Agreed. The argument that one Jamaican created Hip Hop is grossly overstated.

Again, let's all read The Black Atlantic by Paul Gilroy. https://twitter.com/AfroJediii/status/1264421958927736832

British cultural theorist Paul Gilroy argued that the literary and cultural productions of the Black Atlantic are not defined by roots which is to say one particularly traceable originating geographic location. Rather, it is defined by routes, or the movement and circulation

across national borders of music and other cultural objects that, though they are often claimed as indigenous or national inventions, are always already influenced by the multiple sociocultural terrains of the Black diaspora.

So that means our cultural productions are influenced by them and theirs by us. In fact, perhaps Gilroy would say that that means we need to destabilize ideas of them and us because we are so interconnected.

Bookmark this for the next time the urge comes around to make that problematic, obnoxious, and anti-black claim that we like to hurl at Af-Ams. Shit, I made that claim before I had read Gilroy right here on Twitter. But it's just not true, luvs. And it's very antiblack.

"It is possible to argue that the acquisition of roots became an urgent issue only when diaspora blacks sought to construct a political agenda in which the ideal of..."

Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (112)

"..rootedness was identified as a prerequisite for the forms of cultural integrity that could guarantee the nationhood and statehood to which they aspired"

Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (112)

So again the idea of roots, like the roots of a tree that stay in one place forever, has been important to black people across the diaspora because we have never had the privilege of a stable, permanent identity in the way that, say, white British people, like to claim.

They claim a rootedness that their culture is grounded in, although that can be contested. For example, they might say that a particular style of singing is British. But black cultural production, from the very moment of the slave ship, as Gilroy shows us, does not have that

kind of fixity. In fact, no cultural production really has that fixity of one single origin. Instead of the roots of a tree, culture moves like the routes of a ship. And there many kinds of movements, flows, circulations. Culture is dynamic, open, created by multiple people.

But in our efforts to create and stabilize nationhood, especially during black political movements such as decolonization in which we sought to create a uniquely Jamaican/Trinidadian/Antiguan identity, we emphasized our differences with other black people.

But there are many continuities because that is the nature of a diaspora, a black diaspora, that has been characterized by all sorts of movement including displacement and immigration. So despite our attempts to root ourselves, culture always routes itself.

But man, Caribbean nationalisms can be so annoying, especially on here. The constant desire to shout “mine, mine, mine!” really stops us from seeing our connections with folks across time and space. The claims of culture as a national object can really do political solidarity

with other black folks elsewhere a great disservice. Like when I hear Jamaicans say African-Americans don’t have a culture I’m like what???? Huh??? Do we realize how interconnected our cultural productions are? I mean even take a look at the music scene TODAY.