Dear Editor,

Lloyd B Smith’s recent column on the Hill and Gully rhythm controversy raises important questions about culture, morality, and national identity. However, the discussion requires deeper historical reflection beyond simply condemning “slackness” and vulgarity.

Historically, all societies establish standards regarding public conduct, sexuality, and decency. African civilisations are no exception. Yet Jamaica’s present cultural tensions cannot be understood apart from the powerful influence of British colonialism and Victorian evangelical morality upon the island’s social imagination.

Much of what Jamaica now instinctively interprets as “Christian morality” was filtered through colonial standards of dress, body exposure, grooming, and “respectability”.

Over time, European aesthetics became normalised as the measure of civility, while African-derived bodily expression, movement, hairstyles, and modes of dress were often treated as inferior, primitive, or morally suspect.

This remains visible today in controversies surrounding Carnival, dreadlocks, braided hairstyles, ripped jeans, tight-fitting pants, sleeveless clothing, and even the policing of female school uniforms. In many institutions, African-inherited aesthetics continue to face scrutiny under standards deeply shaped by colonial respectability politics.

Ironically, traditional African societies often possessed less anxiety regarding the human body while still maintaining strong moral and communal order. The Christian writer CS Lewis once observed that modesty is culturally conditioned. A Pacific island girl in a straw skirt could be considered as decently dressed within her society as a fully covered Victorian woman in England. The issue, therefore, is not merely bodily exposure, but how societies are culturally trained to interpret the body itself.

This does not mean Jamaica should embrace vulgarity or abandon standards. Rather, we must distinguish between genuine moral formation and inherited colonial body shame. The challenge before us is to develop a healthier cultural anthropology — one rooted neither in Victorian repression nor commercial hypersexualisation.

Jamaica’s identity did not begin in 1962, it emerged through centuries of interaction among Taíno, African, European, Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and other peoples. Any serious conversation about Jamaican culture must, therefore, grapple honestly with the complex historical forces that continue to shape how we see ourselves.

Dudley McLean II

dm15094@gmail.com