Size in Caribbean sports conflict

The legacies of slavery and colonialism seem to be as strong today as they ever were even as many of our leaders seek to convince themselves and their respective populaces that we have come of age and the vestiges of those twin evils have long since become a thing of the past.

Today’s reality suggests that if anything we may well have grown worse with so-called enlightenment. This truism is as present in the so-called wide and wonderful world of sport as anywhere else in Caribbean society.

Size Matters

For many years, the matter of the size of a country from which an individual comes has been made to impact the perception of the individual. Of course many of us grew up in an era where we were told that a man must be measured by who he is, what he has been able to achieve through the successful use of his intelligence and what he has been able to do in the society and world in which he lives and moves and has his being.

Unfortunately this latter perspective does not seem to be important in reality. In the real world in which we live and indeed in the Caribbean in particular, a man is measured by the size of the country from which he comes and/or represents.

In the global environment, there have been many instances of the larger countries of the world seeking to show that the mere fact of geographical size gives them some near-divine right to rule, to dominate, over those that are geographically smaller.