Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

A com­mon strat­e­gy used to main­tain priv­i­lege in so­ci­ety, and hence the sta­tus quo, is to mis­rep­re­sent facts as sto­ries with two sides to them. Yet facts aren't sto­ries. Facts are clear and ver­i­fi­able-that's why they are "facts." An­oth­er rea­son the pow­er­ful use mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion is to jus­ti­fy their priv­i­lege with a co­her­ent cul­tur­al log­ic. Lin­guis­tic an­thro­pol­o­gists call this hu­man in­ven­tion "a chain of causal­i­ty." And we all do it-con­vinc­ing our­selves of our cor­rect­ness in the face of in­dis­putable ev­i­dence to the con­trary. We aren't ly­ing, rather we cre­ate a cul­tur­al myth to jus­ti­fy the way we see and live.

So for ex­am­ple, on a glob­al ba­sis those with wealth and pow­er of­ten con­vince them­selves this is down to their own bril­liance and ex­cep­tion­al­i­ty-per­haps a hard­er work eth­ic even-and some­times maybe it is that sim­ple. How­ev­er, tak­en on a glob­al scale, this nar­ra­tive is a cul­tur­al log­ic that mys­ti­fies the struc­tur­al in­equal­i­ties be­tween na­tions, such as white priv­i­lege and the racist foun­da­tions of cap­i­tal­ism it­self.

This cul­tur­al log­ic hides the racial and class dis­ad­van­tage/ad­van­tage be­tween dif­fer­ent parts of the world un­der the myth that every­one's hard work and ef­fort is and has been re­ward­ed equal­ly. Yet glob­al so­cio-eco­nom­ic facts show this to be un­true.

The cul­tur­al log­ic dis­guis­es that the rat race of cap­i­tal­ism start­ed un­equal­ly. Some had a ball and chain tied to their an­kles; while oth­ers had a start hun­dreds of years ahead. Not even the amaz­ing Us­ain Bolt can over­come such a head start, as the com­ments by IOC leader Jacques Rogge, claim­ing he is not to be con­sid­ered a "liv­ing leg­end," con­firmed.

Through­out his­to­ry mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion has been one of the favourite tools of the pow­er­ful. When Colum­bus stum­bled in­to the Caribbean he pro­mot­ed a sim­ple and in­ac­cu­rate sto­ry of two lo­cal groups: the Caribs (war-like can­ni­bals) and the Arawaks (no­ble, peace-lov­ing farm­ers). This mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the many groups and their char­ac­ter that Colum­bus met is sim­i­lar to what an­thro­pol­o­gists have found in much of the lit­er­a­ture of in­dige­nous groups around the world.

We see it in the main­stream US nar­ra­tive of Na­tive-Amer­i­can In­di­ans who were ei­ther no­ble sav­ages or fierce scalpers, for ex­am­ple. It is a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion the pow­er­ful used to jus­ti­fy the geno­cide of so-called "hea­thens" and the re­li­gious con­ver­sion of "child­like na­tives." A sim­i­lar point can be made about the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion that Eu­ro­peans based slav­ery on.

This mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion and bi­na­ry pic­ture of so­cial re­la­tions in the past is the ba­sic cul­tur­al log­ic of West­ern colo­nial­ism that di­vid­ed pop­u­la­tions in­to two groups-good and bad. This isn't just a prob­lem in his­to­ry. It is a prob­lem found in most hi­er­ar­chal re­la­tion­ships and can be seen in places like pop­u­lar cul­ture. Re­cent­ly there was an ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the US about the Nic­ki Mi­naj video Pound the Alarm. The ar­ti­cle claimed this video was mak­ing a po­lit­i­cal state­ment about our state of emer­gency while al­so be­ing "a trib­ute to T&T Car­ni­val."

The ba­sis for the ar­gu­ment was not on­ly an over­reach but it mis­rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go, our po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, and the his­to­ry of Car­ni­val. As it was pub­lished by a US me­dia out­let it gained a lot of vis­i­bil­i­ty. Many peo­ple who know lit­tle about the lo­cal po­lit­i­cal and crime sit­u­a­tion here bought in­to an ar­gu­ment based on in­ac­cu­rate facts and sup­port­ing such hearsay as "sev­er­al US and UK of­fi­cials have in­for­mal­ly im­plied threats of in­ter­ven­tion."

Not to men­tion nei­ther Mi­naj nor the di­rec­tor of the video ever men­tioned any in­tend­ed po­lit­i­cal ac­tivism in the video-it was pure and sim­ple the per­son­al opin­ion of the au­thor, in­ac­cu­ra­cies and all. Yet be­cause of the pow­er im­bal­ance be­tween US me­dia out­lets and our lo­cal ones there is lit­tle we can do to counter it. Those with a loud­er voice than us put the ar­ti­cle on sig­nal blast and their mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion will be seen and read with­out any cor­rec­tion from us. This is prob­lem­at­ic be­cause it ob­scures our lo­cal his­to­ry, race pol­i­tics, and class sit­u­a­tion at play here for ones based on US racial pol­i­tics, which are dis­tinct from our own.

Now many might just want to say "that's the way it goes." We should all just calm down and han­dle the sta­tus quo. But if you've got a loud­er voice than me, your mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion drowns out the re­al facts of the mat­ter. Mak­ing so­cial change even hard­er and turn­ing hard facts about in­equal­i­ty in­to cul­tur­al sto­ries of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine