Politicians Furious Over Demand For Brownings:

There is surprising news coming out of Jamaica’s industrial front, shockingly, employers and entities have asked the island’s national training agency — HEART Trust/​NTA — for brown or light-skinned trainees to fill vacancies at their companies.

“Wow” this can­not be , how could we have missed this in a coun­try like Jamaica that claimed to have been unshack­led from the chains of colo­nial­ist oppres­sion , seg­re­ga­tion, depri­va­tion and dispossession.

I fail to see how this could hap­pen in Jamaica where peo­ple feel they would be bet­ter off under the colo­nial mas­ters, peo­ple who refuse to demand a new con­sti­tu­tion, one that releas­es them from being sub­jects to a for­eign pow­er that cares noth­ing about them , but still swear alle­giance to said sov­er­eign nonetheless.

It bog­gles the mind that this could come up , when for decades only half white women could even think of enter­ing beau­ty con­tests, or have a chance to win the miss Jamaica crown at home , even though the coun­try is approx­i­mate­ly 96% black. How can this be when most com­pa­nies , Organizations, and lit­er­al­ly every enti­ty is owned , run, and staffed by light-skinned peo­ple, thank God for Government jobs and small hus­tle or dark-skinned peo­ple would lit­er­al­ly starve.

How could this be when the tourism Industry is staffed by peo­ple with alien accents, even though some have nev­er set foot on an air­plane? How could this be hap­pen­ing when they did­n’t want Marley’s stu­dio on Hope Road? Yes Hope road , anyway.….

Of course this vir­gin dis­cov­ery has gen­er­at­ed a cho­rus of out­cry from the usu­al quar­ters, the online fra­ter­ni­ty and the old polit­i­cal hands, of course there are none old­er and have greater sleight of hand that Pearnel Charles of the JLP and the one and only Sister P , Portia Simpson Miller the President of the PNP , leader of the Opposition and for­mer Prime Minister.

If it was up to me I would just give one of those nation­al hon­ors they dole out to cronies and friends, you know the type Carolyn Gomes and oth­ers have got­ten? Yes those , just give one of those to Portia, and hope­ful­ly we wont have to hear her pon­tif­i­cate, cry, and shout in anger, when­ev­er the issue of rights, pover­ty, and dis­crim­i­na­tion comes up.

I am all for any such motion on Portia’s behalf, if it means I won’t hear from her again. Mark you I am always left won­der­ing at what stage does Portia get to do some­thing about pover­ty, abuse ‚and vio­la­tion of rights? You know since she has been in rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics for ever, includ­ing the high­est exec­u­tive office in the coun­try, the Prime Minister.

This is how the Gleaner char­ac­ter­ized Pearnel Charles’ response.

Charles

At first, the labour min­is­ter was flab­ber­gast­ed at the mere sug­ges­tion that Jamaican employ­ers could be using skin tone as a cri­te­ri­on for employ­ment. “No, sir. I don’t believe it,” said a baf­fled Charles before his bemuse­ment turned to anger. If I meet one of those employ­ers, I would per­son­al­ly see to that per­son being pros­e­cut­ed,” said the labour min­is­ter, him­self a vet­er­an trade union­ist. He not­ed that such dis­crim­i­na­tion had no place in the 21^st cen­tu­ry. “hat can’t hap­pen under this Government … not when I am min­is­ter,” said Charles as the notion sank in. e added: “If you can prove it to me, I’ll throw the whole book at such an employ­er in this coun­try.” Carles, who called the colour prej­u­dice expressed by some employ­ers racist, sought to assure the nation that the Ministry of Labour would move swift­ly and deci­sive­ly if it were to receive com­plaints from per­sons who were denied employ­ment on the basis of their skin tone. “Expect imme­di­ate action from me and the Government using every piece of machin­ery to elim­i­nate it from this soci­ety,” he said.

Now I am no lawyer but I am left won­der­ing exact­ly what would Charles do except to advise any such per­son , so trans­gressed against, to seek legal counsel? 

It seem to me that behind all of the com­mo­tion and howls of feign igno­rance and anger that Jamaica has always been a coun­try deeply steeped in racism and Caste-ism.

Simpson Miller, in her angry reac­tion to the report, warned Sunday night that such prej­u­dice against dark-skinned peo­ple would not be tol­er­at­ed in Jamaica “ever again”. She said the prac­tice, report­ed by offi­cials at the HEART Trust/​NTA, is a “pre­scrip­tion for what we do not want in a coun­try like this” and urged the Government to launch its own inves­ti­ga­tions. “We do not want divi­sions … . We are all one,” she told the pub­lic ses­sion of her South West St Andrew con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence at the Haile Selassie High School. “When you come to tell me that you’re going to bring back in Jamaica the days of the colo­nial mas­ters when only peo­ple with fair skin and a cer­tain type of hair can get jobs, I am call­ing on the Government to inves­ti­gate those com­pa­nies,” she said. Simpson Miller also urged con­sumers to be vig­i­lant, warn­ing that “any com­pa­ny we go to do busi­ness and we see only brown peo­ple, and we don’t see a mix­ture of brown and black, then we are going to move our busi­ness”.tyrone.​reid@​gleanerjm.​com

Well what can any­one say about Portia? Portia is Portia , rhetoric, anger, brava­do, emo­tions, heat no light or any­thing of sub­stance, her state­ment speaks for itself.

The truth is, in their haste to cur­ry favor with vot­ers, now that elec­tion is loom­ing ‚both of these sea­soned hands are falling over them­selves to show they are in sync with the peo­ple, they both know how to play that game, a game Charles can nev­er win against Portia, Portia has a monop­oly on car­ing , shed­ding tears, and express­ing anger.

Both of these politi­cians are well aware that the sys­tem they now feign igno­rance of, has ele­vat­ed and kept them and oth­ers like them, in pow­er . The issue of col­or, is only one of the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices that per­se­vere in the coun­try , there are all kinds of exclu­sion­ary castes based on mon­ey, edu­ca­tion, Politics, etc.

Both politi­cians also know that there is lever­age to be gained from this issue, and as usu­al are play­ing to the most base instincts of the mass­es. So once the masks of brava­do and anger are peeled from the faces of these two actors, we real­ize this issue has been with us for ever, expressed, and implied, for as long as we have been around .

Faux igno­rance and con­coct­ed anger does noth­ing to remove this scourge from amongst us. Many ordi­nary Jamaicans have known this for gen­er­a­tions, hence the songs about brown­ing, and the many and var­ied attempts at bleaching.

mike beck­les:

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