Orville Taylor | A piece from my blackside

Black and ugly are still words which are correlated, whenever Jamaicans are administered psychological tests. Descendants of enslaved Africans still find it funny when we make references to hair, that rolls up like black pepper or pimento seeds, or is described as such.

In a country where ‘good ’air’ is not simply a brand of motor vehicle tyres, those of us, who understand the deep symbolism of a post-slavery population, using black in a negative way, squirm when powerful Jamaicans, especially political leaders, directly, half-minded or unwittingly, maintain the mental colonial associations.

When we were children, in the 1960s and 1970s, we thought that the black in our national flag meant us; we the 92 per cent, of noticeable modern African descent. Unlike current Governor General Sir Patrick Allen, my generation has no first-hand recollection of the replacement of the misnomered Sir Kenneth Blackburn, with Sir Clifford Campbell. However, we were the same age that Sir Patrick was, when in 1973, Jamaican Basil Robinson, a man who looked like retired Senior Superintendent Maurice, with the same surname, displaced the British expatriate Jack Middleton as Commissioner of Police, the first Jamaican and African in the post.

As first-formers at St George’s College, a school with an underrepresentation of Africans compared to the larger population, the membership in our African studies club was natural and of course, Maurice’s moniker from a famous Latino revolutionary stuck.

Inasmuch as Campbell, who we mischievously called ‘Circle Food’ instead of Sir Clifford, because he was always at special dinners, was the Queen’s stand-in, his deep pigmentation meant everything to us, because, the decade in which Sir Patrick went through his tweens, the 1960s, was one where black was almost a mark of shame. Rastas were persecuted, lies told about black-heart men and books and black activists, such as Stokely Carmichael and academic Walter Rodney, banned from entering our shores.

Thus, when we discovered that the black in our tri-colour flag meant “Hardships there are, but the land is green and the sun shineth,” we were displeased. Of course, given that the colour in Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s UNIA flag referred to us, our legislators got wise and made the change. Today, the black denotes “the strength and creativity of the people”.

WEARING BLACK

My American predecessor, Johnny Cash, who used the same homograph which I am presently described by, justified his wearing black all the time. Much of it strikes the same notes for me. Therefore, black, which keeps my mind on our struggles, history and identity, is not too different from where he said, “so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back” and “I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town.” Similarly, “I wear it for the sick and lonely” and finally for the homicide victims.

Cash sang, “Each week we lose a hundred fine young men … I wear it for the thousands who have died

Believin’ that the Lord was on their side. I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died.”

True, Cash’s taking on the Man in Black persona is to highlight the wrongs in the world and to point us in the direction of those who need to fix it.

Yet, there is more than that to the wearing of black. Hindus use white as their colour of mourning, South Africans use red and some Latin and Asian countries use purple. No disrespect to my Kingston College brothers, but purple is an acceptable mourning colour even in Christendom.

There is far too much that we have done, as a people, to maintain any stereotype of black in a negative way.

Doubtless, I understand the collective horror that we feel over the unmitigated violence in society, including the ghastly attacks against children.

NO HARM

And, despite my seeing it a empty symbolism, just like the token prayer breakfasts, there is no harm in having these red letter occasions, if they keep focus on the challenges we need to confront.

But Sir Patrick cannot be the one to speak to us. First of all, being the representative of a foreign King, who still is our head of state, he cannot speak for the Jamaican people. The very language of his ‘proclamation’ of anything digs up all the bones of my African ancestors, who died because of being black.

That a representative of a white colonial master is telling his own people to continue a negative typification of the use of our colour, though well-intentioned, is simply wrong.

After Mauritania added red to its flag in 2017, Jamaica’s became the only nation on earth which contains none of the colours of the Union Jack or American flag.

Of the almost 50 countries with black in their flags, Jamaica, the place where international black pride, via Garvey, first put the colour in a flag to uplift us, we cannot continue to add negatives to the significance of the colour, irrespective of history.

Indeed, given that the irrefutable evidence is that the current mess that we are in is the direct and indirect result of policies of both the Jamaica Labour Party and People’s National Party; the protesters should have plaited or twined strips of orange and green or worn both colours.

Let us stop denigrating the colour of the race. There is a well-rounded view to be taken of our blackside.

By the way, ‘ugly’ monkeys typically have skin, which is not black, despite the colour of their fur.

- Dr 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.