Rex Nettleford/Columnnist
"TIE THE Heifer, loose the bull" so goes a proverb from Guyana. It alludes to customary ways of rearing a boy-child as against bringing up a girl in the West Indies, to which millions of Africans were forced into exile some four or more centuries ago to plant sugar. They also did what was natural: they multiplied and replenished the earth!
Heifers and bulls are mere metaphors for women and men, reflecting the self-image of the Afro-Caribbean persona long crafted in terms of fertility functions and gender specificity. The phenomenon persists with a vengeance among most Afro-Caribbean people and against a background of that seemingly widespread concern among the Western male of African ancestry. The Caribbean Asian male is not the subject of this commentary.
Like the threatened white male of the North Atlantic, the Caribbean black male is now being described as an "endangered species". But while his white counterpart may be inclined to blame it on militant feminism in the current fight for gender equality, the Caribbean black male who is made never to forget that he is his mother's son, is left to figure out what has gone wrong. He is reared with an undoubtedly feminine sensibility and that legendary maternal indulgence which lets this proverbial 'bull' loose to roam; to 'toughen'; to be assertive and aggressive in the face of any threat to his self-esteem; to be strong even when wrong; and, to hone his skills to be of service not to one, but to as many heifers as his mating prowess will allow. In short: to be 'a man'.
NEED FOR INCREASING ANALYSIS
What has gone wrong is cause for increasing scholarly analysis, investigative journalism, theatre explorations and continuing speculation. Studies done by University of the West Indies scholars Barry Chevannes and Janet Brown, attempt to take the investigation beyond the general approach of looking at Caribbean men from the needs and perspectives of Caribbean women. 'Tie the heifer, loose the bull' is, indeed, a black mother's explanation of how to rear a fairly 'protected' daughter for personal independence and motherhood and how to prepare a son for adventure and survival, albeit to be 'responsible' to a future family of his own as well as to his mama who, after all, brought him into this world and expects his support in her old age.
Professor Errol Miller, has long warned about the "marginalisation of the black male", increasingly feminised beyond the home where matriarchy and matrifocality had long held rein. Many of us Caribbean black males have indeed been 'fathered' by our mothers or grandmothers.
Yet the absence of fathers and the paucity of 'nuclear families' did not seem to produce in an earlier generation the levels of criminal activity, dealings in drugs, social alienation and chronic wrongdoing prevalent today among young Caribbean black males. Nor were the incidents of urban violence and the loss of a sense of place and purpose attendant on the massive physical and psychic dislocation experienced by the exploding unemployed population exacerbated by urban drift, as evident.
More of our people once lived in rural communities. Caribbean cities were for the most part urban settings with rural underbellies. Boys saw trees grow and developed a genuine sense of process. They had little time to be let 'loose'. They, after all, had such chores as planting and reaping of crops, tending animals, fetching water, constructing and maintaining housing stock and fences which demanded time management and production skills for existence. They also offered everyone that sense of process which many a Caribbean black urban male seems nowadays to lack, in contrast to his female counterpart who, as 'heifer', is 'tied' to house chores and maternal guidance leading to the discipline of routine activity.
Small wonder, goes the argument, that girls now outnumber and outachieve boys at all levels of the educational system. In my own University of the West Indies, female undergraduates outnumber males three to one and cop many of the high-grade passes.
DOMINATE CENTRES OF POWER
What, many are asking, has happened to the Caribbean black male? The paradox is that he still dominates centres of power and influence politics, academia, the church and the corporate structure. Only one woman, Prime Minister, Dame Eugenia Charles of Dominica, has
been able to emerge since Independence came the region's way in 1962. Men are still seen and no less so by our women as the authority figures. But will they continue to be so regarded, into the 21st century?
TURNING TO THE GUN
The fear among many black men is that they will not. This is so particularly among those from the lower-income groups which means the majority who are turning to the gun in quest of manhood but are barely living beyond their mid-twenties in the violent world of ghetto gangs and donmanship. In Kingston there are more 'gun-boys' than gunmen and no 'gun-women' or 'gun-girls'. Moreover, 'Why should I, a ghetto youth spend years getting an education when I can gain quick fame and wealth without it as the late reggae superstar Bob Marley and the thriving dancehall icons like Buju Banton and Beenie Man demonstrate'? Such reasoning remains seductively persuasive.
Further up the social ladder tenanted by those graduating from high school or university, Caribbean black males are deemed to be no less endangered. The rise of women in middle management in the corporate world and in the public service as well as in the leadership of civic and professional organisations, results in cries of "gender imbalance" from men who feel threatened by the new competition from those they are reared to regard as subordinate, other than their mothers.
But old myths die hard. Many Caribbean black women continue to be protective of the 'bulls let loose': their sons.
Middle strata feminism has admittedly made a dent in such attitudes but only a dent. To many Caribbean women, their male offspring must not be further 'emasculated'. Slavery and colonialism have done enough harm, they argue. "A man must be a man!" To many a Caribbean black male, such an ascription must be fulfilled. And the stereotypes turn here, as elsewhere, on his sexuality. The seed of Israel reigns supreme!
There are, of course, myriad ways of losing one's manhood in the view of the Caribbean black male. The humiliating loss by the West Indies Cricket Team, after two decades as world champions, to Australia and later to Kenya, drew an editorial in the Trinidad Express of
March 1, 1996, headlined "Surrendering Our Manhood". For, associated with the manifestation of black male manhood are such cricket greats as Gary Sobers, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Courtney Walsh, Curtly Ambrose, Michael Holding and the current icon of a batsman, Brian Lara.
The upwardly mobile Caribbean black male in a country like Jamaica is very conspicuous by his assertive presence. He is
likely to insist that he is no
different from males anywhere else. And he indeed shares with both his compatriots from below and white men in the North Atlantic, such 'male' peculiarities as the fear of health checks. The reported high incidence among his kind of hypertension, diabetes, sickle cell anaemia and prostate cancer does not help. The courageous public discussion of the last-named disease by former Prime Minister Michael Manley, a male icon for an entire generation, reportedly sent many men over 50 to blood tests and related examination. But the fear of AIDS, no longer an exclusively 'African', 'black Haitian' or 'homosexual' affliction, remains a fate worse than death. Men, it is said, "dread seeing their doctor, if they even have one, because
illness strikes at their sense of
self-worth" their manhood.
So the Caribbean black male remains vulnerable in the face of the common cold, a bellyache or a pimple on his arm which all oftentimes thrill his spouse, mother, girlfriend (or all three) waiting to lend a nursing,
care-giving hand to the dying helpless man-child.
MANIPULATING ILL HEALTH
Women are said to be adept at manipulating ill health to attract attention. But the Caribbean black male is no less so. Perhaps that, inter alia, is what prompted from a well-educated, professional lady colleague of mine the response to the question whether Jamaican black men are an endangered species. "They're extinct" she declared without fear of contradiction. The retributive sequel to this is that she has since married one from the extinct species; and now all three a bouncing baby boy has since arrived are doing well and promise to be 'friends'.
This all makes sense; for as the Chevannes-Brown study has found, the Caribbean black male genuinely wishes to be 'responsible' as provider and even as paragon of marital fidelity; to be caring and compassionate; to be able to cry some actually do; to share in the housekeeping baby-sitting, shopping, cooking, even washing without fear of being seen as 'soft'; and, to be human rather than be a rough-neck 'leggo beas''. He has no intention of physically abusing his spouse, he is quick to say. He no doubt realises that there are strong, black women capable of returning the medicine if he dares.
Above all, he wants to have control over his life, to be less 'at risk' than he feels himself to be at this time with the shifting patterns of relationships between genders, classes and generations in a rapidly changing world. Happily, there is enough evidence to indicate
that more and more Jamaican/ Caribbean black males are ready to find their way to love and liberation since none but themselves can free their minds. They are in no way "extinct" even if endangered.
