Sean Paul didn’t get popular until he started traveling to Canada, UK and America. He didn’t get love back home initially because he was seen as a fraud because of his uptown upbringing (wealthy origins) by the underclass who make up the bulk of the dancehall base. It wasn’t until his international fanfare and number 1 songs that dancehall fans in Jamaica warmed up to him.
That “Out Of Many, One People” motto is fukking cap. It’s used as a
quip to smother any cogent critique of the unequal racial dynamics on the island. Rastafarian’s have been calling out racism on the island since the 1930s, same with UWI professors, even brehs in the ghetto who can put two and two together (from Professor Carolyn Cooper, Beverley Manley, Mutabaruka, DK Duncan). The slogan literally came about through a pageant celebrating the 300th anniversary of British colonial rule that showed Jamaica’s supposed racial diversity (called the Ten Type Beauty Contest), a contest mixed women would almost always win. The top 10% of Jamaica own and control 3/5ths of the wealth on the island, +90% of that 10 % are Chinese, Lebanese, Jews, Syrians, Cacs, Indian’s and Bi-racials. Only one of the top 10 wealthiest families in Jamaica is fully Black. Indian’s isolate and are more often than not opposed to mixing, they still celebrate their traditional holidays. You can’t even buried in the Chinese cemetery in Kingston if you’re non-Chinese Jamaican, they also socially isolate other than for engaging in commerce. If you do all that to distinguish yourself from the average Jamaican then how we can be the same?
These non-Blacks in Jamaica make it clear that the line of demarcation is ethnicity and nationality tbh. It’s only during sporting events and maybe carnival that they engage with their so-called “Jamaicaness”. These are the groups who hated on reggae and dancehall, who pushed for censorship and lobbied against its proliferation, but simultaneously pilfer and plunder it. These are the groups who led the charge of subjugation snd oppression against Rastafarian’s (who were seen as socially disruptive with all that blackity black stuff), for decades Rastas would get snatched up off the street and would forcibly get their heads shaved. All these other races do in Jamaica is isolate, practice anti-miscegenation, gaslight the Black masses, lobby against favorable social policies and wealth horde.
This isnt 2004, nobody is thinking about Sean Paul except for when they play Temperature 20 times during a single NBA game
