During my summer galivantations in St. Lucia and Barbados a random thought crossed my mind that I want to share. Tell me if you agree.
When you travel to the “developed” world we often come across old structures the locals point to as monuments to their greatness as a society or people. Usually something big or grandiose to say “look at what we have made”.
These societies made most of these monuments in an age of plenty, fueled by intense colonialism and the literal blood, sweat and tears of our Caribbean ancestors.
My thought was, in its own way, carnival stands as the Caribbeans own unique monument. Our monument is made of hundreds of thousands of us, standing on the shoulders of the millions who lived and died and put up a resistance, no matter how small, to the evil that funded so many other monuments around the world.
That resistance is now transformed into a MONUMENTAL celebration of ourselves. A celebration of our music, our shared attitudes, our bodies and sexuality and, more and more over time, a celebration of our blackness as we (slowly) let go of the colonial biases of the past and accept our collective and varied beauty.
