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Round Table: Dialogue among Civilizations United Nations, New York, 5 September 2000 Provisional verbatim transcription

Address by Rex Nettleford (Jamaica)

Mr. Nettleford: I come from a part of the world where I suppose we are neither civilized, nor whatever else it is. We do not have the claim to a discrete civilization because we are still in formation. Personally, we in the Caribbean would regard ourselves as part African, part European, part Asian, part native American but totally Caribbean. That is extremely difficult to understand for those who are accustomed to exercising power, because homogeneity has been the principal social organization in such civilizations whereas heterogeneity is a principle of social organization as we see it. I would imagine that one of the things that this exercise should seek to do would be to get it across to the entire world that the plurality of existence is a given and that any cosmology that we are going to embrace from now on in the so-called twenty-first century has to take that on board. There are people in the world who are very conscious of this, who live by it and who understand that the dynamics even of late twentieth century existence was such that one had to be continually code-switching.

I noticed with interest that all the authorities who have been cited are the kinds of people I heard of when I went to those rather good Western schools. But there are other civilizations that make up the place where I come from with which we have to come to grips. That, of course, applies to the entire Americas. The United States of America managed to hijack into its designation the word "America". Therefore when one speaks of a US citizen one speaks of an American. That is anthropologically quite wrong. All of us on this side of the Atlantic came of ancient civilizations with whom we have had to come to terms and who in turn have had to come to terms with those of us who were either brought here involuntarily or came voluntarily as migrants and have created or are in the process of creating a civilization which is the kind of thing this exercise hankers after. Therefore I see the focus being to get the next generation to understand the new kind of world in which they live, whether via the [indecipherable] of consciousness or the ease with which we can move from one place to the next now, or whether labour is still needed and therefore has to be imported from other parts of the globe, interestingly enough, still to the countries of the north Atlantic.

One focus for the purposes of action is to find the target in the young generation. When one thinks that the child who is now ten years old will be 28 by the year 2020 and will just about be being prepared to take over this world and lead it, that young person has to be prepared on the heterogeneous principle and has to understand that the world is not made up merely of people who look like the majority who come from the north Atlantic.

The whole notion of unity in diversity is not by any means new. Both the Roman and Spanish empires had as their motto e pluribus unum X lots of pluribus, very little unum. We are still plagued by the non-fulfilment of that particular aspiration.

There are a number of initiatives that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has already taken on board and I would advise them that as part of this Year that they remind the parent organization that UNESCO is on the road and that it needs resources and help for this. The silk route is one of them because things happen along routes. The slave route is another. Those are just two, but other initiatives taken by UNESCO need tremendous support and should be brought into the discourse. Practically, UNESCO and the United Nations could do a great deal to encourage educational institutions in every part of the world. They should take them on board in this particular exercise. Lots of books need to be rewritten. Lots of histories need to be rethought. That would be one way to do this.

Lastly, in approaching the young, the cultural indices are very clear. Many of the people from below are already teaching us older folks and those of us in authority what can be done. Language X I think the whole world has to become multilingual in a very real sense. Maybe we will have to rebuild this place so that there can be more booths for more official languages. The question of religion, absolutely no doubt; the ecumenical principle has been around for a long time but I am happy that I have lived to see that we have gone against what I learned when I was young in a colonial country, namely that anybody who was not a Christian was an infidel. I could not understand why they should all go to hell but now we know that that is nonsense. That no longer works.

I notice too in naming the civilizations and the religions, that the religions of Africa are left out. Again we persist in the myth that Africa has no real civilization. I have heard this in seriousness. But a place such as Africa, like all civilizations, has come up with thoughts which are universal. The notion that everybody sitting in this room is a manifestation of those gone, those living and those yet unborn, is a fantastic cyclical view of life which is repeated in nature X the fruit falling from the tree and producing more trees. That is the kind of thing that should be taught to the young and should get into our textbooks.

Then there is the question of the family. What kind of family? That is a very important cultural index. The myth of the nuclear family does not make sense to millions of people all over the world who are in extended families. Certainly where I come from there are matriarchal and matrilocal ones without people necessarily ending up being dysfunctional souls in this world.

Lastly, artistic manifestations, products of the creative imagination, which young people understand and that is why the music has spread all over. I can lie in my bed and listen to a reggae tune completely in Jamaican but if I turn around and look at the television I see that it is a Japanese who is doing it. What has happened in this sense is fantastic. The music of the world; somebody mentioned sports, and there are all these different games X where I come from it is cricket which has to do with the Commonwealth. Those of you who have not heard of the Commonwealth, it is that gentleman's club which is the transformation of the old British Empire. Only the English could do this. There is basketball, and football world cups of one kind or another. The young meet there and understand each other. Dance, art, all these things should get into books and into the curriculums of schools everywhere so that Africans can appreciate Indian Islamic art and Westerners can appreciate African art and acknowledge that they are appreciating African art, and not something that the Africans might have stolen from Picasso or something like that. There is a great deal of work to be done by way of action and a lot is already on board. I recommend to the United Nations that we do not necessarily reinvent the wheel. Put resources into what is already on the ground, see what the young people, in particular, are doing. They are getting together while we old fogies are fighting each other. We will then be way ahead. The President of Mali said that it should not be empty rhetoric but should be the basis for meaningful action in which in the twenty-first century indeed we can learn to live together rather than side by side.

Mr. Picco: Let me reassure you, Professor Nettleford, that the United Nations will not put money into things that already exist. In fact the United Nations is not putting any money whatsoever into the dialogue among civilizations; there is no financing at all. Rest assured that no money will be wasted because there is absolutely no financial possibility behind the whole idea of dialogue among civilizations, I say that with a degree of comment, curiosity and something else, as a curious observation I should like to leave with you for thought in the next few days and perhaps weeks.

Professor Ramazani, do you think that, following what Dr. Nettleford said, it is easier to speak of common shared values among young people than among the old?

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