JAMAICA IS AFRICA

Trevor Burrowes I ratcheted up what I understood of the relationships we're dealing with globally. If we are free (or relatively free) to chart our own course, we are free to designate Jamaica as an African nation within a provisional African unity. As an African nation equal to any other, we would be as entitled as any other to set the rules for that unity. If we can therefore set an example of African independence, then other African nations are free to join us. In this way, as Jamaica goes, so goes whatever we term "Africa." I'm sure we can do better with independence if we work at it. And that means all of us.

Brian Lee and Village to Village: program of Americans helping Africa in relatively selfless ways, without middle man bureaucracy.

For that program to grow its legitimacy, it could help to associate it with Garvey's vision for upliftment of the African world

To associate this African vision with colonial architectural heritage would be healing and unifying (Why?)

It is a cultural element that can get a headstart in SAB and be advantageous for the populist American venture in the African continent

Important for the African world in the Americas as well

Jamaica is an anglophone nation with its interconnected native Jamaican creole language. It has had centuries a hybrid language and cultural style--part African, part European.

Although slavery was endemic in pre European Africa, the scale of slavery of Africans in Europe territories was unprecedented. It is creditably beliecved that at least 11 million Africans were sold into European slavery. 

Whereas  endemic intra African slavery was among people of similar ethnicity, large ethnic and civilizational differences between African slaves and European slave owners might have created unprecedented gaps between slaves and owners. And adapting to those gaps at such a scale and speed might be seen as a most unusual event in history? Moreover, the indiscriminate (?) mixing of Africans of different cultures and languages together so that THEY had to adapt to each other could be seen as an equally monumental cultural challenge. (It's unclear as to the nature of adaptation by and among slaves as opposed to that by or among slave owners. Scholars should delve into this.)

A takeaway from the issue of adaption by continental African to cultural conditions in the West is the unalterable way in which Africans in the West challenge the issue of African identity. Is the African in the West a harbinger of African unity? And, if so, is European heritage therefore embedded in a provisional African identity?