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Re: Why Are Jamaicans Racist Towards Black People And African Culture?
BLACK-ON-BLACK RACISM IN JAMAICA
In the foregoing account, I am cognizant of the fact that I will be accused of being overly reductionist in my treatment of the subject of black-on-black racism in Jamaica. However, by seeking to understand the fundamental origins of Jamaican black-on-black racism, I am seeking to find the most parsimonious explanation available that accounts systematically for the institutionalized anti-black racism that permeates all facets of Jamaican society. I am simply using the blade of Occam’s razor to decipher the mystery of Jamaican anti-black racism and get at the underlying truth of the matter. In this essay, I shall present a visibly essentialist account grounded in a kind of unified field theory of Jamaican-style black-on-black racism.
Some people assert that black-on-black racism is everywhere, but I strongly disagree with this assertion. However, I do agree that black-on-black racism does exist wherever there has been a discernible socio-historical pattern of substantial European colonization and Western cultural hegemony. Let me begin by defining what black-on-black racism ultimately means: it is the political, economic, or socio-cultural exclusion or marginalization of people of African descent from receipt of equal treatment, rights, or opportunity by other people of African descent who possess the power to authorize and legitimate such an exclusion and whose sole justification for allowing such an exclusion to occur in the first place is grounded on the perceived ethno-racial characteristics of the group of black people being discriminated against. In other words, black-on-black racism is the ethno-racially predicated social marginalization of the racialized social subjectivity, as well as the subsequent dismissal of the social subjectivity from the collective consciousness of those who perpetrate instrumental racist exclusion against the arbitrarily racialized Black Other. For example, the Jamaican perpetrator of black-on-black racism will discriminate against any group of people of African descent, be they Haitians, African-Americans, Afro-Brazilians, Nigerians etc., who can be distinguished ethno-racially from an idealized, even childishly romanticized, vision of the so-called “Jamaican identity”. Even those Jamaicans who do not meet his description of what an idealized Jamaican should be, such as a darker-skinned Jamaican or a Jamaican of Chinese ancestry, can be readily excluded from equal treatment as a “true Jamaican”. What’s more, the Jamaican anti-black racist will not only seek to show preferential treatment towards his own “kind”, but will also display preferential treatment to those he deems acceptable, such as people of Western European, particularly Scandinavian, origin, because these are the people who provide the necessary instrumental apparatus of the white power structure which the racist Jamaican will use to his own advantage by exploiting said apparatus in an attempt socially exclude or marginalize those people of African, or even East Indian, descent considered less worthy of consideration.
Some people see the corruption rife amongst the political leadership in Africa as a form of black-on-black racism. However, this is corruption, not black-on-black racism. It is, at the end of the day, due to the fact that the European colonizers failed to establish solid democratic institutions within the countries they colonized, as well as develop any kind of solid infrastructure within the country itself or an adequate bourgeoisie to safeguard these institutions, that finally paved the way for dictatorship and mass economic exploitation of the common people. Nevertheless, the widespread corruption occurring in many African countries is not black-on-black racism: it is really people in power, who happen to be black, preying economically on people who have very little power or authority, who also coincidentally happen to be black. People are not being exploited on the basis of what colour their skin happens to be, whether they are light-skinned or dark-skinned, or whether they happen to be Ghanaian or Nigerian; they are being exploited because they are weak and powerless and the people in power know there will be no immediate retribution for their misdeeds. You will mention the ongoing Hutu-Tutsi conflict in central Africa. However, this is not an instance of black-on-black racism, but one of the worst examples of tribalism ever displayed of recent memory. The Hutu-Tutsi conflict finds its origins in the rigid system of tribal classification that was instrumental in reinforcing and solidifying the Belgian colonization and imperialist occupation of central Africa. As a matter of fact, before the arrival of the Belgians, the Hutu and Tutsi actually lived in a state of peaceful coexistence with one another for hundreds of years. It was the Belgian introduction of white supremacy in the form of the so-called Hamitic hypothesis and the preferential treatment given by the European colonizers to the lighter-skinned, more Caucasian-looking Tutsis, as opposed to the Hutus, that is ultimately responsible for much of the tribal rivalry within that region of the continent. However, only Jamaican society institutionalizes a generalized hatred towards all blacks, regardless of where they come from, whereas the Tutsis and Hutus are fighting amongst themselves, NOT against other blacks. Consequently, if a number of international black visitors were to travel to Rwanda today, they would not be discriminated against because of their perceived blackness or any other ethno-racial characteristics; in fact, as opposed to the current situation in Jamaica, people of European origin would probably suffer considerably more, probably xenophobic, discrimination based on their perceived reputation as colonial oppressors. This is because people in Africa are typically tribal in outlook, they define their own individual social subjectivity in terms of immediate family through patrilineal descent, extended family, clan, and then finally tribal belonging. For many African people, tribal identity takes greater precedence over national or ethno-racial identity, which are viewed and summarily dismissed as European socio-cultural impositions of very little importance, whereas those who have been thoroughly assimilated to the values of Western European culture tend to be very ethno-racial in outlook (race and ethnicity are really European inventions).
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