Dear Editor,
It is very interesting that the slogan for this year's Independence celebrations is "Proud and Free! Jamaica 53!" Either it is easy for us to keep up this pretence that were are indeed a proud people, or were are simply just masters at fooling ourselves.
Which proud people are so good at begging? Even when we sing our national anthem, we beg. It is bad enough that we are begging favours from a god that isn't really there, but if we must find a god to sing our anthem to, couldn't we at least do so with some pride? Instead of asking this god for all kinds of "gifts", why couldn't we have an anthem that tells this god about our achievements?
What proud people can you think of that go around the world trying to give the impression that we are poorer than we really are simply to achieve the goal of getting more economic aid? It is one thing to ask for assistance but quite another thing to convince people into giving such aid under a false claim. What pride can there be in this?
We even interpret our history within the context of begging. We are hell-bent on trying to guilt the Europeans into giving us more handouts under the guise of reparations and their so-called crimes during slavery. We even beg in the name of our ancestors.
I know that all of us were taught how Anancy tricked those around him to get what he wanted, but I am sure that even he would have learnt a lot of new tricks from us by now. All this talk about us being a proud people is just talk; not an ounce of truth is there to it. Some "proud and free" people we are.
Michael A Dingwall
michael_a_dingwall@
hotmail.com
It is very interesting that the slogan for this year's Independence celebrations is "Proud and Free! Jamaica 53!" Either it is easy for us to keep up this pretence that were are indeed a proud people, or were are simply just masters at fooling ourselves.
Which proud people are so good at begging? Even when we sing our national anthem, we beg. It is bad enough that we are begging favours from a god that isn't really there, but if we must find a god to sing our anthem to, couldn't we at least do so with some pride? Instead of asking this god for all kinds of "gifts", why couldn't we have an anthem that tells this god about our achievements?
What proud people can you think of that go around the world trying to give the impression that we are poorer than we really are simply to achieve the goal of getting more economic aid? It is one thing to ask for assistance but quite another thing to convince people into giving such aid under a false claim. What pride can there be in this?
We even interpret our history within the context of begging. We are hell-bent on trying to guilt the Europeans into giving us more handouts under the guise of reparations and their so-called crimes during slavery. We even beg in the name of our ancestors.
I know that all of us were taught how Anancy tricked those around him to get what he wanted, but I am sure that even he would have learnt a lot of new tricks from us by now. All this talk about us being a proud people is just talk; not an ounce of truth is there to it. Some "proud and free" people we are.
Michael A Dingwall
michael_a_dingwall@
hotmail.com