#one ups

Hiro: "Ah, you know, Tadashi's now studying medical science at Harvard, and is at the top of his class!"

Karmi: "Cool. I won the 'Smartest Child' prize at my fifth-grade awards."

As a born and raised Jamaican, nothing annoys me more than when you meet another Jamaican and they insist on explaining native things to you, and I'm talking anything from slang to patois, to how something is done in the country that is common to you.  It all really comes back to the basic principle I preach about, which is to do your research before you run your mouth (Read 'Research Much?').

So i've decided i'm going to write a string of posts on the complexities of Jamaican culture that no one else would really understand unless they lived there.  So today I am going to speak on Jamaican Competitiveness.  I really don't know what else to call it, apart from downright ignorance, but my country is the one place where your country man is always ready to prove he is more Jamaican than you are. 

The sad part about all of this is that the stereotypes from outside of the country definitely come into play here.  By this I mean that the more authentic Jamaican theoretically is of darker complexion, has a better grasp of spoken patois, smokes weed, has locks, probably grew up in the inner city...stuff like that.  The interesting irony is that knowledge of your country sometimes has little to do with exactly where you come from, but more to do with how you are informed.

Take me for example, the light skinned (aka brown), Kingston born Jamaican who went to uptown schools.  For many Jamaicans the story basically ends there, because someone like myself would have no knowledge of rural Jamaica, except both my parents grew up in the cane piece, or about taking the bus, except that I had to take public transport home many times because no one was available to pick me up.  I am not trying to have a pity party.  I am trying to make the point that someone of my perceived upbringing would have no knowledge of the few Jamaican things I have mentioned.  The list is extensive and includes being able to dance the dances of the streets, speaking patois in a grammatically correct way (and trust me there is patois grammar), and even just having basic knowledge of things commonly practiced by the people of the country.

To me it is an insult that you would think I know nothing or very little about my country because I speak proper english.  Well let's just ignore the fact that I have lived in the country all my life.  SMH.  This is similar to educated black Americans not being perceived as black enough because they choose not to speak in sentences loaded with Ebonics.