ACROSS THE POND

Is Michael B. Jordan a Colonizer?

Renaming J’Ouvert rum doesn’t change the fact that Killmonger woulda beat his ass

Michael B. Jordan at the 2020 NAACP Image Awards in Hollywood. He is working to rename a rum brand that he purchased. Image: Getty Images

The popular African American phrase coined by Zora Neale Hurston “All my skinfolk ain’t kinfolk” was dramatically expressed in the behavior of actor Micheal B. Jordan when he launched his Caribbean rum brand J’Ouvert. Yes, he did an about-turn and apologized when Trinidad-and-Tobago-born Nicki Minaj suggested he change the name of the rum, but the revelation of Jordan’s mindset is clear.

Jordan is a Black capitalist, and for millions of Caribbean people in the islands and the diaspora, he’s the worst kind — a colonizer.

Jordan wanted to bottle and gift-wrap African Caribbean culture characterized by exclusion, enslavement, rebellion, extermination, and, finally, celebration to the world. He did this with no consideration for J’Ouvert’s originators or their descendants who, like him, are members of the ex-slave diaspora.

J’Ouvert is a celebration that emanated from Trinidad and Tobago and was later exported to other Caribbean islands and is linked directly to the enslavement and freedom of Africans. It is a contraction of the French phrase jour ouvert, the morning time referred to as “day open.” French influences became…