I see nothing poetic and about poverty, political ineptitude and corruption. Perhaps those who do not live with it can see some poetry in suffering, but I assure those for whom it is a daily reality do not. As a Caribbean person I can say that yes, parts of the landscape are beautiful, and yes some of the people are warm and friendly. However what I detest is the touristy, idealistic attitude of most whites toward the Caribbean. They seem to have bought wholesale the idea of this almost mythical, picturesque place where nothing bad happens. They wax poetic about the trees, the beaches, the sea, and the sand. To them Caribbean people, culture and landscape appear to exist solely for their entertainment. I cannot tell you how many times during my line of work I have had to telephone an overseas office, most often in the US, the UK or Canada, and had the person on the other end began to take up a casual conversation with me, asking what the whether was like, or if my office was near a beach. It is sickening. There is a very real problem of not being taken seriously. At it is not just the fault of the impression from the tourist brochures but an underlying cultural discrimination and racism.

That is just one small example. The booming sex tourism industry is based on these same elements of racism. White males and increasingly white females come to the Caribbean for the sex that they know they cannot ask their white spouses for. They come to control, to purchase to take advantage of the poverty of a few and to play out their sick slave master/ sexual fantasies on a people who they see as less than REAL. We are seen as mere puppets, actors in a play, fantasies that they can go home and brag to their friends about over coffee at Starbucks.

We have seen this play out over and over again. Those who are not the victims are always the ones who have the luxury of telling the victims to ‘lighten up’, that they are too ‘political’, that they are too serious. Now we can add that they are not poetic and philosophical enough to the list.

It is unwillingness or perhaps inability to conceptualize other people cultures as just as valid as your own. A Caribbean person speaks of the political persecution, poverty and attacks on the sovereignty of its leaders, and you tell them to lighten up! You use some paltry excuse of being a poet and philosopher!? Give me a break. This is quite similar to the attitude many Whites have of Black Africans/Rastafarians. You did not look at life though the eyes of an artist or poet, you looked at life like someone without any eyes at all. Read the news, read a book, talk to people from the region without the self-righteous attitude of someone who wants their tourist illusion maintained at all costs, or even worse someone who wants to dictate (once again) to those who feel it most, how they should express their issues.

The Caribbean has not yet got over the legacy of the extermination of its indigenous people, of the years of African slavery, Indian and Chinese Indentureship, Colonialism, Neo-Colonialism and the never-ending political and economic stranglehold that Europe and American have maintained on it. The tourist dream does nothing for us except force so many black Caribbean people to have to cow and pander to the desires and whims of whites who hold their economy firmly in their newly-bought straw handbags (and from a real ‘rasta’ too, Bob!) It has created dependent economies and crippled and stunted many local businesses who cannot compete against large foreign hotel chains. Worst of all, it has perpetuated the idea of white dependence. The attitude you displayed here is proof of this and proof that contrary to what you say, collectively we are not serious or political enough.