Wackos are not extinct

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

I hadn't realised that it was already time again for the annual examination of our ethnic anxieties brought on by the Miss Jamaica World pageant and the cross-accusations of a 'pigmentocracy'. It's time to stop this rubbish. My first suggestion is to call a 10-year halt to the pageants. Give us some time to get our bearings.

Failing that, I want to turn the whole operation into a vast voting exercise. Reduce or eliminate the role of judges and handle it like a 'Jamaican Idol' and allow people to vote their preference. That way, if the ethnicity of the winner causes consternation, we have nobody to blame but our own collective decision-making. Who knows? The results of such polls might surprise everybody, including that we could get a proper plus-size, round beauty queen that looks like she's eating good food to really represent! That would get me, who otherwise couldn't give a damn about pageants, interested.

Incidentally, I wonder why there's this effort to make these beauty contests into intelligence tests and talent shows. Forget that. The formula regarding outer beauty has always been the same: bikinis. We know most men prefer gorgeous women with low self-esteem. So did somebody change the rules of pageantry? If so, I didn't get the memo.

Meanwhile, further on the issue of ethnic anxiety, I was anticipating an interview with a Goat Island iguana, or at least a Jamaican boa, when I saw The Gleaner's headline 'I am not extinct'. Instead, it was about Dr Erica Neeganagwedgin, a professor at the Centre for World Indigenous Knowledge and Research, Athabasca University in Canada, and formerly of southern St Elizabeth, who claims to be Taino. Then there was an even more emotionally laden follow-up article, 'I am not extinct - Pt II'. I trust the health ministry is aware of this ChikunTaino outbreak, especially since I think it warrants referral to Ward 21.

WIPED OUT

The Taino were Jamaica's natives, and 600 years ago there were perhaps 200 villages here. But they were wiped out by European diseases and savagery, and any survivors interbred with incoming Europeans and Africans and ceased to exist as a discrete and identifiable group.

Are the histories wrong about the Jamaican Taino extinction? I don't think so. I've come to doubt many things taught as history, but this isn't one of them. If a Taino village had persisted, it's the sort of thing that couldn't be hidden, and also the sort of thing that travellers would remark upon. What size population would it take for a community of Taino to survive intact into the 21st century?

To continue in the vein of Captain Obvious, I'm aware of many governmental agencies that study and monitor the country's population. They don't report that Tainos are extant in Jamaica, and I can't imagine the diligent researchers and surveyors have any reason to lie about that.

I also don't believe that in our time of obsessive self-identification and aggressive self-expression, there is any reason whatsoever to hide one's ethnicity, much less for generations. There has been no 'shame' in declaring Native ancestry for a very long time. In fact, certainly in North America, people with very remote connections and mere tendrils of lineage proudly announce it.

It verges on the absurd. Senator Elizabeth Warren weathered a scandal during her campaign when it was discovered that she listed herself as a minority professor at Harvard Law. A 19th-century marriage certificate purportedly showing a Cherokee great-great-grandmother turned out to be false, whereas her great-great-great grandfather was a member of a Tennessee militia that rounded up Cherokee before the 'Trail of Tears'. Awkward! This isn't a totally unfamiliar pattern where a conqueror's descendants fetishise the victims of the old conquest.

BLOOD MEMORIES

Anyway, given the recommended massive rewriting of history by Dr Needagoodwedgy, one would expect serious evidence to shift the burden of proof. Not so. The proof of Taino ethnicity was family lore, daydreams and 'blood memories'.

"She recalled once driving in the back of a pickup, and when she looked up into some hills, she saw 'a whole bunch' of Taino people. She was told by an elder that she was having blood memories of her Taino ancestors."

That's it! That's the basis of Dr Noodleandegg's sentimental declaration.

Mind you, when DNA testing becomes sophisticated or widespread enough, I expect scientists will find Taino genes represented in the population, because if its one thing we know, it's that Jamaican water encourages breeding. But after 500 years of intermingling, it's an epic imaginative leap to call oneself 'Native'. Calculating conservatively at three generations per century, and assuming that Dr Needsomeganja had a Taino ancestor 15 generations ago, it makes her like .00006 Taino.

If this were the ramblings of a random citizen, it would hardly have caught my attention, because people are entitled to their illusions, and these even add to life's colourful masquerade. I've met Egyptian reincarnations of Rameses VI, unfortunately now homeless. But more troubling are the countless people who have been perplexed and deformed by racism, so they invent imaginary ancestors of a desired ethnicity. When I hear these things, I think, "You Ar-a-wak-job!", which if I were to speculate, accounts for Dr Needanawakening's nativity.

And that's what's disturbing about this Taino resurrection. I sense it stems from some racial screweduppedness. In fact, the article that "Neeganagwedgin identifies herself as 100 per cent African and Taino".

Really? Both African and Taino - 100 per cent? What's wrong with 'Jamaican'? Not good enough? The wild popularity of the Gleaner article tells me we need to be teaching 100 per cent more self-respect.

Meanwhile, we have a right to expect higher standards from an academic, who should harbour less-relaxed notions of verification, evidence, and truth. A Google search tells me that a genetic test can be had for US$99. Dr Needabrainjob should present one before we gather around the communal campfire, sing some Taino version of kumbaya, and burn all the history books.

Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.