PART I
America can been see as the melting pot of cultures that goes beyond ethnicity , race and social boundaries. Whilst it may be better than a lot of places, for a Jamaican it may feel like throwing a dog in a pig’s pen. The dog will definitely survive and may hold his head down in the trough and wriggle its tail, from a distance one will be able to tell the difference.
My intention is not to demean each nation but to highlight the issues that will forever prevent us from truly uniting in this nation.
More than eighty percent of Jamaicans wake up with the horn of survival blowing in their ear, so much so that it becomes a part of their blood and their veins hum to the horn’s tune. ”How will I survive this, why I must survive this”. The hunger, daily living and surviving without love. Here are a few ways reasons why some of us may not be able to relate to some Americans;-
GANG-
An American may join a gang to feel a sense of belonging, that sense of belonging may or may not involve protection from the gang but an American joins a gang to fill a void that really doesn’t need to be filled. Their sense is passion and obligation to the gang they may not necessarily need is incomprehensible to a Jamaican who joins a gang out of a true need to survive. The gangs that are in Jamaica consist of inner city youths who truly feel that there is no other way to survive than to steal. Oddly enough, Jamaican gang bangers will work if given an opportunity to do so , mainly because they feel they are working;- robbing, killing and threatening. Everything is scheduled and over-seen by a bigger boss so they feel they are really working.
A sense of belonging sit’s in an American gang-banger’s chest , like a sponge, waiting to soak up a place to call home. They say home is where the heart is and for the American, that is where his loyalty will be. To his gang, the place where he felt complete.”Even the colors of the chameleon is for survival, not beauty”. For the Jamaican gang-banger, there is no loyalty . His dedication to the gang is for the sake of keeping food on his table if there should arise an occasion where the gang isn’t feeding him, the gang will become the enemy almost immediately.
The Jamaican will never understand an American’s need for a gang. They are unable to relate to the codes of the American gang and fit in with its structure. Although many Jamaican men who are in America’s prisons have quickly joined some of it’s gangs , again for survival, they rarely admit they are in it because it is taught from early to be a one man army hence the reason why it is quite rare to see Jamaicans fight in packs.
The American ganger may feel a sense of completion once he has joined the gang and proceeds that the gang may allocate will not change an American’s perception of life or lifestyle. A Jamaican on the other hand will get rich from the proceedings and switch, may even educate himself via the History Channel and begin looking for his own way to get rich because he is constantly seeking to survive ..Even the colors of the chameleon are for survival…not beauty.
Baggage and Economics-
Fighting for freedom drummed in the veins of the slaves who landed in Jamaica .In fact, the slaves who were deployed to Jamaica were the ones who were thought would bring the most unrest to plantations and so Jamaica became the drop off point for our unruly ancestors.Our D.N.A speaks war, strife and makes a silent call for blood. It is only in Jamaica where it is possible to see a well oiled body, naked , jumping a fence to initiate a fight. Once a baby’s feet hits the ground, most Jamaican mothers feel the hugs should be less. If a study were to be done on Jamaican children who have heard their parents profess love for them, more than 50% of the children wouldn’t have heard those words. In fact many of the unplanned children in Jamaica happened because a woman was trying to ”survive. In many of these cases, there is an unspoken disconnect between parent and child especially if the man is an absentee father. That child is a reminder of what his/her mother could not attain and children are fed these blurred lines of love throughout their life. Jamaicans have real baggage , the disconnect is never reconnected and the cycle continues.
Children turn to adults with the misconception that survival means love and not sacrifice even if there were many sacrifices made in the home for them to survive. There is an unspoken percentage of absentee mothers in Jamaica’s society. Mothers who have abandoned their children and have never searched for them, mothers who have abandoned their children without a real reason and mothers who abandoned their children for the next man who will help them ”survive”. Jamaicans baggage is invisible to the unseen eye and many carry it without knowing that its there but its real.
A Jamaican may never truly understand an American’s baggage, it appears as if its superficial but it cuts deep. Slavery’s remnants taught Americans that there is great joy waking up not fighting to stay up. Survival for them meant passivity , and invisibility. The less the master was aware of the American slave, the longer his life would be. Survival meant not resisting, not fighting, not showing up, staying in their lane, even after slavery.
Many American slave children were sent to other plantations far away from their biological parents but were mothered by other slaves on the plantations they were assigned to. This in my opinion, taught them a kind of incompressible compassion. A compassion that allowed them to love in a way only they knew or could understand.
It may be explained by an American that they feel oppressed by society and its opportunities because they are more sensitive than Jamaicans about what goes on around them. A Jamaican may not understand because he/she is too busy trying to survive to see the world crumbling unless it falls on them. To some Americans there is no purpose in achieving because survival means something totally different for them.
America’s economic standing from slavery allowed free, willing involvement between man and woman in its society and although they may be a few gold diggers few and far between , couples come together out of mutual feeling and not realized out of opportunity for one party. Children, if unplanned are not seen as a burden. An American mother will look for her children because she has had to look for them from the plantation and has had to love them from afar. Letting them go meant giving away a piece of themselves to be returned at a later date. A Jamaican won’t see their scars and will never be able to understand it but…A child who has no mother will not have scars to show on his back. ~Nigerian Proverb.
Part II will Race/Class/ Cultural differences
*Will edit in the late morning so if uno see errors mi haffi run to mi bed oo*
Please read oo dont skip
Well said oooo..
porn-st*r won’t sign in
:thumbup
This article has so much truth…Powerful article….
I agree with most of it, but the last part (paragraph) is not always true, it happens on both sides of the fence.
Tinan to be honest mi never meet up a Jamaican mother whey eva seh she a look fi har child yet. Mi have a family member now that has been abandoned by his mother from before he was 2 in Jamaica…him a 20 now and still nothing from her
I have seen the same thing here, mi tiad fi si pan di news where American women just get up and leave their kids, fi man, money, food, drugs, car etc. and never look back. The same thing happens in Jamaica and when you think of it, every other country you can think of. I have seen and heard stories of Jamaican women who have looked for, and at times successfully find their children, most of the times these things are not highlighted on social media, because it is not “mix-up” or because it is not seen as “news” so it not as important to those on the outside looking in, sometimes some of these women(here and Ja.) are not as educated about what to do and therefore have no idea where to start, don’t have the resources (money), are afraid of being ridiculed, or just think that the children are better off where they are than with them (because they are not in a place where they should be, financially,physically or mentally. I am not condoning it, because I can’t see myself leaving my kids anywhere no matter what, God forbid this ever happening, but if I was in a situation where I see that my children would be better off without me, and would have a better life and chance at life without me,I would make that sacrifice, but I would not just leave them like that: knowing that I was capable and able to support, love and care for them. I don’t think it is as simple/black and white, as that last paragraph or a couple other alludes, because I don’t think that this is only a “Jamaican women thing”, you have “carriers of children” everywhere, having a child makes you the biological mother, how you care for and protect your children and their future is what makes you a mother/parent. I do not like the generalization at all, because this is an issue not particular to any one nation, it happens here, there and many other countries. I, like a lot of women here and all over, believe that my mom is the best person in the world, and there are those that believe that their mom is the worst;it is sad and it happens, but I do not believe that it happens more with Jamaican women. The part that states that unplanned for children here is not seen as a burden, not true, planned and unplanned pregnancies are seen as a burden to many women, that is why they have so many abortion clinics,legal and illegal here and as many children wondering the streets and in orphanages etc. At the same time I am looking at the number of single mothers in Jamaica that have gone through hell and back for their children,ensuring that they are productive members of society, without any fathers present, and if he is present, no matter how nasty, evil or dirty he is, she still pushes on because she is focused on the fact that it is her child, irrespective of what or who the father is. The part where the author says that the women that were on the plantations in Jamaican were allowed to keep their kids? that they were not separated as they were here? and if so that they did not love them, not even enough to love them from afar? or just did not care enough to look for them? therefore are not as vigilant with their kids? I don’t think so. If this was the case we would have an island filled with motherless children. That is what I do not agree with. There are a lot of things that we do not see or hear, but they do happen, sometimes it is just that it is not brought to the forefront/spotlight like other things are. It is a thought provoking piece true and had me thinking, liked the metaphorical usage, and parallelisms as well..
Let me name three cases of Jamaican mothers I know personally
1. She had one set of children in Jamaica, migrated to england, had a second set…left those in england came to the us had another two…9 children in all and never helped none not even the ones in the U.S none of the children have anything to do with her
2. One had a set of children in the country, left them with the man..came to kingston…had a few more left that man with them and went to another man who she had children for and left them also then go live with a man with his…a when dem children deh get big two a dem look fi har n find har
3. She had about 10 children and disappeared on them one day..someone find her when one dead and called her to tell her one had died she said she didn’t know who they were talking about. ..I dont know no Jamaican mother in my life time that abandoned their children then go back go look fi dem and it have nothing fi do with social media or mixup..They just have a different mindset that is all
4. Mi know a next one left 6 come to farrin have 3 more and didn’t do anything for none a dem in terms of mothering.
When a woman gets pregnant here she will mostly abort if she n the man not on good terms..if she dont want children yet etc..imagine a woman in jamaica getting pregnant n keeping it knowing that the next one is going to have to drink sugar and water just like the one before…Here women can get some help..
I am not disputing the fact that that happens, I am saying that it happens here as well, that is not more prevalent in Jamaica, than here in the USA. I am saying that mothers here also do the same thing:they leave their children with their mothers, and never go back, leave them with friends and never go back, drop them off a store and never go back, get up and leave them in the house but them end up in jail because the police find them and lock them up. There are several shows here where you see kids seh dem searching for their parents, they just leave and never return, and even sometimes when they do find their mom, the mother seh she nuh want have nuttn fi do wid them. Innah my likkle country weh me come from, I have seen more than one mother leave, go abroad, (England, Canada, USA) and we did not hear nothing from them for years, left them with them grandmother, father, next door neighbor, until one day, them return and took them all away, grandmother and all. At the same time I have seen those that left and never return. There are a lot of things that you might hear and see and I don’t & vs versa, just because I don’t see or hear it I am going to say it cannot or never happened. Women all over breed up and leave their kids, start another set and leave that set and carry on and not just black women, women of all creed,race, rich and or poor. It has nothing to do with whether they are Jamaicans or not, it has to do with that or those particular women, their upbringing and a lot of other factors, most importantly how they choose to lead their lives as an adults,the women that do these things are very selfish and just like some animals and anuh Jamaica alone dem deh Met dem deh everyweh. You misunderstood my point about the use of social media. I mentioned social media, to say that we might not hear about it happening often on “social media” because people quicker to post “mixup” or things that they consider to be shocking, more than they are to posting things like “hey a mom just returned and is now caring for her children”, that is not as eye catching and or won’t mean much to the masses, per se. So you might not see it for that reason. Pickney deh yah a eat outah garbage and then nuh hab not even a likkle watah wid sugar fi drink or a cracker to each because the mother is more concerned about her drug habit and har man. I still say is not only Jamaican women…no Met dah nuh right…
Well u touch a point..the mother concerned bout a drug habit but those in Ja dont have a habit though..mi nuh seh it dont happen here but as to what I have seen mi never see one a search fi dem children yet u say it has happened and I believe that…I hope many more do the same
Metty u touched on some very good points, very thought provoking, never really view it from that angle but its always good when u have a different perspective. Excellent job, but the part with respect to d American versus d Jamaican mother attitude towards reconnecting with an abandoned child is it dependent or influenced by culture of our ancestors or just d individual outlook on life & mindset?? Also d part which refers to willing involvement between men & women” As we r fully aware d curse of single parenting & broken families has hold a firm grip on d Jamaican society. Marriage is sacred & alot of emphasis is placed on it in d US while not so much in JA, but I believe our past gives us an identity, its there to remind us, it may dictate who we were but we get a chance to determine what we become. Some of us r d same ppl that our ancestors were & our descendants r going to go through alot of d same situations we do, but we must bot let it make us a prisoner of our past. Both cultures/nations attitude to work are also quite different, some Americans have a “go getter” attitude while some JA have a “bring it come gi mi” mentality, but we just have to study our past, learn from it & it will shape our future…
dwl@bring it come gi mi
a real thing man lol