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What Is the Value of Black Life? Thoughts on a Framework for Gender and Human

Rights in Jamaica -- Taitu Heron, Lecturer, IGDS, UWI Mona

Presentation to 3rd Breakfast Forum, March 15, 2011, Institute of the Gender

& Development Studies, UWI Mona

What is the value of a human life that is worth defending? What is the value of

Black life? Or even wider, of people of Colour? Why do we as humans claim

that we have rights? What makes us know that – dat nuh right? Or that “we want

justice”. And what does gender have to do with it? These questions form the

basis of my presentation this morning.

For women in particular, the United Nations prioritized the issue of human

rights in terms of programmatic, administrative, and methodological

approaches to international relations. Feminist legal scholars have developed a

body of scholarship that demonstrates the emergence of a body of customary

international law that requires governments to expand protection for women,

particularly against gender-based violence. These developments would seem to

lay the groundwork to advance women’s equality both within a national context

and international setting, although based on the increasing levels of gender-

based violence against women and children, we know that that is not the case in

Jamaica.

Arguably, the government of Jamaica’s wholesale and unquestioning

acceptance of neoliberal globalisation, its concurrent impact of economic

restructuring combined with the international political economy of drugs and

arms trade, has also opened up Jamaica society to other vulnerabilities such as

human trafficking, child pornography, gang targeting of young males in drugs

and arms dealing; sex tourism, – all these scenarios put persons in vulnerable

situations where rights are suppressed, ignored or violated. While some of these

scenarios are indirectly caused by the government’s naive and incoherent

development approach towards globalization; others involve citizens’

knowingly exploiting others, including community and family members. So we

ask in our setting - - what is the value of black life?

The international legal standards framed as human rights protections whether

embedded in state constitutions or treaties are often first grasped mostly at the

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discursive level. Globalized legal standards in the area of human rights are

supposed to symbolize ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’. Even as mere symbols,

though, they create incentives for states to appear as abiding by global standards

of appropriateness, including standards affecting women, children, the disabled

community, and the elderly.

Human rights norms function to create the spaces of autonomy that can be

adapted to the material and political conditions of those who seek to invoke their

rights. First, human rights norms function as a signpost of a civilized

government’s international obligations. By framing human rights violations as

transgressions that occur internationally and to which all nations in good

standing must respond, activists create strategic opportunities to mediate the

tension between gender interests and group or nationalist consciousness that

may otherwise discourage public claims of harm. Second, harms that are defined

as universal in nature encourage activists to expand their advocacy beyond the

national to use in transnational networks to redefine democratic participation

and create democratic structures in a globalized world. It begins with accepting

our common humanity and embraces equality of treatment and dignity of the

person. Women’s rights activists for instance, often take advantage of

opportunities and political space created by these norms to make claims and

raise issues both in domestic and international fora, relating to rape, domestic

violence, inheritance of property, parental rights and so on. Gay rights activists

for instance, ask us to accept the humanity of gay men (and women) in a society

that expresses a cultural preference for heterosexuality. They ask to accept other

expressions of masculinity and femininity other than the heterosexual one that

we are comfortable with. Activists/Persons with disabilities would ask us to stop

calling them ‘cripple’, ‘handicap’, ‘retarded; and to provide them with fair access

and facilities in schools, public buildings, transport and employment. They

would ask us to remember their visibility.

Human rights framework is thus a challenging one, because it asks us to go

beyond personal beliefs, subjective moralities, prejudices and privileges, and

actually allow and facilitate ourselves and others to live in dignity.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among other International

Human Rights Conventions, such as International Convention of Civil and

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Political Rights, the International Convention on Economic, Social and

Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, The Convention on

the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women, as well has the

Constitution of Jamacia, have on different occasions provided the basis for

activism around certain issues. However, to my mind, this topic, gender and

human rights, in a Caribbean setting, in a Jamaican setting, in a post-colonial

setting in particular – has other considerations that impede a serious undertaking

of this international rights framework that at the policy level is fairly highly

developed. What are these other considerations?

These other considerations are rooted in the historical and contemporary

contradictions between what exists in the letter of the law and policy framework

what is experienced in everyday life. It leads to the question – what is the value

of Black life? Considerations relating to vestiges of its colonial past of slavery

and colonisation and how human beings used to be treated and how class, race

and gender relations were defined by hierarchy, status and the practice of

everyday violence as a means of control, communication and extraction of

labour. Therefore human rights in our context have been defined in terms of

how they have been denied, not by what has been afforded or considered

inalienable by virtue of one’s humanity.

A history of an enslaved and colonised past is marked by extensive violation of

human rights, from the very demarcation of the African and Asians into ‘negro

slaves’ and ‘coolie servants’. I have written elsewhere (Heron, 2005) that people

from a colonized past such as in the Caribbean, became fixed into imposed

categories of non-human races in relation to imperial/European conceptions of

what was considered human – white and male. I further argued that

independence did get rid of this colonial baggage. Therefore the question of

rights and the need to reconstitute and/or defend one’s right as human is still

significant, particularly as we acknowledge this year 2011 as the International

Year for Peoples of African Descent/Ascent. A Jamaican proverb is useful here:

“what is joke to you is death to me”. Thus, how does the colonial context in

which citizens’ rights are institutionalized perpetuate (neo)colonial bias and

elitism in current times? How much of these rights, alter, and therefore, facilitate

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a dignified human life and the practice of ‘full’ human rights, in favour all

Jamaican citizens, man, woman and child?

I have argued that the need to act to defend what one considers a fundamental

human right, (whether this is given priority in a country’s constitution or not);

is dependent almost entirely on the context in which the facilitation of these

rights occur in a manner which furnishes human dignity. In the context of

neocolonial societies such as Jamaica, then, the idea of what constitutes

fundamental rights worthy of defending; which ones are entrenched in the law

books, which ones are not given priority or stipulate conditions; who wrote

them; and in whose interests do they operate, we may need to take a deeper look

into the connection between rights and the emotive defense/reaction in the face

(literally and metaphorically) of the violated and the violator (Heron, 2005).

In this sense, operationalizing and actualizing human rights clearly requires

something more than statements of intent, policy formulation and legal

documents, and a constitution, especially where unwritten norms often are more

powerful than the letter of the law. So for instance, even though as a Jamaican

citizen I have a right by law to walk on a beach front and swim in any sea,

whether or not the security guard following the Big Hotel Boss orders, will let

me in and allow me to walk on hotel property because there is no public access

way to get to the beach is another matter. Because of the ingrained prejudices or

privileges we impart daily on each other, the Jamaican citizen getting to use that

beach will vary depending on the clothes one wears, the language one speaks,

whether you turn up in a car or on foot, your complexion and so on; and most

importantly if you are brave enough and patient enough to make an argument

that you actually have that right.

Another case is to ask where is the toilet? Go to any construction site and you

will find that there are inadequate toilets or changing rooms for the workers,

even more so, if there are female workers, in some cases, they may not even be

a separate bathroom for them. If you walk along the shopping plazas on

Constant Spring road in Kington, or on Barnett Street in Montego Bay, to Pizza

Hut off Mannings Hill Road in Kingston, or to several banks in the New

Kingston area and ask again – where is the toilet? Often, there are no toilets

provided for customers, including children. If you need to relieve yourself, or

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carry your child to bathroom, you have to make a case, in the midst of

statements such as – that is not company policy. One would think that this is

simple, but it is not. It is a case of dignity and seeing that as we human beings,

little persons are people too and establishments must cater for children when

they are with their parents or caregivers.

A third case is a blind teenage boy begging at traffic light? We must ask – how

did he get there AND importantly WHY? So horrific incidents of an 80-odd year

old man getting his throats slashed will pass like a rainy day. Fifth, so too did

the lives of the girls lost in the fire of the Armadale Children’s home. Sixth, two

15 year boys locked up in a don’s cage in an inner city community because of

refusal to sell guns.

The seventh case in point is to ask when next you drive around Kingston or

whichever other urban space – where are the public parks, green spaces for

children and their families to gather? If we understand what is meant by the first

article (a right to leisure learn and play) in the Convention of the Rights of the

Child, we would know that an absence of accessible green spaces for children is

in direct opposition to the cognitive and spiritual development of children.

There are numerous more cases and examples I could point to but what is clear

is that this thing called human rights in our everyday lives calls for walking that

extra mile to capture what may be considered either mundane or invisible. If it

is seen as mundane or invisible, then we must ask – what is the value of that life

why it is seemingly more automatic to put up barriers, deny access or be

dismissive based on norms and more so than the letter of the law; than it is

facilitate ‘good treatment’ or ‘dignity’ with ease. Some of these things are quite

basic and not that difficult to facilitate, but it is the vision to see that facilitation

would actually make a difference in public’s lives.

So I go back to my paper, “A Lost Opportunity” written in 2005, and raise these

salient points again: how then do we perceive the handling of historical injustices

that are passed down from generation to generation, anger and emotion intact

and become normalized behavior and unfortunately normalized expectations of

“the runnings”.

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These injustices hold deep and unforgettable historical/ancestral resonances

that remain and in many cases continue to repeat themselves and will probably

continue until some effort is made to engage with our history, unravel and

resolve and make a psychic and transformative break with the past.

If we have this comprehensive framework offered by the United Nations, of

which the nation-state are part of, and of which the government has signed on

to many international agreements; how come we have not met the challenge of

moving from rhetorical engagement and signage to one of implementation and

enforcement at the national level, and even further at the household and

community levels. David Pilgrim, Barbadian singer/songwriter, has a line in a

song that asks -- Could it be, could it be, could it be, that we are Babylon? This question

is an important one to consider and answer for the 21st century.

I do not have a conclusive conclusion. I have raised more questions and food

for thought than I have answers. That is because, I believe that we have much

to unravel and resolve and therefore we have much theoretical and historical

analysis to do to understand what is happening now. From my own reading

however, I have seen that the nature of our own constitutional history which

was elite-led placed more focus on civil and political rights in the constitution

and did not provide for protection against gender based discrimination or even

for discrimination in the most general sense. Similarly, not much emphasis is

given to social or economic rights. Our constitution is also state-centric and in

many cases, pre-independence human rights norms are preserved; with the

savings clause preserved. If the state’s approach to human rights is rhetorical

and conservative on paper, then the logical place for making that psychic and

transformative split would be with rewriting the constitution as a new set of rules

from which to live by. The comprehensive human rights framework offered the

UN could then be further theorized according to our particular situation and

then utilized to make this a reality. Make living in dignity a reality.

Thank you.

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References

Taitu Heron, “A Lost Opportunity? A Commentary on the Jamaican Experience of Independence” in Working Paper No. 6, 2005. Sir Arthur Lewis

Institute for Social & Economic Studies (SALISES) UWI Mona, pp. 56-72.

Stephen Vasciannie, “The Human Rights Project in Jamaica”, the Cobb Family

Lecture 2008.

Deborah Weissman, “Gender and Human Rights: Between Morals and

Politics”. Downloaded from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1655902