YeKengalé

*So a wa yu waa mi kaal dem den? Ruos bredfruut?

Professor Mattias Desmet, Professor of Psychology at the University of Ghent in Belgium, seems to be giving voice to the dull agony I feel this morning as I find myself re-immersed in the atmosphere of Kingston, which for me, has always represented a sphere of great insipidity… another adjective was used to describe this particular phenomenon in the context of the conversation he had with Glenn Diesen, professor of Russian international affairs, focussed on The West’s descent toward totalitarianism. Diesen spoke of suffocating environments where thought and behavioral conformity is induced by mass psychosis, a product of the collaboration (or perhaps conspiracy) of media, education, religion and politics to promote a single narrative (however absurd). Of course this is the soft totalitarianism that precedes the more extreme form where an extra layer of state coercion is applied to ensure that the line holds and all forms of dissent are squelched at the bud.

I am sure that eyebrows by now will be raised at the very notion of a comparison of kingston culture, (pulsating with its many loud and variegated differences and strangely harmonic dissonances, its garring protestation and celebrated individualism paraded everywhere;) with a space of insipidity or suffocation. Most experience the space as the very antithesis of control itself, much less totalitarian control. I admit there are significant differences, although the parallelism, at least for me, is equally palpable. (I also admit that my feeling has much more to do with those parts of kingston I more regularly come in contact with at this stage of life and focus. There are sections positively teeming with vibrant realism and authenticity.)

Kingston indeed is always brimming with creativity, as well as destruction. It is within the general direction, both of that creativity and that destructiveness that I experience suffocation. The creativity seems systematized towards an outward direction and the destructiveness has somehow been cauterized and directed inwardly. Jamaica, at large, like much of the rest of the Caribbean, seems to be preparing itself to ultimately belong to outsiders (a legacy orientation it apparently cant manage to shake). Whichever insiders do survive, will serve the new owners. The system just does not seem to be thinking seriously about how to build a civilization its native citizens are proud to call home.

Again, these are explosive comments indeed and some might be a little too earnest to attempt to thoughtlessly repudiate them before consideration. Indeed it does seem extremely harsh and insensitive of regard for the tremendous sacrifices that have preceded our present freedom, however imperfectly effected or distributed. And so, to drill down to the core of what many may dismiss as a baseless impression, but which I have consistently experienced as highly concealed but most palpable, I must explore the twin issues of race and religion and test the popular narratives against the facts and findings to discover how truly democratic and free the space really is, or how much whatever facade of democracy might be but a mechanism for neutralizing dissent and establishing state control … and then the question becomes only “Who are, in fact, the real owners of the Jamaican state and what is their long term vision or design?” A question many may have wondered more than once given the apparent intransigence to progressive movements such as regionalism and republicanism – (half a century of talk, talk, talk, and nobody has the will to do more. Why?)

Beginning with race and the most fallacious and misleading perception promoted by deeply misguided and misguiding Jamaican intellectuals – that race, being a social (some would venture to say ‘artificial’) construct, should now be dispensed with as a meaningful determinant of human identity. The Americans affirm racial identity with Black Lives Matter. The Caribbeans (a more advanced civilization, purportedly) have moved beyond race and affirm Race does not matter (an absolutely bogus statement if ever there was one). This is a pernicious and destructive lie. And it is wielded either by people who should know better but refuse to, or people who know better and refuse to. (Yes, I am aware the only difference is in the ‘should’.) The given excuse that racial and other ‘Old World’ identities (class, caste, tribe) are meaningless in a New World context which ushers in the possibility of a brave new meritocratic utopia is seductively enticing precisely because it is half true.

What must be examined now is the other half of the sugar sandwich with the bland but poisonous deceit, made plain enough when under interrogation the doctrine seems only to apply to Black (African) and White (European – less so) identities. It doesn’t care at all to bother much less obliterate other vibrant ethnicities contributing to the Jamaican space – Jew, Chinese, Indian etc.) In fact, when closely examined the whole schema is a ruse to perpetuate and establish the obliteration or permanent distortion of African identity, a necessity to the owners of the Plantation for obvious reasons, but haven’t we moved on? Wi no gyet wi frii piepa? Or did a good portion of our educated elite not get the memo? Den wai wi so fried a wi Blak self den?

Curiously, many of the said people, [(let’s call them the ‘out-of-many-oners’) who have conscripted the national motto as a slogan for a brave new raceless world where every body is irie and singing either ‘One love’ or ‘Kum ba ya’ on idyllic Caribbean beaches, sipping coconut water and white rum, half naked, before retiring to bed to make a new race of beautiful mulatto babies to conquer the world with love;] become apoplectic when this same free-spirited rootlessness is applied to gender.

Yes the world is changing, roles and perceptions are dynamic, but here is the wake up to reality moment: As long as there are genes, there will be generations and gender. There is some biological base to the sociological infrastructure that defines humanity across time and space. Race was never about complexion. It was always about the much more complex markers of human identity [ historical legacy, communal belonging, language, culture, mores, values etc.] lumped together under the name of ‘ethnicity’. You cant erase that in one generation or two. You cant educate that out of human consciousness. You cant repudiate that with religious indoctrination. And you cant legislate that or sanction it away with however vigorous a program of social engineering. You can try, but you will fail, as every imperialist power which has ever risen only to eventually stumble and fall after the first few centuries has discovered: human memory goes deeper than the individual brain.

There are techniques and tactics of survival, there are pathways of human resilience designed to withstand calamaties and catastrophes beyond the entire collective destructive capacity of mankind’s darkest imaginations. Those who define the ‘Powers-that-be’ as the nuclear super states because of the annihilative capacity of their armed forces simply do not understand the wonder of mankind, nor the creative capacity that supports our existence.

But back to the core issue of Black/African identity, and why this identity in particular, which unlocks the full range of the human story in all its divergent wonder, is key to any accurate understanding of human potential, including the potential to cohere, co-exist, and cooperate. You simply cannot get to ‘out of many one’ by the suppression and denial of African identity. To ignore Africa is to kill any semblance of hope for a grounded humanity. It is not only to murder one’s mother, but also to kill the womb of future generations, to deny them access to the legacy of life. But this is what these ‘intellectuals’ have conceived, and in the Jamaican space, the main narrative carrying their death code is the religion of Christianity.

I mean to back up every claim just made with indisputable proofs. Watch the space. The clueless can perhaps listen to the videos below as a primer for following or contributing meaningfully to the continuing conversation. That ignorance is so rife one hundred years after Marcus Garvey, is inexcusable for the claimed educated.