Melville Cooke

I was highly amused when, in June last year, rapper and record label executive Jay-Z said he would not be popping any more corks from Cristal champagne bottles. This was after Frederic Rouzaud, managing director of Louis Roederer, which makes Cristal, was quoted in The Economist magazine in an article entitled 'Bubbles and Bling', as saying the company viewed the fascination with the bubbly of rhyming and flossing choice by rappers and their fans with "curiosity and serenity".

But when he was asked if the love for Cristal by the 'blingers' (which invariably means 'black') was bad for the brand, Rouzand said, "That's a good question, but what can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Perignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business."

Ouch. I guess that popped the rapper's bubble.

At something like US$200- US$300 a bottle, Cristal is not cheap. Like the cars and the jewellery, it is a symbol of excessive financial success - not just being able to take care of the bills and have a house or two left over, but being able to live to excess just for the hell of it. However, what is a symbol of excess for the financially successful black person is often commonplace for the financially successful of another race.

Financial success

(I wonder what the reaction would be if the makers of Hennessy, the cognac of expensive choice for dancehall deejays, were to make a similar remark.)

As a people, we generally hold ourselves to very low standards of symbols of financial success and I find the results that I can see very amusing as well as sometimes very irritating. I suppose it is a result of 'neva see come see', as in a people less than 200 years removed from not owning even themselves actually being able to afford something eye-catching, doing their best to catch the eye.

Hence, the amusing 'lean back' in the front seat of a car, a stance which declares "a fi mi dis an' it hot, so me hot". Hence, the very irritating habit of two drivers stopping beside each other in the middle of the road and having an extended conversation.

Hence, the amusing habit of drug dealers building their mansions in the middle of upscale neighbourhoods, with no visible means of income, instead of living simply and under the police radar. Hence, the irritating habit of drug dealers' lawyers squealing about how good a man their client is when he is caught.

Hence, the amusing habit of buying the blingest of bling phones and the flippest of flippant cellies.

Hence, the irritating practice of getting them to ring (for I swear the owners ask people to call them, so they can hurriedly scramble for the device or hurry out, phone at the ear and eyes on who is eyeing them) in the most inappropriate of places, like at funerals and when Chinua Achebe was reading at the Undercroft, UWI, Mona, last month.

Colour requirement

Hence, the amusing scramble for a labelled or preferred parking position by employees of a company, the place in the parking order determining their place in the pecking order. Hence, the infuriating habit of people who get a supervisory or managerial role in a company where they do not fit the colour requirement to sit on the board using that position to make the lives of those who report to them miserable, just to show that they have reached some stage of 'arrival'.

And hence, the assumption that a black person is driving the most expensive car they can afford the payments for, or paying rent for the bashiest quarters they do not own, an assumption which leads to us generally not applying our low standards to other races.

So a Chinese man driving a cheap is not seen the same way as a black person is; neither is a white (or off-white) person in a well-worn pair of shoes. The assumption is that they can easily acquire much more expensive items.

But for us, the standard is always just above our comfort level.

Next week: The white minority