“””Why pretend not to know what I mean when I use the word "contraption"? You claim to be a Jamaican, who made you a Jamaican? Who named you? Do you believe that these were beings superior to yourself? Do you believe that they knew what was best for you when they named you Jamaican? Is that why you are so proud of the label?””””

Honor, nowhere in my response did I identify [I] myself as a Jamaican, please re-read. What I did do was gave you my lineage and their countries of origin. And even if I did clam to be a Jamaican, what’s so wrong about calling myself a ‘Jamaican.’ Should I be ashamed of the country I was born to?

Why do you loathe sights contrary to your own so much? I really want you to open up to me sir, because I do admit that I have a long way to go before I can truly see things, but you can’t help to educate me when you attack my whole reason for being and say that ‘mixing’ is bad. My Ego did get out of hand, but you must overstand that I, in the same way you feel when black woman are relating to white men, or vice versa, felt threatened. This is who I am, and I am actively trying to overstand all I can so when I talk to people, I don’t just recycle and perpetuate indoctrinated lies but I can share what I learn here with many people who want to learn.

Who made me a Jamaican? God did. I believe that God purposes all men, and he ordained my being born to a particular place and time. Of course, I could get technical and say it was the ‘white man’ who in his slave trading scattered us all across the earth, but I wouldn’t because, try as people may, that argument is a bit thin now, history has already written its pages, we are born to wherever we are born, all over this earth, I don’t reject the idea that my origins are in Africa, but I will not ignore Jamaica as my home.

If a man is born in Ethiopia, does that not make him an Ethiopian? Should he not identify himself with Ethiopians? You identify yourself as an African (as evidenced by your profile) you do, then, please answer me this: What makes you an African? If not only by Geography, which determines what most if not all of what people get labeled (Jamaican, Trinidadian, Irish, Dutch) if this doesn’t make him his label, what does. And why do you call yourself an African then, if you disagree with labels?

See what I’m saying…I just want to learn.

You say I am being proud of labels. Its what I have grown to know. If you disapprove of labels then please, respectfully eliminate all words used to ‘label’ people. But you can’t because as insightful s you pretend to be; you are really not above observations, and your steadfast stance on a viewpoint cannot educate only push people away from what you are trying to teach.

respec