Dancehall Devalues Black Pride More Than Anything Else
From time to time, we in the Caribbean, and especially here in Jamaica, are constantly reminded that we should be proud of who we are.
We are told that we should be proud of our heritage, culture, achievements and especially our skin colour. Many times, many of us get very upset when others put us down. Yet, as far as I can see, we have an art form that we consider to be very much ours that is doing a very good job of devaluing us – Dancehall.
One simple example: have you ever taken notice of the posters that promoters of our dancehall events plaster all over the place? There is usually some near naked woman on it that is clearly designed to get as many patrons as possible to attend these dances.
Now, my concern isn’t really about the near-nakedness of these women as such, it is more about how they look. For a predominately black country, it is always interesting, to say the least, how most times, these women are either white or as near to white as can be.
The promoters of these dancehall events seem to always go out of their way to discover what they consider to be the most attractive young women to put on these posters – and in the vast majority of cases, they are white or very light skinned. Indeed, come to think of it, I can’t remember seeing very many of these posters with very dark-skinned women as the main attraction – so to speak.
Also, with all of these women, even for the few dark-skinned women that appear on these posters, they don’t have hair that matches their race. As a matter of fact, if you want to see a supposedly real “green-headed, straight hair” or even “pink-headed straight hair” woman, just take a casual look at some of these dancehall posters. Indeed, I think Jamaica must be the only place where there exists black women of African descent with blue and straight hair!
Dancehall also targets our men too. In the vast majority of cases, the artistes who are promoted are present as vicious black thugs and riff-raff gangsters. With a hundred rope chains around their necks, their pants below their knees, their under-pants above their stomachs and sometimes even a gun of a ganja spliff in both hands, dancehall has done a good job of scaring everybody with the perfect black man. The “bling-bling” culture is synonymous with us black people. There is no doubt in my mind that this is mostly due to our cherished dancehall culture.
If dancehall is to be believed, the black man is nothing but a party animal – content with getting wealth while not working and worse, not studying, for it. As for our women, they shouldn’t even be black at all – surely, not if they can help it.
Yet this art for, Dancehall, is something that we are supposed to be proud of! Surely with friends like dancehall, who need enemies!
Michael A. Dingwall.
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