CARIBBEAN UPDATES

Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?

Why I value Evan Jones’s Importance in Jamaica’s culture.

Listen to the Poem” Banana Man” on Youtube or Audio.com written by Evan Jones

Jamaica transitioned from a British Colony to an Independent Nation in 1962, when I was 11 years old. Upon reflection, and with the brilliance of hindsight, I can see how this event reinforced the psyche of the lower-class working man

Pre-independence, small farmers like the banana man were self-sufficient, and in his case, he could export his bananas to England regularly and earn a living wage. There were informal social divisions within this group, shaped by the following circumstances:-

1. How Well You Spoke English
2. How well you communicated in writing
3. The color of your skin. (My label for this is ‘Colorism, ’ and this unconscious bias still exists in Jamaica today.) The lighter your skin color MULATTO shade the more arrogant and supercilious some folks think they can behave.
4. The level of education acquired leaving school
5. Were you from a 2 parent family? Or were you Illegitimate? If so did your father own up to his financial responsibilities?

I mention these informal social divisions because, theoretically, they helped these rural farmers pull themselves up by their bootstraps and increase the acreage of land they could afford to cultivate.

The patois language was never used in formal settings. It was used at Christmas time in pantomimes with Louise Bennett and her husband, and Miss Lou also had a Children’s program on television. After Independence, speaking patois publicly in Church and at parent-teacher meetings became more acceptable.

Thanks to Evan Jones, who, while a student at Oxford University and unashamed of his heritage, gave the rural farmer not only a voice but his way of expressing the written word without feeling a sense of inferiority complex.