Getting Deals Done with CARICOM, Ulric Cross, and Hip Hop...

CARICOM from the Outside In, Hip-Hop from the Inside Out, and the New Financial Systems at the Center?

What roots do Africa and CARICOM share, aside from coming from the same slave ports—the same “doors of no return” in Ouidah, Grand-Popo, Jakin, Agoué, and Porto-Novo, Benin; Aného, Togo; and Badagry and Lagos, Nigeria? Aside from planting and farming the American continent’s global supply of cash crops such as sugar, cotton and tobacco? Engineering an industrial economy from our agricultural genius over centuries? And now, having reimagined the culture … again? Then, at the beginning of the 21st century, reasserting our sovereignty in the White House, in CARICOM, and at the United Nations? The answer: We share common origins in our history and ultimately the same destination towards a single legacy.

For the past decade, we have been getting our house—our tribes—in order. This organizing is not broadcast on CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, or The New York Times with the same fervor and zealotry as the First-World banana republic exploits of Donald Trump and the Republican party, beyond all rationale, stuck in its seedy terrorist past of white supremacy, white so-called superiority, and the immense damage their spiritual sickness has done to all lives and souls on the planet for centuries.

We watch as this year a Ghanaian delegation of 100, including the Ashanti king Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, visited Trinidad and Tobago to commemorate the anniversary of the final abolition of chattel slavery in the British colonies on August 1, 1834. “And yet when emancipation came, it was the perpetrators who were compensated and not us—the victims,” the king said earlier this year. “Not only was no possibility of support available but crucially, no consideration was given to the consequence of centuries of trauma and suffering.

”We watch the countless trips to British suburbs, American cities, and other Caribbean townships by descendants of Nigerian, Benin, and other Ghanaian tribes who participated in the slave trade. We watch Guyana’s president Mohamed Irfaan Ali school a panel of British television correspondents who blithely question the legitimacy of reparations. And what of the fact that Guyana will be the largest emerging growth opportunity in the world thanks to recent massive oil and gas discoveries? What of neighboring Suriname’s multitrillion-dollar oxygen economy? Surinamese president Chandrikapersad Santokhi takes the lead in selling carbon credits under the Paris Agreement, credits also known as “Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes,” or ITMOs. Suriname has around 95 percent forest cover, which serves as a carbon sink to the entire planet. Its vast forests capture more carbon than the nation emits, making it among the few carbon-negative countries globally. Suriname is not only a global faucet washing our air supply; it is also the bridge to sustainability.

Our tribes know that we come from a legacy of kings, kingdoms, and palaces, and our ancestors are pushing us to return to those centers of commerce, trade, and finance as we speak. Look around the planet and you will find that the International Monetary Fund has ranked Colombia, Guyana, South Africa, and Rwanda among the top emerging growth economies globally. Visual Capitalist counts eight African and CARICOM countries among the world’s 11 fastest-growing economies in 2024: Guyana, Niger, Senegal, Libya, Rwanda, C?te d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Benin.

From the outside in, CARICOM has designed policy and organized the Caribbean region via a range of functional institutions with critical mandates including education executed through the University of the West Indies and the Caribbean Examinations Council, agriculture through the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), healthcare via the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), disaster preparedness and response via the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), security through the Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), and many more that are overlooked until a crisis hits and their niche area of expertise is catapulted to the forefront.

From the inside out, hip-hop planned, blocked and strategized a generation into its own army of aspirational entrepreneurs and super-megaton-bomb intellectuals, movers, and shakers. The tribes that made the transatlantic trip from Africa to the Americas are the same ones that have now become a new breed of superachievers in the Caribbean, the Americas, and across the diaspora. Hip-hop has been a defining planetary force in not only music but also art, fashion, society, politics, and culture for five decades. Hip-hop, it turns out, is our constitution, and CARICOM is our organization, marshaling the wills and destiny of a struggle, a people, and a legacy. It is the new esprit de corps of our people, humankind, and our ancestors coursing through this world in a different form … again.

And for those of us who attended various institutions under the guise of proudly affirmed action, was it really UC Berkeley that we were paying attention to as we made our strides so wide, bold, and furiously ambitious? Or was it black hornets stinging CARICOM babies lovingly with their very beings? Injecting that black hornet love into our spiritual mitochondria? Or perhaps, to borrow parlance from O’Shea Jackson, a.k.a. Ice Cube, “Gangsta rap made me do it.”

The article in its entirety can be found here - Hip Hop and CARICOM Turned 50 Last Year—So, Now What? | Los Angeles Review of Books (lareviewofbooks.org)