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The Story of the Caribbean dates back as early as Christopher Columbus who likened the indigenous people unto barbaric cannibals that have no god. The Caribbean’s story is one that if examined closely you’d be quite surprise what people think and say about Caribbean people, they think that we all smoke marijuana, are all hooligans, are a people of a violent nature, don’t have cable television or internet, call our creole backward and they think that everyone is from Jamaica. This is mainly because from the outside world they only know one story of the Caribbean, one story that is tailored to show the Caribbean as backward, slow, undeveloped and uncivilised. This ethos also goes back to a preliterate era where the Europeans portrayed the Caribbean and its inhabitants as a wild, ‘uncivilized’ place that was only worth how much they could exploit. To narrow it down even further I’m from Trinidad and Tobago, more specifically Tobago and being a Tobagonian in Trinidad I too face the problem of people only knowing little or one thing about Tobagonians. The thing about these stories is, though they may be true, it is what makes us who we are but to focus only on these negative stories, is to overlook the many other stories that makes a civilization great, these stories make and develop a stereotypes that are incomplete and they make that one story become the only story.

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Objective 2 : Civilization , Culture , Society (23/11/217)

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Objective 2 : Civilization , Culture , Society (23/11/217)

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Dear Christopher
You called them uncivilized, unruly and men without Gods, but how is it that you can judge or call one civilization uncivilized using your own Eurocentric mindset about Civilization. How can you say since there was no writing then there was no history? Pre-literature.  How can you come into a society and say they have no systems no order and no structure? And then proceed to force your own systems upon their Culture. The idea that there was no history before your arrival, that they were uncivilized and had no culture is absurd and barbaric. When the people that you killed out had their own political system with their own social hierarchy of chiefs and leaders. When the people that you killed out had their own history called pre-literature. When the people that you killed out had their own culture, own way of life, own social constructs. You come to these islands forcing your eurocentrism onto them, over work them, exploit the islands, commit genocide against a race of people and had the audacity to be referring to the individuals as uncivilized, barbaric and cannibals.

You sir is the one with no God
By Bronx.com. (2017). The Bronx Times - The Controversy Of Columbus Day. [online] Available at: http://www.bronx.com/news/usa/586.html
[Accessed 24 Nov. 2017].

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Immigration Crisis between Haiti and the Dominican Republic ( 30 / 11 /2017)

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Immigration Crisis between Haiti and the Dominican Republic ( 30 / 11 /2017)

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“The influx from our poorer neighbor is overwhelming. They steal jobs. They are dangerous. They take advantage of our laws.”
“They are seeking better lives. They do the labor-intensive jobs locals won't. They contribute to the economy.”
One would assume that the above statements are regarding the rhetoric surrounding undocumented immigration into the United States and their border with Mexico but it’s taking place on the island of Hispaniola at another highly disputed border: the one between Haiti & the Dominican Republic. And as has been the recent global trend, the hard-liners seem to have the upper hand.
The intertwined histories of these separate states is full of colonialism, revolution, racism and conquest. After the enslaved Africans in (what was then called) Saint Domingue revolted & created the first black independent nation, Haiti, France plunged the newly independent state into an insurmountable debt (to get the independence recognized). This debt, amplified by a unstable post-revolution economy and terrible leadership led to the Haiti we know today: the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. This has caused a continuous exodus into the neighboring Dominican Republic; an exodus that has been resented. Mix in the effective black listing of Haiti by France, racism (Haitians are generally of African descent, while their neighbours are more mixed) and nationalism over regionalism & you have the perfect recipe for an oppressive, xenophobic government that in September 2013, had a high court rule that all Dominicans born to undocumented immigrants since 1929 are no longer citizens - stripping them of their rights.
In an instant over 200,000 Dominican citizens became stateless; over 80% of them of Haitian descent. This ruling has not been overruled, creating the border crisis that is happening today: tens of thousands without a home, facing imminent deportation & an uncertain future.

So much for one Caribbean identity.

References

Story Mariano Castillo, C. (2017). Faces of a divided island. [online] CNN. Available at: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/04/12/world/dominican-republic-haiti-immigration/index.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].

Young, S. (2017). In our backyard: The Caribbean’s statelessness and refugee crisis. [online] Brookings. Available at: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/06/20/in-our-backyard-the-caribbeans-statelessness-and-refugee-crisis/amp/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].

Yuhas, A. (2017). Dominicans of Haitian descent turned into ‘ghost citizens', says Amnesty. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/19/dominican-republic-violated-human-rights-haitians-citizens [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].

Image from: References

BostonGlobe.com. (2017). The Dominican Republic must normalize harsh immigration policy - The Boston Globe. [online] Available at: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2015/07/04/the-dominican-republic-must-normalize-harsh-immigration-policy/TNqkvTtSAjBfeX5PWzGaxN/story.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].

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Prior to beginning this Course, I was ignorant to a lot of concepts and terminologies about the Caribbean and its history and/or civilization, so I knew this course would have been a challenge to me; nevertheless, upon starting the plenaries I was taken by surprise at how informative and effective they were delivered to us by our lecturer Dr. Campbell and his moderators. They did an amazing job at delivering each lecture to us in a way that even someone with zero background in history would be able to grasp the concepts and ideas being delivered. What stood out the most to me were the concept of pre-literature, Caribbean identity, civilization and chattel slavery to name a few. I really had high expectations going into this course and I am pleased to say, they were met and by surpassed by a milestone. There isn’t anything I would have changed going through this semester, the plenaries were great and informative, the tutorials were helpful and the course examinations were a great test on how much we actually learnt, rather than testing on how much we can recall they tested us on how much we understood what was being taught.