WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson shares a light moment with Bruce Golding JLP leader.
Don Robotham, Contributor
NATIONALISM IS the natural ideology of Jamaica, as it is of most nations. In Jamaica, our nationalism comes in two main varieties: the black nationalism of the People's National Party and the Nationalism-lite of the Jamaica Labour Party. Traditionally, the political debate in Jamaica presents itself as a duel between these two outlooks. Between the cultural nationalism, regionalism and African Diaspora politics of the PNP and the 'Jamaica First' nationalism of the labourites. But actually there is a larger problem: Both these nationalisms foster one of the greatest problems in Jamaica today: national narrow-mindedness and parochialism.
BLACK NATIONALISM
As is to be expected, black nationalism is the natural ideology of Jamaica. Given the origins of more than 90 per cent of the population in Africa, the experience of the slave trade, slavery, colonialism and racism, this is hardly surprising. The overwhelming majority of Jamaicans, including many who are not mainly of African descent, follow events in Africa with some interest and have a natural solidarity with people of colour the world over.
In the view of this outlook, Jamaica is a black country and when people say 'a true Jamaican', it is a black Jamaican that they usually mean. They point to the numbers, to Rastafarianism and reggae, to the extended family and the religiosity as proof of the African core of Jamaican culture. From such a viewpoint the current motto - Out of Many One People - is a conspiracy by light-skinned elites to obscure this black reality.
This outlook finds its natural political home in the PNP. From its very foundation in 1938, the PNP has capitalised on this black nationalist sentiment in Jamaica and attempted to utilise it for political purposes. It has always been a contradictory process since, as is fairly obvious, the upper middle class Drumblair clique who formed and ran the PNP for decades, were extremely uncomfortable with this black trend. In fact, it is impossible to understand a political figure such as our present Prime Minister P. J. Patterson without understanding the many silent and not so silent humiliations meted out quite nonchalantly to blackness by this creole PNP elite.
Prime Minister Patterson is not from this creole elite and one of the tasks he set himself has been to promote blackness in Jamaica, culturally, politically, socially and economically. In fact I would maintain that his achievement in this area far exceeds that of Michael Manley who, while kicking up an ideological storm, had the usual brown man's ambivalence to blackness. As a brown man myself I think I can speak with some authority on that subject!
But P.J. and the PNP face a problem which they have been unable to address. This is the fact that so far, their black nationalism has had results only at the cultural level and, even there, incompletely. Skin-bleaching creams, chicken pills and various hymns to brownings still play a prominent role in Jamaican society. The horrible phenomenon of black self-doubt and self-denigration is far from defeated. Indeed, they may have become more pronounced in recent years with the social and economic crisis and the influence of globalisation.
Black nationalism however faces a larger problem: It has not been able to deliver the goods economically and socially. Indeed, there can be little doubt that in this 15 year period of PNP rule economic and social inequalities have increased, even as a wealthy black elite has emerged. One only has to look at the figures of 90,000 young people unemployed with half of them never, ever having worked to realise the depth of the failure of this black nationalism on the economic front. This is the reason behind the lack of popularity of the PNP among young people in the recent Don Anderson Polls, despite their eight per cent lead over the JLP.
HOLLOW RING TO IT
So the PNP's black nationalism increasingly has a hollow ring to it, as far as the unemployed young person in the inner city or the rural poor are concerned. This is not only an economic but a social failure. You cannot understand crime in Jamaica unless you understand the social and cultural effect of this growing gap not simply between rich and poor. The point is the growing gap inside the PNP: between the PNP rich and the PNP poor. It is the reality of this very visible gap which has defeated all attempts by the government to promote values and attitudes. One would have to be foolish indeed to take such pieties seriously from people who are quite alright Jack. This gap is one of the main sources of social alienation and cynicism in Jamaica. It makes a huge contribution to the sense of social injustice and betrayal and hence to violent behaviour and crime.
The JLP has historically sought to take advantage of these glaring failures of the PNP to deliver economically and socially on its black nationalism. In so doing it has sought to present itself as the party of Jamaica, eschewing regionalism or any foreign ideologies and entanglements. In reality of course, the JLP's nationalist credentials are rather dubious and incoherent, to put it mildly. It has also, in the past, had the advantage in the economic sphere since its leading supporters included the leading investors.
Historically, the JLP was opposed to Jamaican self-government which they, perhaps rightly, characterised as 'brown man rule'. However today, the JLP seems to have become a bastion of the brown man tendencies previously the preserve of the PNP. The aroma of a pro-colonial nostalgia is unmistakably present there. At the same time there is an espousal of the plural society theory of the late Professor M. G. Smith in the form of the Two Jamaicas theory of Jamaican culture. This is even more problematic than the black nationalism of the PNP, since M.G. Smith was, as most people know, an extremely close confidante and advisor of Michael Manley! The two Jamaicas idea is therefore yet another PNP borrowing by the JLP.
The JLP implementation of this idea has been clever but unconvincing. The treatment of Marcus Garvey is characteristic. The chief thing here has been to appropriate Garvey as a 'Jamaican' national symbol-minus his Pan Africanism and blackness of course. Garvey without Garveyism - who would have thought such a slogan
possible?!
This 'things Jamaican' nationalism of the JLP is not completely without merit as it sought to foster a sense of national unity. But it too failed because it was too trivial and shallow. The JLP is comfortable with folk expressions of blackness - jippy jappa hats and revivalism - but it is extremely uncomfortable with modern expressions of this self-same nationalism. Black small farmers and the urban poor are one thing: the educated, assertive black middle class is a totally different story. One reason for the ease of the JLP with this jippy jappa nationalism is that it lends itself to being patronised by a paternalistically inclined light-skinned elite. Most educated black people that I know have not the slightest intention of being patronised by anyone. In fact, they plan to do a little patronising of their own!
Now the JLP faces an additional problem revealed in the recent polls: its support in the investment community has weakened. In that vital arena they have been trumped by the PNP. One reason for this is the financial crisis of the 1990s which weakened many of the pillars of the JLP establishment. Another is the success of the macroeconomic policies of the PNP. Indeed, part of the disarray in the JLP can only be explained by this relative absence of powerful economic interests inside the party who, in the past, would have called a halt
to the squabbling long ago. Sociologically speaking, JLP fractiousness is a sign that the JLP leadership has been excessively infiltrated by social, economic and political adventurers of the worst kind and that the JLP's footing in the solid sections of society is shaky. At last there are encouraging signs that Bruce Golding realises that one of his most urgent tasks is to deal with this problem very resolutely.
PAROCHIALISM
But the issue of nationalism is not primarily whether one should prefer black nationalism to the 'things Jamaican' variety. The problem is that both nationalisms suffer from and promote a dreadful parochialism which harms the country immensely. For example, this parochialism in the 1970s, despite all the internationalist rhetoric, caused the PNP government to be blissfully ignorant of the significance of the passing of the Bretton Woods regime in 1973 and then in 1979.
Likewise, the best laid plans of Mr. Seaga in the 1980s were undermined mainly by international not national factors. It had little to do with what he did or did not do, silly PNP propaganda notwithstanding. It was a result of the severe economic recessions of the 1980s which struck Latin America and the Caribbean particularly severely.
