Orville Taylor | Get ‘red’ of it

Not a piece of bloody cloth; the Jamaican flag has no red. More than 15 countries, including 11 African nations, have some modality of the red, green, and gold.

With black and white as a base colour, many teams could get mistaken by the current kit of the Reggae Boyz, which bears a red stripe, ostensibly because of the pervasive impact of Rastafari on our ethnicity as a proud diaspora African nation.

Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, Benin, Mali, São Tomé e Príncipe, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Togo, and the Republic of the Congo, all take inspiration from the Ethiopian flag.

Importantly, with a different reason than Rastafari, the emergent African nations, who suffered under centuries of colonialism, found great symbolism in the fact that Ethiopians never experienced it.

Doubtless few, if any, nations can boast such a pristine history. After all, despite the short occupancy by the Fascist Italians, Ethiopia can proudly claim to be a real original. Add to that, homo sapiens emerged in or around Ethiopia, and we have a pretty good idea as to what Adam, Moses, Jesus and the original Biblical Jews looked like.

Never mind the current population of the State of Israel and the images popularised by Leonardo da Vinci, Moses and Jesus must have closely resembled Jah Jah, Haile Selassie I.

Being an Africanist, it is easy to deeply empathise with Rastafarians choosing the flag of His Imperial Majesty, that with the crowned lion on it, and not the current.

Today’s flag used by the government in Ethiopia has a pentagram on a blue centred disc which, at a glance, calls to mind the nowadays Israeli Star of David. Even that in itself smacks of irony, because the image makes a Freudian connection with Selassie’s reputed direct descent from the line and loins of King Solomon, the son of the Biblical David.

Moreover, since Ethiopia’s population has essentially remained intact since Eve put the thing in Adam’s mouth and made him taste and eat it, Ethiopian Jews, who are also Israelis now, as well as the current relatives of Jah Jah, have a big case for original identity.

However, that is a discussion for another column.

Apart from the Africans, Lithuania and Bolivia both use the red, gold (yellow) and green. For them, as for all the other non-Ethiopian African people, the red in their flags refers not just to blood, but the blood shed in their liberation and independence struggles.

Independent since 1962 and a one-person-one-vote democracy from 1944, our nationhood was largely gained via our blood; yes, but blood pumping inside our veins and circulating in our hearts, not the ground.

‘One blood’ might be the chorus from reggae superstar Junior Reid, but we had one of the smoothest transitions from colony to nominal independence.

Jamaica is the third country in the entire globe with free elections under universal adult suffrage. That is a big deal.

As for the justifiable red and the blood association across the aforementioned countries, the American flag’s red denotes ‘hardness, valour, bravery and strength’, a direct legacy of the very British they fought in a bloody War of Independence. As a matter of fact, ‘Old Glory’ was adopted in direct opposition to that of the Confederacy. In the most bizarre association, the latter group of Americans who killed and died to keep black people in bondage, the red in their flag has the same meaning as the American, except that the blood of Christ is an added significance.

With all of this history, Jamaica does not need red in our flag.

In CARICOM, Suriname, St Kitts & Nevis, Grenada and Guyana have the ‘ites, green and gold’ as well.

Jamaica’s black, gold and green is distinctive.

Of the between 195 and 250 national flags, no other nation has the black, gold and green combination.

Up to recently when Muammar Gaddafi was the head of Libya, it was the only other nation apart from us, with a flag that did not share any of the colours of Britain or the United States.

Originally a plain green, now its addition of a white crescent, a black band and the obvious red, symbolising the bloodshed in its colourful history, it fits perfectly the present reality.

Now Jamaica stands alone.

Interestingly, Libya’s current flag reprises the colours of Marcus Garvey’s Pan African flag. Gaddafi was a pan Africanist.

Adding red to our official kit tramples on the uniqueness of our banner. To be fair, the Ashanti, with whom 60 per cent of us share DNA, have a flag of black, green and gold (yellow) as well. Similarly, the South African, African National Congress’ flag also has the Jamaican colours. These banners pre-existed our nation and are not national flags.

No doubt, the sense of oneness with these continental ‘bredren’ needs no elucidation.

Jamaicans, after shrugging off the Union Jack, slowly carved out a visual and auditory image of ourselves. Imported with the Indians, the Madras cloth, popularly called the ‘bandana’, is an ethnic marker.

Popping up among the Maasai in Kenya as one of the minor patterns and in other parts of the continent, and among the French Creole people of the Caribbean, it does not identify us with the same distinctiveness.

While not discarding or disrespecting the awesome impact of Rastafari and thus their colours melding with the national ones, there is a big difference between popular and national or official.

For good measure, our most widespread large Jamaican plant is the bamboo. Given the universally known Jamaican expression beginning with its homophone, follow the illogic and consider that phrase instead of ‘one love’ or ‘one blood’.

Trust me, it is a bigger ethnic marker than Bob, or Rasta.

Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.