Turks and Caicos, Bahamas, Jamaica, Barbados and the United States. He returned last year, saying he wanted to share what he had learned with his home Island.

When it comes to fighting among black people, Bermuda is not alone.

"You go to Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas, and they don't like Haitians and Jamaicans. You go to Barbabos and they don't like the Guyanese or Indians," he said.

"It's not logical that people of the same race would dislike each other. It's planted. The education of our people was done by and for someone else.

"Education is not only in the school room. I remember when I as a young man would be there and talking about the things that I wanted to do, my mother would say: 'Stop dreaming boy, you can't do that.' And I could have passed that on to my children. I probably did to some extent, unknowingly.

"Why would a mother tell her son that? Because it's something that's ingrained. People felt they couldn't do things for themselves, they have to toe the line."

Teaching about African heritage would be a start, he says.

"It's divide and conquer," he said. "Take a people out of Africa, make them forget about their heritage. In schools we should learn about everything. I have nothing against learning about my country's connection to the UK and America but, hold on, I'm of African descent. Why is it that I can't learn about my people? I believe a lot of adults don't have a clue as to their African heritage."