CIPRIANI COLLEGE OF LABOUR AND CO-OPERATIVE STUDIES.

Course Code: CAS 130.

Course Name: Caribbean Studies.

Lecturer: Mr David Muhammad.

Assignment/ Coursework: Explain what the Term “Caribbean Identity” Means to You.

Give Details on How the Region has made a Contribution to

World Culture.

Student Name: Ansar Abdal Karim.

Student ID: 2011030571.

Date: 30th July 2014.

Explain what the Term “Caribbean Identity” Means to You. Give Details on How the

Region has Made a Contribution to World Culture.

The Caribbean region has long been looked upon as the gateway from the old world of Europe to

the new world of the Americas. This view of this rich region is the cause for the present

composition and the headache of defining a truly Caribbean identity. The question begs as to

what in fact constitutes a Caribbean Identity and what has been the benefit of this to the world.

The term Caribbean comes from the word Carib, one of the early peoples who inhabited the

region. The search for an identity or a commonality that is specially Caribbean has perplexed

historians, sociologists and politicians alike. Is there one identit6y that incorporates the disparate

threads of this region? Or is it in fact a series of identities that has shaped and is continuing to

shape the region’s identity or identities? In essence, Caribbean identity can be traced to four

main sources- the region’s geology and geography, its history and colonial experience, its

peoples and ethnicity, and globalization and the reciprocal contributions to culture between the

Caribbean and the world.

The obvious identification of the Caribbean is as a geographical/ geological phenomenon. It is

made up of over 7,000 ‘West Indian’ islands, (the vast majority in The Bahamas) surrounded by

Caribbean Sea and ringed by the coastlines of mainland North, Central and South America, the

archipelago of West Indian volcanic islands to the east. The co-ordinates of this Caribbean Basin

as it is sometimes called are between 60 and 90 degrees west longitude, and between 5 and 30

degrees north latitude. There are a small group of large islands and a large group of smaller

islands. The larger islands are collectively called the Greater Antilles and this lies in the north of

the Caribbean Basin. The smaller islands excluding the Bahamas are called the Lesser Antilles

and are made up of an outer arc Windward Islands and an inner arc called the Leeward Islands.

In addition there are traditionally mainly English, French and Dutch speaking lands of Central

and South America such as Belize (formerly British Honduras), the Guianas, now Guyana,

Suriname and French Guiana, Curacao, Aruba and St Marten. The Caribbean as a geologic entity

puts it as the Caribbean Plate the smallest tectonic plate on the planet. It pushes outward from the

main mid Atlantic ridge. While these two phenomena do not shape by themselves a Caribbean

persona they help to delimit the region.

A compelling unifying phenomena that defines the Caribbean is the shared history of the region

especially as it pertains to the last 500 plus years. The year 1492 is looked upon as a watershed

time in the history of the region. It was in that year that Europeans under Christopher Columbus

first made contact with the New World of the Caribbean. That is a common thread for the region.

The contact with Europe changed the face of the Caribbean forever and brought an invading,

exploiting behemoth up against a largely pastoral people. This relationship, started with

‘discovery’, ran into servitude and subjugation of the native people, to their ultimate decimation

and or assimilation and finally the replacement of the indigenous populations with introduced

indentured labour from Europe to work on the newly formed plantations of exploitation in the

New World including the Caribbean. Dissatisfied with the low level of gold and precious stones

from the region, the Europeans sought other avenues of exploitation, including the removal of

virgin forest and replacing it with sugar and cocoa for the European market. This led to the

importation o slave labour in the form of Africans from mainly West African coast of Ghana,

Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. This action of the Europeans, called collectively as the

Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, is by far the most unifying factor forging a Caribbean Identity. A

people were rooted from their homeland, forcibly transported across the Atlantic where over 200

million men, women and children perished in the Middle Passage and were dumped into the sea

en route to the Caribbean shores and the wider Americas. Those who survived the journey of

rape, whippings, cruelty, starvation and cramped conditions, were then exposed to land-based

oppression unimaginable. These people were dehumanized, robbed of their language, culture,

traditions, family life and religion, all in an attempt to make them docile and submit to the

imposed slave conditions needed for plantation work. As a result of this decision by the various

European nations in degrading an entire race of people, the Africans in the Diaspora of the

Americas have remained second class citizens in their ‘adopted’ homeland. There is no uplifting

history except in the instances of revolt rebellion and resistance to the chattel slavery imposed on

them. Indeed a Caribbean Identity cannot be seen without reference to this darkest of period of

human civilization and is certainly the most important in seeking to define and frame a

Caribbean Identity. While not trivializing the work and contribution of others in the tapestry of

Caribbean development the work of the African as major stakeholder in this project is without

question. Take for example the Europeans who remained. Their legacy in forming this Caribbean

Identity is one of shame rather than pride. Yet for all their misdeeds towards other peoples

including the native populations and enslaved Africans they have managed to remain at the top

of the social and economic strata of society to date. History has defined a master and servant

identity in the Caribbean that is race and ethnicity based. This identity is forged from a lopsided

arrangement that persists to today and relegates those who enabled and shaped the region to

economic and social marginality as hewers of wood and drawers of water. When providentially

the slave trade and slavery ended on paper it remained as a social entity and so colour is of major

importance to Caribbean people. The upper strata of the society still looks like the Europeans,

while the vast majority of Africans occupy the lowest social and economic strata of societies in

the Caribbean touched by slave history. This is an abiding identity throughout the Caribbean.

Even where other people have been introduced into the region their lot has always been better

than the enslaved Africans. Entitlements were always unfavourable to the latter. Land

distribution, repatriation, cultural heritage, educational opportunities and compensation for the

end of slavery were all done disadvantageous to Africans. So today, the Caribbean identity is one

that shows all people besides Africans with some social and economic moorings from which

their people can rise. Indians were given land at the end of their labour contract and were paid

wages. White slave owners were compensated for the loss of their slaves, Chinese indentures

were facilitated with land and financial inducements to remain and in Trinidad, poor European

indentures and the bastard children of slave owners and their Middle East replacements were put

at the head of the society with the dismantling of chattel slavery. This racial/ethnic imbalance is

as much a part of Caribbean Identity as any other phenomenon and may be argued to be the most

abiding.

Because of the slave trade in Africans, more so than the landing of Columbus on America’s

shores, the Caribbean identity has taken on a distinct flavour in terms of ethnicity and culture. At

first, enslaved Africans were dispossessed of all cultural contact. In this way their way of life

was stripped from them; foods, worship, cultural instruments, family and social structure and

education. It broke the will of a people who had known thousands of years of proud civilization

and culture. In truth many of the slaves kept their culture in the oral tradition and so elements of

it survived albeit disguised in European trappings. Today therefore the songs of the Caribbean,

namely Reggae, calypso, tambour bamboo, the games such as Capoeira in Brazil, the use of

European gods and saints, are seen as adaptations of African culture to slavery-era and colonial-

era periods of history when it was not fashionable or legal to display openly African culture.

Indeed, the development of the steel pan is similar to the use of bamboo as a musical instrument

by the slaves and ex slaves. Since African drums were outlawed, the Africans after slavery began

experimenting with the discarded oil ‘drums’ as a musical replacement. It is this common

identity of disenfranchisement of a people that has enabled the rich innovations to be presented

to the world, forged in the crucible of repression. In like manner, the use of calypso as a form of

mocking the colonial powers has developed into an international phenomenon and has given way

to Soca. While other contributions are widely acknowledged of other peoples the work of ex

slaves in fostering a Caribbean identity looms large. Indeed the idea of the Indians as part of the

Caribbean cultural landscape is not to be trivialized. The world’s hottest pepper, The Moruga

Scorpion, was a hybrid, the original brought into Trinidad by Indian indentured labourers in their

journeys from Calcutta to the West Indies. The Indian diet has been internationalized from its

adaptation in Trinidad. Roti, Tassa Drum, Curried Duck, as well as Indian songs such as

Pichakaree, Chutney and Chutney Soca have all been added to the Caribbean’s identity basket.

Globalization has assumed the position of the great leveller of culture of the world. In actuality it

is seen by many sceptics as another attempt at world domination by European and American

powers socially, culturally and of course economically. After slavery, indentureship and

colonialism, European powers set about maintaining a stranglehold on Caribbean life by the

introduction of the ‘global village’. This was seen as a great melting pot of cultures and

economies. In fact it was to promote European culture and economics at the expense of the

emerging Caribbean expressions of culture and economic way of life. Reggae and calypso were

set to eclipse American music as a major influence in the Caribbean. The response was to flood

the Caribbean with American pop music dominated by Afro-America. The end result in most

cases was a fusion of both such that zouk, spouge, dancehall, Soca and rap emerged. Indeed,

globalizations, far from eliminating Caribbean Identity, has caused it to syncretise, bifurcate and

combine with other strains to form new more electric extensions of what is today viewed as part

of the Caribbean Identity. While the everyday dress in the Caribbean is dominated by western

norms, the Nehru style suit is now fully accepted as formal wear. The shirt jack too, typified by

Guyanese politicians has also been made into formal dress. Cultural festivities have been given

to the world from part of the Caribbean’s vast reservoir. Notting Hill Carnival in England was

started by a Trinidad woman. Today it is the single largest festival in London. Labour Day in

Brooklyn USA has been developed by West Indians living in New York. In recent years several

carnivals in Germany, Florida and elsewhere have appeared, all with a distinctively Caribbean

flavour. The display of Tan-Tan and Saga Boy by masquerade band leader, Peter Minshall in

Olympic Games in Canada is yet another example of the Caribbean lending its culture to the

world. Cuban music floods the North American market and went viral for the recently held FIFA

World Cup in Brazil. If nothing else, the world has been inundated and blessed by the

contribution of the Caribbean to world culture. The reciprocity is seen in the region’s ready

acceptance o outside strains and adapting them to our local conditions. Today therefore

American giant KFC has culinary stranglehold on Trinidad and other larger Caribbean territories.

Music from Europe and North America dominates the Caribbean airwaves, and everyone has a

European name and women try hard to look as Caucasian as possible, using false hair pieces and

skin whitening formulas. As yet, Afro- Caribbean economics of Sou-Sou and self help are yet to

be explored fully. So too unexplored is Afro-Caribbean sociology of the village rearing its

people and policing its own.

The Caribbean, while being the smallest geologic plate on the planet, possessing the smallest

population as a region and the smallest islands and nation states, is nonetheless rich in cultural

diversity and heritage. To speak of a single Caribbean Identity is to do grave injustice to the

Caribbean which has, because of its various threads, been able to spawn a plethora of cultures in

its small geographical space. One Caribbean Identity? It would more read like one Caribbean

space, several Caribbean Identities, each identity based on the unique occurrence in history and

geography of its varied people sewn together in a sprawling tapestry. CARIFTA, Caricom,

University of the West Indies, West Indian Cricket and cricketing greats such as Sir Garfield

Sobers and Brian Lara, FIFA First Vice President Jack Austin Warner, V. S Naipaul, George

Lamming, Derrick Walcott, Norman Girvan, Uriah Butler, Sir Walter Rodney, athletes Hasely

Crawford, Donald Quarrie, Claude Noel and Usain Bolt, Pan-Africanism, Black Power,

International Criminal Court, Law of the Sea Convention, Emancipation celebrations on the

African continent, Back to Arica Movement, Mathematical genius Dr R Capildeo, Eugene Chen/

Acham, Darcus Howe, Stokely Carmichael/ Kwame Toure, among thousands of others, owe

their genesis to the rich West Indian/ Caribbean landscape. It is indeed a Caribbean melting pot

of Identities in a Caribbean Basin of struggle, survival and overcoming.

References

1) Beckles, Hilary, Verene Shepherd 1993, Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society

from Emancipation to the Present, Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston.

2) Reddock, R et al, 2001, Caribbean Sociology: Introductory Readings, Ian Randle

Publishers, Kingston.

3) Martin, T (2012), Caribbean History: From Pre-Colonial Origins to the Present, Pearson

4) Reid, Basil (2008), Popular Myths of Caribbean History, University of Alabama Press.

5) Williams, E, 1944, Capitalism and Slavery, University of North Carolina Press

6) Williams, E, 1970, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969 ,

Andre Deutsch Ltd, London

7) Howe, Glenford, 2002 Race, War and Nationalism: a social history of West Indians in the

First World War , Ian Randle Ltd.

8) Campbell, John et al, (2004), Caribbean Civilization: Course Material, Faculty of

Humanities and Education U.W.I

9) Van Sertima, I, (1976), They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient

America, Random House Inc. NY

10) Brereton, Bridget, 1996, An Introduction to the History of Trinidad and Tobago.

Heinemann Educational Publishers, Oxford.

11) Anthony, Michael, 1985, First in Trinidad. Circle Press.

12) Woods, Donald, 1968, Trinidad in Transition: the years after slavery. Institute of Race

Relations, Oxford U.P

13) De Verteuil, Anthony, 1992, Seven slaves and slavery: Trinidad, 1777-1838.,

14) Roberts, Peter 2008, The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race, and Ecology,

Cambridge University Press

15) Haley, Alex, 1976, Roots , Vintage Publishers

16) McIntosh, Karel, One Caribbean; Many Identities, Global Voices Newsletter, 30 May

2007.

17) Laughlin, Nicholas, What ‘Caribbean’ Can Mean, The Arts Journal Volume 2 Number 2

(2006).