For Community, By Community Collaborative Research on LGBTQIA+ Activism in Jamaica by the Milken Scholars Class of 2017
Published 08/23/2023 in Scholar Travel Stipend
Written
by Mariko Rooks |
08/23/2023
When I think about our weeklong Class of 2017 trip to Jamaica, I can only conjure feelings of deep gratitude for the truly indescribable experiences of learning, solidarity, and education that were hallmarks of our time there.
Our trip furthered the work of both the Milken Institute and Family Foundation on three main levels: the work in which our interviewees were engaged, the education we received as a group as we learned and archived this work, and the unprecedented level of personal solidarity I was able to explore as a queer, Black, mixed person. I walk away with a profound sense of gratitude for the value of “education” as the “means most conducive to helping people…lead productive and satisfying lives,” as shown by how our interviewees use education to further LGBTQIA+ advocacy and in how the lessons and methodologies I learned from this trip will inform my own space-making, organizing and teaching practices moving forward.
As previously stated, our team’s “collaborative…data-driven research” was designed in of itself to further the Milken Institute’s mission of “advancing collaborative solutions” that “widen access to capital, create jobs and improve health.” Our goal in conducting interviews with LGBTQIA+ elders and advocates is to work with, rather than speak over, the expert voices of marginalized LGBTQIA+ Jamaicans and amplify their work in creating a more prosperous future (fair access to jobs and hiring, improved health through decreased physical and socio-emotional violence, etc.)
Over the course of one week, we conducted four interviews in pursuit of this goal. Our first interviewees were the program manager of J-Flag/Equality Jamaica and the director of Transwave Jamaica. J-Flag focuses almost exclusively on “meaningful policy initiatives” designed to “widen access to capital” and “improve health” for LGBTQIA+ Jamaicans, a clear example of successful applying the Milken Institute’s mission to improve “global prosperity” for a marginalized group consistently denied access to resources through institutional and interpersonal violence. The group broke down their history, first as an HIV/AIDS relief organization focused on “improv[ing] health” through “action-oriented meetings” and educational sessions with LGBTQIA+ community members and later through developing broader policy and healthcare services coalitions that continue to work with local and regional governments. We also learned about the current political gains and struggles within the context of legal and human rights in Jamaica, including effective lobbying and political navigation in a government with which I had little prior familiarity.
Jamaica is most well-known globally for the infamous “Buggery Law,” which criminalizes same-sex penetration, but J-Flag did a remarkable job of adding complexity and nuance to the overall legal and lived realities of operating as an LGBTQIA+ individual under Jamaica’s current legal and governmental structure. These observations were placed into a larger regional context during our interview with Dr. Tracey Robinson, whose work with the Faculty of Law UWI Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP) has included legally challenging homophobic policies throughout the Caribbean. She discussed the ways in which legal advocacy has changed as LGBTQIA+ groups have developed stronger in-house counsel and campaigning. She gave her insights into island-to-island differences in both law and culture, and her subsequent analyses of likelihood for legal gains and change on each island. U-RAP’s work is both “inventive and effective;” their often brilliant and subversive readings of laws and precedent have led to several important legal victories and subsequent “meaningful policy initiatives” that offer protections for LGBTQIA+ peoples.
Interview with Dr. Tracy Robinson (note: some of our interviewees declined requests for photos due to personal safety concerns)
Transwave, which shares a physical space with J-Flag, focuses less on policy advocacy and more on directly ensuring the “health, welfare, and well-being of the transgender community in Jamaica and the Caribbean.” Much of their advocacy is digital, grassroots, and community driven and many of their goals and strategies were more familiar to me as a community organizer. It was both enlightening and fascinating to hear about the logistical specifics of their campaigns and movement work, specifically in their targeting and messaging towards larger audiences through both cable and social media-based broadcast venues, and I’ll definitely be using and teaching about some of these strategies in my future work. As someone who also does a lot of grant management, I was also struck by their insights about applying for grants globally; namely, that Jamaica’s relatively new status as a middle income country can make it difficult to advocate for funding despite the fact that some non-profits in other countries are not community-driven and the clear need for infrastructural and financial capital in Jamaica. The balance of presenting their work as successful and impactful to outside funders while also establishing continued need (and oppression) is a delicate balance with which I am personally familiar. These observations felt both validating and connective with my own struggles while also providing me with new insight and context that forced me to expand my worldview and reflect upon my American-centric privilege.
Our final interview with a prominent Jamaican artist and actor, who needs to remain anonymous until certain projects are released within the next year or so, was one of the most intellectually and personally fulfilling and engaging conversations I think I’ve ever had. Following a non-linear autoethnographic model (one of my favorite data collection formats), I learned about the artist’s work in developing a vision of queer futurity for Jamaicans, one created with attention to the death of selfhood as a function of queerness, to Jamaica’s decolonial past and present, and to an amalgamation of histories and methodologies that impacted not just the final vision of futurity but the development process. While Michael led our interviews, I took on this one almost individually, which led to an incredible process of cross-cultural, relational knowledge sharing rooted in complex understandings and use of ethnic identity to develop a non-white understanding of queerness. The flow often looked something like this:
Interviewee: *talks about death in ways that are clearly culturally specific and weighted*
Me: “Here’s my understanding of death from a Japanese American and Black queer Buddhist perspective. Is this aligned with what I think you’re saying?”
Interviewee: “Wow, okay, fascinating and relational. Yes/No/Not Quite, here’s how I would frame it based on the language you are using.”
Me: *furiously scribbling out all of the new nuance and insight offered*
Taking part in this kind of shared knowledge creation, archiving, and envisioning was so, so, awesome in the purest sense of the word. I left with a profound sense of expansiveness in my understanding of self, community, and the world through a queer lens. The role of decolonial, deliberate education as a means to “help people help themselves” underscored the entire piece, as the interviewee synthesized Western and traditional Jamaican knowledge to imagine Jamaican queer futurities in their writing and acting.
In conclusion, too often Western narratives about Jamaica’s status as “the most homophobic country in the world” flatten and erase queer advocacy, activism, and survival; creating comprehensive resources that allow others to access this interview is one example in which our work as a team can lead to “helping people help themselves….lead productive lives…through education.” Giving organizations and individuals like our interviewees a larger institutional platform to share complex truths and lived experiences is crucial educational work that allows for better and more accurate advocacy and representation at a global level. I’m excited to continue moving forward with both virtual and in-person interviews as we continue to build our database, and look forward to producing some publishable work!
Of course, merely recounting my interview experiences does not do justice to the profound ways in which conducting a research trip grounded in the Milken Institute and Family Foundation’s missions impacted my own life. My week began with an unexpected twelve hour layover in Florida that culminated in an emergency flight change to an airport on the opposite of the island. I realized as the plane took off that I’d miss the last bus from the airport to Kingston by mere minutes and instead would be left stuck in a torrential downpour scheduled to start as soon as I arrived. As I frantically texted Michael to reschedule interviews, booked an Airbnb because I’d be unable to make it across the island after landing, and passive aggressively messaged with increasingly unhelpful JetBlue customer service chat representatives, I remembered wondering if the trip was worth it, or even if it would happen at all.
Yet, the second I spotted Montego Bay out of the airplane window, street lights slowly flickering to life against a green forested sunset, I was overcome with an unexpected sense of peaceful familiarity, and all of the travel stress immediately felt worth it. I found myself still struck with a sense of connection rather than “foreignness” and alienation while lugging my carry-on across a mile of mostly dirt roads to my AirBnb. The humidity, the smell of grass in the late spring air, and the quiet chirps of the cicadas reminded me of my time wandering around the Japanese countryside. I had braced myself for irreconcilable culture shock, but instead felt an instinctive sense of relational kinship and safety when actually faced with the land and people.
I write all of this to introduce one of the major ways in which this experience furthered the advancement of the Milken Family Foundation’s missions at a personal level; the ability of “education” (in this case, experiential self-education via intentionally decolonial travel) to increase my ability to live a “productive and satisfying life.” When I think about what impedes my ability, and that of those who share my identities, from “lead[ing] productive and satisfying lives,” the violence of racism and colonization is a pretty glaring obstacle, from the extreme to the seemingly mundane facets of life. One of my biggest realizations in Jamaica was how much everything from my executive function to my adrenaline system improves when I travel to countries where I’m more safe from racialized violence by virtue of no longer being a minority in the literal sense of the word.
Jamaica’s population is almost 100% Black, including law enforcement officers. While there’s certainly corruption and misuse of power within the police force, the likelihood of racially-driven police brutality is practically non-existent for Black people. Michael drove us around the entire week and for the first time I wasn’t ever worried about his safety or my own
when we passed a police car. Surveillance cameras are non-existent, decreasing worries about being profiled at stores. Jamaica alone has spared me the microaggressions of being mixed race Black and Asian, from the stares in public to the invasive questions; in fact, Jamaica is probably the only place where high levels of Black and Chinese migration have made my phenotype not only accepted, but normative. When I wore “non-touristy” clothes and kept my mouth closed, I could play at belonging for the first time in my entire life. While I was exceedingly conscious that this was not “my” community or history, I could root myself in the relationality of belonging and existing together in new ways.
When I’m in environments where I feel physically safe because I am not a racial minority in both numbers and power, I find myself more productive, functional, and emotionally and physically healthier. Much of this feeling is also generated by the land. Some landscapes tell stories of reclamation, decolonization, and struggle; others embed oppression and erasure into their built environment. This is echoed in the types of institutional and interpersonal violence, particularly racialized violence, that are built into the environment as well (surveillance, policing, etc.). Therefore, the very act of traveling and living in Jamaica itself is high up on the list of “effective ways” that the Milken Family Foundation contributes to “helping people” like me “help themselves” (and, by nature of my public health-focused career, “those around me”), increase my productivity and overall life satisfaction.
After leaving Jamaica I realized that this feeling also extended to my time in Korea; while anti-Blackness is a real issue, guns are outlawed for both civilians and law enforcement. In both places, I no longer have to navigate around whiteness as a majority race or culture to which I do not belong; in both places, I feel aligned with the majority culture and phenotype. I recognize my role as an outsider and a visitor and therefore feel no pressure to prove that I “belong” (though I do my best to not act like a rude and obnoxious American), instead exploring kinship rooted in similar histories of decolonization and resilience.
This discovery has greatly impacted my long-term life trajectory and my professional life; by finally understanding what “safe” looks and feels like, I can seek to replicate these results in all spaces I enter and help create (even when this might be much more difficult in America). I think one of the hardest things to do for marginalized peoples fighting for justice is envision alternative futures, but places like Jamaica demonstrate new practices and existences that we can bring into our own organizing.
Of course, I don’t think I would feel this way if I was not the recipient of Michael’s kindness, labor, and friendship. By virtue of school and hometown location, Michael and I have never been able to spend as much time together as I’d have liked despite the fact that out of all of the people in our class, our work is probably the most aligned to each other’s. His mediation of our entire experience, from concept development to itinerary to choosing restaurants, allowed all of us to connect with Jamaica at a level far more intimate and far less consumerist than an average tourist or researcher. Driving past Michael’s elementary school, swimming in the lake near his childhood home, meeting his mother and cousins, and hearing his stories are all memories for which I will be forever grateful.
Visiting Michael’s mom in Michael’s hometown, Ocho Rios.
Our trip furthered the work of both the Milken Institute and Family Foundation on three main levels: the work in which our interviewees were engaged, the education we received as a group as we learned and archived this work, and the unprecedented level of personal solidarity I was able to explore as a queer, Black, mixed person. I walk away with a profound sense of gratitude for the value of “education” as the “means most conducive to helping people…lead productive and satisfying lives,” as shown by how our interviewees use education to further LGBTQIA+ advocacy and in how the lessons and methodologies I learned from this trip will inform my own space-making, organizing and teaching practices moving forward.
As previously stated, our team’s “collaborative…data-driven research” was designed in of itself to further the Milken Institute’s mission of “advancing collaborative solutions” that “widen access to capital, create jobs and improve health.” Our goal in conducting interviews with LGBTQIA+ elders and advocates is to work with, rather than speak over, the expert voices of marginalized LGBTQIA+ Jamaicans and amplify their work in creating a more prosperous future (fair access to jobs and hiring, improved health through decreased physical and socio-emotional violence, etc.)
Over the course of one week, we conducted four interviews in pursuit of this goal. Our first interviewees were the program manager of J-Flag/Equality Jamaica and the director of Transwave Jamaica. J-Flag focuses almost exclusively on “meaningful policy initiatives” designed to “widen access to capital” and “improve health” for LGBTQIA+ Jamaicans, a clear example of successful applying the Milken Institute’s mission to improve “global prosperity” for a marginalized group consistently denied access to resources through institutional and interpersonal violence. The group broke down their history, first as an HIV/AIDS relief organization focused on “improv[ing] health” through “action-oriented meetings” and educational sessions with LGBTQIA+ community members and later through developing broader policy and healthcare services coalitions that continue to work with local and regional governments. We also learned about the current political gains and struggles within the context of legal and human rights in Jamaica, including effective lobbying and political navigation in a government with which I had little prior familiarity.
Jamaica is most well-known globally for the infamous “Buggery Law,” which criminalizes same-sex penetration, but J-Flag did a remarkable job of adding complexity and nuance to the overall legal and lived realities of operating as an LGBTQIA+ individual under Jamaica’s current legal and governmental structure. These observations were placed into a larger regional context during our interview with Dr. Tracey Robinson, whose work with the Faculty of Law UWI Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP) has included legally challenging homophobic policies throughout the Caribbean. She discussed the ways in which legal advocacy has changed as LGBTQIA+ groups have developed stronger in-house counsel and campaigning. She gave her insights into island-to-island differences in both law and culture, and her subsequent analyses of likelihood for legal gains and change on each island. U-RAP’s work is both “inventive and effective;” their often brilliant and subversive readings of laws and precedent have led to several important legal victories and subsequent “meaningful policy initiatives” that offer protections for LGBTQIA+ peoples.
Interview with Dr. Tracy Robinson (note: some of our interviewees declined requests for photos due to personal safety concerns)
Transwave, which shares a physical space with J-Flag, focuses less on policy advocacy and more on directly ensuring the “health, welfare, and well-being of the transgender community in Jamaica and the Caribbean.” Much of their advocacy is digital, grassroots, and community driven and many of their goals and strategies were more familiar to me as a community organizer. It was both enlightening and fascinating to hear about the logistical specifics of their campaigns and movement work, specifically in their targeting and messaging towards larger audiences through both cable and social media-based broadcast venues, and I’ll definitely be using and teaching about some of these strategies in my future work. As someone who also does a lot of grant management, I was also struck by their insights about applying for grants globally; namely, that Jamaica’s relatively new status as a middle income country can make it difficult to advocate for funding despite the fact that some non-profits in other countries are not community-driven and the clear need for infrastructural and financial capital in Jamaica. The balance of presenting their work as successful and impactful to outside funders while also establishing continued need (and oppression) is a delicate balance with which I am personally familiar. These observations felt both validating and connective with my own struggles while also providing me with new insight and context that forced me to expand my worldview and reflect upon my American-centric privilege.
Our final interview with a prominent Jamaican artist and actor, who needs to remain anonymous until certain projects are released within the next year or so, was one of the most intellectually and personally fulfilling and engaging conversations I think I’ve ever had. Following a non-linear autoethnographic model (one of my favorite data collection formats), I learned about the artist’s work in developing a vision of queer futurity for Jamaicans, one created with attention to the death of selfhood as a function of queerness, to Jamaica’s decolonial past and present, and to an amalgamation of histories and methodologies that impacted not just the final vision of futurity but the development process. While Michael led our interviews, I took on this one almost individually, which led to an incredible process of cross-cultural, relational knowledge sharing rooted in complex understandings and use of ethnic identity to develop a non-white understanding of queerness. The flow often looked something like this:
Interviewee: *talks about death in ways that are clearly culturally specific and weighted*
Me: “Here’s my understanding of death from a Japanese American and Black queer Buddhist perspective. Is this aligned with what I think you’re saying?”
Interviewee: “Wow, okay, fascinating and relational. Yes/No/Not Quite, here’s how I would frame it based on the language you are using.”
Me: *furiously scribbling out all of the new nuance and insight offered*
Taking part in this kind of shared knowledge creation, archiving, and envisioning was so, so, awesome in the purest sense of the word. I left with a profound sense of expansiveness in my understanding of self, community, and the world through a queer lens. The role of decolonial, deliberate education as a means to “help people help themselves” underscored the entire piece, as the interviewee synthesized Western and traditional Jamaican knowledge to imagine Jamaican queer futurities in their writing and acting.
In conclusion, too often Western narratives about Jamaica’s status as “the most homophobic country in the world” flatten and erase queer advocacy, activism, and survival; creating comprehensive resources that allow others to access this interview is one example in which our work as a team can lead to “helping people help themselves….lead productive lives…through education.” Giving organizations and individuals like our interviewees a larger institutional platform to share complex truths and lived experiences is crucial educational work that allows for better and more accurate advocacy and representation at a global level. I’m excited to continue moving forward with both virtual and in-person interviews as we continue to build our database, and look forward to producing some publishable work!
Of course, merely recounting my interview experiences does not do justice to the profound ways in which conducting a research trip grounded in the Milken Institute and Family Foundation’s missions impacted my own life. My week began with an unexpected twelve hour layover in Florida that culminated in an emergency flight change to an airport on the opposite of the island. I realized as the plane took off that I’d miss the last bus from the airport to Kingston by mere minutes and instead would be left stuck in a torrential downpour scheduled to start as soon as I arrived. As I frantically texted Michael to reschedule interviews, booked an Airbnb because I’d be unable to make it across the island after landing, and passive aggressively messaged with increasingly unhelpful JetBlue customer service chat representatives, I remembered wondering if the trip was worth it, or even if it would happen at all.
Yet, the second I spotted Montego Bay out of the airplane window, street lights slowly flickering to life against a green forested sunset, I was overcome with an unexpected sense of peaceful familiarity, and all of the travel stress immediately felt worth it. I found myself still struck with a sense of connection rather than “foreignness” and alienation while lugging my carry-on across a mile of mostly dirt roads to my AirBnb. The humidity, the smell of grass in the late spring air, and the quiet chirps of the cicadas reminded me of my time wandering around the Japanese countryside. I had braced myself for irreconcilable culture shock, but instead felt an instinctive sense of relational kinship and safety when actually faced with the land and people.
I write all of this to introduce one of the major ways in which this experience furthered the advancement of the Milken Family Foundation’s missions at a personal level; the ability of “education” (in this case, experiential self-education via intentionally decolonial travel) to increase my ability to live a “productive and satisfying life.” When I think about what impedes my ability, and that of those who share my identities, from “lead[ing] productive and satisfying lives,” the violence of racism and colonization is a pretty glaring obstacle, from the extreme to the seemingly mundane facets of life. One of my biggest realizations in Jamaica was how much everything from my executive function to my adrenaline system improves when I travel to countries where I’m more safe from racialized violence by virtue of no longer being a minority in the literal sense of the word.
Jamaica’s population is almost 100% Black, including law enforcement officers. While there’s certainly corruption and misuse of power within the police force, the likelihood of racially-driven police brutality is practically non-existent for Black people. Michael drove us around the entire week and for the first time I wasn’t ever worried about his safety or my own
when we passed a police car. Surveillance cameras are non-existent, decreasing worries about being profiled at stores. Jamaica alone has spared me the microaggressions of being mixed race Black and Asian, from the stares in public to the invasive questions; in fact, Jamaica is probably the only place where high levels of Black and Chinese migration have made my phenotype not only accepted, but normative. When I wore “non-touristy” clothes and kept my mouth closed, I could play at belonging for the first time in my entire life. While I was exceedingly conscious that this was not “my” community or history, I could root myself in the relationality of belonging and existing together in new ways.
When I’m in environments where I feel physically safe because I am not a racial minority in both numbers and power, I find myself more productive, functional, and emotionally and physically healthier. Much of this feeling is also generated by the land. Some landscapes tell stories of reclamation, decolonization, and struggle; others embed oppression and erasure into their built environment. This is echoed in the types of institutional and interpersonal violence, particularly racialized violence, that are built into the environment as well (surveillance, policing, etc.). Therefore, the very act of traveling and living in Jamaica itself is high up on the list of “effective ways” that the Milken Family Foundation contributes to “helping people” like me “help themselves” (and, by nature of my public health-focused career, “those around me”), increase my productivity and overall life satisfaction.
After leaving Jamaica I realized that this feeling also extended to my time in Korea; while anti-Blackness is a real issue, guns are outlawed for both civilians and law enforcement. In both places, I no longer have to navigate around whiteness as a majority race or culture to which I do not belong; in both places, I feel aligned with the majority culture and phenotype. I recognize my role as an outsider and a visitor and therefore feel no pressure to prove that I “belong” (though I do my best to not act like a rude and obnoxious American), instead exploring kinship rooted in similar histories of decolonization and resilience.
This discovery has greatly impacted my long-term life trajectory and my professional life; by finally understanding what “safe” looks and feels like, I can seek to replicate these results in all spaces I enter and help create (even when this might be much more difficult in America). I think one of the hardest things to do for marginalized peoples fighting for justice is envision alternative futures, but places like Jamaica demonstrate new practices and existences that we can bring into our own organizing.
Of course, I don’t think I would feel this way if I was not the recipient of Michael’s kindness, labor, and friendship. By virtue of school and hometown location, Michael and I have never been able to spend as much time together as I’d have liked despite the fact that out of all of the people in our class, our work is probably the most aligned to each other’s. His mediation of our entire experience, from concept development to itinerary to choosing restaurants, allowed all of us to connect with Jamaica at a level far more intimate and far less consumerist than an average tourist or researcher. Driving past Michael’s elementary school, swimming in the lake near his childhood home, meeting his mother and cousins, and hearing his stories are all memories for which I will be forever grateful.
Visiting Michael’s mom in Michael’s hometown, Ocho Rios.