I am sharing Professor Carolyn Cooper’s recent blog post (and column in the Sunday Gleaner) – not only because it refers to an area in our “neck of the woods” on the outskirts of Jamaica’s capital city. As she has done in previous articles, Professor Cooper touches on what has been, for some time, a great irritant in the discussion and debate over urban development: the lack of planning for people, rather than private motor cars. Why should this road, where there are still many residences but also commercial properties, become a highway?
And the writer points out that Lady Musgrave herself, the wife of a former Governor of Jamaica in colonial days, rather unfairly gets a “bad rap.” I am glad that the good Professor picked that oft-circulated “urban myth” to pieces. We need to be more careful with our history; rather than jumping on what fits in with one’s perception of the past, we need to look a little deeper. History is way more complex and nuanced than we think – just as the present is. Let us not simply repeat well-worn myths and half-truths that have been handed down. It’s like uncritically swallowing “clickbait.”
Professor Cooper likes to be provocative – an approach which I wish more writers and thinkers took when they put pens to paper, or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be. We are too afraid of offending people, so we censor ourselves. In a pretty strong democracy such as we have, let all views contend!
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