There are few things sexier than an island man. Let’s scrap that….
There are few things sexier than a Jamaican man. Even now, when I hear a Jamaican man speaking with eloquence and assertion, I am forced to turn my head. I truly love to hear his accent. You can tell a Jamaican man from his walk even – and no, not because of the tightness of his pants- but the distinct confidence in his stride. The swag of the Jamaican man is to this day unmatched.
As a Caribbean immigrant, the preservation of culture tends to be of great importance when conversations surrounding family planning are had. Both men and women can be heard muttering about how nice it would be to be with someone from “home” who understood our nuances and could better assist in carry on our heritage in an otherwise foreign land. In the same breath, you can hear the island woman, in all her frustration, “Girl I am so sick and tired of these (___insert island heritage here__) men.” Citing constant mantras of “all a dem wutless,” making reference to their slightly accurate dating acumen that island men are more or less engineered to cheat. Believing this, but all at once, hoping to meet the gentleman who will defy this truth.
There are a few stages of dating for the ” Caribbean-American female. As is the tendency of any specie, we first seek our likeness in others. It is comfortable and familiar to us and so we find ourselves in situations and scenes where we are likely to meet other islanders. After enough familiar circumstances with said “type,” we open ourselves up to islanders outside of our homeland. Testing the waters, only to find that the Indies seem to generate men who have been cut from the very same cloth. The final stage differs for some and ranges from, “anything but a ‘_____an’ man” to “It’s so much easier to date outside of our race.”
And what about the men, given the current climate, island men don’t want to date island women either. In fact, several Caribbean men can now be seen sporting Latin women on their arms. When I spoke to one of my Jamaican male friends about this new-found preference, he stated that he’d rather date a Jamaican girl but they make the courting process difficult. Many island women are used to being courted, and as such, will hardly be found approaching men. It is not in our nature to be the aggressor. In fact, at “home” we are quite aggressively hunted, and pursuing the attention of men does not come naturally to us. He added, that in the States, when he approaches island women, they are very dismissive and act like “u a beg dem summin.” “As a man, ye we’re encouraged to court and approach girls but it’s never easy to come up to y’all, no one ever gets used to the constant rejection, and unuh rude wid it….Spanish girls don’t treat us like that. One: dem a come up to you, and two: if you approach them, they’re grateful or at the very least really nice and warm.”
The Formula
Now this article, by no means is intended to speak for ALL Caribbean immigrants. We all have our preferences and types and for many that is limited to dating their ‘own.” However, the more we become acclimated to our new home, the more we become assimilated. In this day and age, there really is no reason to believe that the norms important to us would somehow fade to dust because of the persons we date or fall in love with. The onus is on us as individuals to carry on the cultural norms we claim are so important to us. In addition, ALL MEN/WOMEN don’t __________ (fill in the blanks with whatever mantra you’ve caught yourself perpetuating). If you’re gonna exclude a certain ethnicity based on preconceived notions, I’m sorry to tell you, but chances are you’re gonna dive into a different pool to find the same notions exist there. It’s hard enough to find the real deal, don’t restrict yourself with rules that only truly exist in your mind.