The Black Lives Matter Movement effect in the Caribbean – As Seen Online. ( Jamaica) PT 1

The world watched the 8 minute and 46-second long murder of African American man George Floyd. He died from a knee on his neck. His killer was Derek Chauvin a clearly racist cop that has since been charged with second-degree murder. It wasn’t our first such viewing, unfortunately, but somehow this one hit us all very differently this time. Maybe it was because we couldn’t escape it with our usual daily distractions. We’ve been a captive online audience thanks to the COVID Pandemic since March. So, the video, photos, memes, reactions were everywhere. The World erupted with BlackLivesMatter protests. The Caribbean watched too. Stunned at first, we internalized it, then responded soon after. Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Bahamas led the way with protests, petitions, and very heated debates.

As I’m writing this, the protests have already spread across all 50 states in America as well as to over 20 countries -in Africa, Asia, and Europe. It’s now been over three weeks. This is now far beyond being the usual 9-day wonder. It has shaken our world to the core and had kicked off a fresh wave of direct institutional challenge and change in America it seems. Yet, there are a few people in the Caribbean – Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados in particular, who have been dismissive of the Black Lives Matter Movement’s effect here.

They’ve said – said that racism is not an issue here, only classism and shadism/colorism. Yeah, your read that right, so go ahead and insert those WTF eyes. But, Marlon James Manbooker Prize-Winning Jamaican author captures that attitude perfectly. He said:

Others have even been tone-deaf AF, acting like it’s business as usual, when there is clear evidence online and offline that screams the opposite. Corporate Brands, Governments, some prominent figures in society have been called out, corrected and some canceled. All challenged live online and very publicly especially on Twitter and Facebook.

Caribbean nations seem to be matching the resolve of the #BLM movement, with protests, online petitions, unbridled swarms of discussions, boycotts, and provocative memes. It’s been a palpable rally cry of enough is enough, with the outrage being sustained primarily in independent digital media, on digital platforms, and in real-life spaces. I for one, hope that the typical Caribbean crisis of courage is crumbling and giving way to a hunger for real change. While it all remains to be seen, what has been happening so far, is providing very hopeful indicators.

The Caribbean Brand That Really Stepped in it.  

Let’s start with the CEO of Sandals Hotel Chain Adam Stewart who was caught in a screenshot that showed him liking that controversial Trump photo with those words “…when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.

Jamaicans who followed Stewart on Twitter called him out on it, loudly and angrily for days. Jamaican Twitter was on fire! He responded by unliking the photo and doubling down on the Black Lives Matter support in the following days. Along that very bumpy ride, some people were apologising for him, but the majority were not having it and calls for a boycott was Caribbean wide.

Amidst the Twitterstorm, people were questioning if Mr. Stewart’s actions meant that the Sandals brand is aligned with Trump’s philosophy. Then someone found and posted a 2016 picture that was published in the Jamaica Observer, a newspaper that is owned by the Steward Family.  It showed the Gordon “Butch” Stewart Founder of Sandals, Adam Stewart his son with Trump. The juxtaposing of those two photos below speaks volumes.   

As the heat got heavy under the Sandals brand, it was revealed that Sandals was spending some of its ad dollars on Fox News, a channel that is unapologetically pro-Trump. They had Sandals ads inviting people to the Caribbean airing on specific shows headed by the likes of TuckerCarlson and Laura Ingraham. Both have reputations for not being very fond of black people or BlackLivesMatter.

Below are just two of the many reactions we found on twitter about that. Sandals have since published a press release that it has pulled its ads from those shows, claiming that it buys ad space in bulk, so they didn’t know their ad dollars were supporting anti-black shows. *sigh*

But as soon things were cooling for the Sandals brand somewhat, their media company The Jamaica Observer greenlit a cartoon from its resident cartoonist, Clovis, and well, that started another round of hell for them.

The Clovis Cartoon that was tone-deaf AF.

Clovis has been the resident editorial cartoonist since the Paper started over 20 years ago. He did a cartoon that angered Jamaicans both at home and in the Diaspora. Marlon James once again, so succinctly shows why anybody black and Jamaican would not have been happy with it.

To their credit, the Jamaica Observer issued an apology and removed the cartoon from its website. But frankly, it should not have seen the light of day in the first place. The fact is, this crap with the Jamaica Observer is doubly upsetting for me since I started my journalism/writing career right at the Observer, right after College. I still know some people there and they have been really good to me over the years. But that said, they fucked up big time and I was not going to be quiet about it.

So it has not been a very good couple of few weeks for the Sandals and Jamaica Observer brands but alas, there is more.

The Column that caused a blowback and its missed opportunity.

Then came a column from a respected and successful PR entrepreneur Jean Lowrie-Chin who along with her husband founded PROComm in Jamaica. Mrs. Lowre-Chin writes a weekly column in, yes you guessed it, the Jamaica Observer.

Under the title, Our Wounded Human Family, her column published on June 1, came fresh on the heels of the fast-developing BlackLivesMatter protests which was now across 30 cities across the United States. She also published it on her personal blog. She spoke about George Floyd, The Central Park Racist woman Amy Cooper and the US Policing System.

Lowre-Chin expressed that “Our human family needs healing, and this will come when everyone, of every class and colour, receives the respect and justice that we all deserve.”

Then her column took a curious turn in my opinion and a section titled  “A strange kind of racism” contained two sentences that blew back very hard and fast.

This section, some say already read like she was acting as an apologist for The Sandals Brand. But the line that sparked the Twitter rage was this…..” with all our problems, Jamaica remains the most racially harmonious country in the world, where colour is no obstacle to success. “  Now you tell me.

Anybody Jamaican, living in the country or in the diaspora knows this is a lie. And for that, Twitter let her have a Defcon 10 level of anger. For an entire week, she was called out, challenged, canceled, and threatened unfortunately by a very angry Jamaican Twitter. People were pissed at her for promoting what many called typical Jamaican uptown, 1% type propaganda.

While Lowrie-Chin threw a few punches herself, she deactivated her personal Twitter account and for me, missed a grand missed opportunity. She could have chosen to use her platform and influence to defend her world view, listen to those who disagreed and to center and amplify an overdue truth and reconciliation discussion about classism and colorism in Jamaica.  But I’m the eternal optimist and there is still time for to happen, whether through her others as it has been a simmering, undeniable, and often whispered thing for ages.