Alesha E. Hart, “No Room for Debate”

No Room for Debate A Response to the 2016 Junior Junkanoo Parade

by Alesha Hart

“I’m wild again, beguiled again, A simpering, whimpering child again, Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I…”

scholars and politicians and ordinary people will be picking away for foreseeable decades. And these are questions that snag through the pattern of my life, not abstractions but practical worries, tightropes to cross and tripwires to vault.

“Yes”, is the answer that many Bahamian artists and thinkers and visionaries have given and continue to give.

– Lorenz Hart, American songwriter

W

hen it comes to cultural faux pas knowing the script is half the battle.

Let’s be clear, there is a difference between cultural diversity, cultural exchange and cultural identity. And, in recent times one event explains it well.

Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival. What a vast weight of confusion and divide and debate those three little words have to bear.

And, misunderstanding is afoot.

To put a fine point on it, is there such a thing as a Bahamian identity or spirit or culture, shared by all the islands clustered around the Atlantic Ocean, regardless of economic or political status? Is it an aspiration, an attitude, an illusion? Is its meaning determined by presence or absence? Is “Bahamian” a defined concept?

This is a knot of questions unlikely ever to be completely unraveled; certainly,

But pinning down that identity, naming its essence or essences, and using that knowledge to guide our young Bahamian communities through the minefield of the modern world, these are problems we are yet to solve.

Nonetheless, there is no room for debate: Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival is a modern Bahamian virus incubated by the venal, validated by politics and, today diagnosed as fatal. Indeed, it is endemic.

The afflicted do nothing, want everything; symptoms are greed, cultural sacrilege and a passion to auction our ancestors again.

Is it inbred and contagious? Is this virus of disrespect likely to boomerang?

To be frank, we are on uniquely vulnerable footing identity wise, yet we are endowed with the best forms of cultural inheritance. Thus, this web of our incestuous acceptance of disrespect has beguiled, bothered and bewildered this writer.

And so, the travesty continues.

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One-on-One Preschool students perform at Junior Junkanoo 2016. (Photo: Ahvia Campbell, Nassau Guardian)

Now to put a number two pencil on it: Saturday December 17, 2016 at Junior Junkanoo, one group played Soca, while another played Disney music, and I reeled into an abyss of copse anger.

Well kiss my placenta. Unapologetically, these groups reduced a sacred cultural expression to cultural exchange. Those who saw it as a lovable “goof” moment, rather than one of disrespect and offense, is indicative of the tendency within our society to defecate on our Bahamian self. These transgressions were a mystifying national spectacle unwittingly denouncing Bahamian identity.

One on One Preschool’s theme was ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Ok, this is fine in

Junkanoo culture. However, what was alarming was not merely the full cloth

regalia but the obnoxious selection of Disney music during our junkanoo parade.

Then there was Two by Two Academy

whose theme was ‘Columbus Landfall’.

Their cultural apathy pushed more white

anger into my soul. Yes, Two by Two had the audacity to play a Soca song. Determinedly, I was again placed in cultural purgatory.

Now to my alma mater, Government

High School. The Junkanoo choreogra-

phy and music was dynamite. However, the group sported all cloth. And, from

antiquity this has been a challenge.

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Government High School students perform at Junior Junkanoo 2016. (Photo: Ahvia Campbell, Nassau Guardian)

No mulling over necessary, we need some defining moments to grind ignorance to dust. Let’s confess, the mistakes of the past are too egregious; we cannot tolerate their recurrence.

And, how was it that Eleuthera

remembered our cultural identity and financed breathtaking Bahamian folk expression?

Here is an advisory. Do not attack my dignity and dishonor my identity. I will not pledge allegiance to another’s culture as they will not reciprocate in response. In the clearest of terms, these acts of foreign music and full cloth get-ups are unacceptable.

And the story gets worst. One could argue that, Hurricane Mathew was the culprit. You know, the financial challenges thereafter. But would the argument have integrity, especially in light of Andros’ stellar cultural parade?

When will we begin to recognize the

imperative for Bahamians to understand ourselves in our own terms, to look

through eyes unrestricted by imported

theories, define ourselves in a language of our own invention? It is as if we are a nation of body doubles.

When we are blunt about disrespect

and it is implicitly endorsed, I am grossly challenged. These ‘Junkanoo acts’ ooze disrespect. And when the confusion of cultural exchange becomes acute, it is difficult to ignore.

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Think identity abyss. We see the disrespect, however, we have eyes, but we cannot see.

We have ears, but we cannot hear. Bahamian cultural disconnect appears as a bizarre pageant where people succumb to inexplicable incentives. But anyone who puts his mind in neutral should check to see who is behind the wheel.

For worse, never better, forty years later, we are still depressingly far from achieving this apparently simple, actually, titanic ideal of Bahamian identity. So we adopted culture and this is the great Bahamian plague.

One-on-One Preschool students perform at Junior Junkanoo 2016.

(Photo: Ahvia Campbell, Nassau Guardian)

Seemingly, when faced with blunt disre-

spect—our people, conditioned by

passivity’s lethal lullaby, go dumb and stare; their jaws agape, their eyes

goggled, and a peculiar dysphasia sets in

on them like a terrible hangover. There, in all its attendant ugliness, is a phenomenon that might be called Bahamian cultural confusion or disconnect.

But enough of us accept and believe in a bigger, genuinely, and distinctively Bahamian identity for the word – the definition, the aspiration – to carry weight of validity and the charge of possibility.

In all moments of life, I paraphrase myself Bahamian by birth and Bahamian by conviction.

As I bore witness to the parade of white and blue cloth complimented by Soca and Disney music, it reverberated social apathy. Even as I write, the levels of insult twirls, twists, and loop-de-loops in ways it

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would take decades of academic thought to unpack, but it has a definite starting point: RESPECT.

We cannot tolerate Bahamian cultural tailoring.

Bahamians authenticate yourself. Do not allow the whitewashing of our concept of self. It’s not just unpalatable; it’s deadly.

Question and identify: What give Bahamians a positive image of ourselves?

Why are they important?

What are the factors that influence our self-esteem?

A Yoruba proverb in Nigeria says, “Omode ni ise, agba ni ise, ni a fi da ile aye”, which means that, both the young and old have roles in the creation of the earth [or Bahamian identity].

Two-by-Two Academy students perform at Junior Junkanoo 2016.

(Photo: Ahvia Campbell, Nassau Guardian)

As a Bahamian, foster this: Unquestionable respect for culture is a fundamental feature which every child is born into, taught and grows up with and is expected to replicate.

I confess, my lifetime would not allow me to outline the myriad acts of disrespect we’ve come to accept as a way of life in these islands and it will not allow me to outline how these can lead to

a final pathway of harm to our idea of the Bahamian self.

Let these words infuriate you. It’s equally troubling when the organizers, the audience and media sidestep the obvious disrespect. That misrepresentation is disrespectful to the Bahamian identity, but the impudence doesn’t stop with misrepresenting Bahamian identity and, it

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Government High School students perform at Junior Junkanoo 2016. (Photo: Ahvia Campbell, Nassau Guardian)

continues with the acceptance. Silence is consent; an apparent collapse of support for our self-survival.

And, there is the minefield.

This shift in perspective is a shock to my system. When we tolerate a culture of disrespect, we aren’t just being insensitive, or obtuse, or lazy, or enabling. We’re in fact violating the first commandment of identity without fear of repercussions.

How can we stand idly by when our casual acceptance of disrespect is causing harm to our people as educational errors, teenage mistakes, sputtering lapses in moral conscience, missed economic and social mobility?

Let’s question further: Is Bahamian culture disposable?

The substance of the issue to be raised is that many hardly noticed because they are so ingrained in the culture of acceptance. Dismissive attitudes — are as corrosive as outward manifestations of disrespect.

Just as Marcus Garvey said, "None but ourselves can free our minds!" No ancestor, no mother, politician, reparation, or ganja can help us beat our own inactivity.

We must shun things which enslave us to inaction -- negative attitudes to work, success, intelligent people; envy which led many to want more than they can afford;

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ganja which affects mental and physical acuity and stanches “desire” — so important to winning in the business called life.

Social change in The Bahamas has to and can only begin in the minds of Bahamian men. If we are to act for change, our philosophers and our theorists have first to understand, articulate and reengineer, in many cases how we relate to ourselves and to the wider world in which we live.

This toxicity towards Bahamian identity is hard to fully comprehend if you don’t have an understanding of the supremacy of cultural disconnect.

This is a sounding of the alarms that we’d do well to heed and, for our kids’ sakes, I think sooner is better than later.

The postscript? Have courage. Let us not tolerate the intolerable. With arms opened wide embrace that which is Bahamian; stand in the light and darkness of that self. And do not erroneously disrespect who we are.

Building a culture of respect begins with respect and it begins with you. Are you ready to step up?

But this article must make the point that disrespect comes from the country itself. All disrespect is cut from the same cloth. When we cut education budget to the bone, for example, it’s doing much more than cutting costs. It’s sending the message that culture is an interchangeable thingamajig whose productivity can be dialed up or down like household appliances.

Lack of respect poisons the well of collegiality and cooperation. The poisoning-of-the-well metaphor is apt.

And, like pornography, we know it when we see it.

Luckily, the reverse is true. Rising tides, in this case, can indeed lift all boats.

There is no room for debate. Show me respect, countrymen. I DO NOT come to Junkanoo for a parade of cloth, Soca or Disney music. I come for and need DRUMS. You may add trimmings or side orders but I come to hear my ancestors, I come to remember, I come to feel the passion and hope of the dead, I come to vision the fight for the future, I come to dance and shout and connect with the heartbeat of my people.

Let there be no debate.

Bahamian teachers and parents have to take a good deal of the blame. For better or worse, we often set the tone in all manner of children. When we show or tolerate even subtle disrespect, it works its way all along the chain.

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