Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006

Reggae and Homophobia

Missed this while on tour last month, but this is a great piece
on dancehall and homophobia by Elena Oumano, among the best pieces she’s ever written.

Slavery and colonialism are gone, but Jamaica’s 1962 independence masked the economic abandonment of an absentee plantation worked past profitability. The queen gifted her former colony, though, bequeathing Jamaica her church, Bible, and buggery laws. That little-old-lady-in-the-Cotswolds mentality is more recent, and therefore, more vivid in the Jamaican consciousness than any dim genetic recollections of pre-colonial Africa. Even the Rastaman who rejects church as part of the Babylonian West is not immune. Folded into his message of black self-reliance (and for some, separatism) and an African utopia is good old-fashioned King Jamesian fire and brimstone for Babylonian abominations like homosexuality. Yet mounting academic research suggests that the West’s legacy to Africa is homophobia, not homosexuality.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 1:19 pm | 1 Comment

One Response to “Reggae and Homophobia”

wayne&wax says:

March 25, 2006 at 3:52 pm

this one actually ran last year (when you were also on tour?!), but yeah, it’s gotta be the best treatment of the issue to date. deep on context.

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