Even before leaving, we already seemed to have Jamaica on the brain. For JD it might’ve been connected to his rumination on the cultural significance of The Clash, and my chatting up my someday follow-up on Jamaican music’s status as global authenticator (à la the importance of dancehall, for instance, to Gwen Stefani and MIA). For me it might have come from sitting on a thesis about Jamaican film, or last year recommending Stephanie Black’s documentary, Life and Debt for a poco class. Or maybe it was my own brief contemplations on Zahra Redwood, the first Rastafari Miss Universe contestant.

Most likely it was my memory of living in Flatbush during graduate school, of feasting daily on jerk chicken from Danny and Pepper’s (they’ve since split up!) or of making toast from Gordon’s bread, or my weekend treat of ackee and saltfish. (By the way, can we just add ackee to that list of foods that make no sense? Like yucca, ackee can kill you just for looking at it: who figured out that, if you get past all these poisonous contingencies, that it would become edible?)

Needless, to say, after a full week of three-square Jamaican meals, it’s a little bit hard to be home. Oh, and splitting our time between Kingston’s über-urbanity, Mona’s bucolic-yet-rigorous academic environs, and Bob Marley’s gorgeous Blue Mountain retreat didn’t hurt neither! We didn’t hit the beach on our trip. I love the sea, but sand in Jamaican summer (95° in the shade baby!) came in second to Strawberry Hill, a cool mountain retreat overlooking Kingston and the ocean on one side, and surrounded by the beautiful blue mountains. Sigh.

Interestingly, both our hotels were Chris Blackwell properties, so he had to count as our celebrity sighting. Both properties are deeply integrated into Kingston and its environs (albeit in very middle and upper class ways). At the Terra Nova in Kingston, it was all about the bar scene, and friends and business people brunchin’ and lunching on the terrace. At Strawberry Hill it was all about Sunday brunch, with Kingston families in their Sunday best. Don’t get me wrong, class conflict, and our refusal to recognize it properly in black communities, is one of the central problems in such communities–and I am in general worried about the exalted place of consumerism in African American life. But what does it mean that class difference, or even people of just difference classes, is seldomly represented? And what does it mean to forget that class difference is about more than money, that it is also indicative of cultural differences that contribute to the richness and diversity that blackness should also signify?

Jamaica reminded me a lot of my time in Ghana, and I couldn’t help but think about how this is the part of black life (and I’m going Diasporic here) that is seldom represented in general, particularly in any global sense. I think about the vast swaths of Chicago’s South Side, for instance, that are solidly black and solidly middle-class, and have been so for generations. Where are those stories? Jamaica’s story is a story of slavery, colonialism, and independence, studded with repeated and striking instances of resistance and accomplishment. I couldn’t help but wish my son were older, so that he could really register this sense of black people everywhere, every one different in so many ways. Another twist on the national motto: “Out of many, one people.” He noticed it in his little ways though: “mommy, all the brown people.”

For our big tourist excursion, we visited Devon House, which was the Kingston home of Jamaica’s first black millionaire, George Stiebel. Built in the 19th c., its lore includes the story of Lady H., who had a road built to circumvent Devon House, so that she would never have to see it.

The day before our visit to the house, I had mentioned our Devon House excursion to one of the Jamaican students working the conference. I was a little shamefaced (ok not really, but you know what I mean), assuming he would laugh at our “big tourist trip.” But no, he stiffened his back a bit, becoming more formal in his comportment even as his language became more comfortable to me, “Ya mon. Devon House is a great place. Our first black millionaire. That’s a good choice for a trip.” I felt a test coming on–contrary to what you’ve heard about the SATs and such, black people love tests! Suddenly our roles of student and teacher switched:

He asks: “and do you know where the road is?”

I say, laughing: “The one the white lady built?”

“Yah mon. Do you know why she had it built?”

“So that she would never have to drive past a rich black man’s house.”

“Yah, stupid lady would go an hour out of her way just to avoid it.”

“That’s pretty fucking awesome.”

Laughter: “Yah mon.” (picking up my big fat midwestern accent). “It was pretty f-ing awesome.”

I had passed the race test, but, as usual, had failed the West Indian propriety test. Oh well. It was still pretty fucking awesome!

I am not much of a recapper (I don’t even like pageants!). But I’m in this thing and must fulfill my duties until the end! So here is what you officially need to know about the 2007 Miss Universe pageant:

Miss USA fell, and then got booed. (Trump blames Mexico’s anger over American immigration policy. I blame Elvis.) Whatever, she’s a trooper, smiling through the jeers: “Buenas Noches, Mexico.” Ouch! →

← Miss Japan won, and Miss Mexico didn’t make it into the finals.

¤

What I’m interested in, though, is Reuters‘ description of this year’s pageant as troubled. And they don’t mean “troubled” as in “we should be troubled it still exists,” a la Sweden, but troubled by its many controversies. Now, again, not big on the pageants. At worst they are just too tightly tethered to processes of female oppression through objectification; and at best they simply propogate the modern sense that all women must be “perfect,” e.g. smart, beautiful, and talented in completely mainstream, high capitalist ways.

But let us put that aside from now, for I am interested to see what counts as troubling in the Miss universe. According to Reuters:

A raven-haired Miss Japan, Riyo Mori, was crowned Miss Universe 2007 on Monday in a contest marked by protests, a banned dress and the withdrawal of one beauty queen on the ground the pageant degrades women.

I find these events far from troubling, and even think we should assume them to be par for the course– although I am also willing to admit that Reuters might simply be trying to wring some spicy story out of this monumental, hugely watched, non-event! But protests are good, especially when they are trying to bring attention to violence against women during an event that screens us from such violence (more on the protests later). And of course there was a banned dress. The Miss Universe costume is the pinnacle of nationalist couture; I’d be more worried if there were never controversy over what a contestant is wearing. Unless of course you’re Balkan or a European non-aligned state. And yay Sweden, “giving in” to the feminists. Or can we say, “responding to women’s concerns”?

But then the Reuters report takes a turn for the worse, letting too many things slip into, categorically, “troubled.” Let’s watch the progression of these three paragraphs. Beginning with the protests, the story moves from that which is a sign of trouble, to that which is “quirky,” to a reference to winner Zuleyka Rivera’s incipient eating disorder in last year’s conference:

This year, [the contest] attracted protesters wearing white dresses splashed with fake blood and sashes proclaiming “Miss Juarez,” ”Miss Atenco” and “Miss Michoacan” in reference to places in Mexico made infamous by killings or sexual abuse of women.In another quirk for 2007, the long, twisted dreadlocks of Miss Jamaica, the contest’s first ever Rastafarian participant, and the close-shaved head of Miss Tanzania stood out from the lacquered manes of the other contestants.Last year’s Miss Universe event in Los Angeles also made its mark when winner Rivera caused gasps by slumping to the ground in a faint during a post-pageant news conference.

In another post, I found myself unexpectedly reading Miss Tanzania and Miss Jamaica as beacons of light in an event that otherwise signals a kind of dreary global vision. According to Reuters, it turns out I am just totally into pathology– feminism, diversity, and political action…

And, oh, why do I care about a random Reuters story? It’s because no one seems to care so much about the Miss Universe pageant this year. That is quite fine with me, but it means that across the world (checked on the world this morning!), the Reuters story is the story– cited, misquoted, and plagiarized unto infinity in blogs, magazines, and newspapers. More stories will emerge, but the “trouble” might give this one just enough spice to keep it afloat in a sea of follow-ups.

And to quote my three year-old son: I don’t like this “trouble.” Or to paraphrase Objectify This, to the tune of Big Pun:

“I’m not a troublehater ’cause I dream a lot.”

“We’re taking a big beating by being linked to it,” said Panos Papadopoulos, the organizer of the Miss Sweden contest, which scrapped its swimsuit competition and allowed women to apply for the position like any other job after heavy criticism from feminists.

By waiting until the weekend before the event to stage their withdrawal, the Swedes have pulled the ultimate in TV- friendly protest. How modern! How Swedish! Unfortunately, however, I do think this one might have already fallen off the radar.

I guess, for now, I will just have to enjoy the way some of the contestants are working to stretch the boundaries of the Miss Universe beauty standard. We’ll be seeing Miss Jamaica, Zahra Redwood, the first Rastafarian contestant. And then there is also Tanzania’s Flaviana Matata, who has shaved her head bald: “I never let anyone define me neither by hair nor clothing as I believe God made me perfect as a pure, natural African woman.”

Hakuna matata indeed!