Whitey's Payback Read Free Page B

first there, many of the neighborhoods were cordoned off by makeshift barricades. For fifteen years or so, the island had been in the throes of a wave of gang violence touched off primarily by the partisan wars between Jamaica’s two main political parties. Each ghetto neighborhood was aligned with one of the two parties, and the gunplay and general violence, especially around election time, was horrifying.
    Over time, I established important contacts with a human rights organization based out of an office in downtown Kingston that was dealing primarily with the issue of police brutality in the city’s poorest areas. They assigned me a guide, a kid who appeared to be about fifteen years old. One hot, tropical morning I set out with my guide on what would be an all-day journey around Denham Town, an especially rough shantytown right in the center of the action. The kid took me around and introduced me to wise neighborhood elders, shop owners, people at a bicycle repairman’s shop, average denizens of this unremittingly poor but vibrant neighborhood. My guide introduced me as a journalist from the United States who wanted to know about life in Kingston during this time of strife and violence, and then I was more or less on my own. Some people did not want to talk to me; some did. All were startled to see something they rarely saw—an outsider from another country who was interested in hearing about the reality of their daily lives.
    At one point in the afternoon, my guide led me into a sprawling tenement yard. He warned me that the physical terrain was ragged (no paved streets or sidewalks) and that sudden and explosive violence was always a possibility. The homes, such as they were, were wood shacks with roofs made of corrugated tin. We made our way around shacks and through the yards of what seemed like one huge collective living space. People gaped at me like I was a visitor from another planet, some smiled, some scowled. The entire environment was dominated by the sound of reggae music coming from distant radios or cassette players, and the pungent aroma of ganja.
    Eventually, my guide led me into a yard where a group of four or five dreadlocked Rastas were sitting around a homemade grill roasting salt fish, listening to reggae and smoking from a huge chillum pipe. The look on their faces as I was brought into their lair on a leisurely afternoon was one of astonishment. They all looked at me, then looked at my guide, with an expression that said, “Junior, you better have a good reason for bringing this stranger into our yard in the middle of the afternoon while we be chillin’ in our private space.”
    The kid explained, as best he could. The response was not enthusiastic. Two of the Rastas simply up and left. The other three stayed put mostly out of curiosity.
    I attempted to explain what I was up to. The lead Rastaman—the one who controlled the chillum pipe—took it upon himself to scold me about exploitation and colonialism, explaining how absurd it was that they had to speak to me in a different language—American English—as opposed to their own Jamaican patois, so that I could understand them. Referring to our interview, he said, “Dis a colonial relationship.” The others chimed in: “Ras clot.”
    I was sweating from the sweltering afternoon sun and the heat off the grill. The Rastaman had a valid point. I was there representing a big corporate American enterprise— Playboy— and I was asking them to share their experiences with me without them having any guarantee that what I might write would be accurate or informed. All I could do was try to assure them that my motives were sincere, that I was not ignorant of their plight, and that I was capable of seeing beyond a colonial or imperialist point of view.
    As I spoke, they passed the pipe around.
    “Let me ask you this,” I said. “How many times have you had a journalist here in Denham Town, a white journalist from New York, here in your yard by