Excerpt from the Jamaica Observer column published on Monday, October 3, 2022
By Jean Lowrie-Chin
We read deeply into history at The University of the West Indies (UWI) and, yes, we knew all the ills of colonialism, but we did not feel malice toward our fellow students from various ethnic origins because of their colour. Indeed, we learnt that the Irish joined the Indians and Chinese as indentured servants and later there was a settlement of poor Germans and Jews who fled Nazi Germany. How could we decipher then the ancestry of our fellow Jamaicans based solely on their colour?
Fast-forward to the present, where white-looking folks in Jamaica are being painted with a broad brush. Never mind that these Jamaicans care for their country, that they built businesses which create employment, that they offer scholarships and invest in the professional development of their staff. Even as we celebrate our young black Jamaicans who have risen to become business moguls, let us also celebrate those who were not content to only inherit businesses but continue to put their energy into innovative expansion.
Our motto ‘out of many, one people’ was created on a bright hope for Jamaica’s future, a hope that all of us, regardless of class or colour, would aspire to be nation-builders. There is nothing that saps our common good like malice, both for the giver and the target. We have lost fine Jamaicans who could not tolerate the bile being poured on them and have opted for a more peaceful life abroad.
But there are some of us who refuse to give up our Jamaican dream that we can all work to affirm and help each other to prosper. It was Dr Martin Luther King Jr who exhorted Americans not to judge someone “by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”. It is a challenge that we should embrace here in Jamaica.
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