Martin Henry

With a few notable areas of exception, we Jamaicans have been generally less inclined to murder those perceived to be different from us or to chase them out of town than many other sets of people.

In recent days, we have watched political controversy in Kenya degenerating into old-fashioned tribal warfare the African way, with hundreds dead. We have seen a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq fracturing into warring, religious and ethnic groups. Just to give two hot cases in a world fragmented into factions at each other's throats.

Even among our Caribbean neighbours, the race tensions of Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana are unknown here. Minorities in Jamaica, like Jews, Roman Catholics, Indians, Chinese and 'Syrians' have generally had a much better time here than minorities in so many other places. And so have marginalised groups like women and Rastas. The independence of the Jamaican woman even in slavery is legendary despite everything.

More advanced places

Professor Errol Miller in the 2001 GraceKennedy Foundation Lecture 'Jamaica in the 21st Century: Contending', in the question and answer session described Jamaica as sharing a common humanity of Africans without tribes, Chinese without clans, Indians without caste, and Europeans without class. We seldom stop to observe how unlike this most or the rest of the world really is, including allegedly more advanced places.

Sunday Gleaner Reporter Gareth Manning last Sunday singled out one aspect of an important survey of political tolerance in Latin America and parts of the Caribbean carried out by a team led by UWI Professor Ian Boxhill. Jamaica scored 73 out of 100 on the political tolerance index, the highest among 15 Latin American countries and Haiti. The nearest country, Costa Rica, came in nearly 11 points lower at 62.2.

Homosexuals

But Jamaica ranked second to last on tolerance for homosexuals running for office, the focus of the news story, 'No to gays running for public office - survey'. Both the high level of general socio-political tolerance and the low level of acceptance of homosexuality have deep roots in our history and culture. The story carried a clip of my response to the data. More extensively, I commented that:

"The Boxhill data on political tolerance is indicating a sturdy, secure and functional democracy in Jamaica despite the known problems of tribalism, garrisonisation, political violence and some areas of intolerance".

There really is no surprise that Jamaica has scored more highly than Latin American states with the strong history of military dictatorships and the deep and wide class and race divide in that region.

While Jamaicans themselves living here might not think so, on the whole, Jamaica historically has been a rather tolerant country on the issues which most deeply divide people: religion, politics and race.

The level of intolerance for homosexuality is a variation from this general stance of tolerance and is deeply rooted in cultural and social values, something worthy of separate investigation in a follow-up study. The only surprise in the data on homosexual intolerance in Jamaica was that people from rural areas, generally thought to be more conservative, were, in fact, found to be more tolerant. The wealth and education divide on the issue holds firm (the wealthier and more educated indicating somewhat greater tolerance), as is usually the case on most controversial social issues.

Every society has had to set boundaries to tolerance in its legal code. Buggery, for deep reasons, remains illegal in Jamaican law which, of course, does not abrogate the general rights of homosexuals except where a court by due process determines that the law has been breached and punishment is to be applied.

A major battle is taking shape to have the law changed. But as everyone knows, change of law does not mean change of cultural attitude, especially where the law ignores majority views. An excellent reverse case is ganja: The belated criminalisation of ganja has done little to alter the wide social acceptability of its use.

A word of congratulations to the Boxhill team for being commissioned by the Latin America Public Opinion Project based at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee to break out of the English box and conduct a cross-language regional study. Way to go!