Jamaica: Land of Discrimination
by Jamaica is famous for its reggae beats, pristine environment and beautiful beaches. But behind all that aesthetics there is the stench of discrimination and social injustice. It is not as evident now as it probably was in the eighties or early 1900s but from time to time it rears its ugly head.
Jamaica is famous for its reggae beats, pristine environment and beautiful beaches. But behind all that aesthetics there is the stench of discrimination and social injustice. It is not as evident now as it probably was in the eighties or early 1900s but from time to time it rears its ugly head. Even today the indices of colonialism and slavery that had governed the Jamaican society are still alive in our Jamaican Society. Social inequalities are a part of every society. People will always consider others as superior to another. But discrimination! When science has proven that phenotype, complexion nor social status does not influence nor designate superiority in dexterities is absurd and as far as I am concern primitive and vacuous. But what the hell! Who cares what I have to say!
Did you know that students that survived all the rigors and natter of a Jamaican high school or more likely to be successful in life? Yes believe me high school is a mini feature of our society. It has social stratifications, preferences, discriminations, social injustices and inequalities that are embedded in the social fabric of the wider society.
In the wider society we have discrimination. People are stereotyped, treated unfairly based on ethnicity, cultural preferences and religious practices. Students in high school encounter the very same societal biases. During my high school years I was marginalized because of my skin color and family background. I was not poor but definitely not as well off as some of my classmates. Albeit I had cable television, insides bathroom and all the other amenities of a Jamaican twenty first century home. I was brilliant than all the kids in my class but I was treated with inferiority because my hair was not permed and because I did not wear my uniform above my knee. That was when I encountered the ideology of conformity. I realized that my school society had a dress code which defined what was considered acceptable regalia and what was labeled as being wardrobe impaired. My below the knee uniform tuned that concept out loudly. Members of my school ensure that I did not forget that. The popular girls enjoyed teasing me about that fact.
I was not the most popular girl in high school. I was maligned by the tall brown skin girls that were in my class. I went to what was termed a traditional high school in Jamaica. Theses traditional high schools are like the American version of Ivy League schools, in that they had expensive school fees, great labs and super qualified academic staff. They have been around for over centuries and everybody who was anybody went to my school and so would their children whether they were academically qualified or not… Mine was the second oldest on the island. In the past, the richest kids with more Caucasian features came to that school. Only recently girls with my phenotype have been attending the school due to our flair and superior intellectual capacity. My brilliance was not recognized by my peers only my teachers, instead they concentrated my appearance. They made me feel or rather I felt inferior for being dark skinned and by the nineth grade I was teased because I was fatter than most kids in my class even though back then I weighed 140 lbs. I had a perfect coke bottle physique and some of guys who knew me outside of my uniform thought I was sexy. But that did not prevent me from wanting to look like my brown skinned counterparts. I sometimes wished my hips and my ass weren’t that big. I did not begin to appreciate them until I was in preuniversity and the older men started looking my way. I realized that what I was experiencing was simple a precursor to bigger troubles. There are some organizations that will not hire me for a job because I was not light skinned enough. It didn’t matter that I was more qualified than the entire staff put together. I received less attention from men if I am walking with a brown skinned friend and recently most women are striving to lose weight so that they can look more European phenotype that Negroid with the big hips and big ass. Women now would prefer to look like Angelina Jolie than Buffie Carruth.
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