Apr 20
No updates for the next little while (not that there’ve been many updates recently anyway) because I’ll be a-travellin’.
Follow-up to my earlier post about Akon’s appalling behaviour at Zen nightclub in Trinidad. (Yesterday’s link to the video no longer works, because the video has been removed from YouTube; Akon’s record company is making some sort of weak copyright infringement claim, and for “copyright infringement claim” you can read “efforts at damage control”.)
Afrobella, Karel McIntosh, and Elspeth Duncan (all Trinidadian women) have posted entries about the incident.
Afrobella also talks about the blogosphere reaction to the video; when I read some of the comments on other blogs that posted the story and video, and over at digg, I found myself feeling angry and frustrated. I read that the girl involved was a “slut” and a “ho” and a “prostitot” and a “dumb bitch” who “was asking for it” and “should have known better”. I read that she “looked like she was enjoying it”. I read that “she doesn’t look like 14, she looks like a grown woman”, as if that makes a difference. I read that “this sort of behaviour is normal [in Trinidad / in the Caribbean / among black people / in Africa / for rappers]”. I read that Akon was “showing the girl a good time”. I read that “island girls are easy”. I read that the whole thing was somehow “the girl’s fault” and she was “to blame”. And I read all kinds of extra stupid shit about how it was racist to criticise Akon for what he did.
Akon intentionally deceived this girl (who is just fourteen years old) when he lured her onstage with his promises of “a trip to Africa”. Akon grabbed this girl and manhandled her in a fashion that I, as an “island girl” who has seen a lot of stuff at clubs and parties and fetes and carnivals, have never seen before. He literally tossed her about like she was an object, a thing. And then he dumped her on the stage and went on his way while his crew picked up what he had discarded. He engaged in behaviour that was atrocious and unexcusable, regardless of what the girl looked like, what she was wearing, how old she was, or what kind of parenting she had. Her poor judgement does not excuse his misogynistic violence.
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Apr 19
So apparently American rapper Akon performed at a nightclub in Trinidad sometime last week, and somehow ended up simulating sex onstage with a member of the audience.
The buzz around the ‘net is that he got girls (the one in the video and a few others) on stage by telling them that they would be participating in a dance competition, with the prize being a trip to Senegal (Akon is of Senegalese heritage); reportedly he later admitted that the contest was a farce and that there was no prize on offer (apart from, of course, the awesome privilege of engaging in violent frottage with Akon in front of hundreds of people). It is also rumoured that the girl involved is only 14 years old.
See video here. And read Trinidad Express coverage.
I’ve been to plenty (well, enough) fetes and soca/reggae shows and I’ve seen revellers at Kadooment and thing, so believe me, I’ve seen raunchy, but that isn’t just raunchy, that is brutal and scary.
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Apr 17
Caribbean people from all over the region and the world answer the BBC’s question: what does it mean to be Caribbean?
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Apr 16
Over the past week or so, I’ve learned via the newspapers that some fellas from nearby districts have been involved in a series of violent altercations, resulting in at least two deaths and one arrest.
This morning, while I was doing my usual pre-dawn exercise, I saw a police SUV with 4 dark-uniformed officers inside, cruising slowly through the streets of my neighbourhood. I’m still not sure if this made me feel safer or more at risk.
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Apr 11
No Impact Man is a blog that chronicles one man’s experiment with researching, developing and adopting a way for him and his family to live in the heart of New York City while causing no net environmental impact.
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A couple of weeks ago I was browsing through the posts over at Barbados Free Press, and followed a link to this Nation newspaper editorial which mentions, in passing, “controversial Barbadian-born international figure Sydney Burnett-Alleyne”. Having never heard of this gentleman, and being intrigued by the characterisation of him as a “controversial international figure”, I decided to do a Google search for his name.
I found a Time magazine article from 1981, which describes Mr. Burnett-Alleyne as a “mystery-man gunrunner with [a] novelish name”. He was apparently one of the central figures involved in a plan to overthrow the government of Dominica. A 2006 article from the Nation suggests that Burnett-Alleyne was also involved in an attempted coup in Barbados, with the ex-Prime Minister of Dominica apparently looking to become head of some sort of “Commonwealth of Barbados and Dominica”. It’s not clear to me whether this coup attempt is the same one referred to in Time, or whether Mr. Burnett-Alleyne was just very persistent. Finally, I came across this recent, but unrevealing, submission to the Nation’s editor from one Sydney Augustine Burnett Alleyne.
The most informative thing I turned up was a post at the Barbados Forum which quotes at length a 2003 article (original source not indicated, but it sounds like the Nation again) about Burnett-Alleyne. Here are the opening paragraphs:
Is the Burnett-Alleyne of today the same person who spent several months in jail after being caught in Martinique’s waters with a yacht full of guns and ammunition, supposedly bound for Barbados to try to overthrow the Tom Adams administration in the middle 1970s, or is he the soft spoken man in Britain who recently converted to Roman Catholicism and who recently told the SUNDAY SUN that he loves Barbados and Barbadians?
Is he the same man who once vowed that the streets of Barbados would “run red with blood” if he didn’t get his way by having a government of “national consensus” to replace the freely elected administration in Bridgetown?
Streets running red with blood, wow. That’s some strong language. I never imagined that modern Barbadian politics had ever involved the sort of conspiracy and turmoil revealed by these tales. But I suppose that back in the 1970s (back before my time, I’m still a young(ish) yam) revolution was in the air.
Overall, what I’ve read makes me, to somewhat misquote Lewis Carroll, curiouser and curiouser. I would love to know more about this Sydney Burnett-Alleyne guy. Can anyone help me out?
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Via rebecca blood, I can across this Guardian report about female civil servants in India being asked to provide information about their menstrual cycle as part of a new job evaluation process. At the end of the article a government official is quoted as saying:
A committee had formulated these new rules. But for every problem there is a solution. If things are not proper, another committee will be appointed to re-look at the new appraisal form.
Maybe there’ll even be a committee to examine a need for a new review committee, and then a committee to decide who should sit on that new committee. As the Guardian reporter says, that’s true civil service style.
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Apr 03
Recently overheard:
Man: I realise that having a baby…
Woman: It changes your whole body.
Man: Yeah, it changes your whole body, and…
Woman: Because I didn’t always look like this, you know. Before I had the baby I was not this big.
Man: But you know what the problem is with you? The problem with you is basically that you’re lazy. I mean, not necessarily you in particular, but women you know, they’re just, they’re just lazy.
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Apr 01
In this New York Times article about the re-imaging of advertising icon Uncle Ben (of the rice) as “an accomplished businessman with an opulent office, a busy schedule, an extensive travel itinerary and a penchant for sharing what the company calls his “grains of wisdom” about rice and life”, the president of the food division at the company that produces Uncle Ben’s Rice says:
What’s powerful to me is to show an African-American icon in a position of prominence and authority. As an African-American, he [Ben] makes me feel so proud.
Which I think is slightly ridiculous and surreal, because dude, Uncle Ben is a character contrived by marketing people to sell rice. Whether he’s in a boardroom or on a cotton plantation, it’s rather silly to talk about being “proud” of him, because he is not a real person.
[link via kottke]
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My consumption for the month of March.
First books:
- Harriet’s Daughter
- The Middle Passage
- Deadly Persuasion
- Sister Outsider
- Ways of Sunlight
- Purple Hibiscus
- The Stolen Child
- Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
- The God Delusion
Then movies:
- Ghost Rider
- Stomp the Yard
- Barnyard
- Matchstick Men
- Hard Candy
- The Devil Wears Prada
- Sherrybaby
- Happy Feet
- 300
No movies that I was particularly impressed with. In fact, I watched a lot of fairly crap movies in March. My favourite book for the month was The Middle Passage, which I quoted here.