Some cultural obstacles to development

Martin Henry, Contributor

I'm back. Popular scholar and fellow columnist Kevin O'Brien Chang and Ian Randle Publishers (IRP) have just published a delightful book, Jamaica Fi Real: Beauty, Vibes and Culture.

By 'popular scholar', I mean Chang is one of those highly educated thinkers/researchers/writers who reside outside the academy, and who write sensibly for popular audiences and not with the obfuscations of learned journals. He is, in fact, a businessman, a pretty good combination of artes liberales and artes serviles.

I raised Chang's book at the start of this column because although IRP has described it as a 'travel guide', it really is a fine cultural study by somebody who "has been trying to explain and understand Jamaica". The book says for itself, "Here is today's Jamaica from a Jamaican point of view, giving an in-depth look at its people, history, music, sports, religion and culture."

Chang is a Chinese-Jamaican, belonging to a minority ethnic group which often falls below the radar in discussing things Jamaican, but which has had a profound impact on Jamaican culture once you get past the notion of 'culture' as food and drink, story, song and dance wrapped in bandanna. The stuff of the Jamaica Festival. The wider Jamaica, particularly black Jamaica, would do well to study and emulate the Chinese-Jamaican culture of success.

Glossy travelogue that it is, Jamaica Fi Real has skirted around much of the ugly; and what it touches of the ugly is only touched lightly. I raised the matter with the author in email exchanges, writing to Kevin to say: "While the book, by its very intent and nature as a 'travel guide', naturally focuses heavily on the bright side, I believe a 'Jamaica, No Problem'? section - giving more space to the real problems of the society and culture, particularly the crime and political violence problem - would have upgraded its usefulness as a critical analysis of Jamaica fi real. But then 'Ugliness' would have had to be added to 'Beauty' in the title!"

Chang wrote back explaining: "Actually I did consider having a 'Dark Side of Paradise' section, but the publisher and I decided that it did not fit. Just as we could not be fully frank about the sex situation. To go 'full frontal' would probably have turned off a lot of the potential target market for the book."

Another popular scholar and fellow columnist, who wears his considerable learning a little too heavily, Ian Boyne, opened his column year last Sunday with a return to a favourite theme - the role of morality in development. "We need a new conversation. A moral discourse. Of course, there are many who are dismissive of any such notion, warning of 'moralising our problems away'," Boyne wrote (again) in 'New Year, new thinking'. We are fighting the Economy; and the Economy is fighting us back, because we do not have a moral and cultural base for producing more 'goods' than 'bads'.

Everywhere we look, including around the Caribbean itself, the development we envy is based on a kind of cultural discipline and self-control which are extraordinarily lacking in Jamaica but of which we are fully capable, as in sports and artistic performance - and when we work abroad.

Let us start with something simple, but of the most profound consequence: Our 'soon come' attitude towards time. The hosts of at least two high-profile radio programmes have made 'soon come' their fade-out mantra for segments. Media used to be one of the few places in Jamaican society where time was rigidly respected. But that 'foreign influence' has been fading.

Do not squander time

Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of the most powerful and productive civilisation in the history of the world, remarked, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for time is the stuff of life." And, "Time is money."

We waste time and kill time and life and opportunities for success, prosperity and development. With the law being no shackle, a prime minister in the euphoria of a sporting victory and at the spur of the moment sends the nation on public holiday at a cost of millions of dollars to business. And what are we not late for in this country? We sort of just drift towards the start of things, exceptionally proud of our 'Jamaica time' as a part of the culture. And national development quietly absorbs the drift.

Very regrettably, I had to miss the media round table of the Trevor Munroe-led National Integrity Action Forum to mark International Anti-Corruption Day on December 9. The prime minister addressed the forum giving an update, as requested to do, on the reform commitments which he had given to the country in his May 17 apology speech for the handling of the Coke extradition/Manatt, Phelps & Phillips affair. I received, a few days ago, the transcript of the presentations.

In explaining the slower-than-expected progress of most of the reform commitments, the prime minister at one point told the round table that he had been advised just that morning that the meeting of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament considering a particular bill had fallen through because of lack of a quorum.

"You know, we come up short in the best of times in terms of parliamentary attendance and to parliamentary committee responsibilities, but particularly in December, it is a difficult time," the prime minister told his audience.

I wasn't there but I bet you that remark passed without remark because that's just the way things are.

Trevor has demonstrated that the Jamaican Parliament meets fewer times per year than parliaments in the developed Commonwealth and in Commonwealth countries doing better than ourselves in development. And the sittings scheduled for two o'clock in the afternoon, when Parliament does sit, routinely start late.

Not only did the prime minister matter-of-factly state that the Parliament is not doing its job in committees tasked with urgent reform matters because members can't bother, but he reeled off excuses as explanations in the same fashion. We don't have sufficient drafting capabilities, we don't have the investigators for INDECOM to get its work done, we don't have the money, the legislation was passed but the appointment has not taken place, and on and on.

Jamaica is the greatest excuse factory on the planet. And we have invented a cute cultural phrase for it: "We are working on it." The refrain of a couple of hundred Budget Debate and Sectoral Debate speeches delivered 'since mi have sense' and of countless responses to demands for workplace progress reports.

And related to the manufacture of excuses, which we have down to a precise science, is the failure to take responsibility with the appropriate cultural expressions. "The bus lef mi." "The plate mash." "Mi nuh get the subject." "Storm mash up mi gully bank house fi the third time and guvament haffi help mi." And from our leaders: "IMF, Is not My Fault." And the armed and dangerous mother of all garrisons simply happened.

Sanitising, perhaps?

Chang's Jamaica Fi Real was a little less than real in the toning down of the hypersexuality which characterises the culture and which condemns it to a degree of backwardness and ramshackle which can't be fixed without dealing with our attitude towards and our freewheeling practice of sex. The author does have a chapter on 'Ramping Shop Slackness - Trying to Draw a Line', with an excellent, crisply done historical review going back to the 18th century. And Chang notes in the introduction that Jamaica "is reputed to have both more churches per square mile and a higher out-of-wedlock birth rate than any other place on the globe".

We have invented nice, soft cultural terms for this state of affairs which is hobbling our prospects - 'babymother' and 'babyfather', the latter being more often than not an absentee rammy breeding several babymothers.

There are others, but for today one more cultural obstacle to development - our generally low emotional intelligence which obstructs negotiation, compromise and collaboration. There is a boisterous, aggressive and, yes, vulgar edge to the culture masking deep emotional vulnerabilities which will make us hate and sabotage and kill for being dissed, even over rather minor matters. And this is not just at the low-education street level. Parliament and our politics display this characteristic. Public discourse and the failure to listen and to negotiate common ground show it up. Much of our violence, from domestic to the gang varieties, is driven by it in this strange, fascinating land where property crimes are fewer than violent crimes against the person. Our nasty, lose-lose driving behaviour shows it. And so does the loud, discordant and, yes, vulgar noise masquerading as elements of popular music.

Oh, and I mustn't forget the enormous national capacity for Anancyism, which, under the nice nice Anancy stories and belly laughs, is a poor foundation for nation-building. The need for trust and openness for free-enterprise economies and societies to work is now strongly established in the scholarly literature which Ian Boyne, or myself, will write about (again) in the future as our country dances along with 'Jamaica, no problem' through another year. The old truths must be freshly spoken - again and again - even if no one listens.

The political and economic manoeuvres alone by political leaders, who won't even turn up for meetings of parliamentary committees, will not bring us the development of prosperity with peace and human well-being to which we aspire without attending to these 'habits of the heart' as sociologist Robert Bellah has termed them.

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