By Dr. Basil Wilson From The New York Carib News

The birth of New York Carib News coincided with a turbulent period in Caribbean history.  The 1980s entailed riveting ideological struggles in Grenada, Jamaica, and Guyana.  The 1980s was also a time in which the white backlash movement in New York City raised its ugly head and race relations deteriorated with tragic incidents in Howard Beach and Bensonhurst.

The changes in U.S. Immigration laws occurred in 1965 and in the 1970s and 1980s, the Caribbean community in New York City was experiencing exponential growth, particularly in areas of Brooklyn, South-east Queens, and the Bronx.  People who migrate with families looking to enhance their material wellbeing and also seek to preserve their culture and natural identity.

Sociologists in the early twentieth century paid much attention to societal assimilation.  In the late twentieth century, the frequent movement of people from a new geographical place of abode and preserving national identity was made less challenging by mass and affordable airline travel.  One could commit to American citizenship and concomitantly continuing to embrace one’s national identity.  That commitment to national duality is very much an integral dynamic of the modern world.

What becomes essential in preserving that Pan-Caribbean heritage is the omnipresence of mass media in shaping our worldview.  We currently live in an advanced technological age and Caribbean immigrants have experienced various cycles in the struggle to bind together the disparate diaspora. The ongoing quest is to ensure that the umbilical cord with the home country remains unbroken.

The Caribbean community in the last five decades has struggled to establish and sustain productive organs of communication.  Many have lacked sustaining power.  W.L.I.B of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation served the community well in presenting a format of news and music but that crucial communication entity went under for financial reasons.  Other information organs have come and gone.  The New York Carib News has the distinction of surviving for thirty-eight years.

During that period the newspaper industry has been battered by technological changes and new forms of social media.  Nevertheless, the printed word is indispensable for an immigrant community that understands the importance of sharing information and preserving Pan-Caribbean cultural and political interests.

This has not been an easy feat.  Right-wing fanatics tried unsuccessfully to destroy the New York Carib News.  The resilience of the Rodneys and the support that the newspaper received from the community was critical for weathering the storm and overcoming that unprincipled assault on a treasured Caribbean institution.

The New York Carib News with its outreach and annual conferences has worked tirelessly to bring together the Caribbean community and the African American community.  Those conferences have brought together legislators on the state and federal level, businessmen and women of all stripes in the quest of constructing bridges and fostering prosperity for immigrants and indigenous folks in a highly competitive society.

Karl and Faye Rodney must be commended for their pioneering and herculean efforts of contributing mightily to the sense of purpose essential to the wellbeing of the Caribbean the Diaspora.  Throughout black and Caribbean history, newspapers have been vital to oppressed communities finding the strength to resist and to blazing new pathways forward.

That has been the thirty-eight years of the history of New York Carib News and it is in the interest of the diaspora community that such a newspaper continues to thrive in this rapidly changing environment. The existence of New York Carib News has demonstrated the indispensability of the written word to a people sojourned in a strange land.

For more on this story go to; https://www.nycaribnews.com/articles/the-indispensability-of-the-written-word/

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