Peter Espeut | Our mixed heritage

This week is Heritage Week (or is it next week? I’m never quite sure). Our Jamaican heritage is that which we inherited from our foreparents, and hand on to our descendants. But “so me get it” is not exactly “so me gi yuh”. Each generation adds a little of its own character to the national patrimony as it is passed on. Hopefully what we bequeath is an improvement on what we inherited. Sadly, that is not always so.

Ours is a mixed – often contradictory – heritage. We pass on both English and Creole, even though we often confuse the two, and cannot agree on the place of either. We appropriate Canadian salt fish as part of the Jamaican national dish, patties (either derived from the Cornish pasty or Punjabi samosa – or both) as the national snack, and rum (the cause of our enslavement) as our national drink.

If our heroes are those we seek to emulate we have adopted Anancy as our foremost national hero, idolised by scammers and those who battle for our hearts and minds. We make heroes of toxic males, yet cry for more respect for women. We revel in our indigenous music, but deny any link between gun lyrics, gun culture and gun violence (also part of our heritage). We value sex and children, but not marriage or parenting.

We pass on both Christian and pagan practices, even though we sometimes cannot tell the difference. As we thump the Bible and quote the scripture, dreams and horoscopes guide our days, predict the future, and inform which numbers to buy. Drop Pan and Peaka Pow (from south China) have been nationalised and naturalised.

LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP

What could be more Jamaican than an enthusiastic table-smashing game of dominoes (originally from Italy)? The Mento of our folk music as well as Quadrille dancing came to us from France via Haiti. We have this love-hate relationship with Europe.

Previous generations inherited a colonial mentality and passed on a neo-colonial worldview. We inherited structural inequality based on one’s place on the plantation and bequeathed inequality based on a skewed school system. We inherited a system of privilege and corruption based on race and class and handed on a modern version based on politics. Each generation receives and passes on a different mix of Christianity and paganism.

Culturally we are a meld of Europe and Africa, and there are many Jamaicans who loathe either their European or African makeup: antecedents, hair, clothing, or names. And “mimic men” (to bring in V.S. Naipaul) who seem unsure who they are. We are what we are – both what we treasure and what we abhor – because of slavery and colonialism. Somehow we have to learn to embrace our variegated past – no matter how horrific, for it is part of us – embrace our Jamaican-ness, and move forward into a new world of our making.

Barbadian historian and poet Edward Kamau Brathwaite posits that the “people, mainly from Britain and West Africa, who settled, lived, worked and were born in Jamaica, contributed to the formation of a society ... which, in so far as it was neither purely British nor West African, is ... creole”.

Martinican poet and philosopher Edouard Glissant emphasises the newness and originality:

“Creolizatiom is not an uprooting, a loss of sight, a suspension of being … we do not mean cross-breeding, because creolization adds something new to the components that participate in it”.

MORE POWERFUL AND CREATIVE

Jamaican creole culture is more powerful and creative than either European or African culture. Without our evil past, today we would be less.

Trinidad and Tobago with its large segment of nationals of East Indian origin, has to grapple with a more complex dynamic. Trinidadian politician-historian, Dr the Hon Eric Eustace Williams, articulated his vision of that nation and the possible tensions between the various racial and ethnic groups:

“There can be no Mother India for those whose ancestors came from India … There can be no Mother Africa for those of African origin, and the Trinidad and Tobago society is living a lie and heading for trouble if it seeks to create the impression or to allow others to act under the delusion that Trinidad and Tobago is an African society. There can be no Mother England and no dual loyalties; no person can be allowed to get the best of both worlds, and to enjoy the privileges of citizenship in Trinidad and Tobago whilst expecting to retain United Kingdom citizenship. … A nation, like an individual, can have only one mother. The only Mother we recognise is Trinidad and Tobago, and a Mother cannot discriminate between her children”.

Jamaica’s national motto “Out of Many, One People” speaks to “Mother Jamaica”, which has been fecund in giving birth to many creoles, for there is no one Jamaican culture from Negril to Morant Point. It is this variety that makes Jamaica one of the most beautiful places on planet Earth – beauty of geography, of people and of culture. In this Heritage Week we must rejoice in all that we are, with our dips and fall backs, and our warts.

For sure, the transatlantic slave trade in Africans financially enriched both Europeans and Africans (although disproportionately), and reparations from both are due. But that should not prevent us from celebrating those who shed their sweat and blood to bring us to where we are today.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com