Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Thomas, Deborah A.

Titel

Modern Blackness: "What We Are and What We Hope to Be"

Ist Teil von

• Small axe : a journal of criticism, 2002-09, Vol.6 (2), p.25-48

Ort / Verlag

Bloomington: Duke University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2002

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [...]by advocating reforms that would improve conditions for the peasantry, late-nineteenth-century intellectuals and nationalists like the authors of Jamaica's Jubilee continued to legitimize both the popular ideology that linked land rights to independence-culturally and socially, but also economically and politically-and the religious conviction that the figure of the independent peasant represented a more respectable type of human being. Jamaican laborers traveled to Panama to construct the canal, to Costa Rica and Cuba to work within the renewed estate-based banana and sugar industries as well as within the newly developing service sector, and to the United States on Farm Work Schemes.41 With the development of the Jamaican banana industry under the auspices of American multinationals in the late 1800s, the United States displaced Great Britain as the dominant trading partner, and Jamaica became increasingly dependent upon American imports. [...]the closing of immigration channels as a result of the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s, greater economic interaction with the United States provided thousands of Jamaicans with opportunities to increase their wages through both formal and informal emigration channels. For many of the poorer villagers, the "American dream" has not been without its nightmarish qualities due to, in part, their familiarity with American-style racism and their awareness that intensified global capitalism has widened the gap between rich and poor, not only between the United States and the rest of the developing world but also within the United States itself. [...]Americanization" has often been seen as the latest in a long line of oppressions, and Americans have been viewed as degenerate cultural influences.50 Indeed, villagers often attributed the perceived increases in consumerism, individualism, materialism, and a desire for instant gratification to American influence.51 America was perceived as the place to "make a living," but Jamaica was where you would "make life." [...]the Seventh Day Adventist Church provided community members with a religious and social forum alternative to the Anglican Church within which they might hold positions of leadership and influence. [...]many villagers saw in the National Democratic Movement (NDM)-the new political party that emerged in late 1995-a chance to alter the course of party politics in Jamaica by changing the parliamentary system of government in a manner that would approach the democratic system as it is practiced in the United States.