Definition Of Caribbean Identity

I believe that Caribbean persons are best suited for defining the Caribbean for the main fact, who best to describe a place that those who inhabit it. Many persons may see the Caribbean as undefinable for the main reason that there are simply too many ways to define it. For example, the Caribbean may be defined as a geographical region, a group of nations with a common history or culture, or by political links or even by an attitude (Laughlin, 2006). The Caribbean is far more complicated than that. The definition is always changing, and so are we as Caribbean people, but the goal remains to understand ourselves and share it with the world. Caribbean societies are unavoidably heterogeneous, the Caribbean has long been an area where some people

For most Caribbean persons their separate and unique identity is derived from their association with the shores and scenes, the special sights and sounds, of the Caribbean environment. Caribbean peoples are new arrivals who have had to reconstruct their identities having lost most of what they had in the transmigration from the Old World (Walcott, 1992). There are other places in the Caribbean where the homeland is contested but by the more penetrative and possibly permanent forces of tourism and television. The fact is that Caribbean citizens actively participate in cultivating this industry. To have a home is to control it. In many parts of the Caribbean, citizens surrender public spaces for exclusive tourist use and pleasures (Richardson). If the Caribbean can be conceived as a single cultural community, this claim cannot be established on the basis of a commonly shared language. Language however is a critical marker of identity in the Caribbean. As noted by De Vos in relation to other parts of the world, “it is undoubtedly true that language constitutes the single most characteristic feature of separate ethnic identity”. In many parts of the Caribbean, very often residents can locate the home of another Caribbean person simply on the basis of an accent or a dialect. As students of anthropology the most important areas to consider when depicting a representation of the Caribbean are not only the physical settings but also the identity of its people, the language and even the