Old people and their intriguing first names are a phenomenon, anyway…
Five-year-old Leoline Robinson’s dress ribbon went loose during her walk to class on a 1950 school day in Manchester, Jamaica. An uncontrolled inconvenience resulted in an intentional slap on the hand by an older woman who saw Robinson’s loose ribbon. She reprimanded the young girl and walked behind her until she entered the school grounds to ensure Robinson didn’t “play” with it again.
Robinson never untied the ribbon, though. Yet the women’s actions speak not only to a generational difference but also a geographical difference that illuminates some cultures’ emphasis on manners and discipline compared to others. Yes, “others,” is the American culture.
Robinson grew up under British rule until Jamaica secured independence on August 6, 1963, four days after Robinson’s 28th birthday. She made British colonialism sound sweet compared to what she experienced in America.
In a time without electricity, when the moon was their light source, it seemed like the sun was always shining on young Robinson and her sister, my grandmother Bernice, whom she grew up with.
“I remember making swings from rope and using the vine from trees to skip with,” Robinson said. “We didn’t know it was stressful because our parents hid it. Also, I felt like people cared about people. You could leave your child home and know the neighbor would care for them until their parents returned.
“We got so many things from the British that I was afraid of what Jamaica would look like after getting independence.”
Robinson’s aunt was her guardian, and her husband worked for a sugar company in Jamaica. She remembers receiving toys and drinks from the British every Christmas via the sugar company and says her parents even got a bonus.
To be quite frank, I doubted my aunt. Given my understanding of the commonwealth nation’s conditions throughout history, I thought her 78-year-old mind was talking foolishness. So, I hit up my 68-year-old best friend, who also happens to be my dad. My pops was eight when Jamaica became independent.
He echoed her remarks, granting confirmation for her skeptical claims.
However, despite the peaceful experiences under British rule, my pops and aunt, like most Jamaicans today, shared a common goal: Get to America. Get to the land of milk and honey.
Robinson got her chance in 1973, 15 years before Eddie Murphy came to America.
She admits to initially liking it. Quickly, her sentiments changed.
“We used to hear about the opportunity America offered,” Robinson said. “In our minds, we saw it as a way out economically, but when you get here it’s a slap in the face because of what you encounter.”
Robinson pursued a career in the care-taking field upon arriving to America. She confronted children who startled her with their undisciplined behavior and minimal manners. But Robinson soon realized disobedient behavior wasn’t restricted to children, and for many adults, in particular white elderly adults, this manifested itself as racism rather than jumping on a couch.
It was a routine rotation for Robinson, who was now working with a nursing facility in the late 80s. She was assigned a new lady to care for and received no response when attempting to introduce herself. Robinson persisted in her introduction, and the elderly lady responded, “Get out of here, you nigger. I don’t want you to touch me.”
When Robinson was ten years old and skipping with her vine, she wasn’t aware that Rosa Parks had just refused to give up her seat on a bus after being told to head to the back of it. She wasn’t even aware of the driving force behind the white person’s demand because she wasn’t exposed to discrimination under British rule in Jamaica.
Well, around 30 years after the Parks incident, in a country that isn’t under imperial rule but is in bondage to the spirit of racism that looks to steal, kill, and destroy the Black man and woman’s progress, Robinson now carried Rosa’s burden.
She recalls getting on a bus in Upper East Side Manhattan draped in her all-white work attire when a white woman told her to get to the back.
Robinson never expected this, and with an influx of immigrants entering the country, they will experience similar shocks.
While legal immigration is the right path, it shouldn’t be hard to see why immigrants are leaving and coming to America. Robinson enjoyed her experience in her native nation; many don’t.
They may not share experience but they share a mindset. The mindset that America is the place to be.
While it’s ironic that the founding fathers’ families illegally immigrated here too and stole the Native Americans’ land, there’s a chance Donald Trump will send the illegal immigrants back if he wins the next election. On the other end, there is no doubt that Biden, it seems without any boundaries, keeps them rolling in. The reality is that in addition to needing to come, the immigrants want to come.
What draws them is what drew Leoline Robinson: how America is advertised.
As I was writing this piece on my futon in a studio apartment in downtown Phoenix, just a few hours from the Mexican border, the Redemption Song by Bob Marley started playing on my bluetooth speaker. In his lyrics, he urges people to emancipate themselves from mental slavery.
I fear people equate coming to America with experiencing that sense of emancipation in totality.
I fear America has become the empire in which man places their trust for security and comfort.
I fear this because in a land advertised as one of milk and honey, Robinson’s and many other immigrant’s experiences reveal that the milk may be sour and the honey not so sweet in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
