91%

What is this 91% I keep making reference to? I hope the little saying that goes: "if you want to hide something from a Jamaican put it in print/a book" will be incorrect prove me wrong - read. Anything you see with 91% or 9% is what I am making reference to.

Advertising

Is being black such an embarrassment to the extent that even advertisers in Jamaica shy away from using dark-skinned individuals in advertisements. I guess they may have done some market survey that excluded the better part of the population (91%) that concluded that seeing a black person (especially women) on advertisements that do not objectify/belittle/ridicule them is seen as unsavoury or a little harsh on the palate of our more classy and discerning portion of the population (9%). I would like to make the companies that are selling products via this route aware that it only makes sense - makes sense to sell to the majority. But in a way it is selling to the majority as a majority of Jamaicans have been fooled into believing that a dark-skinned persona on screen or in print is out of place.

Sunday Magazine (Outlook as it is called)!

Outlook into what, how the richer less than 9% of Jamaicans are living? I'm not surprised - I'm more outraged at the fact that the Sunday Gleaner "Jamaica's Premiere Sunday Newspaper," fails to truly document the true Jamaican. It strikes me as a little queer how whenever I open the pages of the Outlook Magazine I keep seeing parties or soirées as they like to call them (maybe the use of which imparts an air of sophistication on the user) of what we regular Jamaicans call "uptown" people in some location a regular Jamaican would be as much at home as a gazelle in a crocodiles watering hole. Or how a friend of mine puts it "a Jamaican at a Glaad rally." What the hell ever happened to the days of the Sunday Magazine being a true reflection of a true Jamaica?

It just worries me when I see the outlook (definitely no pun intended) of the typical Jamaican on this skin-lightness or as many Jamaicans put it "high colour"-ism. I fondly recollect my days at York Castle High School in Brown's Town St. Ann where if your pants were too tight you faced ridicule the likes of which would be a good excuse to slit your wrist, let alone practicing "skin lightening" as is the more euphemistic term adopted in reference to some of the myriad effects of the scourge of Mental Slavery that has befallen us as Black Jamaicans subsequent to the infamous "400 years." A scourge that common sense would dictate we try to rid ourselves of. But no - it is not apparently but obviously alive and kicking like a bouncing baby emboldened my media support and endorsement.

I recall I was an "intern" working in Media Styling for the 2008 UTech UDel Conference on Business, Hospitality and Tourism Management which was a dream to carry out, I was responsible for the conference theme, magazine layout, posters, brochures, newspaper advertisements and all other conference-related items that were to carry the conference theme. When finishing up the magazine layout I was to take pictures of all the persons who took part in the conference when one "learned" individual as Jamaican as Ackee and Saltfish was asked to stand against a white-ish background for the photo shoot "wittily" mentioned the words "white against white." Crap which the others found quite amusing and somewhat applicable, I was instantly convinced that a higher education doesn't alter the outlook on our identity.