Full disclosure: this post was started a long-ass time ago and has been languishing on my WordPress dash since forever. I just never bothered to finish it earlier for no particular reason; I also got sidetracked by other projects along the way. The last draft was dated quite April 2013. I figured I might as well go ahead and post it anyway — finally.
If a beauty queen from a small Caribbean island appears in a rap video, does she cause a ruckus at the behest of respectability politics? Apparently, yes. And if said video includes shots in a low income community on the island, are some folks crowing in unparalleled indignation? Also, yes. On Facebook, folks lamented among other things, that “she’s in Trinidad James’ music video about being a hoe. So not becoming of her” and Metro Magazine (among others) had long running threads on Facebook dedicated to whether it was “beneath her and unbecoming for her to be in a video for a song that calls women hoes.” All this after Trinidad James visited the land of his birth before Carnival and shot this video for “Females Welcomed.” Look, what Athaliah decides to do with her own self is her own decision and how we can make the leap from appearance in a rap video to “hoe” is beyond me. Just stereotyping on top of stereotyping.
I disagree with the notion that by wearing the Miss World Trinidad and Tobago crown, this means that her autonomy becomes null and void. She also doesn’t become a slave to national respectability politics either. Especially not after a slew of us were disparaging her looks and her background. Oh, no, you don’t. (Google search Athaliah Samuels — go ahead do it. See what Google asks you.) A beauty queen is not an emblem of a living, throbbing West Indian culture and its diaspora and she doesn’t have to lug around the weight of your expectations and unending demands of respectability on her back. She’s just a beautiful young lady, probably doing the best she can, that is all. To quote Trudy from Gradient Lair, “I am NEVER gonna be here for respectability politics meant to intraracially police BW who are already intraracially policed.” Furthermore,
Now some will argue that if someone is beautiful (or “ugly”), famous and/or in a field where their sexuality is a part of their image, they no longer deserve respect from Whites or anyone else. They lose their right to discern who may touch them. I’m fully aware of how the politics of respectability and Eurocentric beauty myths manifest for Black people, especially Black women. However, I don’t agree with this. I will NEVER accept the faulty logic that if anyone perceives someone as “not respecting themselves,” everyone else has the “right” to disrespect them as well.”
I eh here for that either. Athaliah herself, would eventually have to take to Facebook in the form of an open letter to nicely read the widespread hypocrisy of Trinidadians for utter filth and claim her space to negotiate her own future and decision making. Enter Trini Trent‘s rant about respectability, Trinidad James, and most of all, the representation of the country, which of course, is rooted deep inside cultural respectability politics.
About that, first off, a Trini living in Trinidad vexedly lamenting all the national symbol waving by folks no longer living in Trinidad is really a pointless harangue. Yes, we all love the country, but of course, people who migrate go a bit extra with that. Understandably so, they left or their parents left with them. Some of it is all psychological really: I will rep this place so damn hard because I don’t want to ever lose sight of the fact that this culture is a part of who I am; even though, I am not physically living there anymore and may never be. How and why is Trent’s use of the “Trini” moniker more legitimate than James’ usage and claim of “Trinidad?”
We wanted to start a conversation about Caribbean people, about West Indian people, about our contemporary experiences; about the variegation and the connections that “thread archipelagos”, ranging through race & identity to culture, mental health to constructs of beauty and more. There’s no one, easy answer to what it means to be a West Indian, a Caribbean person — or any one way in which that identity shapes the person holding it dear to them.
These posts are a sampling from across that spectrum:
This blog carnival will be continuously updated for the rest of the year so please check back to see what’s new. If you’d like to join in the conversation: email creativecommess [at] gmail [dot] com with a blog link, submission/s or questions. Otherwise, do support the participating bloggers and their links: read, comment, share!
The title of this blog carnival comes from George Lamming’s seminal novel, In the Castle of my Skin.
OK, here is the image that sparks the Facebook thread partially copied below and this very post. A person I know personally responded to this image, including the poster who I sort of know from around, so all names have been scrubbed to protect identities, including the folks I don’t know personally. An attempt has been made to show where the same person posted again on the thread. The person who posted this image of PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar‘s Divali greetings captioned the image (quote): “kamla where the black children.”
“The needles of their masts / That thread archipelagoes. . . ” –Derek Walcott
A call to submit to:
“In the Castle of Our Skins”: A blog carnival series focused on voices exploring the range of contemporary Caribbean/West Indian heritage, background, culture and where these intersect with race & identity.
Contributors and bloggers are encouraged to ponder their own range of issues and intersectionality such as: What concerns do you have if any about your race and national identity? Do these function in tandem at all for you and in what ways? Are they separate or intertwined; in what ways? Is it complicated, this business of how you see yourself and your collective cultural identity? What about where your gender intersects with any of these ideas?–Your sexuality? How you look at the world? How has this skin that you’re in impacted your worldview? Do these outlooks/concerns/ideas change when you’re outside the Caribbean versus inside? In what ways?
What about skin tone? Socio-economics? Crime, perceptions of crime or political agenda narratives? Constructs of beauty, attractiveness, virility and the like? Body image? Your sexuality? You’re a straight, black West Indian man or a gay Caribbean man, or a queer, ‘mix-up’ Caribbean femme? How do you negotiate these variant identities — and in what ways? What’s everyday survival like and everyday living? What bothers you about these conversations? What would you like to see changed or hear more of? And anything else you want to say!
We’re a small collective of Caribbean and West Indian bloggers, feminists, writers, creative thinkers & artists who think the conversations in this blog carnival are both vital and necessary.
Talk yuh talk — join us and be part of the conversation!
We’re hoping to broaden this conversation with a specific focus on Indo-Trinbagonian identity, womanhood, personhood and what these variant identities mean for the people embodying these spaces. How do these multiple spaces function inside of contemporary West Indian/Caribbean identity? And in what ways? (This call for examination too, is a work in progress—but doh study it, it’ll come together somehow).
Pieces can be any length, any style. Be unflinching if you need to be — or not. Previously written posts and essays are welcome. Send questions, thoughts, suggestions, concerns, essays or submissions links to creativecommess [at] gmail [dot] com.
i purposefully hadn’t bothered to comment on the trinidad and tobago government’s state of emergency all this time because i think it’s a load of crock and save for that, i really didn’t have anything constructive to employ in the conversation initially. who goes pulling states of emergencies all willy-nilly from out their backside like it’s nobody’s business? & sorry, but i also don’t trust the average local officer to not exploit the SOE — i feel like some might be gorging themselves on power, beating the pavement like giddy overlords drunk on the high of tossing alleged miscreants into the backs of pick-up trucks with no recourse. the whole thing just doesn’t sit well.
also, i’ve mused on crime & race before on here and though jack warner doth protest too much — images do tell a perspective, a slant, that is all. the whole discourse in parliament and outside is often full of fail. first of all, coming from the presupposition that black males in trinidad are posited, innately, as The Criminal — that in and of itself is a flickin’ problem! all the hand-wringing is coming from these problematic, patronising places from atop a moral high ground that makes some of us feel good about ourselves and meanwhile, root issues and inequity aren’t being solved. the kinds of insensitivities being spewed also makes me shiver to my core: “lock dem up” — “all ah dem” and things of that nature, when you don’t even know the hows and whys. bet your talk change when they come for you or someone you love though.
Yesterday, late last night and just into the early morn, I went looking for, unearthed, deep in my closet— then perused an old diary of mine. I recall that I didn’t leave it in Trinidad for fear of it falling into the wrong hands—whoever that may be! Hey, you never know. To be safe, I packed it with me as I set off for university. It covers my thoughts and life, during the years, ages 13-15. I haven’t peeped in it in many, many years but I knew it was here somewhere. It is this rainbow-and-neon hued Lisa Frank diary.
It was as though I sat down to catch an inner glimpse into my teenaged self from my older self’s vantage point. I eventually christen the diary “Lisa-Anne” after Anne Frank and Lisa Frank, the namesake of the Stuart Hall Co.’s then uber-popular stationery line. My entries start as “Dear Lisa” then morph into “Dear Lisa-Anne.” I had read the Diary of Anne Frank and enjoyed and loved it tremendously as a girl. Admittedly, without any sense of irony at all, this—my diary—without a doubt, is one of the most compelling things—out of anything—that I have read in a long time. What a strange, brooding, angsty teen I was. Good Lord.
I have to thank my auntie for telling me the other day about the “jahaji-bhai” within our family tree. I feel as though she referenced it to me before once, way back when but this was the first time that we went in-depth into it along with many other ruminations. Speaking of brotherhood of the boat, if you were in Trinidad then, you might remember how in the aftermath of Brother Marvin’s song in the late nineties, certain sectors in society pointed out the historical inaccuracies alluded to in the song? While other people were heaping praises on the calypso’s thesis and looking to hold hands and sing kumbaya with everyone? Even the Maha Sabha weighed in. Jahaji-bhai had at long last bridged the great divide!
While I do appreciate that song and you-tubed it, while singing along recently; I think the loftiness with which the racial miscegenation of an African blood-line was sung about was problematic for some elders and others vocal in the Afro-Trinidadian community. They’re sensitive to it and I guess I could understand why. There were enough people around, who didn’t understand why however, to spark much criticism and discussion. I mean, there is a verse in the song that goes, “for those who playing ignorant/ talking bout you African descendant/ if yuh want to know de truth/ take ah trip back to yuh roots/ and somewhere on ah journey/ yuh go see ah man in a dhoti/ saying he prayers in front of a jhandi.”
The palpable existence of an Afro-Trini identity seems to be prevalent at first glance (especially in the areas of culture) but it’s also not as highly valued in other areas. We usually see this expressed most noticeably in “racial mixtures” and the ways in which people choose to recognize and classify their own mixes, celebrate it (or not), what parts they prize more than others, what parts are de-valued and in what ways. Plus it doesn’t help that without Brother Marvin singing that song, I (and I suspect many other people, unless you actually knew him) would have never guessed he was mixed with Indian in the first place (in Trinidad, as elsewhere looks matter especially when we talking race).
Back to my auntie, (who is my mother’s sister) so she and I have frank discussions about race and identity a lot. Since my fantabulous mother is Guyanese and my father is a Trinidadian—one might expect some ethnic mixing to be going on somewhere along the lines there somewhere, right? Wrong. *Wags a finger in the air* Not necessarily so. Many people stereotype the Caribbean region as this utopic mixing pot where delicious blends are whipped up and churned out, in the right part African heritage, right part Indian heritage or Chinese and so on. Most significantly, the right part African heritage. Just enough for the right size bam-bam, hair texture, wining skills and hue.
Let me also state, as an aside, lest people start to get their cosmopolitan selves all in a tizzy—that: people are sometimes mixed and nothing is wrong with being mixed. (Racially/ethnically/culturally etc.) Mixed people are awesome people in their own right. And I have nothing against them or the fact itself. What I do find fascinating however is the way in which some mixed people who are either self-identified or societally identified as black—tend to pride the “mixing” that is to say, whatever they are mixed with, instead of, or at least more than the black in them. That’s fascinating. Because the discourse of race and racial identity is so prevalent in many societies. Because it’s just interesting to me. Because, well, I just like to think about stuff like that.
Some days, based on many of the things that I hear, read, see and observe—I just sigh and think that it feels sometimes like no one wants to be black except a small core of people. And it’s maddening to think this. Some days in America, I feel trapped in this definition of “black” and what that must mean for the world viewing me. I think people grow to love who they are, inside and out and there is no singular blueprint telling you the sucessful way to navigate through it all. You just do, because the self is all that you’ve really got. You can do the same for others too which is a bigger challenge but necessary because we live in a community of different kinds of people from diverse backgrounds. I came across this term while reading an article in my favorite tea spot the other day, “metacognition” which is defined as ‘the activity of stepping back and thinking about your own thinking’ and I said, “by golly! If that isn’t what I like to do.” I’m going to use that term from now on.
Back to the matter at hand, that “blackness” is often de-valued is nothing new but it’s also prized—strategically so. I’m not even talking eugenics. Just the general cultural landscape with regard to race and mixing and the ways in which the perceived racial/ethnic hierarchy in mixes reveal themselves, through the things people say. Or do not say for that matter. Take for example, I know some black and chinese mixed individuals who despite the deep brown glow of their skin and in some cases, the kinks in their hair–rave about their “chinese-ness” like a badge of honor, so much that it boggles me. Which is why I think some black people have issues with Tiger Woods (speaking of hypodescent) . Being just black must be hella boring because nobody seems to hype it much (ever).
Of course, people are free to embrace the various facets of who they are racially—however they so desire and I am not implying that people shouldn’t do so but celebrate all aspects of yourself equally. People also don’t have a say in how they happened to be created. Still, I would love to see some people stop throwing black by the wayside, like some remnant of self that you drove out to a remote part of the desert and decided to discard. People need to understand that it’s not just what you say about yourself—but you speak to others too in the process. I am in favor of people grappling with all sides of who they are, honestly. Not for me but for themselves.
Think about it, what if you’re Chinese mixed with black. Who is to say what’s the qualifying factor? Are you Chinese identified, despite your black parentage or in spite of? Obviously slavery, racism and edicts like the one-drop rule in the states, sections of the code-noir in parts of the West Indies and others like it, continue to affect us today. Obviously it’s also complex as hell for the people involved sometimes. It’s still true that many racial mixtures today are defined primarily in relation to the dilution of blackness than whatever else is there in the mix. White and Asian mixes like Jon and Kate Gosselin’s kids for example, are considered “less” of a mix than say, Kimora Lee and Russell’s kids. And I use less, relatively speaking up there. One could counter that Jon is mixed too—but so is Kimora Lee.
According to Guyana’s Bureau of Statistics, in a population of 751, 223 (2002), East-Indians are reflected as 43.5 percent of the population, 30.2 percent of African descent and 16.7 mixed. (For full details, see reference links below) So, if you didn’t know any better, one would think the odds were high for some kind of mixing to take place in one’s formerly thought of as primarily Afro-Guyanese family. But then again…Which also reminds me of one of the prevailing cultural stereotypes about Tobago, our lovely sister-isle (despite all the other prevailing stereotypes which I am not going to touch here) that because the island is traditionally more homogeneous and is not as mixed as Trinidad—somehow we’re better off in that regard. Total rubbish. Once again, mixing is hailed.
So my aunt makes this announcement to me and while I am not surprised nor, bothered by the fact, I’m thinking it makes sense that there are Indians in my Guyanese family. I have also never met any of them, ever. Maybe because I grew up in Trinidad—to start with—but even when I have visited Guyana, the only close relatives I’ve ever met were black. My aunt didn’t shed any light on why this is so either but I also didn’t ask. Maybe I will, next time I chat with her. So the prevailing ethnic vibe in my family is not a mixed one. I used to think that my big sister and and her white boyfriend would be the first set of variation coming directly into our racial gene pool.
I have an African first and middle name, in the right place and the right time, you might catch my dad rocking an agbada other than on August 1st (Emancipation Day in Trinidad and Tobago)—you can catch where I am going with that. A smidge afrocentric? Maybe. Still, why is any of this significant? Well there’s my aunt’s announcement, like a “Gotcha! Guess what?” moment, richocheting around in the context of what was being discussed at the time. It was clearly meant to stir up dialogue between us and in myself, so I’ve been pondering on it. So suffice it to say, our family is slightly mixed-up too? Am I now supposed to be excited about that? Screaming it from every roof top? How does this add to my definition of self via the new revelations inside my family tree? Is this process even relevant? Really, I just love when people understand that celebrating blackness is great and should be just as prevalent as other traits that we prize. In actuality, that does not happen a whole lot—outside of say, a Bobo Shanti camp (among a few other places) or Emancipation Day for some folks.
The thing too is that there are lots of people who mistakenly believe that a transformative society will be one that encourages and celebrates mixing of races—and because of this, people presume that the racial lines that are supposedly blurred by mixing, will eventually disappear. Not going to happen that easily, I think. Sometimes Trinis are in danger of doing this as well, touting our mixing in lieu of rampant racial segregation that does exits (yes it does!) in many places and instances. Honestly, if you take your blinders off and look, you will find it. Furthermore, as to my point, even in mixing—hierarchies exist. Paradigms aren’t going to be radically shifted just because segments of our society are inter-mingling and reproducing together more frequently. Nor should they. Real change is real and lasting and shifts mind-sets and outlooks. According to an article (again read in my tea-spot this weekend) about the new face of white supremacy in the states, “by 2042 white people will be a minority” in America (from a random perusal of a current Details magazine article). Only time will tell, what shifts and impact, if any, that new racial make-up will arrive into.
I’ve been accosted by clearly less-informed individuals in the states that have said I don’t “look” like a Trini. And I am like, are you kidding me? Have you seen Wendy Fitzwilliam, a real life authentic Trini on tv—granted that she’s stunningly gorgeous and tall and fabulous—she looks like me (albeit withoutsome any of those factors). How is that not a ‘Trini’ look? But on that note, having had that happen once, I can totally sympathize with black Latinos who sometimes feel the same way and historically, their society is more mixed than ours is!
I don’t have our current census stats posted but if we juxtapose the East-Indian Guyanese numbers with ours, I will bet that inside there, upon further inspection, there is less miscegenation where “douglas” are actually identified as mixed—maybe even Afro-Trini depending, or Afro-Guyanese. Indian and white mixed are probably identified as mixed, so too are Indian and Chinese. I think African descent identified Trinis may even run the gamut in terms of some mixing and certainly shade but I am pretty sure that the East-Indian statistical figures hold up strongly in terms of little or no mixing. Interesting stuff to consider with all these people who like to run around going on and on about how mixed we all are.
Ultimately though, whatever you are is fine. Whatever you are not, is fine too. I don’t think we should be in any hurry to unduly praise and promote the erasure of certain kinds of racial lineage and identity either—with African being the first on board to go usually—there is beauty to be celebrated, remembered and held-on to in all kinds of people, no matter their racial make-up. There is also much to be learnt and loved.
Related references, good reads and random goodies:
To understand more where I’m coming from (if so inclined) in terms of skin shade and racial identity and why that is important. Check out my post “on being a darkie” below–
Why utopic racial-mixing and merging isn’t fool proof. (See links below) Some societies have a history of doing so, way more and longer than Trinidad has. So much so, that the stereotypical look of who they culturally “are” as a people often leaves out a lot of people. (Guess who?) Someone is always going to be not mixed enough and end up at the bottom of the totem pole. Plus black people will still be marginalized. The root cause of that doesn’t automatically change because there’s more mixing.
Check out what Tego Calderon has to say about being black and Latino,
“When dark-skinned people identify themselves as “black,” there is an unmistakable little thrill of victory, a notch for “our” side, as in someone who was brave enough and tough enough to accept the designation this society despises.” Read all of Leonard Pitt’s piece below:
creative commess 