The proverb, anything too black, no good, is intelligible to everyone in Jamaica. It is a peculiar expression of self-hate that prods the average person to put a little milk in the coffee. Literally and figuratively, such expressions tell a predominantly African, i.e. black population that they are not good enough. These phrases set the boundaries of social acceptance.
Even a small child understands the social exclusion signals that deny them access to the inalienable human rights that should belong equally to everyone in the society. From this you can conclude that although it is the proverbial elephant in the room, racism is rife in the land of Marcus Garvey and reggae.
Just ask members of the Rastafari community and they will cite the Coral Gardens massacre of 1963 as one of the prime examples of such prejudice. At the time of writing, this year’s Coral Gardens remembrance was being planned by the Rastafari Coral Gardens Benevolent Society (RCGBS) for Albion Heights in Montego Bay. The Rastafari community in Jamaica is annually retraumatised on the eve of Easter through memorialising the 1963 Coral Gardens massacre. The incident was sparked by the unjust shooting of Rudolf Franklin, a Rasta man who was one of the small farmers producing on the Coral Gardens component of the Rose Hall estate. The authorities wanted to evict them to prepare the way for the tourism product. The remembrance gathering always recounts how the unjust landowner shot Franklin in the stomach six times, leaving him for dead. It is never clear what was the fate of the landowner who seems to have been vaporised by history.
As for Rudolf Franklin, he benefited from plastic surgery but was told that he would die once the plastic that had been inserted in him decomposed. To add insult to injury, he was arrested for cannabis use after the surgery and thrown in jail for six months. Raging at the multiple experiences of injustice, on his release, Rudolf Franklin conspired with two friends to take revenge by burning down the Ken Douglas Shell Station in Coral Gardens and to eliminate Edward Fowler, the eviction agent.
The commemoration participants always ceremoniously burn the Babylon system, symbolised by the State. At the time of the incident, the Government was led by newly minted Prime Minister Sir Alexander Bustamante, who is infamous for urging the police to “bring them [Rastafari] in, dead or alive.” The police went on a rampage.
The Coral Gardens ‘uprising’ or Rudolf Franklin’s revenge, was blown out of proportion by the security forces that were becoming more and more agitated by the fact and implications of the physical self-representation of Rastafari as well as by their uncompromising cultural profile. However, upon reflection, the entire incident should have just been a storm in a teacup. While only a few Rastafari were directly involved in this incident, the entire community began to be subjected to severe forms of persecution by the security forces as well as by other civil society institutions in the political backlash.
As a result, up until a few years ago, the locks of Rastafari prisoners were automatically shorn once they were incarcerated in prison. It was only in the 1980s that Rastafari children were finally admitted into public schools. And to this day, by social policy, which of course cannot be legally contested, Rastafari are generally denied entry into some private schools and employment in the public sector.
The outgoing public defender, Arlene Harrison-Henry, has been historically immortalised for recommending reparatory justice for the Rastafari community for the Coral Gardens massacre. Satisfactory negotiations between the public defender and the RCGBS resulted in Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ 2017 apology to the Rastafari community and subsequent $10 million monetary compensation. However, the ravages of intergenerational psychosocial scarring run deep and are triggered by ongoing prejudice, stigmatisation, and social exclusion, which result from institutional policies and social practices.
The release of the public defender’s report on the Nzinga King case, which is diametrically opposed to the results of the director of public prosecution’s (DPP’s) report, begs the question that Rastafari continue to bear the brunt of racialised standards of self-expression and social justice.
Coming just before the annual Bad Friday commemoration of the Coral Gardens incident, the community is impatient of the thin veil that covers up the hostilities that have long seethed in confrontations between Rastafari and the police, the executive arm of the State. The community feels justified that the public defender rallied to refute the state prosecutor’s account of how Ms King lost her locks.
The recommendation that the police officer in question be charged with assault for trimming Nzinga’s locks in violation of her human rights, whereas the DPP laid no criminal charges against any of the officers involved, bears witness to the need for a justice system that is stitched in fairness and equity.
Rastafari have peeled away pretences of social harmony promoted in the out of many, one people national motto. The community has also gone the extra mile of affirming that in the Black Power tradition, Black is beautiful. By calling out and renouncing racism, which is otherwise denied by a sophisticated silence, Rastafari have also become the scapegoat of the very prejudices against which they protest.
Following in the ideological footsteps of Marcus Garvey, the ultimate race man, Rastafari have deployed race as a tool of resistance against the external and internalised forms of racism that act as barriers to self-love and sustainable development. This self-hate seeps through the cracks of fragile self-concepts and results in the “creamy crack” addiction as Chris Rock calls the relentless urge to use chemical hair straighteners to transform kinky hair into straightened tresses.
Discomfort with African self-identity features like black hair and facial composites like broad noses and thick lips are denounced by hegemonic aquiline norms. As we are seeing today, social conventions like school rules that police the Black body deny natural expressions like locks and fades that pronounce comfort with African styles. The minister of education is walking on eggshells lest she disturb the status quo. Ironically, when Black people redesign themselves by using skin- lightening creams, pills, gels, and other products to mimic light-skinned, straight-haired human beings, they are deemed to be aligned to socially acceptable values.
The decolonisation of religion that Rastafari embody has proven to be too much of a challenge to prevailing Eurocentric ecumenical ethics. Therefore, at baseline, Herbert Mckenzie, deputy public defender who will act as public defender until the post is filled, should develop an initiative to figure out why those who believe in Krishna or Buddha do not invoke such angst. He should also question why embracing a Pan-African perspective seems to be justification for the powers-that-be to treat those citizens as a thorn in the flesh of the political architecture, which has been dead set on preserving the colonial registers for defining humanity and the body politics.
- Dr Imani Tafari-Ama is a research fellow at The Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Regional Coordinating Office (IGDS-RCO), at The University of the West Indies. Send feedback toimani.tafariama@uwimona.edu.jm [2].