Jamaica, The Concept of Yard and Yardie
Such a shame because we invented the term and concept of Yard and Yardie to mean something wholesome and comforting. It was invented out of love for our Nationality, Island and people. In Jamaica the term yard is used to identify a place of safety and comfort. You are out on the road and something happened and the first thing that comes to people’s mind is “Mi A Go a mi Yard, cause a pure almshouse out yah” so we retreat to the comfort and safety of our beloved yard… “hey that is why me stay a my yard more times” ...because bad things always happen outside of your yard.
Then Jamaicans travelling started identifying each other in that comforting manner, “hey yu a Yardie?” was all its takes for the conversation and familiarity to start to flow. After a while everyone wanted to be a Yardie, even people who were not from yard and had no connection to yard started pretending to be Yardie, because it was cool to be a Yardie. I have been in some remote faraway places only to hear someone shout “yu a Yardie” and the look on their faces when you shout back “yeh man!” is like finding gold.
Then we started associating being bad, wicked and murderous as being a yardie trait. Yardie and Yard was now associated with being a murdering gangster, classified as Yardie gangs. It got so bad that Jamaicans overseas started to pretend that they were anything else but a Yardie from Yard and many started to work on their various foreign accents in order to throw off any connection with the negative aspects of Yard. Asking a person if they were from Yard started to remind me of when the Lord told Peter that "Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times". You simply could not get Jamaicans to admit that they were from Yard.
“Yu a Yardie? No I am from Barcelona, I know nooothing”, in their best Manuel from Fawlty Towers, fake Spanish accent voice. It got so bad that even criminals who were not from Jamaica would pretend to be a Yardie Jamaicans when they got caught.
Everything that happened overseas was being blamed on the Yardie and Yardie gang violence. Even the London riot was blamed on yardies claiming they rioted because they adopted a yardie culture. Black people in England, carving each other up like a Sunday Roast and many of the people doing it have NO concept of, or connection to yard but even that is being blamed on Yardies as they fight to make a Jamaican connection with a person who just happens to be black.
Jamaicans created the concept Yard and Yardie and Jamaicans destroyed the Concept of Yard and Yardie. Making movies about it, glorifying its dysfunctionality, violence and murder is like driving the nails into the coffin of Jamaican life. This is NOT who we are, this is not what we are and, this is NOT who were supposed to be!
I no longer watch movies about dysfunctional black people and especially about yardie dysfunctional behaviour. I believe these type of movies contributes to the dehumanization of black people and us as natural born Jamaicans. Art is no longer following life but instead life is following art, as we try to bring to life what we see on the big screens or hear in our dysfunctional dutty-dancehall music.
The entire planet things we are dysfunctional, criminal minded, useless and worthless and movies like this contributes to that negative stereotypes and narrative. I for one am sick and tired of negative, violent counterproductive dysfunctional portrayal of black people in movies. These movies really lack imagination because it is so easy to go the violence and death one dimensional route. Jamaica deals with real crime on a daily basis, always in the media, totaling up the murders per year and now we must pay money to watch some fictional incarnation of the real thing? HELL NO!
Most of us have good sense, but we have enough of us, who do not have any damn sense, running amok living out movies in real life and racking up dead bodies. I am not worried about the educated person who have the ability to separate life from art. I am worried about the idiots and the messages we continue to send to idiots, especially our fatherless idiots with poor family values. It is the same with dutty dancehall, constantly sending out negative waves to young vulnerable minds who think it is cool and a proper way of life, so they act out the dancehall in real life.
The message we send matters, it is how we socialise our young people and the next generation, values and morality matters.
I agree we cannot influence the minds of people who hate us for our skin colour no matter what we do but we should not reinforce their beliefs, provide them with factual statistics and help them in their hate recruiting process. BUT is is not about them, it is about us and our country, our people. It is is about how we want our young people to see themselves and others around them. We are not murdering animals, who are selfish and greedy without class or education. We are Jamaicans!
Everything that happened overseas was being blamed on the Yardie and Yardie gang violence. Even the London riot was blamed on yardies claiming they rioted because they adopted a yardie culture. Black people in England, carving each other up like a Sunday Roast and many of the people doing it have NO concept of, or connection to yard but even that is being blamed on Yardies as they fight to make a Jamaican connection with a person who just happens to be black.
Jamaicans created the concept Yard and Yardie and Jamaicans destroyed the Concept of Yard and Yardie. Making movies about it, glorifying its dysfunctionality, violence and murder is like driving the nails into the coffin of Jamaican life. This is NOT who we are, this is not what we are and, this is NOT who were supposed to be!
I no longer watch movies about dysfunctional black people and especially about yardie dysfunctional behaviour. I believe these type of movies contributes to the dehumanization of black people and us as natural born Jamaicans. Art is no longer following life but instead life is following art, as we try to bring to life what we see on the big screens or hear in our dysfunctional dutty-dancehall music.
The entire planet things we are dysfunctional, criminal minded, useless and worthless and movies like this contributes to that negative stereotypes and narrative. I for one am sick and tired of negative, violent counterproductive dysfunctional portrayal of black people in movies. These movies really lack imagination because it is so easy to go the violence and death one dimensional route. Jamaica deals with real crime on a daily basis, always in the media, totaling up the murders per year and now we must pay money to watch some fictional incarnation of the real thing? HELL NO!
Most of us have good sense, but we have enough of us, who do not have any damn sense, running amok living out movies in real life and racking up dead bodies. I am not worried about the educated person who have the ability to separate life from art. I am worried about the idiots and the messages we continue to send to idiots, especially our fatherless idiots with poor family values. It is the same with dutty dancehall, constantly sending out negative waves to young vulnerable minds who think it is cool and a proper way of life, so they act out the dancehall in real life.
The message we send matters, it is how we socialise our young people and the next generation, values and morality matters.
I agree we cannot influence the minds of people who hate us for our skin colour no matter what we do but we should not reinforce their beliefs, provide them with factual statistics and help them in their hate recruiting process. BUT is is not about them, it is about us and our country, our people. It is is about how we want our young people to see themselves and others around them. We are not murdering animals, who are selfish and greedy without class or education. We are Jamaicans!
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