Dear Editor,

My heartiest congratulations to Toni-Ann Singh on her not only winning the Miss World 2019 contest, but on representing Jamaica well. In interviews she comes across as a genuine, unpretentious Jamaican. But, like H G Helps confessed in his Sunday Brew of December 22, 2019, I too must confess that before December 14 her name did not cross my radar — and neither did the name of Miss Universe Jamaica Iana Tickle Garcia until the Annie Palmer costume brouhaha.

Not too long before Christmas I had plunked all of US$35 to buy Dr Orlando Patterson’s latest book The Confounding Island. If I had read it in its entirety then my confoundedness in trying to understand Jamaica might have been ameliorated somewhat. But, in reading a review of the book, it appears that on matters Jamaica, Dr Patterson is just as confounded as I am. And that has left me feeling somewhat relieved.

Dr Patterson’s confusion and mine remind me of “Sonny” Levy’s response to his Jamaica Shell Shield cricket Captain “Bull” McMorris, I think, when asked to go out and bat as nightwatchman for the great Lawrence Rowe: “Skip, if Yagga cyaan see it, then how do you expect me to?”

Needless to say, and as not unexpected, Jamaicans everywhere, both at home and abroad, celebrated Singh’s triumph. But it has not gone unnoticed — at least to me — that nobody is calling Singh, who left Jamaica at nine years old, a foreigner. And, maybe nobody should. But, contrast that to this: Over the years I’ve heard in more than one place of the experiences of some Jamaicans in the Diaspora, who migrated at ages much older than that of Singh’s, who, in their quest to return to Jamaica to work, have been met with a cold reception — “Is come yuh comin’ from farin fi come box food out a wi mout’!” I can’t help but ask the question: Is it only when Jamaicans living abroad bring global glory to Jamaica that they are welcomed?

Dr Gregory Roberts as expressed in his December 17, 2019 letter to the editor published in the Jamaica Observer sees virtually the same dysfunctional Jamaica-Diaspora relationship. But he adds an insightful twist. “The [Jamaican] Diaspora is seen same as Europeans saw their colonies – purely to extract.”

Back to Iana Tickle Garcia, Miss Universe Jamaica 2019. She endured much ridicule and scorn from some Jamaicans for the costume choice, and was accused of not being a “real Jamaican”. But what if she had won her contest? I’d bet that there would be dancing in our streets. This confounds me.

Ray Ford

fordraye1@aol.com