Caribbean culture seems to be having the longest moment in American society. Wherever I turn, anything with a slightly spicy kick is flavored as “jerk”, any multi-beat, up-tempo song is labeled as “dancehall” (or even worse, “Jamaican”), and every image of a beach surrounded by blue water and white sand is a “Caribbean getaway.”
For those of us who grew up West Indian, we’re watching mainstream media and advertising profit off of aspects of our culture, while in the same breath exalting offensive stereotypes. Our unique cultures and experiences are lumped under one umbrella. This often supports the-perfect-vacation narrative or the poverty-culture narrative.
Caribbean culture, as a whole, is a product of a survival and a living testament to the very conditions under which our people can thrive. Our culture is born out of “traveling, rupture, appropriation, and loss,” as Stuart Hall, a Jamaican cultural theorist, once said. Each country in the Caribbean encompasses a culture that is innovative and diverse at the core. It is a combination of all the parts colonizers didn’t want us to have, but that we took anyway. We remixed it, infused it with our energy and made it our own. Maybe this is our downfall.
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