wadabagei
A JOURNAL OF THE CARIBBEAN
AND ITS DIASPORAS
Vol. 13 • No. 2 • Spring/Summer 2010
ISSN 1091-5753
Lexington Books
Lanham, Maryland
WADABAGEI: A JOURNAL OF THE CARIBBEAN AND ITS DIASPORAS
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ISSN: 1091-5753
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EDITORIAL QUERIES
Holger Henke, Editor, York College, CUNY. E-mail: [email protected].
www.lexingtonbooks.com
Copyright © 2011 by Lexington Books. All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
without the written permission of the publisher.
Mission and Editorial Objectives
In the academy in the United States, the study of the Caribbean and its
diaspora communities is underserved and underrepresented; there are
few departments and programs and just a sprinkling of courses devoted to
its study. Concerned about the situation of Caribbean studies, the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, in celebration of
its tenth anniversary in 1997, created Wadabagei to fill this vacuum and
address, and redress, this problem. Wadabagei is solely owned by the Caribbean Research Center.
Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and Its Diasporas is committed
to facilitating the exchange of ideas among Caribbean scholars worldwide. It is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes scholarly articles
and occasional creative works from diverse fields, including politics,
literature, sociology, and religion, and reviews of recent publications in
Caribbean studies. Wadabagei places special emphasis on the acculturation of Caribbean people in North America but explores the Caribbean experience in all geographic locations where Caribbean people have settled.
Wadabagei is a Garifuna name for the conch shell, which is frequently
used as a wake-up call in Caribbean villages and to announce community
gatherings. It symbolizes the historic call to action by Haitian slaves and
the Caribbean peoples’ continuing struggle for self-expression and selfdetermination.
EDITOR IN CHIEF
J. A. George Irish Medgar Evers College, CUNY
EDITOR
Holger Henke York College, CUNY
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Henrice Altink University of York
Sonjah Stanley Niaah University of the West Indies
Simon Smith University of Hull
D. Alissa Trotz University of Toronto
Book Review Editor
Millery Polyné New York University
Editorial Board
Carole M. Berotte-Joseph MassBay Community College
Aubrey Bonnett College at Old Westbury, SUNY
Roy Bryce-Laporte Colgate University
Coleen A. Clay York College, CUNY
Charles Green Hunter College, CUNY
Eda F. Harris-Hastick Medgar Evers College, CUNY
Calvin B. Holder College of Staten Island, CUNY
Roberta Walker Kilkenny
Basil Wilson Graduate Center, CUNY
Ex-officio
Anton L. Allahar University of Western Ontario
Shona N. Jackson Texas A&M University
EDITORIAL STAFF
Gerald White-Davis Medgar Evers College, CUNY
LEXINGTON BOOKS STAFF
Julie E. Kirsch Editorial Director
Julie E. Kirsch Managing Editor
Lynda Phung Production Editor
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Margaret Baker-Green Medgar Evers College, CUNY
Sahadeo Basdeo Okanagan University
Hilary Beckles University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
E. Kamau Brathwaite New York University
Carolle Charles Baruch College, CUNY
Michaeline Crichlow Duke University
Walter F. Edwards Wayne State University
Nancy Foner Baruch College, CUNY
Ivelaw Griffith York College, CUNY
Douglas J. Hamilton National Maritime Museum, London
Paget Henry Brown University
Christine G. T. Ho Fielding Graduate Institute
Merle Hodge University of the West Indies, St. Augustine
David John Howard The University of Edinburgh
Winston James University of California, Irvine
Philip Kasinitz Hunter College, CUNY
George Lamming Barbados
Régine Latortue Brooklyn College, CUNY
Brian Meeks University of the West Indies, Mona
Marta Moreno-Vega Caribbean Cultural Center, New York City
Rex Nettleford University of the West Indies, Mona
Diana Paton University of Newcastle
George Priestley Queens College, CUNY
Trevor Purcell University of South Florida, Tampa
Rhoda Reddock University of the West Indies, St. Augustine
Carlos Russell Medgar Evers College, CUNY
Simboonath Singh New York City College of Technology, CUNY
Marcia Sutherland University at Albany, SUNY
Patrick Taylor York University
Bert Thomas Brooklyn College, CUNY
Milton Vickerman University of Virginia
Huon Wardle St. Andrews University
CONTENTS
Articles
2 Fractured Diaspora: Mending the Strained Relationships
between African Americans and African Caribbeans
Jennifer Thorington Springer
35 Economy, Migration, Identity: Late Capitalist Reactions
against Haitians and the CSME in the Bahamas
Ian A. Bethell Bennett
65 Buried above the Ground: Between Babylon and Zion at
the Bob Marley Mausoleum
Brent Hagerman
Book Review
91 Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad’s
Carnival Musics by Jocelyne Guilbault
Teruyuki Tsuji
Wadabagei, Vol. 13, No. 2
1
Jennifer Thorington Springer
Fractured Diaspora:
Mending the Strained Relationships
between African Americans and
African Caribbeans
Introduction
Scholarship on diaspora studies has been plentiful and by no means
exhaustive. Robin Cohen, William Saffran, James Clifford, Kim Butler, Carol Boyce Davies, and Isidore Okpewho, among others, have
offered significant definitions and redefinitions of diaspora. Directly
addressing the black diaspora, Paul Gilroy’s seminal Black Atlantic:
Modernity and Double Consciousness challenges the legitimacy of
nationalism while deconstructing the idea of race to suggest that, as
Stuart Hall and others have argued, black identities are constantly in
flux. Gilroy’s idea of a black Atlantic meaningfully transcends ethnicity and nationality and instead argues for a transnational, crosscultural black diaspora identity (Gilroy 1993). While embracing transnational and cross-cultural identities appears more fitting for current
examinations of black identity politics, it becomes overly difficult to
talk about racial and ethnic ties without being labeled “essentialist.”
Gayatri Spivak and others have argued for “strategic essentialism”; yet
and still the scholar who approaches the highly favored theoretical
premises of transnational identities with slight trepidation runs the
risk of being problematically labeled as “nationalistic” or “essentialist.” How might one argue for racial and ethnic group solidarity in an
attempt to discuss tensions between black diasporic group members,
namely African Americans and African Caribbeans, without appearing
to be anti-transnationalism?
2
Wadabagei, Vol. 13, No. 2
Fractured Diaspora
3
It is increasingly challenging to examine what may be termed a historical fracture in the black diaspora, where African Americans and
African Caribbeans still struggle to maintain and solidify friendships. I
am aware of the dangers of essentialism and embrace the concept of
transnationalism but also recognize that until race no longer matters,
building racial and ethnic group solidarity is critical to the survival of
African Americans and African Caribbeans in the United States. Isidore
Okpewho rightly observes,
Essentialism has emerged in recent diaspora discourse as an ugly label for
any tendency to see the imprint of the homeland or ancestral culture—in
this case Africa—in any aspect of the lifestyles or outlook of Africandescended peoples in the western Atlantic world. But we can hardly deny
that Africa has had much to do with the ways that New World Blacks have
chosen to address the realities before them from the moment they emerged
from the ships. . . . Memory of Africa, a sense of roots, . . . served exiles well,
especially when conditions became simply intolerable. (Okpewho 2001, xv)
In a similar vein, when there is a fracture in the diaspora, we cannot
hide behind the veil of transnational identities without acknowledging
the power of racial and ethnic ties to unify and uplift marginal groups
such as African Americans and African Caribbeans. Maintaining a
sense of community—the diaspora in this case—and your place within
it are critical to understanding the self. Furthermore, a transnational
subject position can coexist with a keen sense of one’s racial and
ethnic loyalties. These positionalities do not have to be examined as
binary opposites unable to cohere.1
Kim Butler’s “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse” elaborates
on diasporic discursive trends by suggesting that “even within single
diasporas, simultaneous diasporan identities are possible”—namely
within African diaspora studies. Butler proposes “shifting the defining
element of diasporan studies from the group itself to a methodological
and theoretical approach to the study of the phenomenon of diaspora
studies in human history,” thus setting up a theoretical apparatus
whereby there may be adequate critical comparisons made between
varying diasporas or diasporic communities (Butler 2001, 194–95). Butler identifies five dimensions of diasporan research:
1. Reasons for, and conditions of, the dispersal
2. Relationship with the homeland
4
Jennifer thorington springer
3. Relationship with the hosts
4. Interrelationships within communities of the diaspora
5. Comparative studies of different diasporas
Numbers 4 and 5, “Interrelationship within communities of the diaspora” and “Comparative studies of different diasporas” are important
to my study as they allow room to address what I call a fracture in the
African diaspora. When African Americans and African Caribbeans
meet each other in North America, racial and ethnic group ties may be
established, but tensions also often evolve. As Butler articulates, this
rupture is primarily the result of the uprooting of Africans from the
mainland:
For African descendants in the Americas, taken from many different nations in Africa and evolving a multiplicity of identities in the diaspora,
their heterogeneity mitigated against solidarity. On the other hand, blanket discrimination based on membership in a “black” race was a vital factor in forging solidarity between diverse African diasporan communities.
(Butler 2001, 207)
I am interested in exploring the tensions—not to suggest that we
should all get along because of a shared ancestral history but to tease
out what’s at the root of the fracture. Butler’s rubric affords an opportunity to conduct a comparative study among or within varying
diasporic communities without homogenizing experiences of black
diasporic peoples. There is a need to demonstrate a recognition that
categories of diasporic identities are multiple and layered, but there is
also room to conduct an appropriate exploration of the more miniscule
(yet important) and intricate tensions that may undergird diasporic
ruptures. This study explores the diasporic ruptures that evolve when
African Americans and African Caribbeans meet in North America.
What fuels such fractures? What realistic tools or coping mechanisms
can be incorporated to foster healthier relationships between African
Americans and African Caribbeans? How can the divide be bridged?
Why is it important to examine strained relationships between diasporic relatives?
Revisiting the literary works of Paule Marshall and Rosa Guy, who
both share African American and African Caribbean backgrounds, can
aid in addressing the aforementioned questions. Marshall and Guy have
been rightly lauded as writers who engendered black literature by giv-
Fractured Diaspora
5
ing voice to the coming-of-age experiences of young black girls in the
United States. They, primarily Marshall, have also been noted for examining the ways in which they identify Africa in black American and
Caribbean communities, sometimes venturing to argue for a pan-Africanist approach. However, there are no in-depth literary criticisms that
examine Marshall’s and Guy’s exploration of intradiasporic conflicts.
An unwritten but seemingly accepted rule within black diasporic cultures proposes that group members should not “air dirty laundry.” As
a result, tensions between African Americans and African Caribbeans
are “swept under the rug” or indirectly addressed. To avoid reinforcing or creating North American racist stereotypes of blackness, black
communities tend to evade disclosing intradiasporic conflicts that
would project them in a negative light to dominant powers. Thus, group
members experience the pain, anger, and distrust that evolve when the
diaspora ruptures with no outlet to mend strained relationships. Or,
maybe, the progress of some blacks in the United States has led us to
believe that there is no need to address racial and ethnic ties, since we
can all claim to be transnational and find new ways of existing without
recognizing the ties that bind us as black diasporic relatives. Marshall
and Guy warn against the dangers of not addressing diasporic ruptures
in their respective novels Brown Girl Brownstones and The Friends.
In these novels, Marshall and Guy break the codified silence to “air
dirty laundry” as they identify the intradiasporic conflict as powerful
and persistent. Marshall’s and Guy’s personal experiences of living
between African Caribbean, African American, and American cultures
are in part responsible for their political decisions to disclose intradiasporic conflict. They acknowledge the transnational positionality of the
fictional characters they create in that they are indeed cultural hybrids;
however, these writers are also cognizant of the need for members of
the diaspora to develop a keen sense of racial/ethnic solidarity. Arguing
for multiple identities alone does not eradicate the pain that evolves
when the diaspora ruptures or erase the need for a strong connection
to one’s racial/ethnic roots in the United States—where, as Cornell
West reminds us, “race matters”; hence, group members still need instructional guides that aid in bridging intradiasporic divides. A strong
connection with one’s racial and ethnic group is integral to developing
a sense of self, especially in environments that are hostile to nondominant group members.
6
Jennifer thorington springer
In a MELUS interview, Marshall reveals:
I was made aware of the fact that I was Afro-American growing up on
the mean streets of Brooklyn, and at the same time there was this other
component, this other strong dimension which was Afro West Indian. I
didn’t see any contradiction or difference or problem with the two until
I was made aware of some of the conflicts between the two groups. This
was very painful for me because I saw myself belonging to both. A conflict would almost suggest that there were parts of myself that were in
conflict with each other. (Pettis 1992, 118)
Similarly, on her experience with the conflicts that develop when
diasporic blacks encounter each other in North America, Guy notes
that she internalized the pain experienced at the hands of her youthful
African American tormentors and could only “regret that there had been
no books yet written, no guidelines from caring adults . . . [to] guide us
over the deep but narrow ravines dividing us” (Norris 1988, 10). Perhaps
it is telling that both Marshall and Guy elect to draw on the usefulness
of a bildungsroman narrative strategy, in which their primary subjects
are young African Americans and African Caribbeans. As Marshall and
Guy unravel the histories, root causes, and struggles between African
Americans and African Caribbeans, they go beyond breaking the silence; Marshall and Guy provide instructive pieces on how to mend
these strained, broken relationships. Both Marshall and Guy create
characters who, despite struggles with Western hegemonic depictions
of blackness eventually accept their multiple selves and histories—realizing that their identities are constantly shifting—but with a heightened
appreciation of their awareness of racial and ethnic associations.
Of note and important to this study, however, is that as Marshall and
Guy prepare their protagonists for acceptance of their multiple positionalities and racial ethnic ties, they are careful to propose the type
of intragroup/intradiasporic healing that Cherrie Moraga recommends:
“build[ing] from the inside out.” In This Bridge Called My Back, Moraga’s
examination of what can potentially save coalitions between feminist
women of color remains powerful and seminal. She affirms the need for
women of color to coalesce with other repressed groups but also argues
for mending intragroup conflicts if a successful revolution is to occur:
If we are interested in building a movement that will not constantly be
subverted by internal differences, then we must build from the “insideout,” not the other way around. Coming to terms with the suffering of
Fractured Diaspora
7
others has never meant looking away from our own. And, we must look
deeply. We must acknowledge that to change the world, we have to
change ourselves. (Moraga 1983, iii)
Marshall and Guy do approach the issue of diasporic rupture as
one that must be tackled from the “inside-out” by probing “internal
differences.” Yes, African Americans and African Caribbeans belong
to a larger African diaspora as well as span other American cultural
groups—but Marshall and Guy opt to begin from that place that is
familiar, the “inside,” which can be interpreted as their ethnic group
membership being both African Caribbean and African American.
Again, their emphasis on fractured relationships between two diasporic
group members does not diminish or limit the transnational identities
of African Americans/African Caribbeans who span other diasporas or
group memberships. Marshall and Guy elucidate the need to address
the unspeakable—a fractured part of the African diaspora—which is
justifiable and noteworthy. This study has implications for the general
study of the black diaspora within the United States.2
Race and ethnic identity are important to my exploration of a fractured diaspora. Race is defined as a social construct where common
physical characteristics are perceived as inherent, and ethnicity as
groups with a common ancestry, shared historical past, and cultural
practices.3 A brief historical account of the relationship between African Americans and African Caribbeans is provided—what happens
when “black meets black”—to demonstrate the longevity of this diasporic rupture. I then proceed to offer a close textual reading of Brown
Girl Brownstones and The Friends to fully explore what fuels the
tensions between group members, illuminating Marshall’s and Guy’s
instructions on the importance of and how to maintain intradiasporic
(racial) relations and ethnic solidarity. This study also concludes that
coalition building and a rekindling of former friendships can heal this
ruptured diaspora.
When Black Meets Black: A Historical Overview
During the 1920s, the influx of African Caribbean immigrants to the
United States aroused much suspicion in the eyes of African Americans. While migration from the Caribbean to Northern U.S. states was
8
Jennifer thorington springer
not a new phenomenon in the 1920s, Caribbean immigrants began
arriving during this decade in large numbers.4 An 1880 census report
cited 14,017 foreign-born blacks, the bulk being from the British West
Indies. This number grew to 143,797 between 1899 and 1937, a significant increase. The increased number of West Indian immigrants, combined with the political visibility of Caribbean immigrants participating
in the “New Negro” and “Garveyism” movements, contributed to the
new, intensified attention African Americans gave to African Caribbean
immigrants. Crucially, the increasing number of foreign-born blacks no
doubt eventually created job competition among these black diasporic
group members. David Hellwig articulates the beginnings of tensions
and misunderstandings:
While white Americans largely ignored the presence of West Indians
as they persisted in the self-serving delusion that all Negroes were the
same, blacks were alert and often hyper-sensitive to nationality differences. Each group found much to fault in the norms and values of the
other. Conflicts rooted in ethnocentrism were exacerbated by poverty,
racism, color, consciousness, and competition from white immigrants
and Southern Black migrants. (Hellwig 1978, 206)
Black met black in the urban North, when African Americans participated in the Great Migration in resistance to racial degradation and
segregation in the hope that the North would promise “some relief from
racial terrorism, as well as jobs and lifestyles never available to southern rural blacks” (Adero 1993, xi). Another group of black immigrants
were flooding the urban North as well: African Caribbean immigrants
arguably in search of better economic opportunities and taking flight
from colonial and neocolonial infrastructures.
Historically, the tension between Caribbeans and African Americans
intensified as blacks struggled for civil rights in the early twentieth
century. Two of the more notable public forums formed at the time
to advocate social advancement for blacks were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United
Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). These political platforms, led
by an African American (W. E. B. Dubois—NAACP) and an African
Caribbean (Marcus Garvey—UNIA), both situated themselves as proponents of black empowerment. Garvey’s UNIA hoped to establish a
universal confraternity among the race, to promote race pride and love,
to reclaim the fallen of the race, and to administer to and assist the
Fractured Diaspora
9
needy (Martin 1983b, 32). The NAACP embraced the need to empower
and uplift the black race both at home and abroad, with the idea that a
New Negro needed to be constructed in order to combat and contradict
imposed racist perceptions of blackness.
Arguably a coalition between the groups would have been a useful
strategy in resistance to racist hegemonic structural systems. Instead,
while the objectives of each group were the same, the strategies to
obtain them were in some ways significantly different, intensifying an
ethnic rift/fracture in the diaspora. Garvey’s UNIA made the case for
a back-to-Africa movement, where all blacks would repatriate to the
motherland; on the other hand, as an integrationist group, the NAACP
strongly opposed this perspective. These differences in ideology were
played out publicly. Historian David Hellwig notes, “Garveyism in its
aggressiveness and independence of native black leadership so clearly
symbolized the problem of the West Indian in the minds of many
American blacks that Garvey and West Indian became synonymous”
(Hellwig 1978, 219). Garveyism shaped African American perceptions
of West Indians and West Indian identities. Likewise, Garveyites also
attacked NAACP members for their stance on integrationist politics.
Garvey’s UNIA and the NAACP publicly highlighted the tension between African Americans and African Caribbean immigrants but were
not solely responsible for it, as the UNIA and the NAACP had members
from both groups. The conflicts were, in part, a developing animosity
grounded in individual acts: job competition, as mentioned earlier, and
suspicion of the unknown. Hellwig insightfully articulates:
Garvey by no means initiated friction between the two groups of blacks,
nor was the membership of the UNIA confined to West Indians. But
Garvey and Garveyism accentuated tensions and symbolized the division. It was not coincidence that West Indian–American black conflict
peaked during Garvey’s greatest influence, the early twenties. (Hellwig
1978, 216)
Considering that the UNIA versus NAACP competition for the black
masses’ attention and following has passed, what other occurrences
can testify to the diasporic fracture outlined in this essay? There is still
the steady flow of Caribbean immigrants to the United States. How
does the animosity between African Americans and African Caribbeans
manifest itself, proving an evaluation of it noteworthy? Public debates
have taken place in various cultural settings at local and national levels
10
Jennifer thorington springer
in small city settings, on college campuses, and in other media forms,
of which an isolated few are noted below.
In 1994, with the intent of beginning conversations between African
American and African Caribbean groups in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, I interviewed local residents, whose responses registered
ongoing tensions. Not much was mentioned about the kinship or ethnic
ties that existed among African Americans and African Caribbeans;
instead, much emphasis was placed on differing ideologies revealing
the suspicion and competition outlined earlier. Some of the more contentious responses from individuals are included in the following statements. From a sixty-two-year-old African American male:
I’ve seen them island people come here and practically take over the
community. They come here with nothing and before you know it,
they’re opening some kind of restaurant. . . . They seem to have more
than us blacks who were born here. They’re taking away what should
belong to us.
And from a twenty-six-year-old Jamaican woman:
Former coworkers would tease me and ask why I didn’t jump on my boat
and go home. They’d say I was taking away opportunities from African
Americans. They’d even make fun of Jamaicans who had more than one
job. . . . African Americans seem uninterested in climbing the ladder of
success. They are always blaming the white man. If they continue to
wait for handouts, they’ll get nowhere. If it’s the white man’s fault that
American blacks do not make progress, why is it that we West Indians
are able to make progress when we come here?
Finally, the observation of a thirty-five-year-old African American
woman:
When I hear some of them [African Caribbeans] belittle African Americans, I get mad. Some of them tend to think African Americans wait for
handouts. There are a lot of Caribbeans who work for what they get, but
there are also a few of you who do not work for what you get. . . . Whenever you’re a foreigner, citizens treat you differently. They think you’re
interesting—the accent has a lot to do with it.
The article that came out of these interviews, “Growing Animosity:
Springfield Caribbean Blacks and African Americans Ponder the Root
Causes of Success and Failure to Thrive,” broke the silence in that
community and forced residents to directly address a deeply rooted
Fractured Diaspora
11
problem—but it also added fuel to the fire. Several radio talk shows became a back-and-forth discussion of what each group does incorrectly.
On a more positive note, research forced the two groups in Springfield
to begin conversations with each other.
Four years later in neighboring Boston, Caille Millner’s 1999 “Bridging the Caribbean/African American Gap” explored intradiasporic tensions on the Harvard campus. She writes:
It’s a tough thing to swallow at 11 years old that different groups of
Black people aren’t going to get along. I was a budding Black nationalist,
a citizen of the African diaspora (or so I thought), and I couldn’t understand why islanders looked at me with such contempt on my Caribbean
vacation. “Mom, why won’t they speak to us?” . . . My mother hesitated,
unsure of how to crush my crystalline castles in the sky, my vision of
the great Pan-African revolution. “Some Caribbeans do not like Black
Americans . . . they think we don’t work as hard as they do and we don’t
appreciate what we have.” I kept that episode with me when I went to
college and realized that I was an endangered species. Blacks of African
American descent are becoming a rarity at my school. Estimates claim
that about 40 percent of Black students at Harvard are of Caribbean descent, at least 10 percent are from African countries and an uncounted
number come from other international locations. Black Students of the
homegrown variety are getting harder to find.” (Millner 1999, 1)
In 2004, more light was shed on Millner’s concern with the disproportionate admission of immigrant blacks and African Americans when
Sara Rimer and Karen Arenson of the New York Times published “Top
Colleges Take More Blacks, but Which Ones?” Lani Guinier, Harvard
law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of Harvard’s African
American Studies department, questioned the implications of unbalanced representations of blacks in Harvard college admissions. Both
Gates and Guinier stressed that their goal is not to exclude immigrants
but that they would like to see better representation of African American students from families who were intended to be principal beneficiaries of affirmative action in university admissions. As was to be
expected, several public responses were made to this debate. Among
them was Belinda Edmondson’s “The Myth of Black Immigrant Privilege,” published in 2006. She problematized statements made in the
Times article by suggesting that foreign-born blacks are not accepted
to institutions at the expense of native-born blacks. To some degree,
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Jennifer thorington springer
it is the heavy immigrant presence that would contribute to the higher
number of admittance of foreign blacks. She also critiqued the statement that black immigrants are more highly educated, suggesting that
the reality is distorted by conflating black immigrants together:
African immigrants are, on average, far more highly educated than Caribbean immigrants, or even white Americans, having the highest portion of
advanced degrees among any ethnic group besides Indians. By contrast,
Caribbean immigrants have roughly the same levels of “low” educations
attainments as African Americans. . . . I have found that my Caribbeanborn students have extremely divided educational experiences; while
some come to the United States very well prepared, many others struggle
with writing basic grammar because of the weak educational institutions
for non-elite students in countries like Jamaica or Haiti. . . . Therefore,
the argument that admissions policies need to favor the economically
disadvantaged will not necessarily change the cultural balance at the
larger institutional level. (Edmondson 2006, 4, 7)
At the root of this dialogue concerning which black diasporic group
is more represented and which group rightly deserves to be recipients of first-rate educations is the issue of a fractured diaspora. Out
of necessity, these dialogues combat and distort problematic racist
ideologies of a hegemonic blackness to reveal that the diaspora is
fractious due to possible cultural, class, and geographical differences.
These dialogues reiterate the underlying issues of black versus black
tensions as ongoing and persistent, from the 1920s through the new
millennium. Moreover, the tension is still being softened and skirted
by sophisticated intellectual and political language. Edmondson argues that the admission of black immigrants to selective private or
less selective state schools is a result of the “changing face of black
America” (Edmondson 2006, 4). If the face of black America has indeed changed, it’s even more imperative, then, to do some comparative studies within the new black America, an important element of
the black diaspora. How might this new black America deal with the
age-old tensions that are experienced when black meets black? The
literature of Marshall and Guy can assist in unraveling not only the
root causes of a black diasporic rupture but afford likely solutions
to the problem. The remainder of this study explores Marshall’s and
Guy’s literary representations of the fracture and suggestions on how
it may be healed.
Fractured Diaspora
13
Understanding Intradiasporic Divides:
Marshall’s Brown Girl Brownstones
Critical examinations of Marshall’s Brown Girl Brownstones usually
focus on the protagonist’s coming-of-age experience, the immigrant’s
struggle to survive in a new home, the problematic mother-daughter
relationship, Marshall’s interest is in “bridging the Americas and/or the
African Diaspora” and the like.5 More recently, critics have challenged
earlier black nationalist readings of the novel. These studies are invaluable readings of the text but tend to overlook or simplify the African
Caribbean immigrant’s turbulent relationship with African Americans.
Brown Girl Brownstone’s protagonist Selina Boyce, born to African
Caribbean immigrants, realizes quite early on that her identity is
multiple and layered. She may identify racially as African American,
ethnically as African Caribbean, and nationally as American. A major
component of Selina’s coming-of-age experience, then, is grappling
with the various racial, cultural, and ethnic communities that shape her
identity. Familiar with the kitchen table conversations about “home”
(Barbados) recounted by her mother Silla and other Bajan women,
Selina also desires to experience the Barbados her father, Deighton,
recollects. She is also interested in the stories told by Ms. Thompson,
the African American hairdresser, who migrates from the rural South.
Selina’s identity conflict is further complicated in that she identifies
with her American classmates and finds that she has much in common
with them.
Selina’s struggle to understand these categories and her later decision to embrace them all elucidates Marshall’s attempt not only to illuminate Selina’s rite of passage but also to bridge the gaps that exist
between African Americans and African Caribbeans by reminding them
of their racial, ethnic, and political connections. A racist encounter
with her American friend’s white mother repositions Selina to make a
necessary and important reconnection to her Africanness, both Caribbean and African American. Forging a relationship with and developing an understanding of racial and ethnic group solidarity is critical to
her success outside of the African Caribbean–African American community. Strong ties to racial/ethnic group members can prepare and
equip her for the discrimination experienced by nondominant group
members.
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Tension between the African American and African Caribbean
communities is first manifested in Brown Girl Brownstones with
the announcement of a wedding. Refusing to allow her daughter to
marry an African American from the South, Barbadian Gatha Steed
instead forces her to marry a Barbadian man: “But de long face girl is
liking some boy from down south, and they almost had to tie Gatha
down with wet sheets when she found out. She want de girl to marry
a Bajan boy who’s here on the immigration scheme” (Marshall 1959,
73). Gatha’s prejudice against African Americans is so deeply rooted
that she sacrifices her daughter’s happiness by forcing her to wed a
Barbadian man who needs to marry, not for love, but for a green card.
This intradiasporic conflict is further articulated when the Bajans
participate in racist American ideologies and ethnocentric beliefs.
They accept stereotypical views of African Americans as materialistic
spendthrifts and deny them membership in the Barbadian Association,
an organization designed by the immigrants to improve their economic
standing. Barbadian business owner Seifert Yearwood echoes the Bajans’ ethnocentrism when he notes: “It does ease off come this time.
They gone now to lick out their money in the bars and whiskey stores. I
tell you, these people from down South does work for the Jew all week
and give the money right back to he on Sat’day night like it does burn
their hand to keep it” (38). On the contrary, he praises Bajans for having “a business mind” where there is no room for “spreeing” and “loving up” (221). Bajan capitalism initiates the founding of the Barbadian
Association, an organization that will assist fellow members in starting
new businesses and purchasing homes as well as provide educational
scholarships for their children. In his opening speech about the association, Cecil Osbourne notes:
But tell me why we start this Association now when most of us gon soon
be giving business to the undertaker? I gon tell you. It’s because of the
young people! Most of us did come to this man country with only the
strength in we hand and a little learning in we head and had to make our
way, but the young people have the opportunity to be professional and
get out there and give these people big word for big word. Thus they are
our hope. They make all the sacrifice, all the struggle worthwhile. . . .
This then is the Barbadian Association. Still in its infancy. Still a small
fish in a big white sea. But a sign. A sign that a people are banded together in a spirit of self help. A sign that we are destroying that picture
Fractured Diaspora
15
of the poor colored man with his hand always long out to the rich white
one, begging: ‘Please, mister, can you spare a dime?’ It’s a sign that we
has a business mind. (Marshall 1959, 221)
Like Yearwood, Osbourne believes that African Caribbeans as immigrants are getting ahead because of their “business minds.” He sees
them as “destroying that picture of the poor colored man with his hand
always long out to the rich white one”—yet another stereotype constructed of African Americans. Osbourne’s speech on the “poor colored
man” begging for a handout echoes the age-old stereotype of African
Americans who do not indulge in “self-help” but look to “the man” for
handouts. To evade being associated with the stigma of how blackness
is read in an American context, to avoid being the colored beggar,
Marshall’s African Caribbeans embrace the work ethic and Western
materialism at all costs, even if it means working more than one job
and denying themselves the simple pleasures of life. As immigrants,
they arrive in the United States with a passion and drive for and use
their status as immigrants to disassociate themselves from diasporic
relatives. Instead of building networks and support groups with African
Americans, Yearwood and Osbourne identify more with other immigrant groups, namely Jews. Percy Hintzen notes:
The social construction of the West Indian immigrant identity functions as a foil against racial exclusionary practices and the generalized
practices of white racial aversion to African Americans. . . . Their very
foreignness protects West Indians from the taint of blackness as they
negotiate the racialized domain of American discourse of difference.
(Hintzen 2001, 111)
Furthermore, Foner adds:
In an attempt to distinguish themselves from native blacks and win preferential treatment from whites, West Indians often stress cultural, behavioral, and linguistic features thought to be superior to those of black
Americans. They tend to have disdain for black Americans, stereotyping
them as spendthrifts and irresponsible. (Foner 1987a, 20–21)
Intradiasporic conflicts increase as Caribbean blacks focus on how
they can separate themselves from the stigma of unsuccessful African
Americans. If they “lose their distinctiveness as immigrants or ethnics
they become not just Americans, but black Americans. Given the ongoing prejudice and discrimination in American society, this represents
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downward mobility for the immigrants and their children” (Waters
1999, 5). Getting ahead is of more importance than ethnic solidarity.
Through Selina’s critique of the Bajans’ marriage to Western materialism, Marshall lays the foundation for her own depiction of the power
and persistence of the intradiasporic divide. Selina questions the materialistic practices of African Caribbeans when she notes: “Some people
don’t care for things in stores. They care about other things—things
that cannot be found in stores.” She refers to Gatha Steed’s daughter
for support: “Well take Gatha Steed. She could buy her daughter that
pretty gown in the store window but she can’t buy any love” (104). As
an observer and member of the Barbadian community, Selina realizes
that Barbadians in Brown Girl Brownstones have sold themselves into
Western materialism with no remorse. Helene Christol suggests, “They
[African Caribbeans] fall prey to the American dream, property, work,
and money—traditional WASP values—acquire an axiomatic quality
for an upwardly mobile community” (Christol 1990, 149). What’s lost as
African Caribbeans seek to acquire wealth? What are the “things that
can’t be found in stores?” Selina wants to know, “Where is the love?”
Romantic love, familial love, self-esteem—all these are invoked, but
Marshall extends the critique further, to show the cost of love between
African Americans and African Caribbeans. In Black Looks: Race and
Representation, bell hooks posits this love across diasporic communities as a radical tool of political resistance. Love of the self and identification with ethnic connections is a revolutionary and subversive act
that can assist black diasporic communities in combating everyday
racisms and assist in uniting black communities.
Marshall voices the need for both diasporic groups to coalesce
through the progressive African Caribbean, Claremont Sealy. Proposing that all qualified blacks should be invited to join the Barbadian Association, he notes: “You need to strike out the word Barbadian and put
Negro. That’s my proposal. We got to stop thinking about just Bajan.
We ain’t home no more. It don matter if we don know a person mother
or his mother mother. Our doors got to be open to every colored person
that qualify” (223).
Sealy recognizes the potential of a politicized coalition of blacks.
Sealy ascertains that African Americans and African Caribbeans are
working toward similar goals—financial success and self-empowerment; hence, working together would be profitable for all included.
Fractured Diaspora
17
Sealy’s thinking elucidates Marshall’s awareness of blackness where
diasporic relatives unite not just to survive but also to combat the various colonial and neocolonial oppressions they face.
The African American immigrant community in Brown Girl Brownstones is blind to the benefits of allowing other blacks to participate
in their organization; instead, they see such an inclusion as a potential
takeover by non–African Caribbeans. Protective of their newly attained
resources and power, they fear losing power and autonomy. Florrie Trotman reacts to Sealy’s proposal with “Look how that man want us to let in
the Sammy-cow-and-Duppy for them to take over. But look at him—with
his teeth yellow—yellow like he bite the Virgin Mary” (223). Florrie’s
hostile humor expresses African Caribbeans’ fear of losing control and
sharing success. Florrie and others recognize a racial connection between Bajans and African Americans and sometimes acknowledge this.
Iris Hurley is momentarily sympathetic—“Yes the roomers is a nuisance
but . . . but . . . I does feel sorry for them sometime y’know. . . . Even
though they ain Bajans they’s still our color . . .” (223)—but reverts to the
default position of exploiting her boarders in order to get ahead. Even a
moment is too much for the angry and bitter Florrie:
Sorry for roomers? Sorry? But Gor-blind yuh, Iris, who did sorry for you?
I ain’t sorry one blast. I had to get mine too hard. Let the roomers get out
and struggle like I did. I sorry for all the long years I din have nothing
and my children din have and now I got little something I too fat and old
to enjoy it and my only son dead in these people bloody war and he can’t
enjoy it. That’s what I sorry for. (Marshall 1959, 224)
Florrie’s admission of how hard she has worked suggests that her
African American boarders have not tried hard enough: “Let the roomers get out and struggle like I did” (224). Even though it has brought her
no pleasure, Florrie’s capitalistic drive overpowers any sense of racial
connection she could potentially feel with African Americans. Heather
Hathaway infers, “The acts of distinguishing themselves from the African American community with whom they shared racial similarity,
but little else, and operating as a single unit, become essential survival
skills for the members of Marshall’s Barbadian American Association”
(Hathaway 1999, 98).
Marshall’s Bajans’ refusal to coalesce with African Americans has
little to do with African Caribbeans’ denial of their racial identity as
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black; they are not denying their African heritage. Coming from islands
where they are the numerical majority often means that upon arrival
in the United States they will view race differently from African Americans who have always been the numerical minority.6 African Caribbeans thus tend to emphasize not race but class. In The West Indian
Americans Holger Henke suggests:
The fundamental contradiction that immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean are faced with is this: they have been socialized in societies that do not attach as much significance to race as U.S. society does,
but rather emphasize such values as hard work, delayed gratification, or
personal austerity. (Henke 2001, 52)
In addition, George Lamming writes in The Pleasures of Exile:
The West Indian, however black and dispossessed, never felt the experience of being in a minority. For the black faces vastly outnumber the expatriate white. . . . To be black in the West Indies is to be poor; whereas
to be black (rich/poor) in an American context is to be a traditional
target for specific punishments. Racism is not just an American problem.
It is an element of American culture. (Lamming 1960, 33)
The African Caribbean’s experience as a majority makes them suspicious of being identified as a “minority.” While they are familiar with
racism and its effects, they have not had to deal with racism in ways
that African Americans still do. African Caribbeans are usually unaware of the specifics of African Americans’ struggle with American
racism and thus place less emphasis on race. In response to Caribbeans’ treatment of racial politics, Mary Waters intimates:
Identity was a more fluid, malleable, and layered phenomenon that did
not require people to choose between race and ethnicity. The immigrants
were from complex multiracial and multiethnic societies. Their “ethnic”
as well as their “racial” identities reflect the history of those societies
and the political and social meanings attached to those identities in
American society.
The social construction of race in the Caribbean has historically been
different than in the United States. Nowhere in the Caribbean is race a
simple bipolar distinction between white and black. Race is more of a
continuum in which shade and other physical characteristics, as well as
social characteristics such as class position are taken into account in
the social process of categorization. The determination of race is quite
Fractured Diaspora
19
variable; different local codes predominate in different islands or in different parts of the same island, and this leads to subtle differences in
characterization. However, the contrast between the overall West Indian
system and the United States is stark. In the Caribbean an intermediate
category of colored mixed-race people was recognized in a way that only
occurred in the United States in Louisiana and parts of South Carolina
prior to the Civil War. (Waters 1999, 6, 29)
African Caribbeans’ decision to ignore the politics of race per American definitions, in some way, explains why Marshall’s immigrants do
not ally themselves with their African American counterparts. However, while adult African Caribbean immigrants are able to separate
themselves from African Americans and instruct their children to do
the same, second-generation African Caribbeans face the reality that
the struggle of African Americans is also theirs.7
As African Caribbean immigrants attempt to separate themselves
from their African American diasporic relatives, their children are
forced to realize that they are categorized as “black” in an American
context. Not only does race take on a more complicated meaning for
them, but they also have to deal with the day-to-day individual experiences of racism that appear more threatening than the structural racism they tend to frown upon (Waters 1999, 34). Racial discrimination
makes it difficult for African Caribbeans to focus on class (social stratification) to the exclusion of race. Marshall’s Brown Girl Brownstones
shows that African Caribbeans ultimately recognize their racial ties
with African Americans; both are oppressed because of their racially
marked bodies and the refusal of whites to register cultural differences
among blacks in the African diaspora. As Reid recognizes, “negroes are
not just negroes to each other” (Reid 1970, 28). Blacks are aware of
ethnic differences.
Marshall conveys these inescapable racial ties through Selina’s experience of a racist attack by her friend’s mother. Selina—the only black
present—encounters the white gaze as her friend Margaret’s mother
ostensibly celebrates their successful dance recital while really undercutting Selina. She asks Selina, “How does it feel to be the star of the
show?” Selina responds, “A little like the real ones. Very high up. Out of
this world almost.” Almost. Margaret’s mother immediately reinstitutes
racist definitions that deny her triumph: “You don’t even act colored.
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I mean, you speak so well and have such poise” (288). She questions
whether Selina’s parents are from the South and breathes a sigh of
relief when she realizes that the Boyces are African Caribbean. Margaret’s mother sits “triumphant” saying, “Ah, I thought so. . . . We once
had a girl who did our cleaning who was from there. . . . I always told
my husband there was something different about her—about Negroes
from the West Indies in general. . . . I don’t know but I can always spot
it. . . . She [the maid] was so honest too. I could leave my purse lying
around and never worry” (287–88). The assertions made are twofold.
First, Margaret’s mother designates African Caribbeans a model minority, starkly differentiated from and superior to African Americans.
Secondly, Margaret’s mother directly contributes to the division that
racists often instigate between African Americans and African Caribbeans. Quoting Jackson, Foner notes:
White New Yorkers frequently compare West Indians favorably to American blacks, thus driving a further wedge between American and West
Indian blacks and making black unity across ethnic boundaries more difficult. It has even been suggested that such invidious comparisons by whites
may heighten discrimination against native blacks. (Foner 1987a, 23)
Margaret’s mother problematically assumes that she is complimenting
Selina by suggesting that her Caribbean ancestry makes her acceptable in
white society, but it is really an insult and active participation in the system of “divide and conquer.” That acceptance is conditional on Selina’s
agreeing that African American blacks are dishonest. And while African
Caribbean, Selina is also African American. As whites attempt to divide
and conquer, Selina refuses to be divided from other black Americans—
or internally divided, hating the part of herself that is African American.
Margaret’s mother’s conversation with Selina is worth close reading because it is contradictory in many ways. She “cheapens Selina’s
triumph and lets her know that nothing she does, no accomplishment,
no emulating of white people, can make her a part of the white world”
(Collier 1981, 26). Margaret’s mother defines the space available for
Selina in white America by comparing Selina to Ettie, a West Indian
woman who kept her home spotless and referred to her young white
daughter as Princess Margaret (287). For Hathaway,
Mrs. Benton reduces Selina to the stereotypical role of the maid that has
historically plagued black women in the United States. By collapsing
Selina and Ettie into one, Mrs. Benton diminished both to nothing more
Fractured Diaspora
21
than blank black entities void of any distinguishing characteristics. (Hathaway 1999, 115).
Subsequently, Margaret’s mother applauds Selina for “making someone
of herself,” yet she belittles this achievement by suggesting that Selina
is expressing her creativity in stereotypical ways: “It’s just wonderful
how you’ve taken your race’s natural talent for dancing and music and
developed it” (288).
As a person with black skin she [Selina] is inevitably linked to all others with black skin: in a society which sees phenotype first, Selina
never can “shed” her ethnic past for an assimilate “American” present because her race intervenes in that melting pot process. Thus the
“wholesale purging” of the ethnic past that immigration theorists have
attributed to “typical” second-generation patterns is neither desirable
nor necessarily even possible for black immigrants in the United States.
(Hathaway 1999, 117)
The hard fact that white racists do not readily recognize the heterogeneity in black racial communities jolts Selina, but this reality check
aids her in recognizing the importance of racial and ethnic solidarity.
Selina discerns the connection between Ms. Thompson, an African
American, and her mother, an African Caribbean; they are different yet
the same based on ethnicity and the politics of race. All about growing up poor and disadvantaged in Barbados during a time when blacks
were not allowed to vote or own property and were given menial jobs,
Silla’s stories resemble Ms. Thompson’s racist encounters. Silla’s experiences of being overworked as a maid and a factory machine operator
are no different from Ms. Thompson’s work as a beautician by day and
a janitor by night to make ends meet. Both women are forced to create coping mechanisms to deal with their oppression. Silla ignores the
racial slurs of white children by focusing on the money she can make to
purchase a home for her children.8 Ms. Thompson leaves the familiar—
her home in the rural South—to escape the most physically dangerous
aspects of racism. Both women attempt to create safe spaces for Selina
in hopes that she can escape their experience of racism, but their attempts are futile. Unable to escape her “racially marked self,” Selina
has inherited the battle of African Americans and African Caribbeans.
As a result, Selina becomes “one with Miss Thompson . . . the mother
and the Bajan women” (292). Race connects the two groups politically. Demonstrating a shift in consciousness at the end of the novel,
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Selina embraces her transnational subject position and reconciles with
the African American and African Caribbean community. This shift is
demonstrated as she awaits the announcement of her name for the association’s scholarship prize:
Selina moved, unaware that she moved, down the aisle, scanning those
myriad reflections and variations of her own dark face. And suddenly
she admired their mystery. No not mystery . . . the mysterious source of
endurance in them, and it was not only admiration but love she felt. . . .
Love was the greater burden than hate. (302)
Selina’s new appreciation for Silla, Ms. Thompson, and the other Bajan
women, testifies to the subversive love that can connect and potentially liberate this fractured diaspora.
Partnering for Survival: African Caribbean and
African American Friendships in Guy’s The Friends
Rosa Guy’s The Friends, like Brown Girl Brownstones, illuminates
the experiences of African Caribbeans in New York as she writes
the coming-of-age story of her protagonist Phyllisia Cathy. Fourteen
years after Marshall’s examination of the relationship between African
Americans and Caribbeans, Guy reiterates the divide in The Friends.
But whereas Marshall’s ending gestures point toward a theoretical and
potential unity, Guy presents an actual work-in-progress, friendship
as a means to unity. Guy examines diasporic tension in the critical
yet strained relationship of Phyllisia and her African American friend
Edith Jackson. The girls differ not only in ethnicity but also in class
backgrounds. Neatly dressed and well educated, Phyllisia is from the
Caribbean, a part of an upwardly mobile nuclear family. Edith, on the
other hand, is African American, poor, orphaned, sparsely educated,
and badly clothed. Although ethnicity and class separate Phyllisia and
Edith, the need for a true friendship unites them. Simply put, the girls
need each other to survive the brutal daily oppressions they face as
black teenage girls growing up in New York. Guy elaborates on how the
different class locations of African Americans and African Caribbeans
can further complicate diasporic fractures.
As a recent immigrant, Phyllisia is insulted and physically abused by
her African American peers. Of her interactions with African Ameri-
Fractured Diaspora
23
cans, Phyllisia notes: “They mocked my West Indian accent, called me
names—monkey was one of the nicer ones. Sometimes they waited
after school to tease me, following me several blocks, shouting” (5).
Phyllisia’s only escape from such victimization lies in her warm memories of “home”; thinking of the sunlit island becomes a survival strategy.
To counter the alienation she experiences as a new immigrant, Phyllisia conjures familiar memories of home. Phyllisia’s teacher, Miss Lass,
interrupts one of her daydreams by asking, “Where is Egypt?” Phyllisia
is afraid to answer correctly because it will add one more reason to
the many reasons why her African American peers despise her. As she
fears, after Phyllisia answers Miss Lass’ question correctly, an African
American student, Beulah, threatens her: “As our stares locked, she
[Beulah] balled up her fist, put it first over one eye and then the other.
The needles in my stomach multiplied by thousands” (8). After school,
the duel begins:
Beulah to Phyllisia: “You dirty West Indian . . .”
Another child, “West Indian? My Ma call them Monkey Chasers.”
Second child, “Run her into the sea mahn. What she want here nohow?
We ain’t got no trees to swing from.”
Beulah to Phyllisia: “Who the hell she think she is? Always trying to act
better than folks.” (Guy 1973, 12–13)
This dialogue depicts the stereotypes of African Caribbeans that are
fed to African American children. In spite of how they, too, are oppressed in the United States, they, as Americans, have been socialized
to think that African Caribbeans are backward and unintelligent; they
use the cultural arrogance of the West to claim superiority over African
Caribbean immigrants. Reid writes:
In defense, the native-born group develops and formulates stereotypes,
myths and ideologies justifying its superiority over the immigrant, and
designs methods to support its contention. Any myth that will give
credence to its ideology is employed. Such reactions in course produce
sentiments of nationality consciousness, which are reflected, in one
instance by a double-reverse method of universal black unity—Back to
Africa, for example—and in others by immigrant solidarity, pride, and
national loyalties. All of these, of course, are directed toward securing
status and rights. (Reid 1970, 217)
Though the teenagers in The Friends tease Phyllisia about her West
Indian status, they are not always or only assuming an air of cultural
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arrogance. Sometimes, believing themselves the rightful heirs to the
American dream and its opportunities, they are unwilling to share with
immigrants. Thus, all African Caribbeans must be “run [back] into the
sea mahn. What [they] want here nohow?” (12). The concern here is
territory and who owns it.
In The Friends the Cathys accomplish the economic success that
Brown Girl Brownstones’ Florrie, Gatha, and Silla work toward. As a
result, their daughter Phyllisia is an outcast, separated from her peers
by middle-class status. Resentful of her economic status, her African
American classmates project class condescension onto her behavior,
particularly her speech: dishonoring Beulah’s challenge for a fight,
Phyllisia says, “Pardon me.” Infuriated, Beulah attacks Phyllisia. This
attack is not necessarily about “hate” but about what Phyllisia’s mother
labels as anger: “They don’t hate you, Phyllisia. They are probably full
of resentment. And who would not be resentful in a city so tense, so oppressive as New York? But they don’t hate you” (20). Phyllisia’s mother
has a unique take on what instigates the troubling relationships between
African Americans and African Caribbeans; in this instance, Guy seems
to suggest that the rivalry has nothing to do with personal individual beliefs but with the political—their poverty and competition for the same
resources initiate problematic group relations. Distracted by white “divide and conquer,” ignorant of their commonalities, African Americans
and African Caribbeans see one another as the problem. And that view
screens the American racism and poverty that oppresses them all.
The above analysis of the incident with Beulah, Phyllisia’s classmate,
is not to imply that all African Americans are poor and that all African
Caribbeans are of a privileged background upon arrival to the United
States. Again, specific differences among blacks are evident to group
members. There are even specific notable differences among African
Americans as an ethnic group and African Caribbeans as a separate
ethnic group; they intersect at particular moments but there are also
disconnects based on class locations. For example, some African
Americans and African Caribbeans may connect on the basis of class
but struggle with differences in nationalities. The Cathys are viewed
as “haughty” in the eyes of Beulah and other disadvantaged African
Americans; however, to their middle-class African American neighbors,
the Cathys are only tolerable because of Calvin’s successful business.
Working-class African Caribbeans would not be admitted into the
Fractured Diaspora
25
homes of these prosperous African Americans because of their nationality. Instead, as noted in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng by former Jamaican
immigrant Mr. Powell, such middle-class blacks normally viewed African Caribbeans as “outsiders . . . people from tiny islands who did not
belong in Black America” (Cliff 1981, 86). Such African Americans take
on the American belief that the Third World subject is of a lower social
status, unlearned, ignorant, and archaic.9 Nationality combined with
class biases and not race then becomes the major issue here.
African American professionals in Guy’s The Friends also ridicule
the African Caribbeans. About the child of one of the middle-class
blacks, Phyllisia notes: “Every one laughed at me. . . . I gazed longingly
at the [middle-class African American] girls playing downstairs. If I
went to play with them they would all simply stop to stare at me. If I
opened my mouth to speak, they would hold their sides laughing. Even
that one Marian” (25). Phyllisia adores Marian, but Marian refuses to
befriend her because of her Caribbean background. When the African
American professionals in Phyllisia’s neighborhood learn that Calvin
has a successful restaurant, their attitudes toward his children change.
Marian, the former snob, becomes Phyllisia’s friend: “I found myself in
the same class with Marian. . . . At the end of the day it was Marian who
waited for me” (83). Marian also clearly elucidates why friendship is
now an option: “My mother says that your father owns a restaurant. It
will be great if we can go there to eat sometime” (86). Hence, Phyllisia
and her sister Ruby are allowed in the social circles of middle-class
African Americans, “because of Calvin’s restaurant” (137). The Cathys’
economic success allows them into circles from which disadvantaged
African Caribbeans would be excluded. As Marian’s friendship is conditional and temporary, Phyllisia befriends classmate Edith.
Phyllisia and Edith thwart Calvin’s demand that their friendship
end because of Edith’s working-class background. Calvin labels Edith
and other poor African Americans “ragamuffins,” unfit to befriend his
daughter. Nonetheless, Phyllisia and Edith work together to fill whatever voids are in the other’s life. Edith defends Phyllisia as well as
initiates her into New York City life: subway rides and walks through
Central Park. Phyllisia notes: “Everyone laughed at me. Everyone—
except that girl Edith” (25). When others tease Phyllisia about her accent, Edith validates it with “I think you talk pretty” (35). Edith’s kindness is reciprocated. Phyllisia helps Edith care for her five siblings,
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who are orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s absence.
After Edith’s father “disappears, I [Phyllisia] had become second in
command at Edith’s house . . . dashing there to help prepare breakfast
in the morning and to prepare the kids to go out” (84). Phyllisia also
faithfully keeps her promise not to disclose to her parents or any authority that there are no adults in Edith’s home. If the authorities aren’t
notified, Edith and her siblings can remain together instead of being
sent to various foster homes. Through Phyllisia and Edith’s friendship,
Guy illustrates how the historical instances of supportive relationships
between diasporic relatives have enabled them to survive. Such friendships are never easy to maintain, given external pressures to divide.
Phyllisia eventually betrays Edith, damaging their newfound alliance.
When her teacher, Miss Lass, makes a racist statement to one of
her classmates: “Well, Miss Smith–Smithinsky. . . . You seem to have
forgotten the route to your seat. . . . Perhaps it is because you greased
your hair so well this morning that things keep slipping your mind. . . .
If you would take more time in oiling what’s inside of your head instead
of what’s on top, your sense of direction might not slip”(42). This individual attack could potentially strengthen the friendship between Edith
and Phyllisia in ways that Marshall’s Selina’s experience with a racial
attack strengthens her relationship with her African American and
African Caribbean communities. Phyllisia’s diasporic consciousness
is not pricked immediately like Selina’s. Instead, she tries to separate
herself from Edith and her other African American counterparts. Of
Miss Lass’s attack, Phyllisia notes: “Carole Smith’s face shone from the
sweat of her embarrassment. And the shame that she was experiencing, because of her oily hair, became my shame” (42). Although Phyllisia sympathizes with her classmate, she is more appalled by Miss Lass’s
failure to recognize her Caribbeanness, to recognize how different
Phyllisia is from the others. However, when Miss Lass proceeds to refer
to the entire class as “greasy, oily, filthy pigs,” Phyllisia notes, “What
nerve lumping us together!” While there is something to be said for
Phyllisia’s recognition of the fact that there is no “essential” blackness,
she is repeating her father’s insecurities and desire to be distinguished
from her working-class African American peers. She does not want to
be publicly associated with African Americans, like Edith, on whom
Miss Lass’s racist attacks are often concentrated. For example, instead
of being sympathetic to Edith’s loss of her mother, Miss Lass blames
Fractured Diaspora
27
Edith’s untidy appearance on an absent mother. Phyllisia is uneasy
with Miss Lass’s accusation because she sees herself as coming from a
nuclear family that supports her and makes sure that her appearance
conforms to Victorian norms. When comparing her appearance to that
of the unkempt Edith, Phyllisia notes, “I pulled myself tall in my seat,
made haughty little movements with my shoulders and head, adjusted
the frills on the collar of my well-ironed blouse, touched my soft, neatly
plaited hair” (4). For Phyllisia, the shame is that Miss Lass cannot recognize how she differs from her classmates. In some ways, Phyllisia
resists Ms. Lass’s racism, but it is at the expense of severing ties with
her diasporic relatives, African Americans.
While Phyllisia longs to be viewed as separate from her African
American peers, Guy illustrates how her friendship with Edith forces
her to come to terms with her own self-hatred, no doubt informed by
racist ideologies. In Presenting Rosa Guy, Jerrie Norris has argued that
a part of Phyllisia’s identity conflict is initiated by her insecurity with
her blackness as well as Edith’s insistence that she deal with her own
identity conflict (Norris 1988). Phyllisia is indeed uncomfortable with
her appearance. She often brags about her light-skinned, long-haired
sister and light-skinned mother as meeting the standards of beauty, but
she never includes herself in such claims. Calvin also participates in
Phyllisia’s instilling self-hatred: “The trouble with that one [Phyllisia],
though, is she’s ugly. Yes man, even if you take away that fat eye and
swollen nose, she still ugly” (23–24). Phyllisia agrees: “I was plain and
my family was good-looking” (25). Perhaps the protagonist’s “plainness”
and others’ disregard for Phyllisia’s feelings reinforce why she should
be Edith’s friend. Both are “outcasts” of sorts, one because she is from
the Caribbean and the other because of her disadvantaged class status.
The bittersweet friendship exists because Edith’s current situation
reminds Phyllisia of her original status—and what she might have
been without Calvin’s business. Simultaneously, Phyllisia’s current
privileges such as having a supportive family, a nice home, and the
like, distinguish her from Edith. This paradox is revealed when Edith
visits Phyllisia’s home for the first time. Disappointed that she is not
impressed by the luxuries, Phyllisia attempts to put Edith in her place.
When Phyllisia’s sister, Ruby, notes Phyllisia’s growth—“Phyllisia
pretty? I guess high school has brought her out a little. Don’t you think
so Mother? At least, looking at her now, nobody would think that just
28
Jennifer thorington springer
a couple of years ago she was nothing but a barefoot little girl running
around her aunt’s backyard” (105)—Phyllisia responds, “I’m not going
to have you sit there telling lies on me. . . . The next thing you will be
saying is that we were poor and dirty and went around with socks full
of holes and runover shoes! You’ll be saying that we were dirty, nasty
little orphan brats with no one to look after us” (105). Ruby’s comment
reminds Phyllisia of a past she’d rather forget. She refuses to accept
that they had been poor on the island because it would suggest that
she and Edith have something in common. Her comment is meant to
hurt Edith by highlighting the class difference. Phyllisia is typical of
most African Caribbeans who, after becoming successful in the United
States, would rather forget their former lives of poverty and explain
unsuccessful African Americans’ poverty by their failures of character.
It is not surprising, then, that when Calvin arrives home to find Edith in
the house, he orders that the “ragamuffin” leave immediately because
she “does not go with the furniture” (108). Phyllisia betrays Edith, as
she does not attempt to protect her from Calvin’s snobbery. Instead,
she enjoys how Calvin “puts Edith in her place.”
Though Phyllisia’s act of betrayal strains the friendship, events such
as the deaths of Phyllisia’s mother and two of Edith’s younger siblings
reunite the friends. At the end of the novel, Edith’s remaining siblings
have already been placed in different foster homes, and she is awaiting
the social worker who will take her to a foster home as well. As she
waits, Edith sits wracked with guilt, blaming herself for the death of her
youngest sibling, who died of malnutrition. Phyllisia arrives and promises to visit her weekly at her new home, convincing Edith that she is
not at fault for her sister’s death: “I came to tell you what a great person
I think you are. You’re the greatest person that I know. You did a lot for
me. A lot for the kids. And you are not to blame for anything—everything you did is because you love them—and that makes you the most
wonderful person to them too.” (179). This vow of friendship could have
been thwarted by Calvin, who has purchased tickets to send his daughters back to the Caribbean; however, recognizing the importance of
her commitment to Edith, Phyllisia quickly pacifies her father. Without
Phyllisia, Edith will have no one. Her survival and mental stability are
dependent on Phyllisia’s friendship. Similarly, to deal with the loss of
her own mother and an inability to communicate with the difficult Calvin, Phyllisia needs Edith’s friendship. Like Selina, Phyllisia and Edith
must learn and affirm their loyalties to racial/ethnic solidarity.
Fractured Diaspora
29
Bridging the Diasporic Divide:
Can We All Get Along?
Marshall’s Brown Girl Brownstones suggests that the conflicts between
African Americans and African Caribbeans stem from ignorance of one
another’s histories and concerns. African Americans are unaware of
the African Caribbeans’ desperate struggle to cope with their identities
as exiles and their thirst for success. In their former communities, they
have not had the opportunity to get ahead—the United States promises a
better life. African Caribbeans remain ignorant of the historical degradation of blacks in the United States and their continued struggles against
white supremacy. Also, this analysis reveals that African Caribbeans
must consider and understand African Americans’ anger and disgust
at building this country as former slaves and not being able to reap the
fruits of their labor. African Americans and African Caribbeans must
make an effort to educate each other about their historical and cultural
differences while building coalitions based on what connects them. Marshall details a persistent and destructive dynamic of conflict for which
she offers love as a tool of resistance. Guy shows the difficult birth of
that love, the forces that threaten its life, and both communities’ absolute
need for it. Guy’s The Friends elucidates the need for African Americans
and Caribbeans to recognize the importance of intradiasporic solidarity.
Even when African Americans and African Caribbeans are unable to
comprehend their differences, their similarities are enough to sustain
workable friendships, as their survival in the United States is contingent
upon their ability to unify to confront and successfully resist systematic
forms of racial oppression. As Kwame Anthony Appiah confirms:
Racial identification is hard to resist in part because racial ascription by
others is so insistent; and its effects—especially racist ones—are so hard
to escape. It is obvious, I think, that the persistence of racism means that
racial ascriptions have negative consequences for some and positive for
others—creating, in particular, the white skin privilege that is so easy for
people who have it to forget; and it is clear, too, that for those who suffer
from the negative consequences, racial identification is a predictable response, especially where the project it suggests is that the victims of racism
should join together to resist it. (Appiah 1996, 73)
Consequently, if African Americans and African Caribbeans are to
maintain diasporic relations, more venues for group work and forums
where group members get to share differing histories while capitalizing
30
Jennifer thorington springer
on the ties that bind are imperative. African Americans and African Caribbeans rarely have the necessary conversations about how/when they
disconnect. Instead of being tight-lipped in fear of being stereotyped,
individuals from both groups must issue the call again and again, until
silence gives way to conversations. These conversations and coalitions
have taken place before and can occur again. In Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century
America, Winston James registers such alliances where African Americans were joined by African Caribbeans in the struggle for civil rights:
One of the most intriguing sociological and historical facts about American radicalism in the twentieth century has been the prominence and
often pre-eminence of Caribbean migrants among its participants. From
Hubert Harrison, “Father of Harlem Radicalism,” who migrated from the
Virgin Islands in 1900, to the Trinidadian Stokeley Carmichael, a founder
of the Black Power Movement of the 1960s, a remarkable line of Caribbeans has stood in the vanguard of both radical political movements and
radical currents of intellectual activity among black people in the United
States. (James 1998, 1)
These forged alliances were instrumental to black diasporic group survival in the United States. Echoing Rodney King’s widely used “Can we
all get along?” Marshall and Guy say we can, we have, and, ultimately,
we have to.
Notes
1. Goyal (2003) presents a useful critique of Gilroy and Phillips’ notion of
diaspora, arguing that nationalism and hybrid diasporic identities do not have
to be mutually exclusive. Also, see Japtok (1998).
2. Heather Hathaway rightly observes, “While important models exist in the
pioneering work begun by Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy on the black diaspora
in the United Kingdom, a notable gap remains in research on black Atlantic
cultures in the United States” (1999, 9).
3. Cornell and Hartmann (1998) influence my definitions of race and ethnicity. Also, while there are some noted differences between ethnicity and race,
there is also an overlap—see Smedley (1999) and Takaki (1987).
4. See Palmer (1995).
Fractured Diaspora
31
5. Alexander (2001), Christian (1990), Christol (1990), Delamotte (1998),
Harris (1983), and Leseur (1986).
6. See Reid (1970).
7. See Waters (1999).
8. Climbing social ladders takes precedence over racial politics. The goal
for West Indian immigrants is not to engage in race wars but to attain wealth.
See Lorde (1982).
9. See Marshall (1983) and June Jordan (2003) for useful explorations of
this issue.
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Delamotte, Eugenia. 1998. “The Mother’s Voice.” Places and Journeys of
Freedom: The Fiction of Paule Marshall. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Denniston, Dorothy. 1995. The Fiction of Paule Marshall: Reconstructions of
History, Culture, and Gender. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Edmondson, Belinda. 2006. “The Myth of Black Immigrant Privilege.” Anthurium 4 (1).
Fears, Darryl. 2007. “In Diversity Push, Top Universities Enrolling More Black
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Foner. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1987b. “The Jamaicans: Race and Ethnicity among Migrants in New
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New York: Columbia University PRess.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Goyal, Yogita. 2003. “Theorizing Africa in Black Diaspora Studies: Caryl Phillips’ Crossing the River.” Diaspora 12 (1): 5–38.
Guy, Rosa. The Friends. 1973. New York: Bantam Books.
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Hathaway, Heather. 1999. Caribbean Waves: Relocating Claude McKay and
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Seung-Kyung Kim. New York: Routledge.
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Lorde, Audre. 1982. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Freedom, Calif.:
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African Origins and New World Identities, eds. Isidore Okpewho, Carole
Boyce Davies, and Ali A. Mazrui. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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Pettis, Joyce. 1992. “A MELUS Interview: Paule Marshall.” MELUS 17: 117–29.
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and Social Adjustment. New York: AMS Press.
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Rimer, Sara, and Karen W. Arenson. 2004. “Top Colleges Take More Blacks,
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Saffran, William. 1991. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland
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———. 1993. Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge.
Takaki, Ronald. “Introduction: Different Shores.” 1987. Pp. 3–10 in From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America, ed. Ronald
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Thorington, Jennifer. 1994. “Growing Animosity: Springfield Caribbean Blacks
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Ian A. Bethell Bennett
Economy, Migration, Identity:
Late Capitalist Reactions
against Haitians and the
CSME in the Bahamas
The recent riot in Nassau Village has focused attention on the growing
antagonism between Bahamians and Haitians living in The Bahamas, a
festering problem that the Government needs to start paying considerably more attention to. Bahamians have long “looked down” on Haitians
as not being their social equals, and generally have been resentful of
the fact that those who enter this country illegally and are successful in
blending into established predominantly Haitian communities create a
strain on our social services.
—“The Haitian Problem,” Nassau Guardian, February 8, 2005
They treat Haitians like dogs in the Bahamas, a woman says. To them,
we are not human.
—Edwidge Danticat, “Children of the Sea,” 14
Introduction
Haitians and Bahamians: so similar yet so different. This sentiment
transcends the idea of relation through geographic and historical proximity and develops into a policy in the Bahamas of social exclusion
of Haitians. Haitians are too foreign to be assimilated into Bahamian
society. Their exclusion results from a Bahamian fear of being culturally remapped by migration and a new global trading reality. This fear
manifests itself in strongly xenophobic attitudes to foreigners, with a
particular vehemence for Haitians.
Wadabagei, Vol. 13, No. 2
35
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Ian A. Bethell Bennett
Arguably, the Bahamas is being remapped simultaneously by transnational, multinational organizations and wealthy individuals from
above and Haitian migration from below. The more visceral reaction is
then saved for the Haitian remapping, which is arguably more visible
to Bahamian eyes.1 Haitian migration and the growth of a local Haitian
diasporic community evoke trauma in the Bahamian psyche. Sadly, Bahamian-born Haitians and Bahamians born to one Haitian parent find
themselves excluded from citizenship, often without being cognizant
of the issue.2 They are not Bahamian, nor are they Haitian, according
to Bahamian law. They have the right to apply for citizenship, but this
process is protracted and often unsuccessful.
How can this paradox exist in countries so closely related? Danticat’s character states: “Even though their music sounds like ours.
Their people look like ours. Even though we had the same African fathers who probably crossed these same seas together” (Danticat 1996,
14). This social exclusion has been fine-tuned in the Bahamas so that
Haitians exist in the margins of Bahamian society. They were prominently placed on the Bahamian Immigration Stop List during the 1980s.
However, the reality is that Haitians have formed a sizeable diasporic
community in the Bahamas.
In the introduction to The Butterfly’s Way, Haitian-American writer
Edwidge Danticat writes: “My country, I felt, was something that was
then being called the tenth department. Haiti has nine geographic
departments and the tenth was the floating homeland, the ideological
one which joined all Haitians living in the dyaspora” (Danticat 2001,
xiv). Bahamians decry that the Bahamas suffers a similar fate; there
are enough Haitians to make up another department of Haiti. The inhabitants of this department are similar yet foreign, and their presence
arouses passionate debate and resistance. Bahamians fear Haitians’
foreignness, although they are like them. Similarity is then erased and
their foreignness magnified. The Bahamian media functions as a tool
of nationalism to galvanize this fear and loathing of Haitians. Bahamians fear that their country is being remapped as Haitian migration increases and initiatives like the Caribbean Single Market and Economy
(CSME) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) push forward trade
liberalization and freer movement of persons.
Caribbean culture, in general, is deeply creolized, joined by a submarine link, as Edward Kamau Braithwaite calls it, which spreads from Trin-
Economy, Migration, Identity
37
idad in the south to Cuba through Haiti and the Dominican Republic up to
the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands in the north. This cultural
diversity yet relation, which E. Glissant discusses, is also accompanied
by economic disparities between nations. The awareness that bringing together cultures and peoples allows creolization and forms diasporic realities is omnipresent in people’s minds. So, while the region is the home for
any number of diasporas, particularly the African diaspora resulting from
slavery, it is also a region so economically, culturally, and ideologically
diverse—set apart by language, types of government, civil unrest, and
dictatorship—that it is amazing that Caribbean citizens inhabit the same
geographic or cultural sphere. The result is a late-capitalist movement of
peoples in search of brighter futures; dominant countries seeking more
dominant market positions through trade agreements; smaller countries
needing to join forces to present a stronger economic front.
The Anglophone Caribbean, or West Indies, is a hybrid space brought
together through geography and a shared history of colonial control.
It is a combination of volcanic islands and limestone cays surrounded
by an aquamarine sea that joins politically, ethnically, and culturally
diverse countries. As Antonio Benítez-Rojo claims, it is the metaarchipelago that repeats itself, the repeating island. In that repeating
island there is diversity within the similarity, economic difference that
integrationists hope to bring together under the guise of the Caribbean
Community (CARICOM), a regional body that works for the betterment
of the member countries. CARICOM was until recently exclusively
Anglophone; this changed with the incorporation of Suriname into the
CSME and then Haiti into CARICOM. Haiti is currently in the process
of ratifying the Treaty of Chaguaramas. The Caribbean is also a place
that people from beyond its geographic parameters dream of venturing
to or buying a piece of beach and inhabiting. The region is simultaneously diasporic and creates a further diaspora in metropolitan centers.
Diaspora, as Danticat elucidates above, forms the basis of this study,
as it is the existence of multiple diasporas that creates tensions in the
region. Diasporas are often created as a result of economic and social
instability. This is at the foundation of the problem in the Bahamas,
where the latter is a richer country, providing employment for numerous Haitians or even access to the United States.
Despite being neighbors, the Bahamas and Haiti have had an acrimonious relationship resulting in a trade embargo on Haitian goods during
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Ian A. Bethell Bennett
Pindling’s Progressive Liberal Party rule (1967 to 1992). This national
acrimony developed partially due to a large migration of laborers from
Haiti to the Bahamas and has spilled over into social and cultural discourse that posits the Haitian diaspora in the Bahamas as unsavory and
unwanted, not to mention base. The flourishing Haitian diaspora in the
Bahamas then throws into sharp contrast the hope for easy interethnic
relations.
In the twenty-first century, though, looking down the barrel of possible cultural assimilation or economic demise through remapping, the
countries that form this culturally rich meta-archipelago must now set
aside national differences and political squabbles to join together to
form a strong trading bloc or to remap themselves under the guise of
Free Trade and a solid Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).
What does the future hold for such a paradoxically fragmented yet
unified space? The idea of free movement of natural [?] persons, as
apposed to legal persons or entities, under the CSME (albeit limited)
causes nationals in the country to react out of the fear of cultural erasure. This is the case in the Bahamas with the Haitian diaspora.
This article examines attitudes to Haitian migration to the Bahamas
and the creation of a diaspora, how these attitudes play themselves out
in society, and how they in turn inform a country’s response to regional
integration. When this article was originally drafted, the negotiations
were still under way for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
Since then, the negotiations have stalled. In spite of the long hiatus in
negotiations, the United States insists that the FTAA is not dead and
negotiations will indeed recommence.
Meanwhile, the original CARICOM countries, along with the Dominican Republic, have signed another trade agreement with the European
Community, the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement
(EPA). This agreement could affect the region’s future. In order to act
as a single trade unit, the Caribbean community must agree to integrate
under the CSME. Thus, the Caribbean Single Market and Economy
engenders a remapping of the region, but not as complete as the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has done between the
United States, Canada, and Mexico.3
The Bahamas, like the rest of the region, is faced with a rapidly
shifting geopolitical landscape, and the theme of freer movement of
workers is a part of this paradigm. This reality of remapping speaks to
Economy, Migration, Identity
39
the presence of similar yet foreign people among the nationals and is
especially salient when dealing with movement and establishment of
Haitians.
Since the outset of this research, the Bahamian government changed
in the 2007 general elections. Ideologically, there should be differences
between the political parties vis-à-vis CSME and migration that work
in tandem with their political platforms. Notwithstanding purported
political differences, both parties have maintained a hard-line antiHaitian, anti-migration stance.4 Bearing these facts in mind, this article
works through the framework of nationalism and the formation of
“nation” to illustrate how Haitian migration, although arguably necessary, functions to create a polarized society of nationals and “others.”
This is a dichotomy that is established around economic instability.
The attitudes that result from the national discourse further work to
immobilize the country in terms of economic progress and open it to
possible economic decline.
Furthermore, the same fears that isolate the Bahamas will ultimately
work to expose it to a larger type of marginality over which it will have
no recourse. So, nationalism’s reaction to Haitian migration results in
a refusal to regionalize that could underpin another type of migration
and takeover under the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and the
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS—WTO). The Bahamas
illustrates with particular poignancy what, according to Robert Young,
would outline the dynamics of nationalism and political agency.
Nationalism . . . does not constitute a political theory as such but, rather,
consists of a politicized cultural phenomenon: we might say that if the
nation is constructed through its culture, broadly defined, nationalism
represents the overt politicization of this cultural formation. . . . This
contact zone is not an easy one, for as a cultural phenomenon nationalism exhibits the characteristics of modern culture: namely, that it is
conflictual and divided against itself. (Young 1998, 16)
If nationalism is always conflictual, it then represents a serious problem within the framework of a culture trying to lend itself to regionalism while also trying to remain a nation-state.5 This “conflict zone”
between culture and politics is certainly borne out in the nationalistpolitical response of the Bahamas to Haitian migration and the CSME.
This political theory of nationalist exclusion develops out of resistance to colonialism. Thereby, colonialism is in part reacted against by
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Ian A. Bethell Bennett
creating a solid and reactionary paradigmatic nationalism and ethnic
pride. These facts fly in the face of the racism that was both explicit
and implicit during British colonialism in the Caribbean.6 Black Bahamians were barred from full participation in the political and economic
system for decades. This was countered by the Progressive Liberal
Party’s push for a fully representative democracy.
Black pride was an extremely important tool in creating a Bahamian
identity that had suffered the marginalization of American-style segregation. The watershed moment for the birth of a positive, independent
black Bahamian identity is arguably on July 10, 1973, with independence from Britain but could more saliently be argued as the day of Majority Rule—January 10, 1967. Postcolonialism is inextricably bound up
in the process of Bahamian identity formation. Pursuant to this, identity becomes a volatile part of independence because of its newness.
A further note of import is the resistance to other Caribbean cultures
bred through the colonial period as a result of the colonial government’s importation of police officers from other Caribbean islands to
suppress any nationalist uprisings. This coupled with another holdover
from slavery: colonists’ fears that the slave uprising and resultant revolution in Haiti would “contaminate” their slaves. An anti-Haitian indoctrination project was started in the neighboring islands to protect their
investment in plantations.7 Though the Bahamas was not a hugely successful plantation economy, it was a successful settler colony—albeit
more North American focused than many other Caribbean colonies,
and somewhat wealthier.
The colonial history and postcolonial struggle of the Bahamas for
a positive self-image, coupled with an internalization of the colonial
fear of the “other” constructed as Haitian due to their embodiment of
poverty as well as religious “otherness” perpetuated by their purported
widespread practice of voodoo, has led to an imbricated intolerance
for the local Haitian diaspora and Haiti. This works to make Haiti the
pariah of the Caribbean. While there is similar hostility toward Jamaicans, though for different reasons, said reaction is not as visceral and
widespread as it is against Haitians.
These considerations conflate with a modern fear of economic instability and political crisis (chaos) in Haiti that lend to an almost palpable
fear of Haitians destabilizing a stable Bahamian social and economic
identity. The theoretical considerations are important to understanding
Economy, Migration, Identity
41
the further playing out of the anti-Haitian, anti-Caribbean Bahamian
nationalist paradigm. This was all a part of the early years of Bahamianization under Pindling’s Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) government.
Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha uncover the paradoxes of
nationalism. As Robert Young illustrates, “Anderson points to . . . newspapers and novels in particular as instrumental in the production of the
simultaneity of this communal, ‘homogenous, empty time’ that allows
the formation of a national culture” (Young 1998, 20). This all harks
back to the fact that the nation is—as Anderson states—an “imagined
community” where people are brought together on the basis of their
belonging to the same group. Bhabha similarly posits it as a narration.
The combination of approaches such as world-systems theory and
cultural studies allows a fuller understanding of the social, national,
cultural, and economic background to the reaction of the Bahamas
to CSME. Young points out, “The capital within the state must operate through a hierarchy within the labor market, which is facilitated
through the ethnicization of occupations and trades” (Young 1998,
32). This leads to resulting Bahamian attitudes to Haitian migrants,
migration, and regional integration. “But even modern positive ideas
of ethnicity, linked to the notion of the ethnic minority, which must
necessarily be implicitly linked to the concept of a nation, can also be
a means of enforcing inequality within it” (Young 1998, 32). While the
Bahamas is developing this modern concept of nationalism, within its
geographic borders it simultaneously creates a system of inequality.
“Ethnicity, like race, is an unwritten text, a floating signifier coerced
into meaning, a surplus produced through the power of a determined
cultural writing” (Young 1998, 33).
This goes in tandem with what Bahamian newspapers produce on
Haitian ethnicity. Young refers to this above as a surplus of nationalism, and Balibar calls it “racism . . . a supplement of nationalism,
or more precisely a supplement internal to nationalism, always in
excess of it, but always indispensable to its constitution” (Balibar and
Wallerstein 1991: 54). So racism develops along with nationalism and
can ironically develop to imbricate those viewed as “others” within the
culture into a silent subaltern, but may also develop this relationship
with those beyond the nation too. While Haitians are imbricated in
the role of subaltern others within the national space of the Bahamas,
the collective Caribbean becomes “other” beyond its geographic lines.
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We must also bear in mind that tourism development creates its own
anxieties because of the power and influence of foreign capital and the
real marginalization of the population in terms of land access. This has
certainly been highlighted since 2006 in the Bahamas. However, residents tend only to obviate their reactions against the Haitian presence,
as tourism is the bread and butter of the nation and so, arguably, must
not be challenged.
The Caribbean region is always seen or rendered as inferior to our
Northern neighbors, who may continue to render the region merely as
exotic destinations. Meanwhile, Haiti becomes “other” to the entire collective that makes up CARICOM precisely because of its population’s
extreme poverty, religious difference, and color.8 The “otherness” of a
group is determined by that group’s economic power or lack thereof.
This determination, then, is a part of nationalism’s contradictory
nature, Young’s “contradictory dialectic.” The situation is further elucidated by what actually plays out between the Dominican Republic
and Haiti—an extremely salient example of one nation’s “othering” of
another nation and its people based on race/color (Howard 1999).
The mere fact that Haitians are being murdered regularly in the Dominican Republic without the Dominican government’s intervention
is significant. It also illustrates the impact of large-scale migration on
forming entrenched attitudes to “others.” Moreover, the Dominican
government, similar to the Bahamian government, has undertaken a
project of Dominicanization of the country. This Dominicanization
once again illustrates the link between nationalism and racism.
The Caribbean and CARICOM have a tremendous burden to shoulder, without considering how to address membership in the WTO. How
can the situation in Haiti, which obviously affects the region’s stability,
be resolved? If the development of a national discourse in the Bahamas
responding to increased Haitian migration is to classify itself as “not
Haitian,” its reactions to CSME are even more interesting.
Within the first six to eight months of 2005 the Bahamian debate over
CSME had heated up considerably, from a lukewarm discussion over
the previous year or so to a full-on row between political parties.9 And
this is where the sad reality begins: What could lead to regional unity
has been deconstructed and made into a local disaster of party politics. The need to maintain a national identity that is always incomplete
makes the stakes so high and the row therefore so determined.
Economy, Migration, Identity
43
Ever since the 1960s, the Bahamas has faced fears of being inundated by foreigners. While the United Bahamian Party (UBP)—the
white minority party preindependence—was still in power, there were
already concerns over Haitian migration to the Bahamas. Judging from
the newspaper articles held in the Bahamas archives, the “Haitian
problem” dates back some thirty-odd years. “Haitian Problem Again
Debated” in the Nassau Guardian of July 24, 1963 (1, 7), is echoed in
the Nassau Guardian of May 14, 1993, “Nassau Resident Complains
of Growing Haitian Problem,” and again by the (former) Deputy Prime
Minister, Orville Turnquest in a speech to the American Men’s Club,
“Haitians Threaten Bahamian Way of Life” (Tribune, April 7, 1994).
The 1993 article is a response to a letter sent to the Nassau Guardian
in which the writer argues “If the situation is not rectified Bahamians
will soon be a minority in their own country” (Archives 108). This
quote clearly articulates the anxiety a lot of Bahamians felt more than
a decade ago. The sentiment expressed here, then, translates into a
strong reaction against “free trade,” or what many Bahamians view as
the “Caribbeanising” of the Bahamas. This fear of alienation at home is
a repeated trope in the local media as the number of Haitians heading
to Bahamian shores increases monthly—particularly since the ousting from government of former president Aristide and the subsequent
natural disasters and political chaos.
In a country a little more than thirty years young, “national identity”
is a constant worry. The formation or continued flourishing of a Haitian
diaspora within the Bahamas creates unique tensions partially because
of the nation’s youth. If Bahamian identity is to be strong, or be defined
in counterdistinction to another, somehow that “other” is defined as
Haitian. With the rise of regionalism, a full-on panic has developed. As
the Bahamas increasingly liberalizes its land sales (of which the public
is now feeling the effects, as increasingly large swaths of land become
exclusive and more non-nationals are seen walking the streets), the
sentiment becomes increasingly anti-Haitian.
The general elections scheduled for 2007 tested this anti-Haitian
sentiment as a component of economic threat. Bahamians derided the
former government for being weak on immigration. The government responded by stepping up efforts to “control” illegal movement by increasing immigration raids and anti-Haitian discourse, while claiming to have
created a robust economy. Despite said anti-Haitian vehemence, Prime
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Minister Hubert Ingraham also gave campaign speeches with a Creole
interpreter during the 2007 race, which posits a rather schizophrenic relationship with this ethnic group in the Bahamas. It also shows, though,
their power in their numbers as to considering them as a sufficiently significant group to address directly, much like former president George
W. Bush did in the U.S. elections with Latino voters.
It should become clear that the economy is directly implicated in
nationalism, as are migration and identity. It should also become apparent that this is an unhappy triad, and that xenophobia is a direct
response to perceived “national threat.” Thus, economy, migration, and
identity are intricately linked and produce a discourse on nationalism
that defines a country’s future path, creating attitudes that work to
entomb the nation in a solitary existence.
Economy
This section builds on the introduction to illuminate how economic
realities underpin migration’s push-pull factor that operates between
Haiti and the Bahamas.
The information on Haiti (see table 1) conflated with that on the Bahamas (table 2) should elucidate, inter alia, first, why there are a large
number of Haitians in the Bahamas; second, that a lot of money is seen
as leaving the country for Haiti; and third, that the preoccupation of
being overtaken is justified on a simple numerical basis. The disparities
alone between GDPs and population size speak volumes about inherent tensions.
Haiti’s economic problems go hand-in-hand with the political chaos
that has engulfed it over the last four or five decades. This uncertainty begins with the post-revolution intervention by the United States and U.S.backed presidents, which included the “Papa Doc” Duvalier dictatorship
Table 1. Haiti10
Population, total
Population growth (annual %)
GDP (current US$)
GDP growth (annual %)
2000
2005
2007
7.9 million
1.4
3.8 billion
0.4
8.5 million
1.4
4.4 billion
1.8
8.6 million
1.4
5.0 billion
2.3
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Economy, Migration, Identity
Table 2. Bahamas: Indicators of Recent Economic Developments11
Real GDP growth (%)
External public debt (% of GDP)
Total central government debt (% of GDP)
IDB disbursements/ Public sector capital
expenditures
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
3.0
8.3
34.2
5.9
8.0
33.1
4.9
7.4
30.8
–2.0
6.9
32.6
0.7
6.0
35.7
14.8
5.4
9.8
7.6
7.9
Source: IMF, Central Bank of the Bahamas, and IDB
and carried on with Jean Claude Duvalier and then the subsequent dictatorships and problems with interim governments and military-backed
coup-d’état. The major coup was the one during Aristide’s term that
brought General Sedras to power. There have been a number of governmental changes as well as a great deal of political instability. The political
and economic crises mean that there are as many Haitians living outside
Haiti as there are in the country. This has been particularly hard on the
neighboring more prosperous and stable Caribbean countries.
As political and economic problems worsen, more Haitians attempt
to escape turmoil by setting out on hardly-seaworthy boats in search
of a safe haven. The Bahamas has continually served this purpose. The
other side of the equation must also be articulated: the arrivants offer
a needed cheap source of labor disposed to do hard work.
Historically, the Bahamas is one of the more economically and
politically stable countries in the Caribbean.12 As the economy of the
Bahamas is not based on revenue raised from income taxes per se, it is
important to note that most money brought into the government treasury comes from import duties, taxes, and tariffs. These are the funds
that are used to run the country.
The Bahamian economy has gone through periods of boom and bust,
and this trend weighs heavily on the minds of many older Bahamians.
The economic disaster of 2000–2001 was felt at virtually all levels of society, as tourists stopped flying for fear of terrorist attacks; the prime minister signed an agreement to disclose bank account information to third
parties in order to remove the Bahamas from the U.S. banking black list
in 2000–2001. These two events resulted in a large flight of capital, when
many banks closed offices and branches in the Bahamas in favor of other
fiscal paradises, and hotel rooms stood empty. The Bahamas has, meanwhile, become almost paranoid about its economic prosperity.
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The implementation of new trade laws and tariffs, which are viewed
as requisite for any unification with either WTO or CSME, would endanger this perceived economic stability and arguably increase the
cost of living by requiring that all individuals pay an income tax. So,
when the title of the story in the Tribune states, “Business behind Government’s Decision to Back Down from CSME” the idea forwarded was
that businesses did not want CSME (14 June 2005, 1). The impact of the
economic downturn can be linked with the people’s worry about foreign incursion into their country’s sovereignty. The Bahamas has also
witnessed an upturn in real estate development. This in turn means
that less land is available for local consumption because the upturn
has been, for the most part, a result of high-end foreign investment that
monopolizes the coast and other desirable areas.
Ironically, the migration that this encourages is an invisible type of
migration, at least as perceived by those for whom Haitian migration is
a concern. The economic concerns the community may have and their
(mis)understanding of the economic implications of free trade have
been obfuscated by the government’s reticence to address free trade
or public unease about tax changes in any concrete manner, except to
say that no income tax would be levied.
It may be beyond the government’s remit to hold informed debates
on CSME, WTO, or EPA, but rather in the hands of civil society
groups. Unfortunately, the Bahamas suffers from a dearth of such
groups. At the same time, the government’s avoidance of addressing
essential changes in the face of globalization handicaps the process.
If the EPA is unavoidable, then it is in the country’s best interest to
engage with it before it is forced down the population’s throats, so
to speak. The same is true for WTO accession, which holds many
similar perils as CSME, as it proposes the liberalization of mode 4
as a part of the GATS. Much like the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT) does with goods, the GATS facilitates the delivery of services across international borders by removing barriers to
legal entities—businesses, for example—as well as natural persons
moving into a country’s sovereign space to establish a physical presence of a foreign business or shop to provide service. The GATS has
four modes of movement of services: cross-border supply (Mode 1),
consumption abroad (Mode 2), commercial presence (Mode 3), and
movement of natural persons (Mode 4). They cannot be discrimi-
Economy, Migration, Identity
47
nated against based on nationality through taxes or other forms of
tariffs.
Inclusion into a regional trading bloc would seem preferential to
being absorbed by the WTO or impoverished by CARIFORUM-EU EPA
ideas of free trade.13 Implicit in the approval of the EPA and membership of the WTO is the acceptance of the stipulations laid down by the
GATS, which is more disempowering for a nation or even a regional
bloc than any other agreement on trade seen before.
While the Bahamas reacts to Haitian migration and CSME, GATS
proposes to fossilize such worries and create even larger concerns
through embedded stipulations that will undermine national sovereignty.14 GATS proposes to be a flexible way to liberalize trade in services, but the reality is different. According to Sinclair:
[T]he GATS seriously overreaches, intruding into vital areas of public
policy making that are only indirectly related to conventional international trade matters. It contends that the GATS unacceptably restricts
democratic policy-making, by privileging international commercial interests . . . [and] in fact, threaten[s] serious harm to public services and
public interest regulation. (Sinclair 2003, 349)15
If indeed the GATS does overreach, as Sinclair argues, how does a region like the Caribbean react, and how does a country like the Bahamas
respond to an agreement that promises to aggravate an already problematic situation? For, what the GATS proposes is the free movement of natural and legal entities and the inability of the “receiving” member country
to control such movement, as all entities must be treated equally be they
local or foreign (national treatment).16 If all countries are governed by the
same policies and agreements under GATS, with the Most Favored Nation rule (MFN) stating that whatever one country agrees to do must be
agreed to by all member countries, then all countries must agree to the
free movement stipulation indicated. As Sinclair points out:
This rule prohibits governments from placing restrictions on: the number
of service suppliers or operations; . . . the number of persons that may
be employed in a sector; and, significantly, the types of legal entities
through which suppliers may supply a service. (Sinclair 2003, 353)
For a small vulnerable country already feeling threatened by migration, this is obviously a death stroke. If the Bahamas cannot adequately
deal with all the Haitians who migrate there every year, how will it be
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able to absorb other people, who will require an even greater portion
of the national resources?
Migration
Migration in the Bahamas is contentious, as it is significant which
migrants are seen (visible) and who remains invisible. Full-factor migration is not, however, what the CSME or the GATS calls for. These
call for free movement of citizens who are within the framework of
the contracting countries. Chapter 3 of the Revised Treaty establishes
the guidelines for free movement. Migration implies a broader, unregulated, legal/illegal movement of factors.
The focus here is visible migration or migration that is usually illegal and on a larger scale, mostly limited to Haitians. However, Cubans have also been known to migrate to and through the Bahamas
in increased numbers at various times. They are less visible than the
Haitians, though. The visibility of migration is also often determined
by economic means or status. That is to say that poorer migrants are
often more visible than those who might be middle class or above.
Once again, ethnicity or race plays a role in the visibility of migrant/immigrant. Once someone arrives by sea (except via cruises), that person
is already suspect.
As a result of a steadily increasing flow of immigrants into the country and concerns over their being housed at Fox Hill Prison, the government of the Bahamas opened a detention center on New Providence
in the 1990s to house immigrants without mixing them with hardened
criminals. The detention center on Carmichael Road has since become
a thorn in the government’s side, as has their treatment of immigrants,
particularly Haitians. Amnesty International, as well as other international organizations, has sharply criticized the handling of immigrants
or refugees by the Bahamas. This has lead to increased resentment
between the populations. The international watch groups have claimed
that the police, the defense force, and the general treatment of refugees
has been cruel. They argue that immigrants may experience physical
abuse and the withholding of food, and females may also face sexual
violence from guards. The Cubans interned there have complained
vociferously of poor conditions and mistreatment and held a number
Economy, Migration, Identity
49
of protests at the center. To lay to rest such complaints and bowing
to international pressure, the 2007 Ingraham administration commissioned an independent inquiry into conditions at the center but has not
made the report public.17
Since the number of Haitians making their way into or through the
Bahamas is rather difficult to ascertain due to a poor system of collecting information and the illegality of most travel through Bahamian
waters, it is also difficult to say how many Haitians enter and leave
annually. The only numbers that can be counted accurately are those
who are apprehended by the Bahamas Department of Immigration and
the Bahamas Defense Force while attempting to enter the country, and
this is only a percentage of the number who actually achieve entry. The
ease of entry into the Bahamas is facilitated by the dispersed nature of
the islands, a relatively small budget for marine policing, and the fact
that so many islands are uninhabited or sparsely populated, with large
expanses of bush where immigrants can hide. A news report on Friday, January 28, 2011, said that the number of immigrants repatriated
in 2010 exceeded 2,000. The government, however, jealously controls
access to such hard facts. Many attempts to gather similar information
from the immigration authorities have met with decided resistance
over concerns of national security.
Interestingly, labor in the Bahamas is sharply divided into groups. Haitians tend to occupy the lowest rung on the labor ladder, doing jobs that
Bahamians refuse to do—i.e., gardening, some types of construction,
and commercial landscape labor, as well as other low-paid, manual jobs
that do not require the immigrant have a bank account. This fact in turn
continues to perpetuate a certain image of migrants and creates a polarized society. The Haitian diaspora is a salient example of this.
In the Bahamas this diaspora is marked by class and language,
rendering them irreversibly marginalized from the mainstream. Meanwhile, there is a large population of Haitians that has (over an extended
period) managed to remove itself from this paradigm through a number
of ways: education, marriage, having children, and attaining a certain
degree of financial stability. (Of course, this is always based on attitudes people hold and is always put in relative terms.) There is also
an emergent group of Haitian-Bahamians, but they often remain silent
about the Haitian part of their identity for fear of negative repercussions, as attitudes do not seemingly change easily. In recent years,
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Haitian Flag Day has developed into a big event and attracts a lot of
resentment on talk radio and in the newspapers.
If, as Balibar and Wallerstein argue, racism is an integral part of nationalism, then it would be logical for the Bahamas to react so strongly
against inward Haitian migration. Young posits it as “racism, and its
positive modern counterpart, ethnicity, . . . shar[ing] all the duplicitous
paradoxical qualities of nationalism itself” (Young 1998, 31).
So, the migrant always falls outside the construct of what the nation
sees as its own, thereby becoming “other.” This “other” in this case is
defined as poor, infirm, and black, or darker than people of that nation.
Paradoxically then, blackness once again becomes a marker of “otherness” even in a black nation.18 It is this national writing or the floating
signifier that Young conjures up which is at the basis of this “othering.”
Identity
Due to the postcolonial reality of the Bahamas and, as mentioned before, its short history as a sovereign nation, identity is that much more
of a fundamentally contentious issue. While the Bahamas is a majority
black country, the white minority is still economically dominant and
the threat of external forces coming in is a constant one for those who
try to develop a local economy.19 This is where the paradoxes begin
within the Bahamian national discourse.
The current population is inherently mixed. The idea, then, that there
is an essential Bahamian identity is problematic. It is the degree of Bahamian cultural creolization that is important, not whether it is creolized.
Postcolonial nationalist focus does not lend itself to free movement
of natural persons per se. It presupposes a relationship based on inequality and the desire for control over the “other.” This is perceived
as a problem with large-scale migration. According to the 2000 census,
the Bahamas had a population of 265,157 people.20 There were 21,426
Haitians, followed by 3,919 Jamaicans, and 115 Cubans. The disparities
between the three groups are obvious and beg many questions. This
is further exacerbated by a rough average of two to three hundred
Haitians per month being repatriated to Haiti. However, the numbers
increase according to the environment in Haiti. More persons attempt
to flee during periods of increased unrest or after natural disasters.
Economy, Migration, Identity
51
Opacity around what CSME-style free movement means is a problem for society on the ground more than the technocrats involved
in the process. Bureaucratic double-speak exacerbates the opacity.
A disconnect exists between the version CARICOM distributes of
CSME and the version that reaches the Bahamian public. Bahamians
are more uncomfortable with this idea of regulated quasi-permanent
movement than they are with temporary movement. It is unclear
why this is so, as said movement bears no relation to the unregulated movement in migration. As a June 2007 pronouncement in the
Tribune states:
The FNM government made it clear . . . that it will not sign on to the
agreement, which was a significant point of national debate under the
PLP government. . . . The free movement of labor provision of the agreement received the most criticism, with many Bahamians fearing an influx
of poor dependent Caribbean citizens, to further compound the large
illegal Haitian migrant problem that successive Bahamian governments
have been unable to get under control.21
The country’s angst is summed up in the above quote. Fears of
cultural erosion/erasure as well as economic hardship as a result of
increased migration partly fuel their response. At the same time, the
employment market demands more hands than are available in the
country; most in demand are semi- and low-skilled laborers.
Due to the development boom in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos,
employers are happy to find inexpensive laborers who can do the job.
Here begins the duplicity of the paradigm: People are happy to employ
Haitians to do manual labor, but they would rather not have Haitians
around.22
The following example captures the extent to which Haitian migration figures in the Bahamian psyche, as it is a part of almost daily appearances of similar diatribes against Haitian movement.
Haitian nationals accounted for 570, or 62 per cent of the 910 illegal immigrants apprehended, processed, and taken to the Ministry of Labor and
Immigration detention centre during the first five months of 2004. . . . The
figures . . . disclosed that the illegals were discovered in New Providence,
Grand Bahama, Inagua, Exuma, and Andros between January and May.
The apprehensions . . . were a result of coordinated efforts of the Ministry
in conjunction with The Royal Bahamas Police and Defense Forces, and
The United States Coast Guards. . . . The joint initiative had resulted in
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the repatriation of 980 illegal immigrants . . . of which [the] largest number, 730, being Haitians. . . . The repatriation exercise cost taxpayers approximately $80, 000. However the Ministry revealed that 161 immigrants,
including Haitians and Cubans, remained at the facility.23
The stage is set; a perusal of Bahamian newspapers reveals a serious
problem. This problem is (erroneously) conflated with Free Movement
of Skilled Nationals from within CARICOM and results in the following
fear and warnings:
268 nabbed in Abaco, GB, NP over 3 day period. . . . The Immigration
Department is warning immigrants legally residing in The Bahamas to
travel with the original documents permitting them to be in the country
or face being taken during ongoing raids. “Travel with passports and
photo ID’s if you don’t have original permits.” . . . “Those with permanent
residence should have a stamp on the back of their passports.” . . . “We
will not take photo copies.”24
This fear of the “other” speaks to a theory of national identity being
constructed by those in charge, which as Stuart Hall argues, is paralleled by the nation’s defining itself through exclusion. By this negative
self-definition the postcolonial nation uses discrimination to create
a national identity (Grossberg 1996, 89). But Haitians are rendered
uncivilized in contrast with the civilized landscape of the Bahamas—a
theme and process reminiscent of colonial encounters:
Deep in North Abaco’s dense pine forests Haitian squatters have forged
a new shantytown in Hidden Valley. The 15 roughly painted plywood
buildings are dotted around the lush undergrowth in stark contrast to
the labyrinth of Haitian slums in Central Abaco’s Mudd and Pigeon Peas
areas. But despite this woodland setting, the squalid life-style has followed them into the depths of the forest. Yet this latest illegal outpost
brings into sharp focus the Haitian problem in The Bahamas. . . . In Hidden Valley there is no electricity, running water or sanitary facilities. “We
us[e] the bushes,” explained squatter Judith Demelieu in Creole.25
This process of “othering” functions in many CARICOM member
states, and particularly in the Bahamas.26 Be that as it may, the year
2005 was an incredibly explosive year with the Haitian situation and the
CSME debates. Perhaps it is pure coincidence, but one most certainly
had a negative correlation on the other. This translation of migration
into free movement has a negative impact on the CSME’s reception.
Economy, Migration, Identity
53
Nationalism works as a screen to protect the nation from others
as well as to create a national identity. During colonialism such constructs were easy, as the empire constructed itself as civilized. The
descendants of enslaved Africans were savage. It was a matter of
counterdistinction for colonized countries striving for freedom and independence; these were not white. The nationalist paradigm in essence
developed out of this interplay of identity formation and definition.
The challenge arises when, after achieving independence, postcolonial countries see their sovereignty being eroded by inward migration
of others—non-nationals. This is played out in xenophobic tendencies
to be hostile toward others and exclusive of nationalist space and
identity. Most of the countries in the region have a degree of this xenophobia. Notwithstanding their independence, the talk around regional
integration leads to increased worries of loss of sovereignty. Hence,
there is often a visceral reaction against regionalism in the guise of a
common market and the potential loss of sovereignty. The Bahamas
provides an excellent study for the case in point.
While attitudes may not provide conclusive data on any concrete
study, these sources work in tandem to illustrate that there is a troubling conflation of CSME with Haitian migration. This results in a
highly emotive debate against the CSME and the fear of economic degradation as a result of increased free flow of migrants.
In the twenty-first century, the Bahamas has become more Caribbean culturally than previously. There is more of a cultural awareness
of the Caribbean. The submerged roots that link the region, which
Édouard Glissant refers to as relatedness, draw the countries closer
together at least in terms of regional social discourse. At the level of
national political discourse, the perception is that there is more unity
between the Bahamas and the other CARICOM countries—but at the
same time, politicians still resist signing onto regional integration
agreements or implementing policies that have been agreed to. As the
Bahamas accepts the leadership of CARICOM, it simultaneously disavows full participation in the CSME.
Due to an extremely partisan polarized electorate established in the
1950s/1960s, a nonpartisan discussion appears impossible. CSME has
become well entrenched as a part of Bahamian party politics. Government always shifts toward conservatism despite earlier favor for CSME.
Interestingly enough, while the former FNM government was in office
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(1992–2002), little was said about CSME, FTAA, WTO, or even postLomé agreements. It was not until the bank secrecy fiasco that there
was any kind of public discussion. So, it was with a great degree of
foresight that the former government announced in the newspaper, “No
Signing On to CSME before Next Election” (Tribune, 14 June 2005, 1).
This has led to a tragic flaw in Bahamian governance. As Young illustrates, “This suggests that a nation cannot be thought of without
being international, part of a larger system of competing nations. The
problem with many current analyses of nationalism is that they present the nation as autonomous rather than as the product of a system”
(Young 1998, 29).
Being a part of a system is important to the premise here. The denial
of CSME is a sign of the unwillingness of the Bahamas to participate
with the Caribbean or Haiti. If the debate on CSME blossomed in 2005,
then the discussion of the EPA was a nonevent. But, problematically,
the Bahamas has led itself to believe, albeit mistakenly, that it exists
outside of any trading bloc or regional community.
The country has allowed its xenophobia and fear of cultural creolization to guide its economic future. The marginalization of a sizable diaspora leads to violence and social unrest, as the quote at the beginning
of this article illustrates. If the Bahamas continues on this path of “othering” the Haitian diaspora, it will create a completely disenfranchised
underclass and exacerbate the existent problems.
Notwithstanding this, the Bahamas does have a worry of increased
migration and the need to support development. When a few of the Caribbean countries were in talks with Britain about reintegrating into the
UK, one of the main concerns was the mass migration out of Europe to
the islands. In the late 1990s to 2001, high-level discussions continued,
culminating in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, for example, having
new rights and status within the European Union. The most recent
change is the direct rule from London of the Turks and Caicos Islands
in 2009. Likewise, Trinidad has always been charged with unfairly treating CARICOM citizens in favor of nationals. Barbados has also faced
similar charges for its treatment of Guyanese.
But there is a particular saliency to this fear for local longevity.
Where do the locals of a nation go once there is free movement of
people and they can no longer secure employment in their home country? This is a fear that is also inherent in the signing of the EPA. As
Economy, Migration, Identity
55
seen over the last few months with the narrow passing of other free
trade agreements, there is a fear of losing all a nation’s sovereignty to
a regional power that is somewhat opaque. It is in part this perceived
opacity that has led to some of the resistance to CSME. The opacity,
again, is due in part to the unwillingness of local governments to participate fully in discussions of the agreements and also to cultural border conflicts that have never been resolved from the Caribbean’s first
attempt at unification with the ten territories of Antigua and Barbuda,
Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, the then St. KittsNevis-Anguilla, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent, and Trinidad and Tobago. The
federation was established by the British Caribbean Federation Act of
1956 with the aim of establishing a political union among its members.
The act was later repealed and the federation disintegrated, for many
different sociopolitical and economic reasons.
Bahamians’ fears of being awash in “others” is particularly real in
Abaco, where 8,000 of 15,000 inhabitants are Haitian. The man on the
ground has not seen CARICOM address such problems. Moreover, if
the FTAA resurfaces and pushes full integration, would this result in
a full-scale migration to the warmer, underdeveloped area? If so, Bahamians will be squashed in both directions, from above and below:
Executives in multinational organizations enter under GATS Mode 4
movement and semi-skilled migrants enter in barely seaworthy boats.
The Bahamas is currently negotiating accession to the WTO, but at
this stage any agreement would have to follow the Most Favored Nation principle, a daunting prospect at this juncture. Is CSME regional
strengthening in the face of the newly signed CARIFORUM-EU EPA
and the possible cultural erasure that could result after all tariffs are
eradicated? The primary problem is lack of information. While national
concepts are hard and fast, they are often constructed on a premise
that may no longer be relevant.
Furthermore, the local reality in 2005 in the Bahamas of Haitian
births purportedly outnumbering Bahamian births and the national debate this ignited is visible on a perusal of the local media. The Haitian
problem, as dubbed, directly relates to the negative reactions to CSME
and the fact that the government as a whole has done little to allay the
population’s fears.
So when Young states, “The general system of inequality between
nations is also implemented within the nation through an internal
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Ian A. Bethell Bennett
colonialism that can be facilitated by the contemporary emphasis on
ethnicity and ethnic difference” (Young 1998, 33), the ethnic separation
between Haitians and Bahamians makes his observations ring true.
People are not afraid to express their opinions on ethnic differences
or that they feel that Haitians are inferior and bleeding the country,
because similar sentiments regularly appear in Bahamian newspapers.
Society’s intolerance has influenced government’s policy toward Haitian migration and the CSME and vice versa. Sir Orville Turnquest’s
1994 speech to the Canadian Men’s Club (cited above) highlights this
link between government attitude and that of the people. Bahamians
feel that Haitians are overburdening the public services and therefore
should be stopped from accessing them. This is borne out in Larry
Smith’s comments:
The claim that Haitians are hogging up free public services also bears
a closer look. Official data indicate that about 8.8 per cent of all school
children are Haitian. Haitians constituted just over 11 per cent of hospital admissions in 2001 (although they made almost 20 per cent of all
outpatient visits to public clinics) and less than 12 per cent of live births
were to Haitian nationals in 2003.
On the other side of the coin, over 12,000 registered Haitians contributed
more than $3.5 million to National Insurance in 2004, but they received only
1.8 per cent of total benefits—far less than might be expected from the
estimated size of the population. And like the rest of us, Haitians (whether
legal or not) pay taxes on whatever they buy in our stores. (Smith 2010)
So, Haitians have become the Bahamian underclass and represent
the risk of opening “borders to Caribbean people.” The grounds on
which the Bahamas refuses to enter into the CSME have to do with
sovereignty and are made clearer when analyzed as a response to increased migration and to what has become seen as a threat of erasure
in one’s own country. This threat coupled with the fact that international agreements such as CSME and the EPA (and formerly FTAA) are
political instead of national makes the response to them a little more
understandable. However, it is still not productive. The government’s
best interest would, however, include having an informed population.
For, if the racially motivated French riots are any indication of what
awaits the Bahamas if Haitian exclusion and intolerance as official
policies continue, the disenfranchised diaspora could pose serious
problems.
Economy, Migration, Identity
57
The Tribune clearly illustrates that people are against the free movement of legal and natural entities. While CSME has only been hauled
into the limelight in 2005–2007, EPA discussions remained deafeningly
silent until the eve of signing. Anxiety around migration may be warranted if a “strong” country does not have trading partners. However,
these fears are being inflamed by a reactionary media.
As the IOM pointed out, the argument that Bahamians must compete
for education, health, and social services because of their overuse by
illegal immigrants is frequently reported by the media without substantiation. For example, in 2004 the Guardian wrote (incorrectly) that a
third of students in public schools and seven of ten maternity patients
were of Haitian origin.
In short, the Bahamian media portray Haitians in a way that heightens the threat they pose. And the government is pictured as merely
reacting to events beyond its control—thereby increasing the feeling
of powerlessness in the face of a perceived assault on the nation’s sovereignty (Smith 2008).
Haitian migration is an issue of import, but the media has worked to
inflame Bahamian passions on the matter. More positive approaches to
migration are essential. For example, working to lessen the push-pull
factors that contribute to migration is an option. Reading the local coverage of the Haitian problem in tandem with the CSME row, an almost
palpable link surfaces even if on an unconscious level.
The question now stands, is Haiti to remain a part of CARICOM and
thereby become fully integrated into CSME, or is it to be marginalized
by the region and not included in other agreements either? If the latter
is the case, the Bahamas will face increased migration and the birth
rates will certainly go beyond the purported 90 percent Haitian to 10
percent Bahamian.
Ironically, while the Bahamas suffers the problems of dealing with
thousands of Haitian migrants annually, the language of the Bahamas is
rapidly changing. Further, Creole and bilingual people could soon outnumber English speakers. However, aid to offset the huge capital drain
of Haitian repatriation or facilitation is absent. The sentiment Danticat’s character condemns in “Children of the Sea” further galvanizes
itself in the Bahamian psyche, with help from a reactionary media.
While the remapping explicit in WTO and CSME initiatives is clear,
what is less obvious to outsiders is the cultural remapping underway
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Ian A. Bethell Bennett
in the Bahamas with an increased movement of Haitians into the
country. The obvious growing Haitian diaspora and continued cultural
creolization arguably serve to further inflame anti-Haitian sentiment
in the country. As more and more schools are filled with Haitian-born
and Bahamian-Haitian children, these provide easy scapegoats for
increased school violence and falling scores. As these individuals are
pushed further into a no-man’s-land of nonbelonging, their reactions
become angrier. The imbricated nature of Haitian as “other” becomes
more problematic and steadfast.
Yes, Caribbean societies are certainly hybrid cultures or Creole,
but our cultural heritage is also under the threat of remapping. Bahamians stand to lose an important aspect of their culture(s) under this
new mapping of the Americas (as do many other small societies). Can
there actually be a Caribbean-friendly free trade agreement without
incorporation under a unified, albeit hybrid, trading bloc or CSME?
Meanwhile, the blue waters of balmy dreams and white sandy beaches
are macro-managed by the larger powers, that if Bahamians continue
to micromanage they will end up living in a space where the local population serves as silent subaltern “others” to powerful employers from
beyond our geographic boundaries. Intra-island migration has always
been and will always be a reality, but the new reality of endangered
local cultures due to remapping is a theme that needs to be addressed.
Tourism is often at the very foundation of this remapping. However, as
stated above, Bahamians feel it unwise to challenge tourism’s development as it is the country’s financial mainstay.
At the same time, this work is only a preliminary study of the attitudes to Haitians in the Bahamas and hastens to show that much more
work must be done in order to grapple with such a salient point of
tension. Moreover, the Haitian situation is incredibly nuanced and is
hard to unpick in only one article that glosses over many finer points
to underscore a general problem that must be addressed urgently at the
local and international levels. Meanwhile, globalization along with its
inherent remappings and migrations marches on, though the economic
crisis of 2008 may work to slow the process somewhat.
Sadly, Haiti has become the pariah of the West Indies, which is afraid
that it will be contaminated through contact. The blame for spreading
disease and social decline through violence and gangs has been laid
squarely on Haitians throughout the region and particularly in the Ba-
Economy, Migration, Identity
59
hamas. In spite of similar music and African forefathers, Haitians are
treated like dogs in the Bahamas (Danticat 1996, 14). The Bahamas
fears being remapped by migration, but social exclusion and denial
of citizenship along the lines of Dominican policies is not the answer.
To foster regional harmony, CARICOM needs to address the existent
acrimony between Haiti and the Bahamas. If these considerations are
so significant, how can this meta-nation be narrated into being if we
are divided so completely by nationalisms, particularly as they relate
to Haiti?
Notes
1. For a recent discussion on these facts see Larry Smith’s article in the Bahama Pundit, “Migration Report Profiles Haitian Community in the Bahamas.”
http://www.bahamapundit.com/2008/08/migration-repor.html.
2. The matter of citizenship is a vexing issue, as entitlement to citizenship is
contingent on a number of factors: whether or not the mother is married to the
father, whether the mother is Bahamian and the father Haitian or vice versa,
whether both parents are Haitian but not legal residents. It has particular resonance in the Haitian community, where they are often unaware that they will
need to apply for citizenship even though they have never lived anywhere else,
and that they can be turned down.
3. Note, however, that while the CSME argues for free movement of natural
persons through the community, it does so to date focusing only on professionals. This results in highly restricted “free” movement.
4. Historically, the Progressive Liberal Party’s manifesto and approach to
leadership had been more progressive than the Free National Movement’s approach. This has remained so; however, the former is still seen as the government of Bahamianization.
5. See Richard Woodward’s (2003) discussion of international politics and
the nation.
6. The movement into nationhood and positive self-image will not be discussed in full, as it is too long a point for the space here, but discussion will
limit itself to points that result in a postcolonial nationalism that becomes hard
and fast.
7. This is borne out in part by governor’s dispatches from the colonies and
also seen in works such as Lady Nugent’s Journal.
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Ian A. Bethell Bennett
8. I must confess to creating a parallel partnership between FTAA and the
WTO and GATS. While this reading of the three as intricately related may be
imposing a false similarity or equivalence, for the purposes of this article I will
continue to posit them as not one and the same but as inseparably associated,
the FTAA being a direct result of WTO-style trade liberalization.
9. The Bahamas decided to wait until the 2007 general elections to decide
whether it joined the CSME. It has maintained its membership of CARICOM,
but has not become a full member of the CSME. One of the primary sticking
points remains, not wanting the free movement of natural persons.
10. Available from World Bank website http://devdata.worldbank.org/
external/CPProfile.asp?SelectedCountry=HTI&CCODE=HTI&CNAME=Haiti&
PTYPE=CP.
11. This information was gathered from the Inter-American Development
Bank Strategy for 2003–2007 and is used to demonstrate the economic and
developmental position of the Bahamas as it is and also as these relate to Haiti
and the rest of CARICOM.
12. See table 2.
13. Ultimately, it is the need for preparedness that is at issue more than the
manner in which liberalization occurs. In spite of the FTAA’s stillbirth, there
remains a need to work on national policies and strategies to domestic development in line with global trends.
14. To be sure, many of the recent Regional Trade Agreements incorporate
regulations that would undermine national governance and control local social
and environmental policies.
15. See also Sinclair and Grieshaber-Otto (2002).
16. See World Trade Organization, Trade in Services Division (1999, 2001).
17. The detention center remains a thorn in the government’s side, as international agencies and other governments condemn the treatment of migrants
held there. Since 2005, a number of international scandals have erupted over
the center’s use, one of the more public ones being the detention of three
Cuban professionals held for upwards of twelve months, who were not allowed to return to Cuba nor to go to the United States. A greatly abashed
government finally repatriated them to Cuba, with both governments claiming
them. Numbers of Cubans have decreased since that time. Conversely, numbers of Haitians have risen.
18. Patricia Glinton-Miecholas’s book How to be a True, True Bahamian
(Nassau Guanima, 1994) goes to the core of the dividing color/class lines between Haitians and Bahamians.
Economy, Migration, Identity
61
19. Between 2005 and 2007 the threat increased and then even more so
between 2010 and 2011 and with each natural disaster or political change, the
threat continues to increase.
20. I will not break down the numbers between men and women, because it
does not seem necessary for the purposes of this part of the study.
21. “Government Still Says No to CSME,” Tribune, 11 June 2007.
22. This current trend of anti-immigrant sentiment is an international phenomenon.
23. “Haitians in Forefront of Illegal Immigrants,” Nassau Guardian, 23 July
2004.
24. “The Immigration Department is warning immigrants legally residing
in The Bahamas to travel with the original documents.” Nassau Guardian, 15
February 2005.
25. “The Secrete World of Hidden Valley,” Nassau Guardian, 5 September
2005.
26. New note 28 - This could similarly be said of other countries as Peter
W. Wickham, Carlos L. A. Wharton, Dave A. Marshall and Hilda A. DarlingtonWeekes point out in “Freedom of Movement: The Cornerstone of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME)” A Paper prepared for the Caribbean Development Centre, January 2004.
References
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Balibar, Etienne, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1991. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso.
Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. 1997. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the
Post-Modern Perspective. 2nd ed. Trans. James E. Maraniss. Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press.
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
CARICOM. 2002. Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas Establishing the Caribbean
Single Community Including the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.
Georgetown, Guyana: CARICOM Secretariat.
Danticat, Edwidge. 1996. “Children of the Sea” in Krik? Krak! New York: Vintage.
62
Ian A. Bethell Bennett
———. 2001. “Dyaspora” in The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Hatian Diaspora in the United States, ed. Edwidge Danticat. New York: Soho P.
DeMartino, George. 2003. “Free Trade or Social Tariffs.” Pp. 402–12 in The
Handbook of Globalization, ed. Jonathan Michie. Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar.
Glissant, Édouard. 1989. Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. Trans J. Michael Dash. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Grossberg, Lawrence. 1996. “Identity and Cultural Studies: Is That All There
Is?” In Questions of Cultural Identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay.
London: Sage.
Hirst, Paul, and Grahame Thompson. 1999. Globalization in Question: The
International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. 2nd ed. London: Polity.
———. 2003. “The Future of Globalization.” Pp. 17–36 in The Handbook of Globalization, ed. Jonathan Michie. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Howard, David. 1999. Colouring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic. London: Lynn Rienner.
Koenig-Archibugi, Mathias. 2003. “Global Governance.” Pp. 318–30 in The Handbook of Globalization, ed. Jonathan Michie. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Lee, Simon. 2003. “The Political Economy of the Third Way: The Relationship
between Globalisation and National Economic Policy.” Pp. 331–46 in The
Handbook of Globalization, ed. Jonathan Michie. Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar.
Michie, Jonathan (ed.). 2003. The Handbook of Globalization. Cheltenham,
UK: Edward Elgar.
Sinclair, Scott. 2003. “The WTO and Its GATS.” Pp. 347–57 in The Handbook of
Globalization, ed. Jonathan Michie. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Sinclair, Scott, and Jim Grieshaber-Otto. 2002. Facing the Facts: A Critical
Guide to WTO and OECD Claims about the GATS. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Smith, Larry. “Migration Report Profiles Haitian Community in the Bahamas.”
Bahama Pundit. http://www.bahamapundit.com/2008/08/migration-repor
.html (accessed December 2, 2008)
Smith, Larry. “Not Their Brother’s Keeper.” The New Black Magazine. http://
thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=2245 (accessed January 29,
2010).
Treco, Ria N. M. “The Haitian Diaspora in the Bahamas.” Paper presented at
Florida International University, April 17, 2002.
Economy, Migration, Identity
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Wickham, Peter W., Carlos L. A. Wharton, Dave A. Marshall and Hilda A. Darlington Weekes “Freedom of Movement: The Cornerstone of the Caribbean
Single Market and Economy (CSME).” A Paper prepared for the Caribbean
Development Centre, January 2004.
Woodward, Richard. 2003. “An ‘Ation’ Not a ‘Nation’: The Globalisation of
World Politics.” Pp. 309–17 in The Handbook of Globalization, ed. Jonathan
Michie. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
World Trade Organization, Trade in Services Division. 1999. An Introduction
to the GATS. Geneva: World Trade Organization.
———. 2001. GATS: Facts and Fiction. Geneva: World Trade Organization.
Young, Robert J. C. 1998. “The Overwritten Unwritten: Nationalism and Its
Doubles in Post-Colonial Theory.” In (Un)writing Empire, ed. Theo
D’Haen. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Newspaper Articles
“Government Is Set to Step Up Action on Illegal Immigration: Minister Listens
to Residents in Nassau Village.” Tribune, 13 September 2005, 6.
“Residents Say That Haitian Situation Is a ‘Time Bomb.’” Tribune, 10 September 2005, 3–4.
“New Haitian Births Fears, Doctor: ‘Hospital Births Are the Tip of the Iceberg.’” Tribune, 8 September 2005, 1.
“3,173 Illegal Immigrants Caught This Year.” Tribune, 6 September 2005, 9.
“Dr. Bethel: ‘Ministry of Health Has No Obligation to Report to Immigration.’”
Tribune, 3 September 2005, 1.
“Non-Bahamian Birth Claims Denied by Minister.” Tribune, 3 September 2005,
1–2.
“Haitian Birth Rate Fears: Doctor Claims 90% of PMH Births to Non-Bahamian
Parents.” Tribune, 31 August 2005, 1–2.
“Sears Questions Whether Schools are the Root of Haitian Discrimination.”
Tribune, 31 August 2005, 1.
“Society Calls on Government for Immigration Action Plan.” Tribune, 30 August 2005, 1.
“Action Needed Now to Calm Abaco’s Ferment: Haiti’s Election Will Determine Future Influx of Refugees.” Tribune, 29 August 2005, 1.
“Government Plans to Tackle Racial Tensions. Fear of Haitian Violence on
Abaco.” Tribune, 26 August 2005, 1.
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“Council Claims CSME Decision ‘Will Hinder CARICOM Progress.’” Tribune,
13 July 2005, 3.
“Opposition Leaders to Be Included in CARICOM Progress.” Tribune, 5 July
2005, 1.
“CSME ‘Basically Dead’ but Has Not Gone Away.” Tribune, 16 June 2005, 1.
“Mitchell Denies Personal Interest in CSME.” Tribune, 14 June 2005, 1.
“Business behind Government’s Decision to Back Down from CSME.” Tribune, 14 June 2005, 1.
“No Signing On to CSME before Next Election.” Tribune, 14 June 2005, 1.
“Mitchell in CSME Talks.” Tribune, 9 June 2005, 1, 9.
“Concerns over CSME.” Tribune, 30 May 2005, 3.
“Bahamas Reservations on Treaty Referred to Commission on Trade.” Tribune, 28 May 2005, 3, 5.
“Trade Commission Urged to Review Position on CSME.” Tribune, 27 May
2005, 1, 5.
“Mitchell Plea for CSME Calm to Businessmen.” Tribune, 19 May 2005, 3.
“CARICOM Official Gives Mitchell Assurance.” Tribune, 17 May 2005, 3.
“Ministry Denies CSME Charge.” Tribune, 13 May 2005, 1.
“CSME Will Benefit Bahamas.” Tribune, 12 May 2005, 3.
“Mitchell: Not Joining CSME Will Place Bahamas outside of CARICOM System.” Tribune, 7 May 2005, 5.
Brent Hagerman
Wilfrid Laurier University
Buried above the Ground:
Between Babylon and Zion at
the Bob Marley Mausoleum
Introduction
In January 2005 Rita Marley, the widow of Rastafarian and reggae
superstar Bob Marley, announced that she intended to move her late
husband’s remains from his mausoleum in Jamaica to Shashemene,
Ethiopia, for his sixtieth birthday. Rita Marley was quoted in the press
as saying, “Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica. He
has a right for his remains to be where he would love them to be. This
was his mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place” (Mitchell 2005).
The intended removal of Marley’s body from his native Jamaica set
off immediate and harsh criticism from several quarters, including the
tourism industry, the government, local business owners, mausoleum
workers, fans, average Jamaicans, and many Rastafarians. Rita Marley
responded to the uproar by first denying the reports (Mitchell 2005),
but later she said the decision was a family matter (“Family to Decide
on Bob Marley Move” 2005) and hinted that she intended to revisit the
issue in the future (Mitchell 2005).1
The dispute over Marley’s remains affords scholars an opportunity
to take a new look at Rastafarian beliefs about death, an area that deserves further attention in the scholarly literature, especially since very
little new research has been conducted in this area in recent years. Of
particular interest to this study is how the Rastafarian response to Rita
Wadabagei, Vol. 13, No. 2
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Brent Hagerman
Marley’s announcement has been split, with some advocating moving Marley to Ethiopia (also considered Zion) and others arguing that
Marley should remain in Jamaica (commonly seen as part of Babylon
according to Rastafarian teachings). By looking at Marley’s funeral and
visiting his mausoleum, I will discuss the controversy in the context
of Rastafarian attitudes toward death and demonstrate how much of
the available scholarship on death in Rastafari is no longer an accurate
portrayal of the current beliefs and actions of many Rastas. Further, I
discovered in my research that even though African and Rastafarian
symbols dominate the mausoleum site and many of Marley’s lyrics,
interviews, and actions clearly outline his Rastafarian worldview, Marley’s religious faith is largely being ignored by many in the debate over
his remains.
The Contested Body
Bob Marley’s body is not under the earth; it is “buried” six feet above
the ground in a gold-colored casket encased within a thrice-sealed marble tomb and housed in a concrete mausoleum resembling a chapel.
There are many layers protecting his remains from the outside world.
Similarly, there are several layers to this controversy. You could say
that the tumult has effectively buried Marley once more, this time in a
dispute over ownership and control of his identity as well as what remains of his physical body. In recent years the mausoleum has become
more than a commemorative shrine for the family and a destination
for fan pilgrimage. It has become a site of contestation, with multiple
parties vying for the authority to define its meaning and future. At the
mausoleum, religious, commercial, patriotic, and touristic concerns
intertwine and at times knock heads. For the overwhelming majority of
visitors, the mausoleum’s meaning is clear: Marley represents the king
of reggae and the best of Jamaica, and his continuing physical presence
is required in order to commemorate, perpetuate, and even market that
image. For others such as Rita Marley, moving the mausoleum’s sacred
center is necessary in order to protect her husband’s spiritual goals.
There is an overarching layer to this debate that has often been ignored
but must be taken into account in order to understand the context behind
Rita Marley’s decision: the Rastafarian understanding of Africa, Zion,
Buried above the Ground
67
repatriation, and death. Africa, for Rastafarians, is the Promised Land,
a both mythical and physical Zion situated in Ethiopia. Repatriation to
Africa has been one of the main goals of Rastafari since the movement’s
inception. In 1976 Marley expressed his own interest to repatriate: “Today
is not the day, but when it happen[s] 144,000 of us go home” (Sheridan
1999, 80).2 Marley told his wife he wanted to move to Ethiopia after the
1976 assassination attempt but was waiting for permission from the leaders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the Rastafarian organization to which
he belonged (Marley and Jones 2004, 154). And, as evidenced from many
of his songs, such as “Africa Unite” and “Zimbabwe,” Marley was also
keenly interested in African politics of independence as well as African
history and the role of the African diaspora in the continent’s future.
For Marley, former Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie was a God-man,
worshipped as Jah Rastafari. As evidenced from songs such as “War” and
much of the material on the album Survival, Marley believed in a final
apocalyptic battle of good over evil in which Selassie would defeat the
forces of Babylon, or the oppressive systems of the world, and Rastas
would then be repatriated to Africa. In this eschatological vision, Selassie
would reign supreme over creation. Africa, then, was the geographic
center of Marley’s cosmology. It is for these reasons that Rita Marley can
legitimately say that her husband’s whole life was about Africa.
Rasta Funeral: An Oxymoron?
Much of the literature on Rastafari tells us that Rastas believe they cannot
die and that the goal of repatriation to Africa will happen in life, not death
(Owens 1982). Chevannes informs us that it is orthodox Rastafarian doctrine that true Rastas cannot die as long as they remain faithful to Haile
Selassie (Chevannes 1994, 200–203). Because of this there is a tradition of
avoiding everything to do with death, including language,3 symbols, and
funerals. This is based on the Jamaican peasant fear of contamination
regarding the dead (Chevannes 1994, 204), but whereas peasant tradition
has developed elaborate death rites to ensure that the “duppy” or spirit of
the deceased makes the transition from this world smoothly and does not
trouble the living, Rastas have regarded these practices as superstitious
and therefore steer clear of any sort of ritualizing, such as funerary rites,
that accompany death.
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Brent Hagerman
This is especially interesting considering the amount of commemoration, ritualizing, and ceremonial pomp surrounding Marley’s death and
funeral. In fact, the response to Marley’s death complicates scholarlydepicted Rastafarian beliefs about death. The singer died at age thirtysix on May 11, 1981, in Miami. He was on his way home to Jamaica following unsuccessful cancer treatments with Dr. Josef Issels in Bavaria
but passed away en route. A wake was held in his mother’s Miami living
room and a Bible was placed in his arms open to Psalm 23. During the
wake Marley’s lawyer, Diane Jobson, told mourners that Marley had
just appeared to her and asked first to have his guitar laid in the casket
with him, and second to prevail upon Alan Greenberg, who was present, to “make a film to protect his legacy” (Greenberg 2006a).4
In direct tension with Rasta tradition, Rita Marley planned a glorious
funeral fit for a king (Fergusson 2004, 155). Marley’s body was flown
to Jamaica for the ceremony, the largest state funeral in Caribbean
history (Steffens 1998, 263). Following a national day of mourning and
public viewing while he lay in state at the National Arena, he actually
had two funerals on May 21, 1981: a semi-private service at the Kingston Maxfield Park Ethiopian Orthodox Church and then a public ceremony at the arena arranged by the prime minister’s office (Moskowitz
2007, 116). The mourners were so numerous5 that at one point police
used tear gas to stop people rushing the arena gate (Fergusson 2004,
155). Besides reporters and television cameras at both ceremonies, the
proceedings were also filmed for an American documentary whose
working title was “Marley Nuh Dead” (Greenberg 2006b). At the arena
Marley’s casket was draped in two flags, the Jamaican flag and a second one displaying red, gold, and green, representing both Rastafari
and Ethiopia.
The funerals, like his mausoleum, show the borders that Marley
bridged in life and death: the Christian and the Rastafarian, the Jamaican and the African, the pop star and the revolutionary, the celebrity
and the holy man.6 Ethiopian Orthodox priests led the liturgy but, according to Greenberg, every time they mentioned Jesus Christ there
were “irate catcalls and fiery protestations” (Greenberg 2006b) from
the crowd, a large number of whom were dressed in the white robes
and tricolored tams, or banners, of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Marley
was a member of the Twelve Tribes, although he was baptized into the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church shortly before his death (Marley and Jones
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2004, 166). Due to their avoidance of death, the Twelve Tribes had no
existing death rituals (Chevannes 1999, 349) but were incensed that
they were all but left out of the funerary rites. In an act that would be
later called the “capture of the ceremonies,” Marley’s close friend Alan
“Skill” Cole deviated from his assigned role as scripture reader to make
a statement on behalf of the Twelve Tribes, including a proclamation of
Selassie’s divinity (Lee and Davis 2003, x; Moskowitz 2007, 116). Even
at Marley’s funeral, different parties were vying for control of Marley’s
representation in death, something that would continue long after his
body was officially laid to rest.
The funeral ended with a performance by the I-Threes backed by
Marley’s band, The Wailers, singing “Natural Mystic” and “Rastaman
Chant.” The former song is based on the African-American spiritual “I’ll
Fly Away,” with the lyric “Fly away home to Zion / One bright morning
when my work is over I’m gonna fly away home.” It was Marley’s wish
that upon his death his body would be placed in a truck and driven
across the country (Greenberg 2006b). This motorcade traveled the
fifty-five miles from Kingston to his childhood home in Nine Miles
along roads lined with mourners. Once at Nine Miles, with the tiny
hamlet overrun with thousands of people, another graveside ceremony
was conducted, and Marley’s body was sealed in a tomb in the yard of
the house he grew up in. Fergusson says that there were three seals for
the tomb: a red metal plate decorated with the Star of David, a heavy
steel-wire grill, and a wooden sheet covered with wet cement (Fergusson 2004).
The Rastafarian death doctrine, as outlined by scholars, assumes
that Rastas deny, reject, and fear death. However, this theory does not
adequately explain the Rastafarian response to Marley’s death, funeral,
and remains, or even Rita Marley’s decision to move the body to Africa.
What is apparent is that there is a dearth of scholarly research on Rastafarian beliefs about death and the afterlife, and much of what work
has been done is now outdated. In order to rectify this lacuna in the
literature, extensive ethnographic research in Rastafarian communities
would need to be done. This paper is only a preliminary probe into this
topic based on visiting the mausoleum and following the public discourse surrounding the mausoleum controversy. The mausoleum controversy can be viewed as a case study of the multiplicity of Rastafarian
responses to death. It is evident that Rastafarian attitudes toward death
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have been modified since the 1970s because of the changing reality of
the movement, such as the death of prominent members, and that the
community has negotiated and meditated their death beliefs based on
this new reality.
Having shown above that Marley’s death and funeral were anomalous to traditional Rasta beliefs about death, I now turn to an account
of his mausoleum to further identify how his commemoration is incongruent with these same beliefs.
Bob Marley on Mount Zion
What follows is an account of my visit to the Bob Marley Centre and
Mausoleum in February 2008. The site’s very existence seems to contradict Rastafari’s attitude toward death as anathema, but because of
this it offers researchers many clues to understanding this controversy.
By gaining a sense of how Marley is being commemorated, we can better understand the changing nature of the movement’s views on death
and the resistance to Rita Marley’s bid for the removal of her husband’s
remains, even among some Rastas.
The hillside property in Nine Miles that now boasts the Bob Marley
Centre and Mausoleum once held just a small wooden house. Today
the compound is the most recognizable property in the hamlet; its
Rasta flags and colors stand out among the other houses that dot the
Dry Harbour Mountains. Nine Miles is where Marley was born and
spent a partial childhood with his grandparents and mother.7 I arrived
at the site as one of thousands of non-Jamaicans from around the world
who come to the mausoleum each year. Like many people’s, my journey to the site was part touristic, part pilgrimage. My interests in the
site are many. As an avid reggae fan, musician, and music journalist,
I journeyed there out of a desire to be close to one of my musical heroes and commemorate his life and work. As an academic researcher,
I was intrigued by the incongruity between the scholarly depiction of
Rastafarian death beliefs and how Marley, a man who belonged to a
religion that supposedly taught aversion to death, had his burial and
commemoration highly ritualized and was now facing exhumation and
posthumous repatriation to a country he believed to be Zion. I came
by taxi from Kingston, a drive that took three hours each way, with a
Buried above the Ground
71
small party of friends. We drove over Mount Diablo at one point—a fitting name, as it was a slow devilish grind to the top, but also somewhat
ironic because our destination was perched atop a place Bob, as he is
affectionately called by tourists and locals alike at the site, had named
Mount Zion.
Once in Nine Miles our driver, who had not visited the site before,
was directed by a group of dreads to park outside the compound. They
offered us large cone-shaped ganja spliffs. A few in our party accepted
them, not sure how to refuse, or even if they were free. As we passed
through the compound gates, the ganja vendors remained on the public road, and it quickly became apparent that we had been directed to
park outside of the official parking lot so that they could entice us with
their wares. We would find out later that payment was expected for the
marijuana and also realize that their unofficial role at the site played an
important function for many visitors.
Once a family burial plot, the mausoleum site is now an international tourist destination and has been built up to accommodate the
increased traffic. It even houses a restaurant and a souvenir shop that
sells Marley memorabilia such as T-shirts, CDs, posters, commemorative rolling papers, and cigarette lighters. We purchased tickets for
the tour (US$15) in the gift shop and met our dreadlocked guide in
the restaurant, the balcony of which offered a stellar view of the lush
green rolling hills beneath us. As we left the restaurant, we stood in
front of the large wooden gate to the mausoleum grounds. Two identical pictures of Bob adorn the gate, each with a sign above it. One reads
“Respect” and the other “Exodus,” the latter the name of a Bob Marley
record and song about repatriation to Africa. I stopped for a moment
and pondered the meaning of these two signs, side by side: “Respect
Exodus.” It was probably a coincidence, but read together it seemed
as though it was a message sanctioning the repatriation of Marley’s
remains.
Once inside the gate, the tremendous view of the hills is almost always blocked; the area is secluded and protected. The guide pointed
out a small clearing where we could see four white stone graves marking the plots of Marley’s grandparents and an aunt and uncle. Marley’s
grandparents were buried six feet below the ground, he said, but Bob
was buried six feet above the ground. When I asked him why he told
me, “Bob Marley was a prophet. He is not like some people.” This was
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followed by an explanation that suggested the raised height of his grave
symbolized the heights—culturally, socially, spiritually—he achieved
in life.
As we walked farther up the hill toward Marley’s childhood house
and mausoleum, we were shown a small rock garden with stones arranged to spell “Bob Lives” in Rastafarian colors. The center’s guides
constructed this votive in tribute to Bob in 1991. “The reason why
we say Bob lives,” the guide told us, “is because we believe him live
through the music he sing. Also through we the people mind, also
through his children.”
Higher still we arrived at Marley’s house. Bob lived here as a child
and then later with his wife Rita for a period soon after they were
married. The original two-room house, once a dull wooden shack
with a corrugated steel roof, has been rebuilt in stone and trimmed
with the ubiquitous red, gold, and green. Over the threshold there is a
sign that reads “One Love,” and on the door itself another states simply “Bob Lives.” We were asked to remove our shoes before entering,
out of respect for Bob. The interior shows obvious signs of age and
wear, no doubt enhanced by the crowds of visitors walking through
it daily. According to our guide, the interior has been maintained but
not renovated. This gives the sense that it is somehow authentic, and
in stark contrast to the modern gift shop, restaurant, and bathrooms
on the site. The house was sparsely furnished—two chairs in the first
room, a few small tables and a bed in the back room. There were
pictures, mostly drawings, of Marley on the walls and gifts left for
him by fans. A letter, for instance, sat readable on a wicker chair in
his room. There was also a picture of Haile Selassie. In the window
hung a dream catcher. “This dream catcher was made right here by
his grandparents,” quipped the guide. “Rastafari capture the bad vision, you know?”
At the routine stops on the tour, the mausoleum’s guides illustrate
their stories about Marley’s life with short renditions of applicable Marley songs. For instance, after exiting the house we were brought to a
stone painted red, gold, and green, called Mount Zion Rock, where we
were told Marley used to meditate and wrote the song “Talking Blues.”
On cue the guide broke into a verse and chorus, after which we found
ourselves beside an outdoor cookstove that provided the basis for a
chorus of the anti-rudeboy song “Simmer Down.”
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Next we turned toward the mausoleum—a large white cement
structure similar in size to the house but with a tall pointed roof and
cathedral windows facing south, making it look like a small chapel. On
websites of fans who had visited in previous years I had seen pictures
of two black angels holding swords painted on the outside walls of the
mausoleum. I was surprised that they were no longer there and was
told that they were recently painted over. Originally they were the idea
of one of Bob’s half-brothers but, in the words of the guide, “Well, fake
angel them, so they just paint over it. They wasn’t real angels.”
As we walked around the outside of the mausoleum we were shown
several stained-glass windows, each richly symbolic. The first, on the
east side of the building, was the star of David. As the sun rises each
day its light passes through the star of David and rests on Marley’s
tomb inside. For Rastafarians the star of David is a reminder that Haile
Selassie traces his lineage back to King David. Our guide added to this
with an inclusive universalism that Rastafari has come to represent to
many: “We all coming through the lineage of King Solomon and King
David, so just one love, one blood, Rastafari.” Selassie himself was
signified on the next window, which held a picture of a lion: Selassie’s
royal titles included “Lion of Judah,” his royal seal was a lion, and the
Ethiopian flag during his reign carried the symbol of a standard-bearing
Lion of Judah against a red, gold, and green backdrop. Another window
depicted a pastoral scene with four flowers. We were told that these
were for the birds in the song “Three Little Birds,” but no explanation was offered as to the incongruity between the number of birds
and flowers. The next window had a picture of a tree that the guide
said could be likened to the sycamore tree mentioned in the Marley
song “Time Will Tell.” He pointed out that growing beside us was an
actual sycamore, the only one in Jamaica, brought here from Africa
by Marley’s mother. The final stained-glass window had a picture of a
person standing, which the guide explained depicted Egyptian burial
practices. Marley, he added, was laid to rest lying down, with his tomb
facing the east and the rising of the sun.
The final stop of the tour was the heart of the site itself, the building
where Bob Marley’s remains are interred. The doorway was trimmed
in the familiar colors of Rastafari, and two signs greeted us. The same
“One Love” sticker from the house could be seen over the lintel, but on
the brown wooden door was a different sign: “Jah Love.” I remembered
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reading that Alice Walker was offended by a different bumper sticker
on this very spot when she visited the tomb in 1986. That sticker had
said “Good Girl Culture,” at the time the name of Rita Marley’s latest
album (Walker 2004, 244). To me, and probably to Walker, “Jah Love”
seemed a more fitting epitaph for a Rastafarian and the king of reggae.
Again we were asked to remove footwear, and where before pictures
were encouraged, cameras and audio recorders were prohibited. As
might be expected, marijuana plays a prominent role at the site, both
symbolically and commercially. The smell of ganja was the first thing I
noticed as I entered the mausoleum, and then I realized the role of the
ganja vendors outside the gate: They were providing visitors the ganja
to ritually smoke in front of Bob’s remains. The Centre probably could
not do this without fear of legal trouble, so by leaving that up to local
entrepreneurs who, no doubt, offer a very valuable service for many
tourists, the Centre is able to enhance the experience of its visitors and
stay on safe legal ground. This theory was validated when, just before
we exited without smoking a spliff, the guide asked in disbelief, “What,
you don’t want to smoke one with Bob?”
The interior of the mausoleum was ruled spatially and symbolically
by the hulking presence of the rectangular marble block for which
it was built. The tomb stands just over my head, and I felt as though
Marley must have been resting at my eye level. The marble is shrouded
by several clothes and flags, many that seemed out of place such as
Tibetan prayer flags, a kitschy Christian-themed blanket with “God
Loves You” embroidered on it, and a pin that said “I’m stylish.” Others were in direct symbolic tension with Rastafari. Most blatantly the
pin with a skull and cross-bones seemed unsuitable, as Rastas treat
death as anathema and do not use symbols of death. Regardless of
what Marley or other Rastas felt about symbols of death, most likely
some or all of these items at the tomb were left by fans, well meaning,
wanting to leave behind some votive, some connection between them
and the king of reggae. While many of these material items seemed out
of place in a Rastafarian mausoleum, and somewhat irreverent given
the circumstances, in many ways they can be read as indicative of the
movement itself. Rastafari is typically open to cross-cultural and interreligious interaction, often stressing that all people believe in one god
with different names. As such, Tibetan prayer flags or Christian axioms
are not necessarily out of place.
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Other material objects inside the mausoleum included a large photo
of Marley’s mother, Cedella, and his half-brother Anthony, who is also
buried at the site; a painting of Marley with long dreads and flowing
red, gold, and green robes, carrying a lamb and staff—an obvious
Jesus-as-shepherd motif; a magnificent brass bust of Marley donated by
Canadian fans, according to the guide; and several small trinkets. The
floor at the base of the tomb was scattered with the butts of spliffs in
various states of completed combustion. Earlier visitors to the shrine
have noted offerings left on the floor, such as rolled joints (Lefthanded
Pen 2007), Bibles, soccer balls, guitars, personal letters, pictures of
Marcus Garvey, and photos of the fans themselves (Farley 2007). The
material culture at the tomb tells us something about what Bob meant
to his fans—he was a mystic, an athlete, a musician, a family man, a
friend, a celebrity, a Rastaman.
Marley himself is encased in a casket inside the hewn monolith and
is embalmed to preserve his body so that he apparently looks the same
today as when he was buried. According to the guide, the embalming
was to last thirty years. At the time of my visit, that meant that in three
years his body will be removed and re-embalmed. When Bob died, Rita
made plans for his funeral and burial. Not only did she conceive of the
chapel at Nine Miles with space for her to sit and talk with Bob, she
also decided to embalm his body the way pharaohs and kings were
preserved among Egyptians and tribal Africans so that “generations to
come will be able to break the seals, draw Bob out and gaze upon him”
(Fergusson 2004, 155). Like the funeral, everything about Bob Marley’s
interment was meant to commemorate an extraordinary man in an
extraordinary manner.
Bob was buried with a number of objects that were important to
him. He is dressed in jeans; a red, gold, and green vest; and a denim
jacket—his chosen outfit for many stage shows—and underneath
his Rastafarian woolen tam is a wig of his own dreadlocks, as his
hair fell out during cancer treatments before his death (Ritter 2007).
In one hand is placed a guitar and in the other a Bible. He was also
buried with a football—his favorite sport— a marijuana bud, and his
most treasured possession, a ring given to him by Haile Selassie’s
son that once belonged to the emperor himself. Beneath Marley’s
elevated body there was space within the tomb reserved for Cedella.
She passed away two months after I was at the site and is currently
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laid to rest there (Campbell 2008). At the very bottom of the tomb lies
Anthony, who passed away in 1990. We exited the mausoleum, put
our shoes back on, and descended the hill. Then, at the gate the guide
directed us to a sign that read, “One Love, One Heart, Tip Your Tour
Guide and Feel Alright,” an obvious joke based on Marley’s song,
“One Love.” When we descended to the commercial area, there were
a number of guests in the restaurant, some enjoying a Red Stripe beer,
others enjoying spliffs. We made our way to the gift shop, itself with
a large “One Love” painted over the door, where I purchased a children’s T-shirt with Marley’s image on it for my four-year-old daughter.
From Africa to Jamaica to Africa
The Bob Marley Centre and Mausoleum is a testament to the two sides
of Marley that are at the heart of the debate over his remains: the
Jamaican and the African. The physical ground is Jamaican—Marley
played and worked in the fields here as a child and wrote songs here.
He returned with his wife to live at this site for a brief time while she
was pregnant with his first child. Yet many of the symbols around the
site are African: the lion, sycamore tree, and Egyptian images on the
stained-glass windows, for instance. Ethiopian flags fly side by side
with Jamaican flags, and Ethiopia’s national colors, adopted by Rastas,
are ever-present. Pictures of Haile Selassie, at one time an immensely
popular Ethiopian ruler among those in the black diaspora, are also
at the site. Marley’s body lies facing east—the direction of Africa. The
practice of burying personal objects with the deceased has connections to West African burial traditions, where the deceased is believed
to share the same passions and appetites in death as in life (Creel 1988,
316). Even the dreadlocks worn by many workers at the site can be
seen as reminders of the connection between Rastafari and Africa.8
Musically, too, the Marley songs that can be heard at the site are imbued with lyrical and rhythmic references to Africa. Religious objects
and symbols help define the boundaries around a group, offer a public
display of lived religion, and bind believers to the sacred (McDannell
1995). For those who understand the African and Rastafarian symbolism at the site, the mausoleum was clearly marked as Rasta space. It
Buried above the Ground
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was partially this oddity of Rasta burial space that drew me here. The
media have portrayed this as a debate largely about who owns Bob
Marley—his body, legacy, image—and have focused the discussion
around a sort of cultural patriotism. In other words, Jamaica has a right
to Marley’s remains because he was born on this soil and became an
ambassador for Jamaican culture. The question of whether or not his
religious beliefs should be taken into account when deciding his final
resting place remains largely unasked. The Jamaican Observer printed
letters from angry fans: “What about his spiritual ties to Jamaica?
Wasn’t Bob born and raised in Jamaica and didn’t he call Jamaica
home?” wrote one. “Has Rita lost her mind? Bob loved Jamaica. He
wouldn’t have made it his home if it were otherwise,” wrote another
(Burrell 2005, 24–25). One taxi driver who shuttles tourists to the site
stated that if Marley’s body was moved it would cause a riot (Williams
2005). Similarly, a caller to a local radio show announced that Rita Marley should be stoned if she follows through with the plans (Williams
2005). The Los Angeles Times reported that workers at the mausoleum
“have vowed physically to block any disinterment, and fans warn such
an effort could lead to bloodshed” (Williams 2005). The Guardian
quoted one mausoleum tour guide as saying, “If they try to move him
there’ll be war” (Younge 2005). Not one of these reports considers that
Marley may have felt Jamaica was a Babylon he eventually intended to
escape, as a literal reading of the song “Exodus” suggests.
The animosity on the part of those who make a living from the mausoleum as a tourist attraction is understandable. The tourism industry,
which earns more than a third of the country’s GDP (Younge 2005),
has a lot to lose if Marley’s body departs the region. Marley, reggae,
and the image of the dreadlocked male in particular, have become
powerful brands for the tourism industry. Not surprisingly, the Jamaican government supports efforts to keep Marley on the island. They
are aware of the superstar’s tremendous popular appeal, and Marley’s
death had a direct impact on the government’s political agenda. Even
though Marley was a political agitator in life, three weeks before the
singer’s death Prime Minister Edward Seaga conferred upon him the
country’s third-highest honor, the Order of Merit, for his outstanding
contribution to the country’s culture. Seaga’s then new government
even postponed their first budget debate for a week due to the solemn
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mood of the country in the wake of Marley’s death, and Seaga himself
gave the eulogy at the funeral. Marley’s importance to Jamaica was not
lost on later governments either. When the controversy hit the papers,
Education and Culture Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson told the Jamaican Observer, “The country is clearly of a mind that the remains should
stay here” (Bellanfante 2005). For the exhumation to take place, a formal request would first have to be made from the properly constituted
authority, namely the family and the Marley Estate, but a final ruling on
the matter would have to be made by the courts (Bellanfante 2005). According to the government, then, for all intents and purposes the state
owns Bob Marley’s body.
But for everyone who argues that Marley belongs to Jamaica, fans
around the world may take a different view. In many ways his international impact made him a citizen of the world. The New York
Times called him the most influential artist of the second half of the
twentieth century; Time magazine named Exodus the album of the
twentieth century; and the BBC called “One Love” the anthem of the
millennium (Bellanfante 2005). In addition, scholars point to Marley
as the main cause for the Rastafari’s dissemination outside Jamaica.9
As Farley notes, Bob’s roots may have been in the West Indies, but his
branches stretched around the world; this is evidenced by the diversity
at his grave as visitors from Japan, South Africa, America, Europe, and
throughout the Caribbean visit the site (Farley 2007).
With this in mind, then, who really does have the right to claim Bob
Marley’s final resting place? For Rita Marley, who initially argued that
Ethiopia should be her husband’s spiritual resting place, the question
is easily answered: Africa. Yet Marley’s spiritual ties are not easily untangled. A Christian who converted to Rastafari in the late sixties, Marley’s religious life was fundamentally Jamaican yet focused absolutely
on Africa. His religion was founded in Jamaica, but scholars identify it
as African-derived (Stewart 2005). Following the Afrocentric philosophy of Jamaican national hero Marcus Garvey, Marley self-identified as
an African. Rastafarians have always held Africa to be their spiritual, if
not actual, homeland, whereas Jamaica, with its legacy of colonialism
and slavery, is understood as Babylon. Leonard Howell, a prominent
early Rastafarian leader, taught his followers that they were not under
the authority of the Jamaican government or the British crown, but
instead were subjects of their God-king, Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie (Lee
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and Davis 2003). Marley believed this as well, and many of his songs,
such as “Exodus,” take up this theme. Shortly before Marley’s death, he
was baptized into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, thereby becoming
a Christian Rasta. Priests from this tradition officiated at his funeral.
In order to attach place to Marley’s spirituality, these factors must be
taken into account.
“I Man Don’t Deal with the Dead”:
In Search of a Rastafarian Doctrine of Death
I now turn to discussion of Rastafarian beliefs about death in order
to show that based on the available literature there is very little to
be able to explain the response by Rastafarians to both Bob Marley’s
death and the possible repatriation of his body to Ethiopia. Rastafarian reggae singers, such as Lone Ranger and former Wailers Peter
Tosh and Bunny Wailer, once popularized songs about eschewing
burial rites and commemorative exercises.10 Rita Marley once wrote
that as a Rasta you would never hear her husband say “If I die” or
“When I die” because Marley believed in everlasting life on earth
(Marley 2004, 6).11 After his assassination attempt Bob was asked why
he was afraid of assassination if he did not believe in death. Clearly
annoyed with the question, he responded that a person could die if,
for example, they stuck their head under an oncoming bus. Marley
went on to state: “You have to avoid [death]! Death does not exist for
me. God gave me this life and my estimation is, if he gives me this,
why should he take it back? Only the Devil says that everybody has
to die” (Goldman 2006, 271–72).12 As a Rastafarian Bob Marley did
not share conventional Christian notions of death and the afterlife; he
even died intestate based on his refusal to acknowledge death. The
fact that Marley was buried in the largest state funeral in Caribbean
history and now lies mummified for touristic and religious memorializing is at odds with his own beliefs as a Rastafarian.
Rastas see themselves as liberated from the power of death and
often view the event of death as the punishment for sin (Owens 1982,
136). Chevannes tells the story of a Rastafarian who refused to bury
his deceased mother or have anything to do with her body. Finally the
neighbors intervened. The Rasta’s reasoning was, “I man don’t deal
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with the dead, only with the living” (Chevannes 1994, 203). Rita Marley
has written that when Bob’s manager, Don Taylor, was shot five times
and lay motionless on the ground, no one would touch him because
they thought he was dead. It was Bob Marley, though, who overcame
the Rasta aversion to death and tended to his manager (Marley and
Jones 2004, 149). The Rastafarian restriction against meat, referred to
as “dedders,” is also due to their life-affirming philosophy (Sheridan
1999, 132). Many Rastas reject death altogether, saying that true Rastas
cannot die as long as they hold steadfast to their faith in Haile Selassie,
and when death does occur it is reasoned that the departed committed
a grievous sin or strayed from the righteous path and was punished by
Jah (Chevannes 1994, 203). According to Owens, Rastas take no part in
celebrations of death and believe that other religions, like Christianity,
are preoccupied with death:
In order to express their revulsion to the corruption manifest in the
world’s death-worship, the Rastas believe that they must keep far from
the presence of death. . . . As a result they take no part in funeral services
and refuse even to speak about death. (Owens 1982, 138)
Kitzinger’s research among Rastafari in the 1960s confirms these attitudes toward death:
Death only comes to those Rastas who have sinned, or to those murdered by white medicine or poisoned by white food. Death does not
exist for the true Rasta, and he will not attend a funeral of a member of
the faith (unless it is evident that he was killed by white people), since
this would be acknowledging something that does not exist. Nor will he
touch a dead body. (Kitzinger 1969, 240–62)
The problem with the bulk of scholarly literature on Rastafarian attitudes toward death is that it is not current. Kitzinger was working in
the late 1960s, Chevannes’ original work is based on ethnographic field
research conducted in 1974 and 1975, and even Owens’s book is more
than thirty years old. As such, while these sources can tell us about
the beliefs surrounding death and the afterlife of Rastafarians a few
generations ago, it is obvious based on the response to Marley’s death
in 1981 that these beliefs have changed significantly.
This changing attitude was first pinpointed by Chevannes when he
revisited this issue some years after his initial research. Based on the
funerals of prominent Rasta reggae singers Marley, Peter Tosh, and
Buried above the Ground
81
Garnet Silk, Chevannes argues that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
has become a vehicle for negotiating death for Rastas because it is the
only institution able to mediate between Rastafarian orthodoxy and
traditional Jamaican funerary traditions (Chevannes 1999, 350). The
Ethiopian Orthodox Church appealed to Rastas because of its association with Haile Selassie and because it lacked the colonial baggage associated with North American and European forms of Christianity. In
addition, Rastas who were baptized into the church were not asked to
renounce their belief in the divinity of Selassie, even though the church
itself does not recognize that divinity (Chevannes 1999, 350). For these
reasons, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church became a logical institution to
oversee many Rastafarian funerals when the need arose.
Rastas base much of their worldview on a literal and black-nationalistic interpretation of the Christian Bible. Their doctrine of death and
burial, according to Nyabingi sect member Ras Joe, comes from Psalms
6:5: “For in the grave there is no remembrance of thee” (Fergusson
2004, 156). Another commonly used biblical verse is Jesus’ directive in
Luke to “let the dead bury their dead.” Peter Tosh used the Luke verse
to celebrate the living, not the dead, in his song “Burial”: “Let the dead
bury their dead / And who is to be fed, be fed / I ain’t got no time to
waste on you / I’m a livin’ man and I got work to do.”13 Neither Tosh
nor Bunny Wailer attended Marley’s funeral for this reason: “Them man
are livers—they do not deal with death” (Fergusson 2004, 155). Ras Joe
argues that it is not strange by Rasta custom for Marley’s former bandmates to avoid his funeral—Marley would not have attended theirs
either (Fergusson 2004, 155). Yet thousands of people, including many
Rastas, did attend Marley’s funeral.
The prime directive in Rastafari is to get to Zion. Zion is a code word
for Ethiopia, a sort of real-time heaven. But whereas enslaved Africans
believed that in death they would return to Africa (Owens 1982, 139),
Rastafarians invert this and claim that repatriation is something that
will happen in life. Christianity taught the enslaved Africans to be obedient and subservient and wait to achieve their reward in the afterlife.
Rastafarians—who not only identify as descendants of enslaved Africans but also see themselves in a similar scenario of “sufferation” at
the hands of neocolonialists—saw this colonial Christian doctrine as a
ploy to deceive blacks. Instead, they preach that Rastas do not die to
see God, they live to see God (Owens 1982, 140).14
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Brent Hagerman
This is what makes Bob Marley’s mausoleum so intriguing to students of religious studies. In light of Rasta custom, how do you account
for such an elaborate and unusual funeral and preservation of Marley’s
body?
There is very little literature written by Rastafarians that would
clarify their position on death. Former Twelve Tribes leader Vernon
Carrington, known as Prophet Gad, has said that Rastas try to avoid
death, but he concedes that sometimes it does occur. “When death
come, it come. But right now we’re trying to avoid that death business. But when that come, you can’t run from it. As for us, we don’t
die. We only sleep, waiting for the resurrection” (Williams 1997).
Gad’s belief in resurrection can be contextualized in the death beliefs of Africans throughout the Caribbean during slavery. They
believed that once dead in exile the body would be resurrected in
Africa. The afterlife, then, was the fulfillment of repatriation (Stewart 2005, 33). According to Fergusson, Rastas believe that a person
manifests in body after body; Haile Selassie is the same person as
the biblical King David, only in a new body (Fergusson 2004, 155–56).
Some Rastas believe that Marley was the “fleshical manifestation of
Joseph, son of Jacob” (Fergusson 2004, 155–56), so Marley did not
die, he merely exchanged one body for another, as he had since biblical times. Owens clarifies how reincarnation is different for Rastas
than, say, Hindus. Reincarnation does not include a death and rebirth
but rather several bodily manifestations of the same person over
generations. Unlike Hinduism, death has no place in the equation
for Rastafarians. They believe that a person can simply disappear,
or take many diverse appearances (Owens 1982, 141–42).15 In this
way Rastafarians remain Ethiopians, who were reincarnated into
Jamaican-born bodies. This doctrine is extended to Marcus Garvey,
said to be the reincarnated John the Baptist, and Haile Selassie, said
to be the seventy-second manifestation of God on earth (Owens
1982, 141–42). According to Rita Marley, death is not the end of life,
as the spirit continues. She has said that she saw Marley disappear,
not die, and insists that “Bob didn’t die. . . . He’s somewhere, I’ll see
him sometime” and calls this “reincarnation in a positive way” (Marley and Jones 2004, 171–73).
Buried above the Ground
83
Between Babylon and Zion
Given the diversity of Rastafarian beliefs surrounding death, it is no
surprise that Rastafarians are not of a single mind on whether or not
Marley’s body should be repatriated to Ethiopia. Mortimo Planno, Marley’s own spiritual guru and the man who counseled him when he first
converted to Rastafari, said that he sees nothing wrong with Rita moving Bob’s remains (Younge 2005). A friend of Marley’s from Trenchtown, Benjamin Cole, said that he would be buried in Ethiopia if he
could because “as a Rasta, Ethiopia is my destiny” (Younge 2005). In an
editorial in online magazine Rasta Ites, another Rasta finds precedence
for moving Marley’s remains in Exodus 13:19, where the children of
Israel carry the bones of Joseph out of Egypt (Sista Marydread 2005).
Rita Marley, herself a Rasta, cites her husband’s religious beliefs as
the reason for her decision to move his remains. Dub poet and Rastafarian Mutabaruka has supported Rita Marley by reasoning that “Bob
Marley seh him is a Rastaman and him must goh ah Ethiopia” (Walters
2005). Mutabaruka lashed out at the government’s objection to the
plan, claiming that their attempt to keep Marley in Jamaica “is part of a
broader conspiracy to separate the king of reggae from his Rastafarian
beliefs” (Walters 2005). Perhaps Mutabaruka is onto something. Certainly this debate has shown that the government, the tourism industry,
Jamaican citizens, mausoleum custodians, local businesses, and international fans have all ignored Marley’s beliefs.
But not all Rastas or Rasta sympathizers agree with this. Ras John,
who runs www.reggae.com, writes that when Marley knew he was
terminally ill he left Germany and wanted to go home to Jamaica, not
Africa, to die. Moving Marley to Ethiopia, he writes, “would be a sad
betrayal of Bob, Jamaica, and fans of his music and message whose
seed grew out of fertile soil in Jamaica” (Ras John 2004). Likewise, a
post to an online Rastafarian discussion group complains that “there is
nothing whatsoever to be gained by moving Bob. All this serves to do is
take the lickle [little] tourist bread out of the average Jamaican’s mouth
and transfer it to Africa. People from all over the world visit Marley’s
grave site in Jamaica” (Menacetobabylon 2005). Roger Steffens, one of
the journalists and broadcasters who has promoted Marley’s music in
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America since the early seventies, also believes that Marley should remain in Jamaica and makes an interesting argument based on a historical reading of Rastafari. He calls the proposed repatriation of Marley’s
remains appalling:
Bob never expressed any interest to be buried in Ethiopia. They don’t believe that Selassie is God in Ethiopia, and that was the prime motivation
behind Marley’s music. The country that created the faith of Rastafari is
Jamaica, not Ethiopia. (“Rita Plans to Exhume Bob Marley’s Remains”
2005)
One of the most compelling Rastafarian voices for keeping Marley in
Jamaica is that of Rastafarian author, music journalist, and filmmaker
Barbara Blake-Hannah. Blake-Hannah concedes that Marley did say he
wanted to live in Ethiopia but counters by pointing out that he never
said he wanted to be buried there. She offers four reasons why Jamaica
should remain Marley’s home. First, taking into account the political
situation in Ethiopia at the time of Marley’s death, she argues that
Marley would not have wanted to be buried in a country led by MarxistLeninist dictator Mengistu, who not only dethroned Haile Selassie but
also removed the imperial lion from the Ethiopian flag.
This was not the Ethiopia Bob wanted to live in, much less be buried in.
If he had expressed such a desire before dying, Bob’s close ties with the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church and its Western Hemisphere Archbishop
would have made this instantly possible. (Blake-Hannah 2005)
Second, she defends the decision to bury Marley at Nine Miles because the rural locale is in harmony with his naturalist beliefs. She also
argues that interring him in the humble place of his birth was appropriate because it brought the life of “this son of Jamaican soil” full circle.
Third, Blake-Hannah does not support Rita Marley’s point of view that
the family has the right to decide where Marley is buried. She questions the definition of family in this instance, rightly asking “does ‘the
family’ include all of Bob’s children and the mothers who gave birth to
them?” Finally, in a move that seems to contradict much of Rastafarian
scholarship and history, Blake-Hannah argues that “Rastas—Bob especially—have always considered Jamaica as “‘the throne of Jah’ and the
present centre of the spiritual universe.” Her geopiety transforms Jamaica from the land of historical captivity to the land made special be-
Buried above the Ground
85
cause it is where Haile Selassie revealed himself to the Rastafari. This
is made palpable when Blake-Hannah says that Marley was a son of
“JAH-maica” (Blake-Hannah 2005). The island then, once Babylon, can
now be viewed as a suitable resting place for a deceased Rastafarian.
Conclusion
Based on the scholarship on Rastafarian beliefs of death, one would
expect that Rastas would not care what happened to Marley’s dead
body, as true Rastas cannot die and the dead are not celebrated or memorialized. As such, a tradition-based response to the debate over Marley’s body would ignore the feud altogether. Using this tradition-based
theory, Marley was not a true Rasta or committed some transgression
in order to invite mortal punishment. Bunny Wailer believed this when
he refused to attend his friend’s funeral. His feelings were that Marley’s
death was a result of the “wages of his sin and corruption” (Marley and
Jones 2004, 174). Likewise, Chevannes surmised that when founding
member Robert Hinds died and was buried at a funeral with only his
sister in attendance, it was because other members stayed away from
the funeral because they “accused him of immorality and of compromising Rastafari by getting mixed up in politics” (Chevannes 1999, 348).
Yet despite this scholarly-depicted doctrine of death, Rastas do agree
that eventually the body can die and the remains of those who “pass
forward” have to be buried or otherwise disposed of. And the example
of the funerals of prominent Rastas Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Prophet
Gad, and Mortimo Planno indicate that Rastafari no longer takes a
hands-off approach to death.
In regard to the issue at hand, the Rastafarian response to the feud
has taken two forms. Some, such as Rita Marley, Mutabaruka, and
Mortimo Planno, have said that Bob Marley, as a Rasta, should be
repatriated to Africa, as it is the spiritual home of Rastafari. Others,
such as Blake-Hannah, revalorize Jamaica as JAH-maica, the centre
of the Rastafarian universe. No one I read for this research supported the Rastafarian doctrine of death as outlined by the scholars
above. Of interest too is that the non-Rastas in the debate paid no
attention to Marley’s religion. Even with the Rastafarian symbolism
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Brent Hagerman
inherent at the site and in Marley’s music, Marley’s religion and his
own view of death was not a concern to fans, the government, or
average Jamaicans.
Chevannes finds in Marley’s veneration an important link with
African-derived beliefs about ancestor worship found across several
Afro-Jamaican religions. He sees Rasta heroes such as Marley and Tosh
becoming deified as ancestor spirits through veneration. The Jamaican
worldview, he says, allows the understanding that people can possess
divinity, join the godhead (Chevannes 1999). Stewart calls this the
community of ancestors passed on to Caribbean religions from African
forebears (Stewart 2005). But whereas Stewart says that Rastas have
no belief in this divine community (Stewart 2005, 131), Chevannes posits that the veneration of Rastafarians such as Marley, Tosh, and Silk
amounts to the apotheosis of these men.
Marley’s death and the need to commemorate him in this way has
led to a change in Rastafarian doctrine. The death of this very popular
and public Rastafarian was the first time Rastafari had to openly confront the need for burial rites (Chevannes 1999, 348). Even Selassie’s
death in 1975 was not acknowledged by many Rastas, who treated
the reports as false; Marley’s own “Jah Live” is a moving testament
to this belief. Marley’s acceptance of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
no doubt helped normalize the Christian faith for many Rastafarians,
some of whom had found the faith unsuitable because it did not share
their belief of Selassie’s divinity. Bob’s extravagant funeral and Rita
Marley’s annual celebrations on her husband’s birthday, originally
held at the mausoleum, have also contributed to the normalizing of
death rituals and commemoration for Rastafarians. More research
into this needs to be done but, after all, other prominent Rastas who
have since passed away have had large public funerals, and Peter
Tosh, the man who sang “I no go no one burial,”16 is even interred in
a mausoleum of his own open to fans. It seems, then, that the traditional Rasta belief of everlasting life and repatriation to Zion in this
lifetime has shifted to make room for the contingency of death. The
debate over whether to move Bob Marley’s remains from his mausoleum in Nine Miles to Shashemene, Ethiopia, demonstrates this shift
in Rastafarian thinking.
Buried above the Ground
87
Notes
1. The January announcement was by no means a surprise; she had
made these intentions publicly known in her autobiography the previous
year (Marley and Jones 2004, 171). The book also comments on the original decision to lay Marley to rest in Jamaica, saying that it was fitting at
the time, but that the best place would have been Ethiopia, “the place he
dreamed about and saw himself” (Marley and Jones 2004, 171). Rita Marley
herself has moved to Ghana and left a piece of Bob’s locks in Ethiopia (Marley and Jones 2004, 197).
2. The number 144,000 is taken from Revelation 14.
3. For instance, instead of using the word dedicated, with its homophonic
association with dead, Rastas would say livicated.
4. Greenberg says that after Jobson’s appeal, the Marley family asked him
to make the film as well, even though he had never made a film before.
5. Moskowitz (2006, 116) cites the number 40,000.
6. The combination of celebrity/holy man is further evident in the fact that
a Marley relic, a lock of hair, was sold through Christie’s in 2003 for £2,585.
Marley, in a move uncharacteristic of Rastas, apparently cut off the lock for a
female fan in 1980 (Milmo 2003).
7. Marley’s father, a white Jamaican civil servant, was scarcely involved
in his son’s life.
8. Campbell (1987) argues that the dreadlocks style originated from
pictures of Mau Mau warriors the Rastas had seen. This theory, however, is
contested by Chevannes (1994, x–xi), who argues that the hairstyle originated
with a Jamaican Rastafarian organization known as the Youth Black Faith and
signified the Nazarite vow of Samson (Chevannes 1994, 158).
9. For instance, see Hansing (2001) and Savishinsky (1999).
10. Lone Ranger’s “Natty Burial,” Peter Tosh’s “Burial,” and Bunny Wailers’
“Burial.”
11. Rita’s statement contradicts the documentary Spiritual Journey,
which says that Bob predicted he would die at the age of thirty-six (Parkinson
and Santilli 2003).
12. Capitals and punctuation as in original.
13. Peter Tosh, “Burial,” on Legalize It (Sony Music, 1976).
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Brent Hagerman
14. There is another parallel here to the religion of the enslaved Africans.
Heaven and hell for enslaved Africans were physical places, not abstract
ideas, and God, as well as a Satan, were actual persons that possibly could be
encountered in everyday life. Heaven was often viewed as a geographic locale
such as Africa, Canada, or Jerusalem. With this in mind, Rita Marley’s wish
to transport her husband to Africa could be read as a desire to send him to
heaven to meet with the living God.
15. Early Rastafarian leader Leonard Howell is considered to have disappeared, not died.
16. Peter Tosh, “Burial,” on Legalize It (Sony Music, 1976).
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Jamaican Observer.
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Bremer, Thomas S. 2004. Blessed with Tourists: The Borderlands of Religion
and Tourism in San Antonio. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press.
Burrell, Ian. 2005. “Why Bob Marley Can’t Rest in Peace.” Independent. February 1.
Campbell, Howard. 2008. “Teary Farewell for Bob’s Mom.” Jamaica Gleaner,
April 29.
Chevannes, Barry. 1994. Rastafari: Roots and Ideology. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.
———. 1999. “Between the Living and the Dead: The Apotheosis of Rastafari
Heroes.” Pp. 337–56 in Religion, Diaspora, and Cultural Identity, ed. John
W. Pulis. New York: Gordon and Breach.
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OchoRios/zionBus.htm (accessed April 19, 2007).
Creel, Margaret. 1988. A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and CommunityCulture among the Gullahs. New York: New York University Press.
“Family to Decide on Bob Marley Move.” 2005. Guardian, January 15.
Farley, Christopher J. 2007. “A Note on Bob Marley’s Birthday.” February 6,
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Fergusson, Isaac. 2004. “So Much Things to Say: The Journey of Bob Marley.” Pp. 144–60 in Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright: The Bob Marley
Reader, ed. Hank Bordowitz. Cambridge: Da Capo.
Goldman, Vivien. 2006. The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob
Marley and the Wailers’ Album of the Century. New York: Three Rivers
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Greenberg, Alan. 2006a. DVD. “Exploring The Land of Look Behind,” a special
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Greenberg, Alan. 2006b. “Production Notes,” Land of Look Behind: Making
the Imaginary Film. Subversive Cinema.
Hansing, Katrin. 2001. “Rasta, Race, and Revolution: Transnational Connections
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Kitzinger, Sheila. 1969. “Protest and Mysticism: The Rastafari Cult of Jamaica.”
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the Rise of Rastafarianism. Chicago: Lawrence Hill.
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Gonna Be Alright: The Bob Marley Reader, ed. Hank Bordowitz. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo.
Marley, Rita, and Hettie Jones. 2004. No Woman, No Cry: My Life with Bob
Marley. New York: Hyperion.
McDannell, Colleen. 1995. Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Menacetobabylon. 2005. “Rita to Take Bob Home.” In RastaItes. http://groups
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Milmo, Cahal. 2003. “Marley’s Dreadlock Fetches £2,500.” Independent. May 1.
Mitchell, Anthony. 2005. “Ethiopia Reburial for Bob Marley.” Guardian. January 13.
Moskowitz, David V. 2006. Caribbean Popular Music: An Encyclopedia of
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Moskowitz, David. 2007. The Words and Music of Bob Marley. Westport: Praeger.
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Parkinson, Mike, and Ray Santilli. 2003. Spiritual Journey. DVD. WHE International.
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“Rita Plans to Exhume Bob Marley’s Remains.” 2005. Jamaican Observer,
January 13.
Ritter, Judith. 2007. “Marley Mecca Draws Reggae Faithful.” Calgary Herald,
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Savishinsky, Neil J. 1999. “Transnational Popular Culture and the Global
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Sheridan, Maureen. 1999. Bob Marley, Soul Rebel: The Stories behind Every
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Steffens, Roger. 1998. “Bob Marley: Rasta Warrior.” Pp. 253–65 in Chanting
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of the Jamaican Religious Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Williams, Carol J. 2005. “Marley Grave Dispute has Little Peace, Love: Wife Wants
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Younge, Gary. 2005. “Bad Vibes as Tug-of-Love Hits Marley Anniversary.” Guardian, February 5.
Book Review
Teruyuki Tsuji
Kwansei Gakuin University (Nishinomiya, Japan)
Governing Sound:
The Cultural Politics of
Trinidad’s Carnival Musics
by Jocelyne Guilbault
Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2007. xii + 343 pp. ISBN: 0-226-31059-0 (cloth)
Jocelyne Guilbault’s Governing Sound sets out to present a “critical
genealogy of calypso” (p. 3). With carefully crafted introductory and
explanatory passages, this book could serve as a reference text for anyone interested in calypso and its developments. However, Guilbault’s
specific aim is to explore fundamental questions of power, culture,
and identity construction, using calypso and other carnival musics
as ethnographic cases. She periodizes the history of calypso—i.e.,
she identifies critical junctures in which “calypso and its offshoots
emerged, contested, and mattered,” in typically distinct ways reflecting
peculiar “arrangement of power . . . [and the occasioned] politics of
culture” (p. 270).
The book is in two parts, each exploring different questions that,
together, frame the genealogy of calypso. Since the late eighteenth
century, Trinidad has been a recipient of immigrant laborers recruited
from different geo-cultural origins, which configured the society as
a remarkable racial and ethnic potpourri. Music is no exception:
Wadabagei, Vol. 13, No. 2
91
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Teruyuki Tsuji
Like religion and other cultural imports, musical expressions and
practices constituted a mosaic. Among other musical developments,
however, calypso came to be reckoned, by both Trinidadians and
non-Trinidadians, as representative of Trinidadian “national” culture
and identity. In the first half of the book, Guilbault examines “[w]
hat conditions of possibility and political technologies . . . have
allowed calypso to become the expression of national belonging in
Trinidad” (p. 2). The reification of a culture as it conforms to fixed
spatial bounds is necessarily an asymmetrical process. Certain cultural objects, practices, and relative consciences are selected and
appropriated, whereas others are devalued as inconsistent and denied
their contribution to the emerging integrative whole. When valorized as
an emblem of the nation, the questions become “whom does calypso
represent, and whom does it exclude?” (p. 2). The “Land of Calypso”—
the well-established synonym for Trinidad—has stigmatized other
musical forms and expressions and those associated with them as
antithetical to or an illegitimate part of the nation.
Placed in hegemonic position in Trinidadian soundscape, calypso
has become a “site of empowerment and a target of competing powers”
(p. 3). The newly developed “conditions of possibility and political
technologies” have given birth to—or made more audible—alternative
musical constructions that embrace different lyric focuses, rhythmic
patterns, and instrumentation, including soca, rapso, ragga soca, and
chutney soca. In the second part of the book, drawn from an array of
interviews and observations, Guilbault explores “how [these] various
music styles are constructed in relation to, and positioned against,
the hegemonic discourse of calypso” (pp. 169–70). As with calypso,
whom do these “offshoots” represent (and exclude)? And “socially and
politically, what contributions did [these constructions and groups associated with them] hope to have made—and still aim to achieve?” (p.
203).
In the conclusion, Guilbault reminds us, “This book [is] about
governing sound” (p. 270). Since the poststructuralist turn, the enduring
precariousness of power has been reduced to a site of struggle, where
either the powerful or the powerless become fully capable of (re)
producing culture and symbol as purposive instruments. The powerful
are necessarily absorbed in retaining or reinforcing their relative
position through ideological incorporation, whereas the powerless
Book Review
93
busily wage a war of resistance with “weapons of the weak.” In fact,
colonial repressions shaped Trinidad’s music scene: African slaves and
their descendants accumulated and performed their cultural capital,
like the ability to compose and sing, against colonial repression,
without which calypso would not have developed; musical offshoots
would not have emerged or become audible without what leading soca
singer/producer Michel Montano refers to as “will to transform” (p.
203) against the hegemonic audibility of calypso. Guilbault does not
minimize the implications of these individual and collective actions.
However, in her theorization, they constitute the “constellations
. . . that shape distinct outcomes in the calypso scene” (p. 269).
In response, she uses the term agency as the various conditions,
including demographics, material conditions, historical events, and
intentional human actions, that shape and reshape Trinidad’s music
scene “in their articulation” (p. 269; emphasis in original). Sound is
not instrument to govern; it governs. Calypso and its offshoots, for
Guilbault, are not “resistance musics,” because they are true both to the
reified authenticity and originality that are necessarily the medium for
recognition and legitimacy and to the other self defined as illegitimate
by the same hegemonic discourse—“alternative constructions” (Nandy
1983), in my translation. This study serves as a powerful reminder that
assumptions about cultural hegemony and struggles against racially
or ethnically marked moral-political blocks merit closer empirical
examinations.
I resided in Trinidad in the second half of the 1990s, which,
according to Guilbault’s periodization, concurred with one of the critical junctures. In 1995, my first experience of playing mas(querade) was
reigned by Sonny Mann’s “Lotela,” a chutney soca. The latest soca,
ragga soca, and rapso called the tune in pre- and post-carnival fêtes.
While in Trinidad, however, I heard enough of the cliché: “We used
to have good music.” Trinidadian friends of mine apparently believed
that these offshoots were of far lower quality than calypso, although
they loved to wine and jump to them. They thought of calypso as
something that was withering, often referring to it in such terms as
“tradition” and “art(form).” The shared positionality with Guilbault
and dramatis personae in her ethnography allows me to sympathize
with this illuminating “thick description.” This is not to minimize its
contribution to general scholarship on music and culture. Governing
94
Teruyuki Tsuji
Sound is an exemplary analysis of culture and identity construction; it
is empirically grounded as well as theoretically and methodologically
insightful. Interrogating the research questions while locating them
within biographical ethnographies, Guilbault’s study makes heuristic
gains for wider audience of interdisciplinary cultural studies, as well
as ethnomusicology and Caribbean scholarship, comparable to Gordon
Rohlehr’s Calypso and Society in Pre-independence Trinidad.
References
Khan, Aisha. 2004. “Sacred Subversions? Syncretic Creoles, the Indo-Caribbean, and ‘Culture’s In-between.’” Radical History Review 89:165–84.
Nandy, Ashis. 1983. Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under
Colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rohlehr, Gordon. 1990. Calypso and Society in Pre-independence Trinidad.
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad: Author.
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