Peter Espeut
NOT EVERYONE cares much about our Jamaican heritage. For some, heritage is looking backward while they want to go forward. For many, considering our heritage causes us to look at what we desperately want to forget: our rural roots, Africa, slavery and superstition. We are in love with technology, the Internet, Skype, cellphone cameras, DVD movies and all things North American and Western European; and Anancy, Miss Lou, riddles, Ring Ding and rolling calves, Pantomime, and all things Jamaican seem like backwardness.
At base, it is really an identity crisis. What does it mean to be Jamaican in an age where the gospel of globalization is preached in almost every forum? Is it worth being Jamaican in a world where the centre of power is elsewhere? Why seek to deepen our connection with Jamaican culture when the way up seems to be out? Isn't it better to go for American culture: to follow basketball rather than cricket; to listen to Fifty Cent, rather than to Kip Rich; to watch 'American Idol' rather than 'Rising Stars'? Won't we "fit in" better if we look and sound American, if we conform to the global fashions led by American TV?
These questions go to the very heart of whether we really want to be an independent nation, or the 51st state of the USA - or the return of our days as a British colony. And it goes to the heart of whether culture matters, and whether it has an important role to play in modern life.
Some of us are not comfortable with American culture, with pervasive materialism, individualism, selfishness - where 'things' are more important than people. Some of us are not the right colour to reap the American dream. Some of us will never be at home in a McDonald's-Disney-baseball world.
Marxism undervalued the role of culture as it asserted the primacy of the economy; capitalism seems to be guilty of the same error. It is the culture of Asia - of China and Japan - that has propelled them to the forefront of the world economy: their work ethic, their frugalism, their respect for authority, their family values, all important components of culture. Western civilization is in crisis, not just because of the threat from the East, but because it is imploding. Individualism makes poor social cement. Some of our problems in Jamaica may be traced to this source.
ADVANTAGE OF BEING JAMAICAN?
Does Jamaican culture - Jamaican heritage - have anything to offer the world? Is there any comparative advantage of being Jamaican? Does our culture, our heritage, give us an edge? It seems so! On the face of it, the way Jamaican culture seems to be spreading around the world - particularly reggae, Rasta and our own version of Pentecostalism, all essentially resistance to the status quo - means that we have something special to offer the world.
If you thought about it, resistance to dehumanisation is the essential characteristic of Jamaican history and heritage, at least the history and heritage of the majority of us. Nanny, Tacky and Sam Sharpe, Bogle, Gordon and Edward Jordon, Leonard Howell, Robert Love and Marcus Garvey, all struggled from below against the oppression of their day. But there are modern-day heroes - the Honourable Miss Lou struggled with the denigration of our language and elevated it to become our pride; she deserves more than the Order of Merit (O.M.) she has received.
Can you believe that this year marks 25 years since the death of Mass Ran, and it has passed without any public tribute to him? At least he should be awarded a posthumous O.M. For decades, Miss Lou and Ranny ruled the Pantomime stage and the airwaves, making us feel good about ourselves, and much of their antics was allegory: how to beat the system; how to get ahead when all is against you. Anancy! Anancy is the real survivor, the one who has little, but manages to get what he needs. Some years ago, I identified Anancy as the real National Hero for most Jamaicans, the one most Jamaicans seek to emulate. Anancy is the personification of resistance: you won't win a head-on fight; better to resist through subterfuge.
The heroes of today are those who resist the present efforts to dehumanize us, to teach us to be illiterate, to stuff us into garrisons, to disempower us. Do not look to the current lists of honorees for the heroes of today; history will unfailingly identify them.
By the way, on my recent visit to Canada, I spent half-a-day with Miss Lou (I always do). You will be pleased to know that she seems to have recovered from her recent stroke. She looks good, walks well, and is in good voice. We sang together almost all the songs from Queenie's Daughter (the best of the Pantomimes in my view), and reminisced of days past. One year I took Eric and her to a quadrille dance in a mud-floor field hut in Portland bush. Good days!
There will be those who will choose to leave Jamaica and things Jamaican to become American or British; I went to school and to church with many such in the 1960s and 1970s. That is their right. But some of us will remain in Jamaica - not by default, not because we can't do better, but because Jamaica is where we want to be. And some of us will cherish that which makes us Jamaican - our Jamaican culture and heritage.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and executive director of an environment and development non-governmental organisation.
