As you say, you live in San Diego. Therefore, I will say this without aggression – having hoped you would have come to this conclusion – that your perspective on any other region is derived from where you live.

I wouldn’t tell you about where you live. Why do you think you can tell us about where we live? You can’t… and that’s been the point. The Caribbean defines itself, just as San Diego defines itself.

Most people would respond defensively while being accused of aggression, but perhaps I have gained further insight into your manner of dealing with perspectives other than your own. Or – am I reading that wrong?

Such aggression indeed – your response was aggressive. Mine was to make the case that I just made – without aggression. My point is made, though you may not see it as such. This isn’t a competition. I simply tried to point out what your Caribbean contributors already tried to point out.

Now I see why they stopped. l8r, d00d.

Such aggression. I highly recommend going for a run. I went for a run this morning and I tell you, I couldn’t feel better and more relaxed. It’s like a post-orgasmic cigarette lasting all afternoon.

Anyway, the comment wasn’t for you specifically, hence the “you guys.”

I live in San Diego. It’s lovely. Very tranquil setting – I highly recommend that you make a pass through one of these days.

Where do you live?

Does the half of Istanbul to the west of the Bosphorus river count as European while the rest of the city is Middle Eastern?

Man, if you guys could see the sparring going on over Turkey and Sudan … no neat drawers in this world.

As far as the rest – Nicholas, the first thing that I will ask you to do is, without prompting answers, go to a part of the Caribbean where you know not one person and ask them to describe themselves. You may get ‘West Indian’, but you will very rarely find ‘Caribbean’. Certainly, you may speak for yourself – but when a word is used more outside of a region than inside of a region, it’s apparent that the region doesn’t ‘own’ the word. If you don’t believe me, scroll through this tripe: http://www.technorati.com/tag/Caribbean

There are too many borders to make sense of things. But on the web, language is the key border at this time – and some of us are working toward minimizing that border as well.

As far as personal consternation, well… I do not like this world, but I must deal with it as it is. I sympathize with you, perhaps even empathize with you, but I have looked long and deep into that well of consternation myself through CARDICIS and other endeavours. I see the world in five ways – as it was, as it is, as it will be, as I believe it should be, and as others see it. Negotiating between those 5 points and giving my own opinion the least weight lent itself to the conclusion that caused personal consternation on your part.

My answer? If you don’t like it, change it. That’s what I try to do all the time. But to change it, first we must recognize it for what it is.

But: “The Caribbean as an entity really doesn’t exist…. ‘Caribbean’ is a word for people from the outside that are basically saying, ‘those islands over there that we don’t know the names of’”–this I dispute with some personal consternation, as someone who identifies himself, depending on context, as Trinidadian, West Indian, and Caribbean, and who spends much of his professional life trying to understand and define what those categories do, can, and could mean.

I know the Caribbean as a non-geographical, historical, political, cultural entity does exist because I know I belong to it, and because I know many people–Trinidadian, Guyanese, Barbadian, Jamaican, St. Lucian, Vincentian, Cuban, Haitian, Bahamian, etc etc etc–who make the same claim. “Caribbean”, true, does not and cannot entirely circumscribe our identities because, well, identity isn’t so simple: it is a fluid, overlapping concept covering innumerable traits, preferences, choices, behaviours, beliefs, and hopes.

Ask me who I am and I’ll reply, depending on the circumstances: male; young; not so young; Trinidadian; quarter Guyanese; a reader; a writer; an editor; French creole; white; red; Irish; from Diego Martin; from Port of Spain; a St. Mary’s old boy; a UWI alumnus; English-speaking; a fox; a hedgehog; short-sighted; short; skinny; right-handed; lefty; liberal; neo-Tapia; a blogger; an optimist; a romantic; a jointpop fan; Antillean; West Indian; and, yes, Caribbean.

The older I get, the better I understand myself, the more I see of the territories strung through and around this body of water, the more I realise that (and how) I am a Caribbean person; and the complicated and very real divisions of ethnicity, language, class, island, and nation (whatever “nation” means!) that run through these territories do not and cannot fundamentally threaten that notion of “Caribbeanness” that I share with millions of people who I have no trouble conceiving of as compatriots.

It may be–must be?–true that the average individual living in this messy little pocket of the world, eyes firmly on the basic, mundane goals of survival and happiness, thinks of himself or herself foremost as Jamaican, Kittitian, St Lucian (or in even more socially minute terms as black urban female JLP-voting Methodist Jamaican etc). But enough of us accept and believe in a bigger, genuinely and distinctively Caribbean identity for the word–the definition–the aspiration–to carry the weight of validity and the charge of possibility.

Or, to paraphrase Ian McDonald: I am part Guyanese by ancestry, Trinidadian by birth, West Indian by inheritance, and Caribbean by conviction.

Or, to quote Derek Walcott: “either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation”.

The Caribbean as an entity really doesn’t exist. This is because people in the Caribbean do not necessarily identify themselves with the ‘Caribbean’ – there are pretty strong national identities. I used to hate it when people heard I was from Trinidad and tried and screwed up a Jamaican accent. Idiotas. But the point there is that a Jamaican and a Trinbagonian will get along just fine, but they don’t look at each other as ‘one’. There are enough problems within the countries themselves that any island will identify strongly with what they consider to be the ‘real’ .

‘Caribbean’ is a word for people from the outside that are basically saying, ‘those islands over there that we don’t know the names of’. The problem is geography, and there’s a Pope to thank for it with his magic pen that split the region between Spain and Portugal.

Now, as far as the problem with weblog categories, the solution seems to be simple… language. If you identify the English speaking countries, you’ll find that 2 countries in South America speak English: Belize and Guyana. The English speaking Caribbean is pretty clearcut. By land mass and population, the English speaking people are a minority in the region. MINORITY. You could just call this the Caribbean, or Anglophone Caribbean.

By land mass and population, Spanish is the first language of the Caribbean. So you have Cuba, Puerto Rico and the D.R. which speak Spanish. Spanish is also the dominant language in South and Central America. That would be called – Latin America.

French are next by land mass and population – the islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and countries where French kweyol (creole; patois) are spoken – not to mention French Guyana. That would be the French Caribbean.

After English is Dutch. The Netherlands and Suriname. Dutch Caribbean.

Dependence and arguments on geography seem out of place when it comes to weblogs. Language is the key. Go with language. It may be messier, but it’s more accurate.