Caribbean bloggers take on race, class, gender, nation… and Nicki Minaj

Three very popular Caribbean bloggers have written recently about gender, race, class and nation in the region. These are must-read articles, check them out:

Annie Paul writes about the Caribbean Court of Justice Case currently being heard.  The case concerns the infringement of the rights (and sexual assault) of CARICOM citizen and Jamaican national, Shanique Myrie.  She examines notions of gendered respectability and class and how they are at the heart of this case:

This landmark case is not only about nationality, it’s also about ‘class’, the ungainly elephant in the room no one wants to explicitly mention. It is important to portray Myrie as ‘decent’ ‘respectable’ and ‘sober’ because the image of Jamaicans in the region is overwhelmingly influenced by the higglers, DJs and hustlers who often represent the face of Jamaica,  visiting, even migrating to other countries, where they are not always welcome.

Why? because these enterprising but capitally-challenged individuals (ie owning  little capital, whether financial or social) often violate all the dearly held norms of ‘decency’ ‘respectability’ and ‘good taste’ with their choice of garments, raw speech and boisterous behaviour. They regularly transgress the zealously guarded borders of civility and decorum as much as the borders of nation states which under the new Chaguaramas Treaty they now have a right to breach.

Perhaps this was why Myrie was given the finger when she arrived in prim and proper Barbados, regionally glossed as ‘Little England’. Not just because she was Jamaican but because she was perceived to be a particular kind of Jamaican. So @Emilynationwide was right to emphasize the outfit and demeanour of Ms Myrie. It may be extremely germane in the instant case.

The Eternal Pantomime examined  how race and class intersect to render some Trinbagonians as “sub-humans” or “niggas” who should be shot according to one journalist and his facebook friends:

Yesterday a man lost his entire family in seconds. Seconds. We can’t return them to him. Yesterday and this morning that man is firm in the knowledge that he may never receive justice…ever. Because in this corrupt narco state of a country the cliques protect their own. In the midst of wrenching grief, this man knows that the person responsible for killing his family may never be brought to justice. The community of Sea Lots responded angrily, impulsively and violently. The police and armed services responded back.

Meanwhile, on a computer somewhere, a citizen, who happens to be a freelance journalist posts up a rant. It is both classist and racist. He sincerely believes that poor(economically) black people who protest should be shot and killed and cabbages planted on them. He is unapologetic. Within seconds, other people who have little to no clear details of the tragedy, but who also have a deep and abiding disgust for poor black people because they believe them to be a burden on society, click like on his status and add comments. Of the five people who clicked like, one is a police officer. Another one is a friend of mine; and yet another is an online persona I know who is quite comfortable with using the word Negro to describe and define Afro- descended people.

Tillah Willah took umbrage with Nicki Minaj’s description of Trinidad & Tobago as “nothing” demonstrating the extent to which this characterization relies on a homogenised understanding of blackness as outside of humanity.   It is a critique worth noting especially as some feminist scholars think of Minaj as queer, subversive and transgressive.

Maybe it’s all that peroxide that’s eaten through Nicki Minaj’s scalp and started affecting her brain.
Or maybe it’s just the contempt that all Trinbagonians have for their own. You know, the place that gives you so much, that all you can manage to do is bad talk it at every opportunity.
I’m not, as you might have guessed, a fan of Ms. Minaj. There is a lot of really good hip hop out there and she is not it.
In a moment of empathy, Ms. Minaj reached out to an American Idol competitor – a refugee from Liberia – to say that she was so happy that the two of them had made it alive out of their horrible countries and come to the earthly paradise known as the United States of America to have a shot at being human.
In one fell swoop she perpetuates the myth of the savage Third World and also the streets paved with gold that exist outside of these Third World hell holes.
You really have to wonder if Ms. Minaj has some sort of post traumatic stress disorder. But if she does, if she is yet to deal with the traumas of her childhood, she should see a specialist about it, instead of going on American television and describing her country, my country as ‘nothing’.
Also I am curious about the something that she says that she is now. I suppose having millions of dollars is success. It doesn’t matter if you get this money by acting like Oversexed Barbie. It doesn’t matter if you are part of a media machine that sexualises girlhood, that preaches bamsie shaking as the sure fire way to get attention. And if you’re a black woman of any kind of popularity you start to get progressively whiter the more famous you get.
It fits the mainstream world media agenda for us to continue to think that anywhere in the so-called Third World is backward and savage. Trinidad and Liberia are one and the same, although Trinidad has not had decades of civil war. Far from being an expression of solidarity with a fellow person of colour, she is spewing the same ignorance that lumps us all into one amorphous bunch of black savages who can’t help but kill each other.
Oh and by the way? Violence and poverty do not exist in Queens. Racism is a long past dream and we’re all just getting along and having a big old party.

From local journalists, to the Caribbean court of justice to Nicki Minaj, there’s lots to unpack about our understanding of blackness as outside of the human and how this is mediated by gender, class and nation.

Join the discussion…

Edited to add

Negril Stories also wrote about the Shanique Myrie case in an aptly named post “I am Shanique Myrie or Jamaicans and Women are also Human”. Check it out.

Get-of-out-jail-free card for rapists in Caribbean

Two recent cases reported in regional media demonstrate the extent of the injustice which girls who survive sexual assault face.

In the Cayman Islands a judge did not award a custodial sentence for a man who plead guilty to raping a 14-year-old girl because, “he had a wife and two children to support.” This along with the provisions for alternative sentencing, time spent on remand, his difficult childhood and psychological problems were offered up as reasons why a custodial sentence was not ordered.

The judge is reported as saying that “the most important thing was to create the circumstance where the defendant would never commit such an offence in the future.” He, however, failed to describe what exactly that would entail. It would certainly be useful to have practical and concrete advice on how we can collectively create the circumstances where no one ever commits sexual assault.  I’m not sure that deflecting responsibility from the persons who do is likely to be of much use.

All in all it seemed like a gross injustice and a suggestion that the rapist’s freedom and his patriarchal responsibilities were more important that the young girl’s life and right to bodily integrity. It really says a lot about our relative valuing of children and adults, girls and men.  Unpacking this decision also reveals the way in which heterosexual sex, even when criminal and coerced, is viewed as normal and inevitable.  Collectively we seem more moved towards safeguarding the future of the rapists than that of girls. We worry more about how an accusation of rape can ruin a man’s life and bury our heads in the sand about what the experience of rape does to a girl’s life. (Read Velika Lawrence’s story in the St. Lucia star. She is co-founder of PROSAF, an organisation which fights against child sexual abuse & incest).

In Antigua, a former principal and lay preacher escaped a custodial sentence after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.  It was reported that the girls mother made a “stirring plea for forgiveness”, saying that she and her daughter had forgiven the sexual predator and he was a family friend.

In addition, the forgiving mother  also used the fact that the former principal was the sole breadwinner of his family to argue for a non-custodial sentence.

In examining why domestic violence complainants vanish from Caribbean courts, anthropologist Mindie Lazarus-Black argues that a culture of reconciliation operates in the Caribbean:

I coined the term cultures of reconciliation to identify local norms and practices separate and apart from law, but that influence profoundly the decisions people make about what to do about violence in their lives. The concept is useful both: 1) as an analytical framework to capture how local ideas and practices coalesce into structural patterns that operate
against the institutionalized forces of law; and 2) as a research tool for cross-cultural investigation and analysis. More specifically, cultures of reconciliation reflect norms and practices intrinsic to “family,” “gender,” and “work” that intersect to keep men and women out of legal processes. Such norms and practices are learned, mostly early in life. (Source: VANISHING COMPLAINANTS: THE PLACE OF VIOLENCE IN FAMILY, GENDER, WORK, AND LAW).

Perhaps it is this same culture of reconciliation with its gendered and hierarchical valuing of women and men which operates as a barrier to justice for girls who survive sexual assault. Rapists in the region have a perpetual get-out-of-jail-free card and these are the ones who actually have to stand before the courts.  Our culture of silence means most rapes and cases of incest goes unreported, ignored, invisible or resolved outside the law.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Edited to add:

Another recent story in Caribbean news reflects the sympathy offered up to men who abuse girls in the region.  In the Bahamas,  the overwhelming majority of the members of the Pilgrim Full Baptist Temple voted to retain their disgraced Bishop as head of the church despite the fact that he is currently serving three years in jail for having sex with a  dependent.  One of his colleagues suggested that the Bishop has neither admitted his sins nor asked forgiveness for them and should seek professional help.  Nonetheless, it is clear he has the support of the majority of church members. I suspect that the rush to forgive comes from the church members understanding of the 16-year-old girl as having been a temptress and the Bishop as unable to help himself.  It’s the message that’s repeated over and over when we tell women what to wear and how to act in order to avoid rape: that women are responsible for tempting men into sexual violence against them.

Leave a comment with any similar cases in regional news.

Can One Billion Rising End Violence Against Women?

Many Caribbean countries participated in the global One Billion Rising campaign. You can view photos from the events across the region and even add yours to the pool.

Barbados held two events:  One at the Cave Hill campus on the University of the West Indies which focused on sexual violence since three Caribbean countries are in the top 10 globally for rates of reported rape.  The other took place in the capital and featured collaboration among many women’s organisations, artists and UN WOMEN. The Bridgetown gained significant publicity in the mainstream media, particularly radio and press.  The following letter to the editor details the UWI event which was hosted by the Institute for Gender & Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit.

Barbados might be interested to know that the UWI Cave Hill Campus also held a significant One Billion Rising event that mainly targeted students, but also involved staff in the audience and as performers.

I write this letter and hope it is published because of what emerged. Female students at the campus routinely face harassment, sometimes physical, on ZR vehicles. Some also continue to face the problem of voyeurism (peeping toms) in some private residences around campus. Obviously this is unacceptable.

The Cave Hill campus administration does what it can from what I can see, including establishing protocols and addressing safety issues. In fact, the event was hosted by the university’s Institute for Gender and Development Studies – Nita Barrow Unit as a means of gathering just such data.

Students testified, a Guild of students spokesman informed that the Guild’s position was zero tolerance on campus and off, one male students spoke touchingly of the solidarity he feels his colleagues should express to prevent not only physical but also emotional abuse of young women.

Staff members and students performed poetry and sang songs relevant to the theme of rejection of violence in all its forms, and the need for the embrace of more loving, respectful and self-respecting behaviours by men and women singly and collectively. One staff member spoke of the fact young men are themselves victims of sexual violence by other men, and this underscores the evident necessity for men to strongly support the eradication of this scourge.

Violence against women is a feature of vulnerability, especially when men congregate in even temporary gangs.

It is good to see the solidarity your paper offers in highlighting these issues. I certainly ask our community of ZR drivers, conductors, owners and the owners of private residences around the campus to join you in that solidarity and put measures in place to secure the young women using their services. It is just the right thing to do.

– Margaret D. Gill

Source: This article originally appeared in the Barbados  as a letter to the editor.

Guyana also hosted a significant One Billion Rising event in which many women’s organisations participated. There were events in St. Lucia, Grenada and Antigua as well.

A recent comment on the CODE RED blog called into question the political strategies of the One Billion Rising Campaign:

I wish every Feminist initiative, everywhere around the globe, wholehearted success.

But… I have a seeeerious problem with the “Let’s All Dance!” focus for the “One Billion Rising” event. Could someone tell me WHY – and in a way that makes pellucid sense to me, WHY Women, in their seemingly chronic male-designation as Abuse Fodder, would choose the carefree, spontaneous, *celebratory* act of …dance: to (somehow?!?) symbolize the One Billion Rising initiative?

The whole things seems miscued, somehow; it appears – at least to me, like some desperate psychological “buffer” being enacted by Women globally, to try to distance themselves emotionally from what I have NO FEAR in stating as The Harsh REALITY: i.e., WOMEN’S RIGHTS IS ON A STEADILY DOWNWARD CURVE!

Consequently, to “Dance While Women’s Lives are BURNING TO HELL…smacks oddly of a SIMILAR Roman initiative. Only I think the Ancient used FIDDLES to distract themselves whilst their Home-Space INCINERATED!!!

So – as they say in Showbiz: “Break a Leg!”

 

This Huffing Post article took One Billion Rising to task for a lack of feminist consciousness, a refusal to name the causes of violence against women in favour of feel-good dancing in which everyone could participate and a false notion of sisterhood which perpetuates racist hierarchies.

What do you think? Is One Billion Rising a celebrity-driven, white-feminist-saving-the-Third-World-woman danceathon/mediafest that lacks political edge? Or were local organisers able to “creolise” the One Billion Rising to make it meaningful for their communities as part of wider and ongoing efforts to address violence against women?

Man kills 4-year-old witness of alleged rape, cue victim-blaming

Tianna Thomas posted this to our facebook wall and gave us permission to share it here. It revolves around the way in which a man who allegedly killed a four-year-old boy is absolved from blame by some members of the public who choose to focus instead, on accusing the boy’s 17-year-old aunt of making a false accusation of rape. (The young woman has since reported that she too feared for her life and was raped by the assailant). As if an assumed false rape claim should either overshadow or justify the murder of a 4-year-old. Why is the young woman, who had nothing to do with murdering an infant, on trial here? What does it mean when some of us are able to completely bypass the murder of a child and focus instead on calling the young woman a liar as if to suggest that not only is she culpable in the boy’s death but that she is MORE culpable than the man that killed him and raped her!

I was just reading a story on the Demarara Waves Facebook site about a man who stabbed a 4 year old boy to death after allegedly raping the child’s 17 year old aunt. In the comments, there was this remark left by a female commenter:

“This is so damn sad and that’s a wicked aunt, she is now claiming “rape” because that child walked in on them, he was 4 years omg by next week he would have forgot that already, I’m sure he didn’t even understand what was going on, they could have make up so damn lie and tell him, now she being a wicked aunt ran away and look what she has to live with now, the man she was just sexing Murdered her nephew, she wouldn’t want to see a next Penis for the rest of her wicked life. How could he look at that child and stab him for being cause in his wicked dead, sexing his sis in law omg, she should kill her damn self”.

Needless to say, I was horrified by the commenter’s words. It brings to light a bigger problem within the myriad of other issues with society’s response to victims of sexual assault. It’s something I have noticed while living in Guyana. There always seems to be someone placing some degree of blame on the victim. Mind you, the article said NOTHING about the aunt bearing false witness against the person accused of the murder. Whether the allegations of rape are true or not is not clear at the moment (the girl has been taken to the hospital for a medical screening), but it is sickening to see that even though she herself may be a victim in the case, instead of being met with the appropriate care that victims of sexual assault need, she is met with blame. This woman goes as far to ask the alleged victim to “kill herself”. THIS is the reason why so many sexual assaults go unreported. THIS is the reason why many assault victims would rather take monetary compensation than go through the often degrading process of trial. THIS is why may victims commit suicide. Blame is placed only on the victim and not with the attacker, where it belongs. I don’t know if the alleged victim is being truthful, but who am I or who is anyone else to say that she is lying? Especially since the investigation has just commenced? Ugh. I apologize again for the lengthy post. This has been on my heart since I read the story and I just needed someplace to rant.

Guyanese activist Sherlina Nageer also pointed out, “in addition to the individual condemnation of this young woman, there’s also the institutional disregard that makes this even worse. when she ran to the police station seeking help, they told her that she was ‘hostile’, “and that I shouldn’t be making noise in the station.”

Sexual Violence is a Men’s Issue

Caribbean journalist Ricky Singh indicts regional and national women’s groups, women lawyers and women politicians for being silent in the face of sexual violence against women.

Roberta Clarke, on her Roots and Rights blog, pointed out that for the last 20 years women’s organisations have in fact been speaking out, advocating for legislation, running shelters and crisis centres  etc. Caribbean women have been anything but silent in the face of relentless and ongoing violence. In the 1980s schoolgirls in St. Vincent and the Grenadines marched to protest sexual violence and in 2013 women’s groups across the region continue to do unrecognised, invisibilised work.

When it comes to sexual violence the overwhelming majority of persons who are raped or sexually assaulted are women and girls and the overwhelming majority of rapists are men.  Men and boys too are victims of rape (though not at the same rates as women and girls) and in these cases too, men are the overwhelming majority of rapists.  It should therefore be self-evident that sexual violence is a men’s issue.  And the more appropriate question to ask is why men as the majority of elected leaders in the region, as individuals and members of various men’s organisations are not doing everything in their power to end sexual violence. Rape is a men’s issue.  Ending rape, speaking out against violence against women and girls is the collective responsibility of men.

Yet, men collectively, as major power brokers in the region, are silent.

Why are Caribbean men silent on rape? Why did it not occur to Rickey Singh to ask this question? Why is men’s silence not shocking?

Everybody should be outraged when schoolgirls are sexually harassed in the street and on public transportation, when women are killed by their intimate partners, when police officers turn away rape survivors for being naked, when payments are accepted in lieu of prosecution in cases of child sexual abuse, when our legal system supports this form of injustice, when deputy commissioners of police suggest that teen girls are the ones responsible for the sexual crimes against them. Everybody should be outraged.  Not just women.  Not just the handful of women parliamentarians.  Not just overworked and underfunded women’s organisations. EVERYBODY.  And that includes men who for too long have been shamefully silent.  (Big up attorney Lennox Sankersingh and the other lawyers who have offered to support rape survivors throughout the legal process in Trinidad and Tobago).

Why are men silent on sexual violence against women and girls?

What does their silence communicate?

Does it communicate an acceptance of rape culture, of gender inequality? An understanding that violence against women and girls and the threat of it is part of what helps to maintain male privilege? A desire to see that privilege maintained at all costs?

It’s time we heard from Caribbean men what they intend to do to end gender-based violence.

I’m all ears…