Carolyn Cooper | Jamaicans – Island people with a continental consciousness

During the Olympics, as Jamaican athletes again demonstrated their dominance in track and field, a rather clever meme was circulating on social media. It was a map of the world as seen by Jamaicans. Big and broad, the island stretches across the width of the Atlantic Ocean. Its land mass is approximately the same as South America’s. The humorous map was signed @griffthejoker. I tracked down griff, who turned out to be Darran Griffiths, a comedian, podcaster, and host who was born in the UK to Jamaican parents.

I asked Darran what motivated him to draw the mischievous map. “It was Jamaican Independence Day in 2020, and I wanted to create a meme that showed the well-placed boasiness of Jamaicans. For such a small island, with such a small population, it is mind-boggling the contribution we’ve made to the world in music, food, sport, entertainment, language and politics. There are English children who have no idea that they are using Jamaican words daily. If you say ‘Jamaica’ anywhere in the world, they know where it is, and they are probably shocked how small the island is too.”

Darran had no idea that his map had been anticipated, almost 60 years ago, by Miss Mattie, a contentious character created by Louise Bennett:

“She hope dem caution worl-map

Fi stop draw Jamaica small,

For de lickle speck cyaan show

We independantness at all!

Moresomever we must tell map dat

We don’t like we position -

Please kindly tek we out a sea

An draw we in de ocean.”

ANCESTRAL HOMELANDS

Miss Mattie made these demands in the poem “Independance.” That’s right: dance. For her, Independence was not about the song and dance of constitutional arrangements. It was much more personal:

“Mattie seh it mean we facety,

Stan up pon we dignity,

An we don’t allow nobody

Fi teck liberty wid we.”

In Miss Mattie’s opinion, worl-map was an out-of-order smaddy who should be reprimanded for taking liberties with Jamaicans. We may laugh at her, but Miss Mattie intuitively knew that maps can be political. Many of the old maps of the world reflected the power dynamics of the times. Just think of the fourteenth-century explorers and mapmakers of Mali who have been systematically marginalised in Eurocentric narratives of conquest.

Jamaica really is a small island, despite Miss Mattie’s assertion to the contrary. But all of us are the descendants of those who made the crossing from vast continents, willingly or not. We carry the imprint of ancestral homelands. We remember our origins across oceans of history. Our consciousness is not insular. That is why so many Jamaicans have kept on migrating in search of a better life. Our destiny is not limited to this small island. As we say, “Jamaica to di world!”

DESTINED TO MAKE HISTORY

This month, we celebrated the legacy of Marcus Garvey, our first national hero, who was born in 1887 in St Ann’s Bay. His life story is truly spectacular. Garvey’s mother, Sarah Jane Richards, was a farmer and domestic worker who nurtured him. His father, Marcus Garvey Sr, was a mason. He laid a solid foundation for his son’s intellectual development. The books in his library opened Marcus Jr’s eyes to the world. Garvey gradually outgrew his place of birth. In 1906, he moved to Kingston, which promised new opportunities.

Garvey had apprenticed as a printer in his hometown and found employment in the printing shop of P. A. Benjamin. Quite early, he demonstrated his commitment to fighting for the rights of workers. He was one of the leaders of the unsuccessful Printers Union strike in 1908. But that failure did not deter Garvey. He did not limit himself to the printing trade. He became a publisher. In 1909, he launched Garvey’s Watchman. The paper lasted for only three issues. But it established Garvey’s presence as a man destined to make history.

In 1910, Garvey began travelling in Central America, following the paths of Jamaicans who went to Panama and Costa Rica. Then, in 1912, he went to London and attended Birbeck College where he studied law and philosophy for two years. In 1913, the African Times and Orient Review published his article, “British West Indies in the Mirror of Civilization: History Making by Colonial Negroes”. In 1914, The Tourist published another article by Garvey, “The Evolution of Latter-Day Slaves: Jamaica, A Country of Black and White”.

That same year, Garvey returned to Jamaica, and on July 20, he co-founded with Amy Ashwood the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. Soon after, Garvey published a pamphlet, “A Talk with Afro-West Indians: The Negro Race and Its Problems”. Garvey’s vision of what African people could achieve on the continent and in the diaspora was revolutionary. But Jamaica was not ready. The mirror image of our continental consciousness is the internalised oppression of racism. It was in the US that Garvey’s radical politics flourished. The UNIA spread across the world, attracting millions of followers.

CROSS-FERTILISATION

The emergence of the Rastafari movement is another classic example of the continental consciousness of Jamaicans. Rooted in the Pan-African philosophy of Marcus Garvey, Rastafari created God in the image of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. The revolutionary vision of Rastafari is also manifested in their mystical language. In the spirit of our African ancestors who created the Jamaican language by adapting English to suit our own tongues, Rastafari have subverted the vocabulary of English to articulate new modes of overstanding.

Rastafari livity has spread across the globe. Reggae music, another gift of Jamaica to the world, is a primary medium through which the message of Rastafari has been transmitted. The sacramental herb of Rastafari, brought to Jamaica by indentured workers from the Indian sub-continent, symbolises the cross-fertilisation of culture on this small island out of which new strains of identity have grown.

- Carolyn Cooper, PhD, is a teacher of English language and literature and a specialist on culture and development. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.