Whenever natural disasters – or other events that legitimately merit media attention – occur in the region, reporting ‘prejudices’ frequently exclude those tiny pockets of Caribbean people who occupy small geographic spaces in bona fide Caribbean territories, but which rarely for any reason – save and except some earth-shattering occurrence that simply cannot be ignored – attract the attention of the mainstream regional and/or international media. Here one might add that this deficiency ought to have been remedied years ago through robust and sustained interventions by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the ‘parcels’ of ignored territory being bona fide members of larger territorial spaces of the Community.
Truth be told, it is a glaring oddity, and worse, that CARICOM has simply never made any serious and sustained attempt, that we know of, to raise the respective profiles of what one might call the ‘forgotten groups’ of Caribbean people whom, over time, have lived and died in those ‘forgotten spaces’, many, perhaps even the majority, having never really ever having internalized what one might call a sense of country or an understanding of their Caribbeanness.