Caribbean Thought Lecture 4

Week 4: What is Caribbean Thought and who determines this? This is Caribbean Thought Lecture 4 summary of the three- and half-hour Lecture in Caribbean Thought presented on Friday February 3, 2023, via Zoom at The Jamaica Theological Seminary.

(Brain-teaser/Activity:

1. I currently reside in the US as a Naturalized US Citizen, from Jamaica. Would I be considered a “First Generation American”?)
2. Come up with one or two sentences that define/s Jamaica in relation to Caribbean. Example: Nelson and Novella Keith defines Jamaica as… (See Nelson and Novella Keith, Jamaica, Philadelphia: Temple University, p. xix (in the Introduction chapter).

Learning Goals/Objective:

1. To critically formulate and present a concept of the Caribbean in relation to its position in history which has given rise to its present reality.
2. To begin to trace Caribbean Thinking through its process of coming to be, moving beyond Independence and the tensions between competing political thought in Jamaica – capitalism and socialism.
3. To begin to develop a critical and academic frame within which to provide commentary and contributions on current issues of society and identifying media that facilitate these expressions.

This lecture aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of Jamaica in relation to the Caribbean, one where the internal and personal interacts with the external. Like Keith and Keith, they agreed that Jamaica has suffered under colonialism. Yet, they contended for a picture of Jamaica that was independent of its socio-economic position and experience. Maybe as a way to forget the reality of its vulnerabilities so as to boast about something else that gives pride and joy. Indeed, although at first the students struggle to come with an original concept of Caribbean for themselves, they still sourced and provided a definition that gave them great pride about Jamaica – its size, its influence and popularity as a leading island in terms of its worldwide appeal and fame from Bob Marley, Merlene Ottey, Usain Bolt and Jerk Chicken. Nevertheless, the consensus was that Jamaica is still a society divided along class lines. This was important as one student pointed out that his movement from one class to the next and from the rural to the urban has adjusted his experience and his ideas about Jamaica, which changed his perspectives. This supports what Norman Girvan had written in his “Reinterpretation of the Caribbean” in “The Caribbean Reader,” indicating that to define Caribbean is a matter of context and perspective.

However, The Caribbean Reader begin their perspectives on the Caribbean in Grenada, in 1983 when Maurice Bishop and his People’s Revolutionary Army met their demise. This was juxtaposed with the invasion or penetration of the US by their Navy Seals who provided the support that sought the local conflicts among the peoples that crushed the nationalist and democratic socialist intentions of the nationalists. Keith and Keith and Dale Johnson, all scholars of the postcolonial write in their projects how the US penetrated the Caribbean thought their various machineries so as to promote US style ideologies. This was not free of local assistance who were opportunists hoping to cash in as elites or representative/house slaves in the local. Like Europe’s strategy of trickery, making the same deals with all the African tribes which created further chaos in Africa which led to its plunder and domination, the penetration by supporting a few created a local tug-of-war. That was evident between the Manley and Seaga governments of the 1980s, which defined Jamaica. Nevertheless, the students agreed at the end that Jamaica has been given tremendous opportunities and investments. But has squandered it through nepotism, connectionism and corruption. The students alluded to their own experiences, associations, studies showing Jamaica’s corruption index, the NIA and Dr. Trevor Monroe, UK report on Jamaica being on UK crooked politician Radar as evident to support their conclusion that the country has mismanaged its investments and resources.

In the end we concluded that we are not a human race in the sense that we are racing against each other. There is no race but a human race separating us from animals. But if we think in terms of race, then the reality of the Caribbean and the black position within that racial thinking suggest that we lost the race of time – globalization and colonialism. This loss has created the dependent and mixed realities of the Caribbean. So, if we have lost a race, yet the race is not over since we still exist in the world. We are still part of that human race; must we not prepare for the next event in this race so that we can become competitive? It means we can’t make the same mistakes. Therefore, this project of conceptualizing the Caribbean becomes an important endeavor as an objective of this course which we have spent most of our time doing. But we will conclude with the foregoing Lecture summary presentation below:

What is the Caribbean Thought? Past influences on the Present?[i]

Novella and Nelson Keith start their book project, which is entitled: “The Social Origins of Democratic Socialism in Jamaica,” with a working definition of Jamaica in relation to the Caribbean and the history of black and brown peoples of the global south. According to Nelson and Nelson,

The Nelsons who are from Jamaica but moved to the US and developed an interest in deconstructivist history and Critical philosophy, where they reexamined their initial analysis and understanding of Jamaica and Caribbean in relation to the history and progress of the world, where the Caribbean is stagnant. Like many emigrants from the global south who continue to pursue academic and philosophical studies based on their negative experience of contrasts, Nelson and Nelson became intrigued with the tension and struggle that created the political ideologies of Jamaica starting in the 1960’s with Michael Manley. They provided an initial assessment of Jamaica and their Post-independent brothers and sisters as suffering from underdevelopment which they diagnose as causing discontent and unrest in Jamaica and the Caribbean. In a sense, the authors provided a picture of Jamaica as being in tension and conflict stemming from colonization. So, if the problems that persists originates from the past, then Jamaica must cut itself from the “duppies” of the past that continues to hold them hostage. It may require a therapy that is psychological, since the trauma seems to be post traumatic. It could be that it lingers and manifest in the abnormality of underdevelopment and discontent as a result of what Freud calls the human tendency to push unpleasant experiences to the unconscious, through defense mechanisms.

However, if Sigmund Freud is right, then in order to break free, it would require a fix that acknowledges the past and its affect by removing blind spots. This involves working with supports to develop a workable resolve. However, what is important in the helping experience towards healing is the process of empowerment, where those seeking help becomes less dependent on the therapist and more dependent or interdependent. The client must truly become committed to the process, believe in self and have hope, stick to the plan. This is important as any deviations may delay the healing process. This may provide the psychological understanding and resolve that the Caribbean needs as we approach Caribbean Thought. What we are and how we are and hope to be? Therefore, if we are to embark on a psychological understanding of the Caribbean. We may borrow from psychology as it situates the problem appropriately. The healing process involves first removing blind spots that hinder us from seeing us for who we are or those issues that pervade and obstruct our realities. It requires revisiting the past. Nelson and Nelson did just that in their book. The definition is working as they provide an approach to Jamaica that revisits critically, the socio-political tensions of Jamaica underscoring the similar experiences that occurs in other post-colonial countries in the Caribbean.

Therefore, to ask what the Caribbean is, invokes a question of being, as much as it is a question of tradition, culture, thinking, economics, present realities and the consequence of true history. But it is also a question about the place and peoples of the Caribbean. It represents part of a new world with new people, islands of paradise in the Americas with language, history, culture, religious consciousness, politics and economies that are inherited from its mixed past. When we hear of Caribbean today, we think of beautiful islands of paradise with sun, sea, sand, cannabis, Bob Marley and reggae music, Usain Bolt, irie people living out their best dreams, desires and life. But Neoliberalism challenges this motif, stating that the Caribbean is made up of dependent vulnerable states whose beauty is divorced from its people and enjoyed mainly by those outside of it. Further, the Caribbean represents a people who have been disrupted, detached, displaced, hybridized and made into dependent capitalist states with some level of modernity to promote consumption within the neoliberal globalized world which is largely a consumer society…… TO BE CONTINUED. See Assignment in the End Notes.[ii]

[1] (Nelson, Keith and Novella, 1992, p. xix – xxiv).

[i]Caribbean Thought Week 3: Summary: Conceptualized Caribbean Thought

Email Note: Good Morning, I forgot to add the attachment. It’s very important that you read this email in its entirety. It summarizes the lecture today, the main points. Please see the attached for the group questions on page two. It has the group questions that you will reflect on next week. Look at how I comment on the issue of White Collar Crimes, and situated within the wider conversations of Caribbean Thought. That was the rationale behind playing the lecture via podcast in class today. 

Read below: 

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Assignment:

1. Meet in your groups, identify a question from the question sheet that you’d like to reflect on at class. (See Lecture Notes with the sheet on page 2) Answer the question using critical thinking skills: What is Critical Thinking? – The NeoLiberal Corporation

2, Identify an issue in the news and provide an academic reply using academic jargon and language or prose. Situate it within the understanding of Critical Thinking and skepticism. Read this article to help you: (74) Privilege, Power, Position and the Need for Critical Thinking | LinkedIn

3. Read Chapter One of: Norman Girvan. Reinterpreting the Caribbean, in New Caribbean Thought – Google Books University of The West indies. 2001. Chapter 3, Pp. 3 -23.

4. By the way, I just wrote an article commenting on The Tyre Nichols Graphic Video Release showing the Memphis Police Officers beating him to his death. I would like you to read the article and or watch the video available on YouTube or Spotify or if you read the article you will access the channel.

I want you to read it not as an assignment, but to get the sense and gist of writing within an academic frame responding to issues of the day. Notice how it is written, but within a journalistic style. The commentary is academic, targeted, follows a line or pattern, and within the standards of intelligent but critical thinking. The idea here is to get to write academically and professionally as budding and developing thinkers. The ability to express thought but to see how thought is developed and expressed. That’s the idea of the course. 

Here’s the link” The Tyre Nichols Graphic Video: A Black Academic Response to Dealing With Police Brutality Within A Culture of Violence – The NeoLiberal Corporation

So that when you come to class and comment on wider social issues, please keep in mind that we are using critical thinking as post-colonial students.

[1] What will end #violence, if the human mind can conceive of anything better. Yet, the violence done to the controlled mind doubting any reality beyond a fallen state, incapacitates his drive for utopia so that we’re fated to our doom negative #eschatology. What will End Violence? Boys Need for Positive Influences And The Monterey Park Massacre – The NeoLiberal Corporation

[ii] For the assignment this week (4), I want you guys to:

1. Watch/Listen to the video of the last classes we did. 

2. If you haven’t read the preface and chapter one of The Caribbean Thought Reader, please do so plus chapter 2. See course outline.

3. Read the preface, introduction and chapter 2 of Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance. See the Audible https://www.audible.com/pd/Neoliberalism-Globalization-Income-Inequality-Poverty-and-Resistance-Audiobook/B099LFCD79?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp , Library copy or online look inside sample.

4. Read my essay: Tyre Nichols Solutions to Police Brutality Within A Culture of Violence – Tyre Nichols: A Black Academic Response to Police Brutality within a Culture of Violence — You Might Need To Hear This

5. Follow a popular or current issue in the news and be prepared to provide a perspective. 

6. In your groups come up with a name for a podcast or blog. Identify your category (e.g. news and politics, music, poetry, theology, education etc.), And provide a brief description. Look at a podcast or blog to get an idea.

Rev. Renaldo McKenzie is an Adjunct Professor/Lecturer at The Jamaica Theological Seminary and is Author of Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance. Renaldo is working on the release of “Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered” with contributions from Prof. Emeritus Dr. Martin Oppenheimer. Renaldo is the Creator and Host of “The Neoliberal Round Podcast and The Neoliberal Round by Renaldo McKenzie YouTube Channel. Renaldo is also a Doctoral Student at Georgetown University and is working on completing his doctorate at University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School of Communication. Renaldo is also an ordained Minister and member of the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and President of The Neoliberal Corporation, grassroots, think tank, digital media company that is aimed at:

Email the Lecturer to RSVP a link to the Zoom class at JTS: Fridays 6 – 9pm

Contact the Assistant to the Professor/Course Rep: Chantelle Burton

Visit us at https://theneoliberal.com