Orville Taylor | Still incomplete: Emancipendence

That there is a question of its relevance and some believe that the process is over, is evidence that Emancipation needs to not only be celebrated, but that its significance, the legacy of slavery, and the African antecedents, all need to be infused into our school curricula as well as our regular discourse.

Now, inasmuch as it is a bit annoying to constantly making the disclaimer, it is important to clarify that asserting our African ancestry and that Jamaica is an African country, is not a reputation of our diversity or the role and status of ethnic minorities. It is a simple demographic and anthropological fact.

Mark you, our motto, ‘Out of Many One People’, not unlike the United States’ E Pluribus Unum, which translates, ‘Out of Many One’. Yet, no one needs to describe white Americans as anything. However, non-whites have an ethnic or racial badge as prefixes to their names.

Moreover, call a spade a hoe; but despite its different and obvious uniqueness, the dominant culture and identity of America is essentially western European. Thus, we conveniently use the term, western civilisations or nations. Nowhere in the narrative is there a real conversation about non-American nations such as ours.

True, we have a beautiful and remarkable blend of a multiplicity of cultures. Indeed, the bandana, which is Indian in origin, seems to have reached here before the Indians themselves.

India, the hub of the world’s most impressive range of textiles, long before British conquest, produced the fabric, which is also present in Africa as well. Last year, dancers in the Ghana yam festival, wore variations of the cloth. Across the Caribbean, especially in the four main French-creole speaking islands of the Lesser Antilles, there is a very colourful range.

Still, the Jamaican version is our signature.

CURRY

We would be disingenuous in ignoring how crucial is curry and especially curry goat. This Indian spice is a hallmark of our culture. Apart from the dominant English content in our Jamaican language, words such as ‘Baba’ and ‘Naani’ may very well be of Indian origin too. Similarly, ‘Jing bang’ might be Chinese too.

However, the syntax of our Jamaican language is so dominantly West African that we could be excused for saying that Jamaican Patwa is Akan. Jamaican language, conjugates its verbs in identical fashion as Twi. In fact, the ‘Me’ which is pervasive across the African Caribbean, is exactly the same in Ghana.

There is a surprisingly large number of videos and podcasts of continental Africans remarking that they thought Jamaica was part of the continent for the first part of their lives.

During this Emancipendence period, the Maroon communities are the typical hotspots of African retention, and for that we should be grateful. Being relatively isolated and thus, able to reconstruct and preserve much of what remained of our continental link, no doubt, make their African culture far more tangible than that of the average citizen.

However, treaty apart, which gives them some modicum of autonomy, how different are they from the continental Africans who live outside of the cities, when compared to their urban counterparts? Would anyone dare to suggest that the residents of Accra or Lagos are less African than their rural more tribal counterparts?

Back to the statistics. It might be surprising to know that Jamaica has more Africans living here than many other nations in the motherland. With 2.9 million, we are on par with Namibia. Behind us are 16 countries, including The Gambia, Botswana, Eswatini, Gabon and Lesotho.

NO CONFLICT

As I have said in the past, there is no conflict in being 100 per cent African and 100 per cent Jamaican. South Africans have no such conflict. Nevertheless, the significance of emancipation is not only about keeping the African link alive. Equally important is an understanding of what the processes of enslavement and colonialism did to us.

Unlike our Asian folk who came afterwards, there was a deliberate and concerted effort to deculturise the enslaved Africans. Literally whitewashing all that was good about Africa and its people, slavery and plantation life added a different meaning to the word ‘denigrate’ scholars such as Lloyd Best and George Beckford, wrote of the lasting and pervasive impact of plantation slavery on all aspects of our lives.

It coloured our tastes, making us devalue the local over the colonial. Created mistrust and divisions, negative attitudes to work and an insidious self-hatred that came into play at important historical junctures. Recent DNA research reveal that trauma, such as the sustained horror of plantation slavery, rewrites our genetic information, making many negative behaviours ‘natural’. We inherited a social order that is plagued by genetically and culturally programmed social pathologies. Indeed, it is a miracle that we have done so well.

That we are Africans is beyond question. However, some things happened to us as we were culled through the Middle Passage. Honed under adverse conditions, and then flavoured by later immigrants, we are a new breed. Perhaps with hybrid vigour, we Jamaicans are the mules that defy biology and are able to reproduce.

It is the uniqueness of the multiplicity of factors; the west African blood and culture, the natural selection of the trip from the interiors of the fatherland, to the plantation and of course generations of Labourites and Comrade with their own agendas (couldn’t help myself!)

In this Emancipendence period, I am a proud African. No need to call myself Afro-Caribbean, because Ghanaians do not call themselves Afro Ghanaians .

The process of liberation of the mind is far from complete. Marley popularised it, but Garvey coined it. Redemption song Jamaica.

Happy Emancipendence.

Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com