Stephen Vasciannie

Some years ago, I came across an interesting examination question posed for a scholarship to All Souls College, Oxford. The question asked: "Do clothes matter?", or something of that nature. It interested me partly because, in the rather closed context of British society, the question was, I thought, really a proxy for other things. All Souls, you will remember, is the college that caused Eric Williams public pain when he applied for one of their scholarships many years ago.

In his book, Inward Hunger, Williams notes that he made it to the "interview stage" of the prestigious All Souls scholarship competition, but, by means subtle and unsubtle, was made to feel out of place. It was presumption, he said, for a "colonial" to aspire to a fellowship at All Souls, and the interviewing examiners made him pay the price for looking beyond his status as the son of a civil servant from Trinidad.

Do Clothes Matter?

So, when the All Souls question asks, "Do clothes matter?", I am inclined to think that it is really asking for a discourse on social position: Do you agree, the question seeks to know, that in some social settings certain types of clothes are appropriate as against others? And, while you are at it, what are your views on social standing, and social mobility? After all, clothes can make the man, can't they? And if clothes can make the man, do you agree that the type of clothes we wear, help to indicate whether or not we believe we belong in certain social gatherings?

These thoughts came back to me last week, as I was encouraged to think about one's sense of social belonging. Beenie Man and D'Angel got married. As is usual, their invitations included a dress code - that is, a statement that for this function, your clothes matter. That is usual enough. What was unusual, I think, was the requirement that guests should come to the wedding decked out in white.

Why did guests have to wear white?

To be sure, white outfits are symbolic in marital and cricketing contexts, but I was a bit uncertain about this more than Beenie request. Somewhere in Shakespeare's Henry V, there is a reference to the fact that during wartime silken dalliance was left to lie in the wardrobe. But, at this wedding, guests were apparently told - rather in the way of showy opulence - to turn out in white, or not turn out at all.

Had this been a public requirement from the establishment at All Souls, Oxford, I would have scoffed at it as unnecessary extravagance designed to remind me and many others that we do not "belong" in some settings. I suppose I have to reach the same conclusion about the Beenie Man approach.

Hair and There

Other things reminded me about belonging and not belonging last week. Daryl Hair has, it is reported, asked the world's cricketing authorities for a rather healthy sum of money in return for his withdrawal from international umpiring duties. It seems to me that he no longer belongs in the élite panel of umpires. Similarly, I do not believe that Justin Gatlin belongs in the category of persons who should benefit from a plea bargaining arrangement with the American sporting authorities.

But, more fundamentally, I was reminded about belonging and not belonging just by going on to the street in Kingston. The stark poverty evident in many communities, the need to divide our students from a very early stage into those with opportunities and those without, the manifestations of economic inequality, and in some instances the insensitivity to that inequality, all reminded me that this society still has much work to do.

Stephen Vasciannie is a professor at the University of the West Indies and consultant as a Deputy Solicitor General in the Attorney General's chambers.