Hommophobia inna dancehall style...

I just simply can't get my head round black homophobia - it's a bizarre concept to me. Homophobia in general.... but black homophobia?

Please direct me to a post where I've been racist, I'd be interested. If you can't, as I said, don't you dare imply or make untrrue suggestions on a public forum.

Thank you.

John - it's hardly for me, and certainly not for you, to justify the English language, its origins or its strengths and weaknesses - I'm speaking for MYSELF. What I believe and think, not from an irrelevant historical angle - are we all not on here to give our own personal versions/feelings regarding things? Do you honestly not think, as Stevem says (a poster I respect for being able to actually say what he genuinely thinks without fear of being accused of 'trolling' or 'racism' or general political incorrectness by the high and mighty moral highground who seem to inhabit this site), that the constant 'you know worrimean' and 'aiights' make the speaker sound dumb? Honestly? I'm being honest here - it makes my skin crawl. And when I listen to someone speaking like this, I switch off.

And Robin - who asked you? And more's the point - you are? I defend my stance as I wish. I write a post the length and way I care to - I for one skip long overblown theoretical posts as I find them horribly preachy and boring, I'm afraid and I don't have time to get through them. So back off. OK?

But we've had a pantomime / carnival tradition of cross dressing in European culture for at least 7 or 8 hundred years. May be much older.

russ if you're not trolling it speaks poorly of your intelligence.

micky's gags about his cross-dressing and his overall style are mind-boggling. it totally confuses all notions of good taste and good music. everyone should check him out. i wish i could find jpegs of his album covers, they're the best (worst).

Russ, linguistics aren't terribly subjective. You can believe, if you want, that English isn't what is actually is. You are free to eat celery and claim that it's mutton. But it's still celery. It is, in fact, for me, and anybody else who knows the verifiable historical facts of the matter, to discuss the origins, strengths, weaknesses, and myriad wonders of the English language. "Speaking for MYSELF" is fine until you go asserting that there's something innately "pure" about "proper English." Then you're just wrong, and anybody who tells you so is justified in doing so. Unless you want to say something like "Look, I've always said two and two were five, and it's not for you to tell me they're four!"

Your "switching off" is a response which you should examine more closely than you do. That's really all I'm saying. Because your reasons for switching off don't stand up well to scrutiny.

no they are not, 9 times out of 10 its all tiresome, cliched drivel. and rarely is it as effective or useful as its phatic tendencies would suggest either.

russ,it was in direct response to a point you were making!
not only that,but it was concise and clearly written in the queens english

making a point and then refusing to listen to a response is incredibly ignorant,especially if you then continue arguing without even having the good grace to read the post someone else has gone to the trouble of typing for your benefit

patois: a. Properly, a dialect (esp. in France or French Switzerland) spoken by the common people in a particular district, and differing materially from the literary language. In England, sometimes used loosely as a contemptuous designation for a provincial dialect or form of speech.
French scholars distinguish dialects as the particular forms presented by a language in different regions, so long as there does not exist a common written language. When a common language has become established as the medium of general literature, the dialects lose their literary standing and become patois.

pidgin: . A language as spoken in a simplified or altered form by non-natives, spec. as a means of communication between people not sharing a common language. Freq. attrib. or in Comb. Also fig. [This might handily be called "bastardized" without offending anyone.]

dialect: One of the subordinate forms or varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation, and idiom. (In relation to modern languages usually spec. A variety of speech differing from the standard or literary ‘language’; a provincial method of speech, as in ‘speakers of dialect’.) Also in a wider sense applied to a particular language in its relation to the family of languages to which it belongs.

so no, Jamaican English is not a language by commonly-accepted meanings of that term. but neither is it "bastardized" or "invalid."

Stevem : I wonder. I think we all get off a bit on the sense of being "down with the kids / street" from listening to music like UKG or even pop. That's part of it's popularity. It's a bit vicarious, not something we're particularly proud of, but I think it's implausible to saw it isn't part of the mixture for why we dig this kind of stuff. (Look at Simon Reynolds on the "Drive wid' us" theme in UKG)

Now I wonder whether this scene setting isn't an essential part of what attracts us. A lot of people complain when their "street" music seems to get "arty" or "middle class". Explanations given are usually that it's become all about style or technique, or that it's stopped being sexual / about dancing and the body.

But I wonder if one of the problems is that it's also lost this phatic call to community. Suddenly, the "inane" shout outs are gone, replaced usually by abstract music rather than more profound lyrics. It feels displaced, lacking in community, empty.

That's my understanding too. I also think Jamaican has creole like components. When for example a grammatical mistake (such as in the difference between I and me) becomes grammatically correct in this variant.

Also, I heard that reggae Jamaican incorporates a lot of a particular kind of slang, similar to backslang or dog latin, deliberately to make the speech more obscure. Some words are broken up and other words are inserted into the middle. (Bit like saying unbefuckinglievable)

Maybe this kind of slang transformation can become part of the grammatical structure of the language in Creole too.

Would you prefer "xenophobic twat"?

As for this debate between pidgin, creole, and patois, I think what's important (specifically to Jamaica--I don't claim to have tons of knowledge about any other creole) is to recognize that just because a language has a written set of rules doesn't mean it is superior. Jamaican Patois (Creole and patois being near synonyms) IS a language. It's grammatical structure happens to be closer to some African languages (it's hard to trace back--we are talking about a history of slavery and slave masters didn't really seem to care where they were procuring their slaves). Just because its surface morphology and phronology seem to reflect a "slang" or "dialect" version of English doesn't eliminate the fact that its has a grammatical and syntactical structure of its own.

As Professor Braithwaite at UWI wrote, Jamaican Patois (or, more properly, Jamaican) should be considered a "nation-language." Yes, there are similarities between English and Jamaican, just like there are similarities between, say, German and Yiddish (would you like to argue that Yiddish isn't a real language too?), but Jamaican does have many of its own linguistic properties and words--such as verbs like "nyam" meaning "to eat" or nouns like "pickney" to mean child.
It is also the source of much pride in Jamaica and hell, I don't care how angry some of you get, but it's bloody upsetting to me to even have to make this argument.

but of course i agree w/you entirely that this patois is no less "valid" or any such thing than standard american english.

Jamaican Patois is in fact a creole. Creoles are languages. Patois isn't broken English any more than English is broken German. Standard English is not a creole, although the majority of its lexicon is from other languages. If this sounds confusing, well, it is. Read "Word on the Street" or "The Power of Babel" by John McWhorter if you want a well-written explanation of how linguists classify languages, dialects, and all that.

Since Black English has been mentioned, it's probably worth pointing out that Black English is not a creole as many people (including the Oakland School Board at one point in time) believe, it's a dialect.

Also, slang and language are very different things. Languages have slang, no languages are slang.

In my professional opinion you can safely ignore anything russ t says about Jamaican Patois or English.

-fh (a linguist)

I guess it might be a case of dancehall sounding so thoroughly exotic to me in all of its elements that I can't easily connect its dramas to the real world, and the bogeymen homosexuals are as unreal and outlandish and cartoonish to me as Elephant Man himself is. This is not a defence of course... I strongly feel that i should be more disturbed than I am.

Russ why should black homophobia be *more* difficult to "get your head round* than white homophobia? Can you in any way justify this comment other than resorting to hackneyed and hopelessly dimwitted "all oppressed people should unite" arguments? (Yeah, maybe they should but they don't, you know - it just doesn't happen.)
It's true, ethically speaking, this is an incredibly thorny issue for me, as outlined in the pots above, but as someone who won't even recognise the validity of patois, well, you just don't have an awful lot to debate.
And Tim, as ever I can't help but agree with you. Despite being concerned about this issue and making an attempt to understand/rationalise/reconcile my feelings on *any* kind of prejudice with my love of this music, there's something so extreme and *ridiculous* about all the posturing in dancehall that it's just pretty damned difficult to take totally seriously.
Remembering that dancehall is an intensely theatrical and contrived, with deejays taking on the most absurd performance personae etc, makes me think that, to a large degree, these views are merely a front and not to be taken literally. I know this doesn't make it much better, but it does mean that given time they may disappear - however, I wouldn't hold your breath for this.

ding ding ding. The scapegoats (the Hated) find themselves their own scapegoat (Hated). Now they can be the bullies.

rest assured that we all do not

this all comes down to whether one believes homosexuality is a choice or part of our genes. (i believe the latter) obv the equals argt will never apply, but it becomes less problematic to conflate the two in terms of biology. culturally on the other hand...

i don't really know one way or the other and don't care much as both views have their pros and cons. the bottom line is that if it's genetic or a choice, people should have the right to conduct their lives freely and without discrimination. the notion that homosexuality is a sin, has little to do with the nature/nurture debate, it's more about a changing perceived notions of morality - obv when this morality is as heavily tied to religion as in this instance, you start to encounter serious problems...

I do think, though, that the huge rise in clubs/drugs have done a great deal in building bridges between the straight and gay communities.... there's a lot more people who would never have set foot in a gay club or spoken to a gay person before now regul,ars in many clubs I go to - drawn there by the great music and the hassle free atmosphere. And that's a good thing.

in this instance i think it would make comparatively little difference. but this whole issue is all about people judging one another and who is right/whi is wrong? i just find it horrendously condescending that people have kneejerk "homophobia = evil = end of debate" reactions when there is so much inetresting stuff to be discussed here: music, sociology, theology, history etc... that's why i love dancehall - for all its limitations, it's an incredibly rich vein to mine if you're of a mind to.

I think and inclusive society must also be a society in which there is time and space for reflection. When you think about the artificial divisions different groups construct between themselves and others, they really seem arbitrary and ridiculous. Where I live, in Montreal, I have the time and space to think about issues and to evaluate my positions and outlook regarding religion, race, homosexuality, feminism, etc. When I lived in Kingston, I found that a lot of this time and space was taken up by maintaining my level of personal safety. One particularly difficult day, after having been yealled at by dozens of people on the street (I was walking from a church to a bus stop), I called a friend and tried to explain just how hard it was for me to be in Kingston. Waking up every day I knew I'd be in for a challenge...I'd psych myself up if I wanted to go and buy a paper or if I had to leave campus.

One of my dread friends there talked to me about how much he wished he could sit down and write about his experiences. I said "Why not?" to which he responded "There's too much noise in my community." Read: I can't sleep because of shootings, I have to bleech (Jamaican for staying up late in order to make sure nothing out of order happens) all night, I have to make money to eke by, there is no time. Ghetto youth and dancehall performers talk often about how they feel "under pressure" (think Super Cat's wicked mid eighties tune). The pressure one feels in a garrison community (like Hope Tavern, August Town, Hermitage, Trenchtown, Seaview Gardens Grant's Pen, Waterhouse, Southside....i.e. the majority of communities in Kingston) removes the time and spcae necessary for reflective thought. Hell, when I first came back I had to keep reminding myself that I didn't have to feel uncomfortable walking around my parent's rural community. Fundamentalist belief and faith is, to me, a reaction to the intense pressure many Kingstonians find themselves under. It provides a sense of comfort and safety...perhaps the way to eliminate homophobia in dancehall (and in Jamaica--and perhaps other southern developing nations) is to slam liberal economic policies--the forces of globalization that have led to the incredible poverty and desperation in so many areas around the world.