RESEARCH - EVENT OR WORK
Below are extracts from interviews conducted by Elaine Bauer and Paul Thompson whilst researching for the publication Jamaican Hands across the Atlantic.
Identity
Celia Mackay
now a carer in New York, thought she knew about racism from the subtleties of Jamaican attitudes to skin colour:
"But coming to America is an entirely different story. An entirely different story. Coming to America, it’s like a culture shock, because the things I see people do, because of the colour of your skin, seem to me stupid. If you are going to tell somebody, “You have your money, but you can’t live in a certain area because you’re black”, “You cannot get a certain loan because you are black”… to me it is outrageous. That is what you call racism. And to me, it is stupid… When I think about it, it gets me really angry. Because as far as I’m concerned, we’re all created as one… You’re getting a cut, and it’s the same blood that comes out."
Josephine Buxton
expressed the complexity of such mixed feelings from her many years in England with the biblical resonances of a pastor’s wife:
"I am like, I am like Moses, never forget that he was a Hebrew, even being brought up at the palace of the king.… I know that I am from Jamaica, I having so much of my old culture in me. I have adopted so many others of other country until, I think, I’ve lost much of my culture too. But there is the little bit that left there… that I am a Jamaican."