Lots of racism and self hate in your comment. There are at least 30k+ white Bahamians that live in this country. The richest of them own most of the properties downtown, the area of concern. Just about every successful country in the western hemisphere relies on foreign investment, including the US and Canada. The foreign investment in our tourism industry is why the Bahamas is as rich as it is versus the other independant Caribbean countries. The Bahamas needs foreign investment to do these things because our population is too small to do it on our own consistently even if we raise taxes. Also, the reason tourist come to the Bahamas is because it is close, we speak english(second most spoken language in the world and I have heard Americans say that lol), Bahamians are cool to hang with once they are not serving you lol, and the waters of the Bahamas are unrivaled on this side of the world. That being said downtown is indeed a poor representation of the Bahamas. If tourist love coming to the Bahamas with us operating at half effort so to speak, imagine if we put 100%. People all over the world love coming to the Bahamas despite our faults. It's really only the downtown area, the rest of the country is fine and in most cases better off than the other Caribbean countries I have been to.