The Caribbean Woman And The Labour Movement

I come in the wake of the Beijing Olympics where the Caribbean out-performed itself with Jamaica placing third in the Planet's display of achievement largely in the field of track and field. Usain Bolt and his three world record GOLD medals - a phenomenal feat - notwithstanding, it is the performances by our women led by Shelley- Ann Fraser in the 100 meters and Veronica Campbell in the 200 meters that confirmed my long held view about the centrality to Caribbean life and reality of those who belong to the gender other than my own. Being my mother's son has, in any case, impressed on me that fact. I grew up and was reared by a feisty grandmother deep in the bush of Jamaica where women are still respected if only because they were the ones who ran things - from farming through to the marketing of the produce while raising the children - her own and her daughters' own - and carrying the culture to guarantee to the future generation the values and attitudes necessary for survival and beyond. They, after all, have had to be the mothers who fathered the children even in the presence of men who unfortunately have been relegated to being mere providers, of money that is, rather than of some of the caring and compassion that a growing child so badly needs. Which brings me back to the girl power that asserted itself in the Beijing Olympics. For one thing, the victors were for the most part 'poor people pickney' brought up in the rural Caribbean/Jamaica or in the newly emerged urban ghetto or inner city as the Americans now prefer to designate that space. I view this (the display of the women most of whom who have the benefit of higher education) to be the result (albeit slow in coming) of the change from colonial outpost to independent (albeit struggling) nation. It has take this long to defeat the obscenities of colonial subjugation just as it is doing to emancipate ourselves from the mental slavery Marcus Garvey saw as a crippling phenomenon back in 1937 and which a talented young Bob Marley seized to give us that immortal couplet in his Redemption Songs. There is another factor evident in that display of Olympian Women's power - it is the existence of the underpinning support of the family. No less the stars of the winners' performances on the track were their mothers and extended families. They had all had the support of relatives - mothers, aunts, fathers (yes fathers - biological and surrogate ones like their male coaches) and an extended group of cousins many times removed. It is they who encouraged, weaned, even cajoled the young aspirants into commitment, dedication and sustain application, hard work and discipline. On the media it is the women who did most of the talking, with one eloquent mother calling on the gunmen (with which Jamaica is now over endowed) to put away their guns and attend to their families. What a wonderful lesson for us all in the Caribbean. And it comes not from the politicians or the established certified leaders but from a woman who is one of the people from below, who has been a higgler but a first-rate parent taking opportunity of the new possibilities that her independent Jamaica offered by guiding her child with values that are life-enhancing, ensuring her entry into high school and tertiary education and encouraging her to aim for excellence in whatever she does. The other factor that impressed me was the sense of community that all this signifies. The old Caribbean, and certainly Jamaica, has been developed on the basis of co-ordinated social action in communities, ever since the abolition of slavery. This is evident in the mutual caring and help offered by forebears who engaged their humanity, built villages, invented designs for social living, finding expression in religious expressions (orthodox and unorthodox) and shaping the intangible heritage of artistic culture manifest in music, story-telling, recreational dance, religious rituals involving all these, and in folk philosophies which placed survival ahead of the severance and the suffering that marked the kaleidoscopic history and development of our region

Aesthetics · Art · Caribbean art · Ethnology · Genealogy · Movement (music · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · History