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October 23rd, 2017
In the ted talk, Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of being exposed to only one aspect of a culture. A single story, she says, minimizes a culture into one negative aspect of itself. These single stories have the power to dehumanize and dispossess entire groups of people. “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” She says that the power lies in the 'nkali', which translates to 'to be greater than another', which shows that who tells a story, when it is told, how it is told, and how many stories are told, really affects the way in which the subject of the story is perceived as it allows the storyteller to turn a person or group of people into one definitive story. To profess one story is to overlook the other aspects of them.
Caribbean people are also affected by this danger of a single story. Time and time again, we see persons, particularly Europeans and Americans having very flawed perceptions of Caribbean people. The Caribbean is seen as being poor with limited resources and a lack of basic amenities. This goes back to the days of slavery where European conquistadors and missionaries believed the culture of the persons in the Caribbean were inferior to them. Their belief was that their languages, religion, and culture were superior to that of persons living in the colonies. This issue of Europeans and Americans perceiving the Caribbean and being inferior to them still exists. They fail to accept our diverse culture, our richness in oil and natural gas and the fact that we can produce well educated, wealthy persons who live a life outside of relaxing by the seaside and picking fruits and vegetables. The ted talk by Adichie teaches us that "When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise."

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

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November 7th, 2017
Music was used by the enslaved Africans as a form of Cultural Expression while they tilled the soils of the Caribbean sugar estates. They found that singing their African songs and chants made their work seem easier.

Reggae, a Jamaican musical genre, is known for addressing the oppression black persons faced from a cultural, political and social perspective as it looks at the black person's struggle to climb the social ladder. It became a powerful way of voicing the unjust treatment to persons of African descent. Born out of reggae, Dancehall is possibly the most controversial musical genre in the Caribbean. It consisted of artistes singing over rhythms that are "danceable" and the songs were a series of dance moves. However, it has changed and its lyrics now sexualize women, promote violence and normalize the use of drugs. The violence is most apparent and impacts society heavily as Dancehall music is most popular among the impressionable youth of Jamaica and by extension the Caribbean. Dancehall is now plagued by sex, guns and drugs and it is impacting today's youth.

A popular musical genre in Trinidad and Tobago is calypso. The lyrics of Calypso music is filled with critique of the social ills and political scandals that occur in the society. They focus on using this genre as a medium of speaking out on problems that plague the society that no one is addressing. It is for this reason that Calypso is music used as a form of social commentary. Calypso evolved and Soca music was created. The joyous lyrics perfectly capture the spirit of Trinidad, an island filled with carefree individuals living and loving each other, as music and laughter fills the atmosphere.

Caribbean Music is unites us as a Caribbean community. It is also one of the things that shape who we are as a society and adds to our social environment. Music in the Caribbean impacts the way society thinks, acts and live.

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October 16th, 2017
In 1937 a long tradition of anti- Haitian politics began on the eastern half of Hispanola, the island shared by two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Under the direction of unsympathetic Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, soldiers of the Dominican Army troops carried out an ethnic-cleansing campaign along the Dominican-Haitian border to expunge dark-skinned Haitians. The story is told that in order to test whether persons were Dominican or Haitian, soldiers asked them to say perejil, which is Spanish for parsley and a word Haitians were known to have difficulty pronouncing. Failure to pronounce the word resulted in them being killed. The massacre lasted about two weeks, leaving approximately 25,000 dead.
Now there’s a different kind of test for Dominicans of Haitian descent, with the price for failure being deportation. Beginning in 2013, an unprecedented Dominican court ruling revoked the Dominican citizenship of approximately 200,000 Haitians and their descendants, which is contradictory to the country's norm which allows persons’ birthright citizenship. Dominican legislature followed the ruling with the Naturalization Law (164-14) which is aimed towards helping disenfranchised Dominicans reclaim their citizenship. However, it put the burden of proof on the victims to provide records of their citizenship and their parents’ births in the Dominican Republic. It is a known fact however that many of these births were never registered due to deliberate actions by Dominican officials of denying records to persons of Haitian descent. This window of providing proof of their citizenship closed in June 2015 with only a few Haitians being successful and leaving the remaining hundreds of thousands to register as foreigners in their country. Despite claims of President Danilo Medina that mass deportations would not happen, approximately 14000 persons were officially deported and about 70000 others “voluntarily” left. Persons were forced to leave based on their appearance. Stripping away one’s citizenship is a violation of international human rights law, yet in the international community and even regionally the situation has not been paid much attention.

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November 26th, 2017
Caribbean Civilisation is a course that takes students on a historical journey through the Caribbean's history. This course is an informative one that has made me discover so many things about my country's and region's culture that I never knew before. It has enabled me to gain a deeper appreciation for my country's culture and history. The lectures with Dr. Campbell were very educating. He ensured that he explained everything thoroughly and he answered all of our questions providing clarity when needed. The fact that they were online made it very convenient. I sometimes didn't make it home in time for the lecture but thankfully they ensured to post each one online to accommodate students who were not able to participate in the live lecture. The tutorials were just as good. I participated in a face to face tutorial and my tutor ensured that we all fully understood what was being taught and sought to provide clarification on anything we didn't understand. Overall, doing this course was a great experience. I have learnt so much about my country's history and culture and I now know what it means to be Caribbean.

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https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story#t-1098442
http://jamaicansmusic.com/learn/origins/dancehall
http://www.ncctt.org/new/index.php/carnival-history/history-of-carnival/history-of-calypso.html
https://seesharppress.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/a-very-brief-history-of-calypso-and-soca-music/
http://www.thepalmsjamaica.com/brief-history-reggae-music-first-jamaica-world/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/06/haiti-dominican-republic-reckless-deportations-leaving-thousands-in-limbo/