BLACK WOMEN: STATE OF THE UNION, a theatrical event celebrating the complexity and resilience of Black Women, seeks short scripts delving into what it means to be Black and Female in present-day America. The 2012 theme is Taking Flight!
Keeping within the theme, some suggested areas are listed below:
IDENTITY The Angry Black Woman Mammy, Sadie and Jezebel The Power of the Mmmhmmmm Spirituality
RE-EDUCATION/MISEDUCATION Health and Preventative Behaviours Media Portrayals Passing on Knowledge to Those Who Come After What You Don’t Know Can Kill You
RELATIONSHIPS Sexuality Interracial Partnerships Family Same-Sex Partnerships Sistah to Sistah
Submission Guidelines (Authors may submit up to 3 pieces): Length: 15 min or 15 pages. Characters: No more than 4 women/1 man on stage at one time. Set/props: Minimal Publishing Status: Submissions should not be published or represented by an agency or organization for purposes of royalty collection or production.
Black Women: State of the Union is slated for a 4-week run in the Fall of 2012. BWSOTU 2009 earned NAACP nominations, critical acclaim and audience praise for its humor, insight and edgy observations.
Black Women: State of the Union… A theatrical and community event that represents and celebrates Black women as complex and resilient people. BWSOTU promotes greater understanding of Black women’s significant contributions to the world through performance, visual arts, community events, and media. BWSOTU artists aim to use this platform to empower Black women to love and honor themselves, and to help them self-identify as dynamic, expressive, and nurturing contributors to society. BWSOTU artists communicate and express themselves to help Black women embrace the characteristics that make each of them different and unique–today, tomorrow, and for generations to come.
For more information about Black Women: State of the Union, visit:
The Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists is now accepting applications from professional journalists from developing countries for its 2012 fellowship program. The application deadline is Friday, March 30, 2012.
The fellowships are available to radio, television, print and web journalists, age 25 to 35, from developing countries who are interested in coming to New York to report on international affairs during the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The fellowships will begin in early September and extend to late November and will include the cost of travel and accommodations in New York, as well as a per diem allowance.
The fellowship program is open to journalists who are native to one of the developing countries in Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean, and are currently working full-time for a bona fide media organization in a developing nation. Applicants must demonstrate an interest in and commitment to international affairs and to conveying a better understanding of the United Nations to their readers and audiences. They must also have approval from their media organizations to spend up to two months in New York to report from the United Nations. Click here for full eligibility criteria and documentation requirements and the fellowship application form.
In an effort to rotate recipient countries, the Fund will not consider journalist applications for 2012 from nations selected in 2011: China, Ethiopia, India and Nigeria. Journalists from these countries may apply in 2013.
Four journalists are selected each year after a review of all applications. The journalists who are awarded fellowships are given the incomparable opportunity to observe international diplomatic deliberations at the United Nations, to make professional contacts that will serve them for years to come, to interact with seasoned journalists from around the world, and to gain a broader perspective and understanding of matters of global concern. Many past fellows have risen to prominence in their professional and countries. The program is not intended to provide basic skills training to journalists, as all participants are media professionals.
The Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists accepts applications from journalists of the developing nations of Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean to cover the United Nations General Assembly beginning in September each year. Following extensive review of the applications the Fund board of directors selects four recipients each year.
The fellowships offer a unique opportunity for promising young journalists from developing countries to see the United Nations at work and to report on its proceedings for news media in their home countries. Over the past five decades, fellowships have been awarded to hundreds of journalists from the developing world. These awards require the presence of the selected journalist in New York during the first few months of the General Assembly session and should be regarded as an opportunity for news organizations and journalists to provide their audiences with special assignment news coverage from U.N. headquarters.
Successful applicants must obtain a leave of absence from their employers. By endorsing the application of a staff journalist for a fellowship, the editor undertakes to meet all telephone or other transmission charges and to publish or broadcast copy filed by the reporter. Applicants must be full-time, professional journalists between 25 and 35 years old, be employed by a recognized print, radio, television, or internet media organization, and have a good working knowledge of English.
The Fund will provide: round-trip airfare to New York; accommodations; health insurance for the duration of the fellowship, and a daily allowance to cover food and other necessities. The Fund will not be responsible for other expenses of a personal nature, such as telephone calls.
There are a number of fellowship application Eligibility Criteria and Documentation Requirements that must be satisfied.
Your application WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED unless you 1) meet all Eligibility Criteria, 2) satisfy all Documentation Requirements and 3) submit a completed Fellowship Application Form by the stated deadline.
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
The Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists fellowship is open to individuals who:
Are native of one of the developing countries of Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean. For 2012 only, the Fund will not accept applications from the countries of the 2011 Fellows - China, Ethiopia, India and Nigeria -- in an effort to rotate recipient countries.
Currently live in and write for media in a developing country.
Are between the ages of 25 and 35.
Have a very good command of the English language since United Nations press conferences and many documents are in English only.
Are currently employed full-time as professional journalists for bona fide print, television, radio or internet media organizations.
Have approval from their media organizations to spend up to three months in New York reporting from the United Nations.
Receive a commitment from their media organizations that the reports they file during the term of the Fellowship will be used.
Are prepared technically to file their news stories over WIFI, whether broadcast or print.
DOCUMENTATION REQUIREMENTS
Please include all of the following documents with your signed application. Applications WITHOUT the following documents will NOT be considered.
1. Copies of representative selections of your work, such as newspaper clippings, audio tapes, video tapes or Internet submissions. The selections must be work produced in 2011 or 2012 - not earlier. The judges will look for entries with insight and originality. Investigative work is welcome.
For newspaper clippings not in English, include an English translation or summary.
For audio tape and video tape submissions, include a written transcription or a summary in English, even if the originals are in English.
Video submissions should be in DVD, CD or VHS (preferably NTSC) format.
For video and broadcast applicants, kindly send a CD that can be read or send regular size audio tapes (no mini tapes).
2. Originally signed letters from two individuals who supervised you and can comment on your journalism experience and qualifications.
3. Endorsement of the Fellowship application from the editor or director of the news organization that presently employs you. This endorsement must be originally signed and should:
Grant you a leave of absence from your current duties in the event you are awarded a Fellowship.
States 1) plans for using the material prepared by you during the Fellowship, and 2) the arrangements made to file your reports while you are at the United Nations and in New York.
Sets forth the plans for you upon completion of the Fellowship and your return from New York.
4. Summary statement. On a separate sheet of paper, explain in not less than 300 words why you are applying for this Fellowship and what you expect to gain from the experience.
5. Two recent photographs (passport size or larger). Please place these photos in a separate secure envelope and affix them to the front of your application.
6. If available, include a copy of your passport. If you do not currently have a passport, you are advised to obtain one as soon as possible so that, if selected, you can immediately proceed to obtaining a journalist visa.
NOTE: Applicants and/or their employers are required to provide equipment necessary for the applicants to efficiently and effectively report from the United Nations. Such equipment should include a laptop or notebook computer, digital camera (if appropriate), audio/visual recording and equipment needed for transmission, especially for TV. Selected journalists must be prepared technically to file their news stories over WIFI, whether broadcast or print, and arrive with a laptop enabled for WIFI.
News: Please note our new submission period for Arts & Letters Prizes. Both regular mail and online submissions will be accepted from February 1 to March 15, which is a slight change in time period from past years. To see the most recent contest winners, honorable mentions, and finalists, click here.
The Arts & Letters Prizes competition offers publication and a $1000 (US) prize for winners in: Fiction (Short Story), Poetry, Drama (One-Act Play), and Creative Nonfiction (Essay). A $15 submission fee (or $17 for online submissions), payable in US dollars, includes a one-year subscription to Arts & Letters. Please make checks or money orders payable to “GCSU” (note “Arts & Letters” in the memo section). All submissions will be considered for publication. (International authors: Please see below for our new policy concerning international submissions.)
Submission Deadline: Submissions should be postmarked February 1 to March 15. We also accept online submissions during the same time period.
For all submissions: Submit only original, unpublished work in English. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable if the editors are notified immediately that the work has been accepted elsewhere. Authors may submit more than one manuscript; however, each submission should include the required entry fee of $15 (or $17 for online submissions), which provides for a one-year subscription, entitling you to the print edition of our spring 2012 and our spring 2013 issue (spring issues will feature contest winners), as well as a one year subscription to our new ePublication, Arts & Letters PRIME, which appears in the fall and, with new material, again later in the year.
Include a cover sheet with your name, address (where you want your subscription/s to be sent), phone/email contact information, and the title of your work. For those submitting more than one manuscript, you may designate a gift subscription to be sent (please provide name and address where you want the subscription sent). Send a no. 10 self-addressed, stamped envelope if you wish to receive an announcement of winners (usually in late June/early July). No manuscripts can be returned.
The author’s name should not appear anywhere in the manuscript, only in the cover letter (for creative nonfiction, if relevant to this policy, please avoid using your full name in the manuscript).
For fiction and creative nonfiction: Submit one story or essay, typed, double-spaced, no more than 25 pages long.
For poetry: Submit up to eight PAGES of poetry, typed, single-spaced, one poem (or part of a poem) per page.
For one-act plays: Submit one work, typed in standard format.
For all submissions: Please mail your submission unfolded and unstapled in a large-size manila envelope and write “Fiction,” “Poetry,” “Nonfiction” or “Drama” on the outside.
For online submissions only: Please make sure to include your address (for where you want your subscription to be sent) when prompted. Please also remember not to include your name anywhere on your document, though you will need your name and contact information on the cover sheet.
Arts & Letters Prizes Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA 31061
Special Information for International Authors:Please submit online if possible. If submitting by post, please add $10 to the reading fee (for a total of $25) to cover the high cost of international postage for delivery of the spring print issue. Your entry fee also entitles you to our ePublication, Arts & Letters PRIME, which appears in the fall and, with new material, again later in the year.
However, if an international author is able to use a US mailing address (or wishes to have a gift subscription mailed to a friend in the US), please tell us so in a cover letter, provide us the appropriate US mailing address, and include the usual $15 reading fee for hard-copy submissions.
Also: International authors do not need to send a SASE or International Postal coupons for notification of winners. If the author will provide an e-mail, we will send the results (usually late June/early July) via e-mail (this information will also be listed on our web site).
Please note: Unless costs are reasonable, we can only provide domestic (US) airfare for our winners to travel to our campus for special prize programs; travel costs will be addressed on a case-by-case basis. Publication and prize money, of course, remains the same.
A terrific portrait of the fearsome West Indies cricket team of the 1970s and 1980s, set against the backdrop of the cultural and political ferment from which bubbled forth reggae's global rise and the raw-edges of The Harder They Come, Fire in Babylon is a little lacking in broader cricket history, never mentioning, for instance, the deeply controversial "Bodyline" tour of the 1930s, which soured Anglo-Australian relations to an astonishing degree over the use of physical intimidation (by England). As the film tells it, the lethal West Indies fast bowl attack was developed as a response to Australia's fiery tactics, accurate enough for the short term, but an irony indeed when seen in the context of vociferous Australian objections to such intimidation in decades past.
Such tactics were a major innovation for a Windies team still emerging from the colonial shadow, ay a time when they were often dismissed as fun-loving calypso cricketers. As the film tells it the 1976 tour of England marked a major turning point in Caribbean identity, including for those in the diaspora who had endured two decades of unwelcoming treatment in the alleged mother country. Indeed, the team's performances seem to both feed off that broader awareness and contribute to it, most often in brashly joyous ways. For the sportsmen themselves there was clearly much more on the line during the period, most notably during that 1976 tour of England, during which the athletic young West Indian players made England look, quite literally, like a bunch of old men - surely sowing the seeds for a major change in training and conditioning by cricket players. The players weren't just making a sporting point: England's captain, the South African-born Tony Greig, made a spectacular, if likely inadvertent, miscalculation when he commented that he intended to make the West Indies "grovel" during the course of the series. That he made his comments at a time of great unrest in South Africa - the Soweto Uprising began during the tour - only reinforced the sense that the West Indies were playing for rather more than sporting victory, and even in the interview 35 years on there's an icy tone to Viv Richards's comments when asked about Greig's ill-chosen words. It's one of the highlights of the film, giving a glimpse of the steel for which Richards, who played without a helmet, was known.Poster art credit: Bose Collins
A new documentary about the ‘popularized‘ life of Bob Marley is set to be released in theaters (and Video On Demand) on April 20, 2012. But based on an interview with the film’s Scottish director, Kevin MacDonald, it seems the film will be yet another effort to co-opt Marley’s image and put his legacy to rest (along with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X). The director revealed that the movie will take an orientalist approach to Marley’s life and focus on his “mixed-raceness” and his efforts to rise up out of poverty. Fans of his popularized image are bound to be delighted, but those acquainted with Marley’s actual lyrics and expressed philosophy will be disappointed.
Based on the interview with MacDonald, here’s some clarification of at least 6 fallacies/lies the film will try to force into our consciousness – stand guard!
1. Marley and mix-raceness The most revealing thing about Marley was NOT his “mixed-raceness.” Marely’s entire body of work does not suggest someone obsessed with mixed-raceness as those seeking to co-opt and re-package his image. The film promises to present Marley’s multi-ethnic background as a dilemma in his life. The filmmakers will feature a much mis-interpreted clip showing Marley saying he is neither on the black man side or the white man side, but on his God’s side – without clarifying that this was Marley’s attempt to sway sentiments that he was anti-white because of his pan-Africanist stance.
2. Marley out of place in Jamaica It is a lie that Marley was not accepted by “the black or white people in Jamaica.” In Jamaica Marley is seen as a black rasta man. He was marginalized there because as a Rasta he was among the lowest of the low in what was a society under British colonial and mental rule up until 1962. He was not alone in that marginalized group, nor was he a leader of that group; he was a member – just another “dutty head rasta bwoy” until near his death.
3. Marley and African-American music Another lie is that Marley used R&B because he wanted to “get ahead, to be successful”, Marley sought to use R&B to reach Black Americans. Like most famous reggae artiste (from the roots school), and as a pan-Africanist, he was dismayed that his concerts were packed with white people instead of the blacks he hoped would – as he sang, “rebel”. He thought R&B would get him on black radio, so that he could further spread his message of black unity and Rastafari.
4. Marley’s lyrics interpretation The song “Three Little Birds” aka “Every little thing is gonna be alright” is not about ‘third world poverty today could mean stardom through hardwork tomorrow’. The song was written to thank the I-Threes, his background vocals trio which included Marley’s wife.
5. Marley’s international politics Aligning Marely’s image with the Tibet and the co-opted “Arab Spring” is troubling. Marley’s singleminded focus was African unity and the Rastafarian faith. He was not exclusionary, but he was focused on all that he outlined in the Survival album released in 1979, two years before his death.
6. Marley as legend, fiction Marley is not a legend (a popular myth of recent origin, a story coming down from the past; especially : one popularly regarded as historical although not verifiable), he was a living man, committed to using music and the 36 years of his life to inspire and spread african unity, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, anti-poverty, freedom and equality, the divinity of his black, African God, Emperor Haile Selassie I and Rastafarianism as he experienced and knew it. Casting Marley as a “legend” makes his commitment and life’s work appear to be “over” and in any case, super-natural; never to be attained or attempted by those coming after him – Not so! Marley (and Fela Kuti for that matter) was among many and the work continues with those having the courage to do it.
Film and entertainment as propaganda is not a new phenomenon, but now more than ever we need to resist the impressions of those seeking boost the corporate value of men like Marley by nullifying the potency of his true life’s work.
(excerpted from the chapter in Authentic Blackness/”Real” Blackness: Essays on the Meaning of Blackness in Culture and Literature, ed. Martin Japtok & Jerry Rafiki (Peter Lang, 2011).)
“No one screams about Babylon more than a brown boy.” (Participant in an on-line forum about Damian Marley & “brown boys” in Jamaican culture).
My father used to say: “I wrote all my books about child-rearing before having children.” I wrote all of my books and essays about Jamaican music and culture before living in Jamaica. My experience in Jamaica (moving there in the wake of Ivan the Terrible in 2004) strengthened my impression that rational discussions about race and gender in Jamaica are at best difficult for Jamaicans, much less for outsiders.
I lived with two school-aged children in Jamaica. As a family man, I had no problems. But the atmosphere at the University of the West Indies-Mona, where I taught for four years, was another story. UWI-Mona is an authoritarian ex-plantation. In his essay “Why I Love and Leave Jamaica” Roger Mais called UWI “a moated tower of mediocrity [that] has acquired such a body of mediocre opinion about itself that it is useless to try to make a dent in its smugness.” Garth Baker painted UWI as a parasitic “suffocating bureaucracy” which is “defensive and immune from criticism.”1 In the early 21st century, a culture of criticism hardly exists in this institution. I learned early on not to take defensiveness and ignorance personally: stories abounded about foreigners who had been savaged for daring to question conventional wisdom
I want to discuss an obsession with the “white other” in Jamaican culture. Two aspects of Jamaica’s obsession with a non-“black” other are my primary concern:
A) A compulsive othering of “brownness” in Jamaica;
B) a fixation on “white appropriation of black culture,” resulting in a rejection of ideas crucial to the “second emancipation,”2 including the notion of “One Love,” or “One Blood.”
This othering of “brown peoples” has deep roots in Jamaica. Note the evolution of the Rasta saying, “Death to white oppressors,” to “Death to white and brown oppressors.” Those who were visibly mixed or brown, a small slice of Jamaica society, were often viewed as a sort of “middle-man” between the white-man-as-oppressor, and the black-man-as-victim. Yet there is also a lengthy history of brown people who fought for “black liberation.”3
There is an ongoing, often acrimonious debate about the role that skin color had in the success of Bob Marley, Jamaica’s best-known “brown culture hero.” There is considerable resentment about “one love” being held up by foreigners as emblematic of Jamaica’s “black” culture of resistance.
Students tell me that they learn to hate white people at UWI. I cross paths with colleagues who teach the theology of black victimization, often paired with a belief in black supremacy. Their view of “white people” has evolved little from Malcolm X’s “white man is the devil” phase. I hear their opinions coming out of the mouths of my students. General indicators of what “whiteness” represents in Jamaica range from the general refusal of Jamaicans to buy white eggs, to the homeless Rasta I pass on my bicycle on Mona Road, who curses me: “Die white man!”
Jamaicans who conserve milder variations of this hostility exhibit a semi-conscious impulse to engage in guerrilla warfare against “the white man.” The resulting groupthink leads to attacks against those guilty of sins of commission (criticizing the “black masses”; too friendly to whites), or omission (insufficiently enthusiastic in the defense of black people, i.e., Garvey’s “racial empire”). Much of this residual hostility gets displaced onto browns.
The opening quote comes from Wayne Marshall’s blog. One of his Jamaican students at Brown University wrote a screed on “brown boys.” She looks at Damian Marley and sees “the image of every brown boy who went to Hillel.”4This supposed “brown boy domain” is seen as a threat precisely because it has achieved a critical mass. This Brown student talks about Damian “being backed by…a whole slew of supportive brown boys.” In historical context, she sees brown boys all over Jamaica claiming that Bob Marley is their father. Her conclusion is polemical: “Bob was a brown boy. The way he spoke, the frass weede look on his face, the constant righteous terminology, the anger towards the government, all typical of a brown boy.”5
The commercial success of Damian Marley and Sean Paul brought a lot of tensions into the open. Take a discussion about the “white-pot head appropriation of Bob Marley” on Breath of Life. “I grew up thinking of Bob Marley as a black revolutionary,” writes Mtume ya Salaam. But after going to a largely Anglo high school in New Orleans, and working at Tower Records in the French Quarter, Mtume “learned that Bob Marley wasn’t a black revolutionary after all. In actuality, Bob was part of an (un)holy trinity [along with Che Guevara and Jimi Hendrix] of wild-eyed, long-haired, brown-skinned, pot-smoking dudes whose chief function seemed to be giving white hippie wanna-be’s something to put on the front of their T-shirts.”6 Never mind that Che smoked cigars and was fair-skinned. The point was that these “black revolutionaries” had been devalued because they had been embraced by too many ignorant whites.
For one friend of Mtume’, “the dominant image of Marley is holding a spliff looking down from a white pothead’s dormroom.” Thus, the revolutionary power of the icon has been defused for many in the African diaspora. “We don’t want to be associated with the masses of silly white people who listen to them,” as a reader Rosalind observed.
RECLAIMING “BLACK CULTURE”
Many of the people in positions of authority I heard in Kingston were busy trying to launch a crusade to “take back” Jamaica music from foreigners, especially “white people,” whom they feel have co-opted it. A proposal for a “Global Reggae” conference circulated at UWI by Carolyn Cooper, director of the International Reggae Studies Center, observes with dismay that “Most of the books on reggae have been written by non-Jamaicans.” It warns of the danger of “giv[ing] away the intellectual property that is our heritage.”7
When I was hired to teach at UWI-Mona in 2004, it was partly on the strength of my work about Marley, race and gender in Jamaican music. But I already had a more or less terminal case of “race fatigue.”8 So I hesitated when asked to give a public lecture during observations of Marley’s 60th earthday. But on reflection, I decided that if I did not have the courage to present my research to Jamaicans, then I would not be able to face myself in the mirror. So I gave a lecture titled “A ‘Second Emancipation’ Transfigured? Reflections on Bob Marley at 60.”9
Garvey’s “second emancipation” from mental slavery was a timely, and timeless idea, but Garvey’s own pronounced racialism had been a stumbling block, I argued. It was Bob Marley and the Rastas who had pointed beyond this stumbling block, the mental slavery of racialism—“the insidious confusion of race with culture,” as Ralph Ellison wrote.10 They charted this emancipatory path via a concept of transracialism rooted in a Biblical philosophy of One Blood.
I tried to make visible the international community that listens to, has been influenced by, and often now are co-creators of Jamaican-inspired music. Most Jamaican-inspired music is not made in Jamaica. The vast majority is made abroad—in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Germany, and Japan, etc.11 This is common knowledge to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of international reggae music, but seemed counter-intuitive, or even heretical, to some of my Jamaican colleagues (although not to their children).
My second argument was to revisit Bob Marley’s de-centering of race, in his comments about his own brown-ness (“I’m not on the black man or the white man’s side”), his references to Biblical notions of non-racial community,12 and by stressing how Bob Marley grounded his fusion of African pride and trans-racialism in Haile Selassie’s own words:
“Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more importance than the color of his eyes, and until equal rights are guaranteed to all without regard to race, there will always be war.”
Making “race”/skin color the primary criterion of authenticity–or of admissibility to Jamaican-inspired culture—was illogical. Illustrating the point, I noted that my own children were the same skin color as Bob Marley. Calling attention to the biraciality of my children infuriated some in the audience. How dare I insinuate some commonality between my family and Bob Marley? This was all about policing the boundaries of kinship. If they were to concede that there was no “racial” difference between my children and Bob Marley, then that meant, on some level, that they would also have to recognize some form of kinship with these children’s father. And that is of course impossible for people who are so heavily invested in a definition of themselves as a people who have been victimized by, and permanently scarred by, “the white man.”
The blind spots into which such racialized definitions of community can lead people were made clear in my colleague Carolyn Cooper’s comments to the audience after my speech. “I’ve always had problems with that part of Selassie’s speech in ‘War’,” Cooper said. Many Jamaicans had been citing “War” as an example of the radical Bob that the global community had white-washed. But when it became clear that “War” itself lead to a sort of non-racialism that Bob Marley himself had endorsed, well then, Selassie’s words themselves had to be repudiated.
WARRING AGAINST “ONE LOVE”
Around celebrations of Bob Marley’s earthday in 2005, I noticed a virulent mood in the Jamaican public sphere. This centered on a blind opposition to the version of Bob Marley that the global public endorsed, and a re-assertion of a xenophobic definition of racial community. Melville Cooke, a race-baiting columnist for the Jamaica Gleaner, set the tone when he declared that he “despised” Marley’s song “One Love.” “This idea of loving everyone on an equal footing,” wrote Cook, “may be all right for other races,” but “it is a dangerous fantasy for black people.”13 And what Marley classic did Cooke propose as an anthem of black unity: of Jamaican resistance to the international white-washing of Marley? Why, “War,” of course…
Dancehall artist Bounty Killer went on a rant on JTV (Jamaican Television) about why black artists were not made into icons. Marley was made an icon “beca’ him the white man son,” Bounty Killer claimed.14Gleaner columnist Kevin O’Brien Chang jumped on the bandwagon, declaring that he was so sick of “One Love” that he switched stations whenever it came on.15
There is some truth to Chang’s question: “Is it merely coincidence that the three biggest selling Jamaican artistes ever—Bob Marley, Shaggy and Sean Paul—are all noticeably part white?” But this ignores darker vocalists like Shabba Ranks or Buju Banton who blew up globally. There is a myopia resulting from the notion that anything favored by white people must be corrupted, and bad for black people (“white democracy,” for example, according to Cooke).
A year later Cooke was still proclaiming how much he despised “One Blood,” as part of his black-first crusade. Elites in Jamaica had only jumped on board Marley’s Zion Train “because foreigners…[and especially] (gasp!) white people see him as important.”16
I have seen this blind opposition to everything embraced by “white people” in many different contexts. At the Annual Bob Marley Lecture at UWI in February 2006, Federick Hickling described Jamaican popular culture as a negation of “the European Delusion.”17 Indeed, Professor Hickling’s generalizations about “the heart of the delusion,” i.e., “All that I see is mine,” were the most popular part of his lecture, and had students and professors rolling in the aisles. The racial myopia at the heart of this particular subculture became disturbingly apparent when I saw Dr. Hickling repeat this line of his Power Point presentation nine different times:
“White European vs. Black rest of the world.”
No leader in this subculture is challenging the notion that everyone who is not European is black, that all Europeans are “white,” or still suffer from delusions of racial superiority. Few are wrestling with the reality that this centering of Europeans is a perpetuation of mental slavery.
However, if one listens closely, there are still a few crazies around from the old days who gleefully poke holes in this over-inflated balloon of racial and national essentialism. In November 2005, Lee “Scratch” Perry, now legitimated by a Reggae Grammy, was asked on TVJ what he thought about Rita Marley’s announced plan to rebury Bob in Ethiopia.
Perry—I think Rita Marley should first dig up her family and bury them in Cuba.
Q–But what about Bob being buried close to his father?
A—If he want to be buried close to his father them should bury him in England.18
Still, there is a context that makes this opposition to the celebration of Marley as the icon of One Love overstandable. That is the “invasion” of Jamaica around 2004-2005 by Robert Roskind, a Blowing Rock, North Carolina resident who in 2001 self-published Rasta Heart: A Journey Into One Love. Books about the “discovery” by North Americans and Europeans of Rastafarianism and Bob Marley’s music are numerous. A few texts about Americans becoming involved with Rastas, or Maroons, have a pronounced literary quality, as with Book of Jamaica by Russell Banks, or Michael Kuelker’s ethno-biography, Book of Memory: A Rastafari Testimony.19 But I found Roskind’s testimony to be excruciatingly naïve. Having known many who idealized Rastafarians, I understand some of the psycho-social dynamics when someone like Roskind falls in love with Rastas, envisions them as saviors of the human race, and begins to undertake a sort of “reverse missionary” work. But the heights of Roskin’s naiveté were symbolized for me in the scene where he takes a jambox onto a Negril Beach, puts on Legend, and begins testifying to Jamaicans about the gospel of “One Love.” Beware of the recent convert!
Imagine my surprise, then, when I began seeing Roskind’s name everywhere in Jamaica. Penning a letter or editorial for the Gleaner, still in full reverse-missionary mode. Putting on concerts all over the island. Sure enough, Roskind soon found co-sponsors for this missionary work in the Marley family, and the Jamaican government, who together put on a 60th earthday tribute to Bob in New Kingston, which I attended. There was the portly Roskind on-stage, along with his wife and daughter, kind of a latter-day Ram Dass.
Roskind’s interests intersected with those of the Marley family and the Jamaican Tourist Board. The kind of idealized version of Jamaica they were marketing was not so different from the all-inclusive resorts, from which tourists seldom ventured forth to see the “real Jamaica.” Surely Roskind’s “imagined community” was preferable to the hedonistic (or simply mindless) cultural tourism one can see in films like Life and Debt and Rent a Rasta. But I’m not convinced that it has anything more to do with the “real Jamaica” that I saw every day in Kingston.20
Some Jamaicans resented do-gooders like Roskind coming to Jamaica and preaching about the obligation to live up the ideals of their world-famous philosophy. Imagine a newly converted Christian Jew who begins reciting the Sermon on the Mount on a portable loudspeaker at the Western Wall in Jerusalem: the natives might view this as a provocation, an offensive sort of moral condescension. Still, the reaction of Jamaican elites reminded me of similar action-reaction cycles I had witnessed in the U.S. When well-meaning do-the-right-thing liberals came out against any support for post- racial thinking (the movement for multi-racial or “mixed” identity, for instance), they ended up supporting a reified, essentialized black-white binary.
BLACK VICTIMIZATION AS A THEOLOGY
In a critique of a “profit while they prophet…black cultural criticism,” Norman Kelley has decried “the martyrdom hagiology that…defines African-American political culture.” These may be fighting words, but they accurately describe a history of black theology, in the works of James Cone, Albert Cleage, and others. A binary opposition between white oppression and black victimization is the cornerstone on which the whole superstructure of black theology is erected. A similar strain of thought is also entrenched in a long history of black nationalist and later Afrocentric thought. The tenor of outrage, denial, and accusation that words like “black victimization” often provoke have convinced many to let sleeping dogs lie. But they also indicate how unconscious and largely unexamined these presuppositions are.21
I do not want readers to misunderstand me. The history of slavery, as an institution, and the fight against slavery as an international movement, are topics I have studied in depth, have written about, and are themes that I continue to revisit in my classes. A thorough study of the history leading up to the “first emancipation,” of course, forms a necessary backdrop to any meaningful discussion of what a “second emancipation” would involve.
But what aspect of the slave experience is being memorialized? A particular evocation of the middle passage is memorialized in Jamaica. Take a lecture by Clinton Hutton at UWI-Mona as he introduced Kamau Braithwaite, who had returned to Jamaica November 23, 2005 to read from his book of poetry, Born to Slow Horses. Hutton described at length what he clearly saw as a defining moment: slaves lying in their own shit on a slave ship. I heard nothing about who had sold them into slavery, or what happened to those slaves who survived when they reached the New World. It was rather the most degrading moment which drew Hutton’s attention, and which he dwelt on in great detail, and with a fervor that I can only describe as religious.
Listening to Hutton, and observing his audience’s rapt response, it seemed that his obsessive dwelling upon the moment of slaves-in-shit served a dual purpose. One, the depths of this degradation was a means of measuring the heights to which the African diaspora had arisen. And two, this was an original sin which could not be washed clean, and that clearly marked, for all time, an impassable moral boundary between African and European peoples.
Another feature in the public memory of slavery is that the history of abolitionism has been virtually erased. Beyond the elision/repression of this subject, I have also been struck by the degree to which abolitionism fails to arouse curiosity. Moreover, the suggestion that abolitionism is one aspect of the experience of the African diaspora which should be taught is often met with incomprehension, or arouses opposition. Some reasons I have heard from colleagues included: Abolitionism was a movement of Europeans, or white people, and hence fails to interest me. Abolitionism was something taught by the British to cover up the depths of their own involvement in the slave trade, whereas we as West Indians teach the true nature of slavery. Abolitionism was a very small movement that really never had an impact on the Caribbean.
When I described to a neighbor the tremendous popularity of Frederick Douglass in Europe, and argued that Afro-diasporic spokespersons in fact played a pivotal role in transforming this from a fringe subculture of radical Europeans, to an influential international movement, this colleague expressed a suspicious curiosity. His perspective was that the overthrow of slavery had been accomplished almost entirely by slave revolts. I argued that these were in fact two closely related phenomena. Slave revolts empowered the spokespersons who laid out moral, economic, and political reasons to mass publics in the U.S. and Europe as to why slavery could not be sustained, and must be opposed by all means necessary.
In the Anglo-Caribbean, a history of international and interracial collaboration is seldom visible. What dominates the public memory of resistance is the image of the heroic slave, rising up in isolation. The heroic slave is a lonely slave, fighting against the system, and often indeed betrayed by brown men–or by his black woman who has been sleeping with the white man. In this racial mythology, browns are the “weak link,” making “the black race” susceptible to the corrupting influence of the white world. The purpose of this a-historical collective memory seems to be to instill a sense of race pride and solidarity, and to indoctrinate each generation of youths into the irredeemable nature of the white man and his domain. And by extension, to place brown peoples under suspicion, when it does not in fact elide brown-ness or style it white.
At UWI-Mona my office was next to the Reggae Studies Center. One day I heard a dread say passionately: “you mus know that the white man will always prevail!” This worldview was ingrained in many of my Jamaican students. When they speak of the United States, they invariably voice the deeply rooted impression that America is, first and foremost, a deeply racist country where they will never be welcome. They may believe that the streets are paved with gold, and feel assured that emigrating to the U.S. will let them make a fortune. But they have no hopes of encountering any sort of community that transcends race. They imagine economic success as occurring in a social and political vacuum.
The irony is that some of these students go to the U.S. with affirmative action funding. They tell me about their surprise as universities court them as a “prize catch.” I watch the female Anglo exchange students throwing themselves at the Jamaican men, especially those with dreads. And I watch the young dreads playing this game with great skill. I know that they will be able to profit from their “victimization” (or perceived exoticism) in the U.S. for years. They will be able to “breed” many women, and if they choose, not to be present for the rearing of their children, then they can always blame racism, or slavery, for their behavior.
I have come to believe that racial categories themselves, and the quest for messianic figures, are both cornerstones of our collective mental slavery.22Jamaicans, like any people, have the right to define themselves as they see fit. But because their self-definition is so centered on efforts to oppose, or exclude, a non-black other, then I and my children are indeed involved, and affected, for better or worse. My daughter Sela spent a month at an all-black girl’s school near Half-Way Tree, Merl Grove High. She was the only brown girl there, but they styled her as white. One day a student cut in front of her in line, saying “black before white.” That incident took on symbolic weight: for me part of the daily proof that “Marcus Garvey’s words come to pass”—that the “racial hierarchy and catechism” Garvey advocated has acquired an “eternal life” as a racial theology: an unquestionable encoding of belief that has burrowed into the deepest levels of Jamaican culture and collective (un)consciousness.
But the alternatives are all around, in the greater Caribbean and Latin American world. If I were to accept, for the sake of argument, the metaphor of a returning Jesus who changed his skin color, or his language, to better blend in with (and speak to) contemporary realities, then in the 21st century, I believe she would have to return as a mestiza. Someone who looked not unlike Bob Marley’s children. Or mine.
NOTES
1) Roger Mais and the report by Garth Baker are both discussed by Mark Wignall in “UWI Mona and Math Department Mired in Backwardness,” Jamaica Observer (April 15, 2007).
2) Gregory Stephens, “A ‘Second Emancipation’: The Transfiguration of Garvey’s ‘Racial Empire’ in Rastafarian Thought,” Reevaluating the Pan-africanism of W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey: Escapist Fantasy or Relevant Reality, ed. James Conyers (Edwin Mellen, 2006).
3) See sections on “brown redeemer” in Richard D.E. Burton, Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1997), 114, 147.
4) Hillel, an elite private school in the hills above Kingston, is widely perceived as a “Jewish School,” and indeed a producer of upper-class, usually fair-skinned snobs.
7) “Gobal Reggae: The Transnationalization of Jamaican Popular Culture. An International Conference on Popular Culture to be Convened at the University of West Indies-Mona, Jamaica [during] Janaury 2007.” A flyer circulated by Carolyn Cooper and in this author’s possession.
9) Gregory Stephens, “A ‘Second Emancipation’ Transfigured? Reflections on Bob Marley at 60,” Jahworks.org, February 2, 2005.
10) “insidious confusion,” Ralph Ellison, “Going to the Territory,” in Collected Essays, 606.
11) An example of my writing on the “dub revolution” and Jamaica’s international influence: “Finding a Musical Home: Through the German-UK Looking Glass,” Reggae Vibes (May 2004); http://www.reggae-vibes.com/concert/dubrevol/dubrevol.htm. I did not mention African as one of the important sites of outernational reggae, not because reggae in not important, but because discussion of African reggae artists is not racialized in the same way as non-Jamaican artists from other continents.
12) “all one”: Galations 3:28; One Blood, Acts 17:26.
13) Melville Cooke, “Who made ‘One Love’ Marley’s signature song?” Jamaica Gleaner, February 10, 2005.
14) Bounty Killer on “Entertainment Report,” JTV February 18, 2005.
15) Kevin O’Brien Chang, “Oh, for a Jamaica music day!” Jamaica Gleaner, February 13, 2005.
16) Melville Cooke, “(Dis)re(membering) Bob Marley,” Jamaica Gleaner, February 9, 2006.
17) Frederick Hickling, “We Neva Now We Wudda Reach Dis Far: The Psychology of Stardom in Jamaican Popular Culture,” The Annual Bob Marley Lecture, sponsored by The Reggae Studies Unit, University of West Indies-Mona, Febuary 17, 2006.
18) Lee Scratch Perry, interview with Anthony Miller, TV Jamaica, November 11, 2005.
19) Michael Kuelker, Book of Memory: A Rastafari Testimony (St. Louis: CaribSound, 2005); Russell Banks, The Book of Jamaica (Harper, 1996); Robert Roskind, Rasta Heart: A Journey into One Love (One Love Press, 2001).
20) Stephanie Black, dir., Life and Debt (New Yorker Video, 2003); J. Michael Seyfert, dir., Rent a Rasta (Cinepobre, 2006), http://www.rentarasta.com/. The practices seen in Rent a Rasta, see Julia Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sánchez Taylor, “Travel and Taboo: Heterosexual Sex Tourism to the Caribbean,” in Elizabeth Bernstein and Laurie Schaffner, eds., Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy and Identity (Routledge: 2004). Benedict Anderson,Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism(London: Verso, 1983/1991).
21) Norman Kelley, “Black Cultural Criticism, Inc.,” July 17, 2004. A blatant expression of the theology of black victimization is Albert Cleage’s The Black Messiah (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1968). In Black Theology and Black Power, James Cone also uses black victimization as a starting point. See also James H. Cone, “Black Theology in American Religion,” Theology Today 43:1 (April 1986). Critiques: Rosemary Ruether argues that Cone’s “kind of theology primarily addresses white people,” i.e., it centers on its other. “Black Theology vs. Feminist Theology,” Christianity and Crisis (April 15, 1974). William Jones,“Theodicy and Methodology in Black Theology: A Critique of Washington, Cone and Cleage,” The Harvard Theological Review 64.4, Theology and the Black Consciousness (Oct., 1971), pp. 541-557.
22) Growing consensus against racial categories, Brent Stapes, “On Race and the Census: Struggling with Categories that no longer Apply,” New York TimesFeb. 5, 2007.
Best known as the author of The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, Cyril Lionel Robert James was born on January 4, 1901 in Port of Spain, the largest city in colonial Trinidad. Most of his youth was spent in the village of Tunapuna, just about eight miles outside the city.
His intellectual legacy is succinctly described as complex and controversial, having made significant contributions in the fields of sport criticism, Caribbean history, literary criticism, Pan African politics and Marxist theory.
Louis Reyes Rivera Known as the Janitor of History, poet/essayist Louis Reyes Rivera has been studying the craft of writing since 1960 and teaching it since 1969. The recipient of over 20 awards, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2003), a Lifetime Achievement Award (1995), a Special Congressional Recognition Award (1988), and the CCNY 125th Anniversary Medal (1973) --each of which were given in recognition of his scholarship and impact on contemporary literature-- Rivera has assisted in the publication of well over 200 books, including Adal Maldonado's Portraits of the Puerto Rican Experience (IPRUS, 1984), John Oliver Killens' Great Black Russian (Wayne State U., 1989), and Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Crown Publishers, 2001), co-edited with Tony Medina.
An internationally recognized literary figure with translations of his work appearing in the Russian, Latvian, Spanish and Italian languages, Rivera has been consistently viewed by many as a living bridge between the African and Latino American communities. He has distinguished himself as a professor of Creative Writing, Pan-African Literature, African-American Culture and History, Caribbean History, Puerto Rican History, and Nuyorican Literature, and has taught these courses at such institutions as SUNY@Stony Brook, Hunter College, College of New Rochelle, LaGuardia College, Pratt Institute, and Boricua College, among others. As well, he has completed the translation of Clemente Soto Veléz's Caballo de Palo/Broomstick Stallion, and was presently working on the collected poems of Otto Rene Castillo of Guatemala, Por el bien de todos/For the good of all.
Over the past 28 years, his essays and poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Areyto, Boletin (Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter), The City Sun, African Voices, and in several award-winning collections: In Defense of Mumia; ALOUD: Live from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; Of Sons And Lovers; and his own Scattered Scripture, for which he received the 1997 Poetry Award from the Latin American Writers Institute.
Since 1996, Louis Reyes Rivera hosted a reading series in Brooklyn, 1st & 3rd Sundays Jazzoetry & Open Mic @ Sistas' Place (where he continues to conduct a writing workshop), and has appeared in Jazz clubs and festivals with The Sun Ra All-Stars Project, Ahmed Abdullah's Diaspora, Ebonic Tones, the James Spaulding Ensemble, and his own band, The Jazzoets. He appeared on the Peabody award-winning HBO show, DEF POETRY JAM, and was heard every Thursday, at 2pm, on radio station WBAI (99.5 FM) hosting PERSPECTIVE (streamed at wbai.org/ archives).
Louis Reyes Rivera & the Jazzoets Perform at Sistas Place: Brooklyn NY—The Jazzoets consist of Award-winning poet Louis Reyes Rivera, Ahmed Abdullah one of the living masters of the trumpet and a 20+ year veteran of the Sun Ra Arkestra, story-teller/flutist/percussionist Atiba Kwabena Wilson, and legendary poet/violinist Ngoma.
So there’s some pretty bad quality video floating all over the blogs of Lauryn performing her new song, Fearless Vampire Killer. As you know, we have higher standards here at ATWL, so we’re proud to bring you a proper, high quality live version of the song. Lucky for us, taper travellinbeat was in attendance at Ms. Hill’s show in DC earlier this week and was nice enough to share the recording. Here’s Fearless Vampire Killer and Lost Ones live in DC from earlier this week.
Ali Santana is a visual artist from Brooklyn New York. With an interest in the moving image and storytelling through the medium, his work is inspired by community, music, travel, nature and food. Ali creates moving images in the form of short films, video art, live visuals and interactive multimedia experiences.
He has been working with the moving image for over 10 years and freelances on a regular basis for various clients in film and television including MTV. Ali is also a member of The Santana Project: a creative, collaborative, interdisciplinary, intergenerational organization of the Brooklyn art family of Marilyn Nance, Al Santana, Ali Santana, and Rafia Santana. Ali and Rafia Santana mine their parents' deep archives of moving images, photographs, memorabilia and cultural software to produce remixed and rein-visioned mashups of their work for interpretation by a new generation.
Ali is currently experimenting with rhythmic video editing and videoinstrumentalism; which he mixes and composites video live, often accompanying musical acts.
approach to Marley’s life and focus on his “mixed-raceness” and his efforts to rise up out of poverty. Fans of his popularized image are bound to be delighted, but those acquainted with Marley’s actual lyrics and expressed philosophy will be disappointed.
album released in 1979, two years before his death.
