Ask me a question about Jamaica and, depending on the day, I’ll either tell you that it’s the best place in the world to grow up or it’s a hellhole that has a few Paradise Island Vacation commercials glossed over top of it.
Today, I’m kind of in between.
Growing up as one of maybe ten Asian kids in a prep school of around four hundred was - well, it wasn’t really anything to a five year old except the act of fulfilling your societal obligation to teach yourself your ABCs and 123s. It wasn’t until around grade 5 or so that I became aware of this murky racism that a number of my fellow classmates had directed towards myself and the other kids unfortunate enough to have single syllable last names that were easily mocked and derided. When high school started, and I’d convinced my parents to let me walk home with my friends after school, the full brunt of that racism was encountered daily on the streets as taunts and threats rang out, “Ching chong ching chong!” and “Missa Chin, we gon sen yu back a China”.
These bullies addressed every single Asian person as ‘Mr. Chin’. We were a lump entity, not deserving of being addressed or recognized as individuals. The taunts of being sent back to China were especially confounding to an eleven year old since I’d probably been born in the same hospital as they had been, and had never ventured off the island further than a short airplane ride to Miami to visit an aunt.
I recall once, in my parents’ variety store, there was a young man who spent his days running up and down Main Street hustling wherever he could, harassing me for money whenever he saw me. We had an odd patron to our small business - a tourist, a white man buying souvenir shirts and key chains. We hardly ever had tourists come through our town. The young man approached the tourist, all smiles and good cheer, and talked him into kindly handing over some money. Shortly after, the tourist left and a few of the young man’s friends came into the store where they were breathlessly informed that there was a dumb white man whom they could probably talk a few bucks out of if they hurried to catch him up the street.
This incident stuck with me. It wasn’t unique, and it certainly wasn’t the worst thing I’d seen or encountered living in Jamaica. In retrospect, it may have been the moment that, however incorrectly I’d interpreted the term or meaning, the word ‘hypocrite’ made its way into my vocabulary.
The next few years of watching my parents put up with the incessant verbal abuse and having to deal with it daily at school, on the road or in the store cemented my intense dismay for hypocrites and the like. Jamaica is a resolutely Christian nation and every school in the country has some affiliation with a faith or a church of some kind. At a very young age, you’re drilled with the teachings of the bible and taught to respect the fear of divine reprisal and the prospect of an eternity under torture and hellfire. I was, like my classmates and peers, a god-fearing child but somewhere along the way the hypocrisy with which ‘good Christian people’ armed their sharp tongues and malicious intentions dulled much of whatever moralistic teachings the religious leaders in the school purported to teach.
And so, it is here we find ourselves amidst hypocrisy of a different kind. I have to remind myself that just because I can safely walk on a street full of people without having to tense at the possibility of having epithets hurled at me doesn’t mean that hypocrisy doesn’t abound everywhere. When Tasha spoke about opening up a green baby store, she was doe-eyed and optimistic at the notion of joining the cadre of WAHMs whom she firmly believed comprised some kind of benevolent community. After all, they were moms with babies, right? This notion was very quickly dispelled as she found herself having to steel her emotions against vitriol, sabotage, baseless accusations and questions about her ability to raise our son in a manner that wouldn’t see him end up as a morally bankrupt serial killer. We’ve had competitors accuse us of copying their sites and product lines while in the same breath challenging our fitness as parents - claims they backed down from after a carefully crafted response that disputed everything concisely and clearly. Said competitors have, since then, proceeded to keep a watchful eye on our own business while copying every new product line or idea that we implement.
The internet is the internet. It would be disingenuous of me to take offense at competition since, as an online store, you put yourself out there for everyone to see, customers and competitors alike. I’m certainly not at all against imitation - I’ve come across at least a couple of sites that have copied our layout and colour theme with expert duplication skills but I did not feel any urge or impetus to send these sites any kind of sternly worded emails. It’s just the hypocrisy that’s demonstrated by the act of taking a soapbox stand to complain about some perceived slight, and then proceeding to contradict everything that you allegedly stood for with actions without shame; this annoys me to no end. Competition is one thing; hypocrisy while attempting to quash the competition is another.