Is Super Cat Black?

Exploring Jamaican cultural identity and the Metaphysical essence of Blackness

Super Cat is an iconic Jamaican dancehall artist who started his deejaying career in the 1980s before rising to global prominence in the early 1990s.

Much of that success can be attributed to the songs on his 1992 landmark album, Don Dada. The title is a Jamaican ghetto euphemism for “Head Nigga In Charge.”

The album featured “Big and Ready” alongside Heavy D and Frankie Paul and “Nuff Man A Dead.” What drove Cat’s popularity outside of dancehall circles was his album single “Dem Nuh Worry We,” another big tune with Heavy D, and the timeless classic hip-hop remix by perennial Nas producer Salaam Remi on “Ghetto Red Hot.”

To my knowledge, no one has ever questioned Super Cat’s Blackness. When I was a little boy hanging out with my dad in the mid 1980s and early 1990s I would occasionally see Super Cat before he blew up around what was called “the mall” on Church Avenue in Brooklyn. It was the location of a modest Jamaican-owned business near a Chinese takeout on the corner. My dad had the 45 vinyl for his 80s song “Boops” which he may have gotten directly from Cat as an early show of support.

Super Cat

Super Cat was well acquainted with di man dem in the streets of New York. Jamaicans in New York City knew him, ate with him, and laughed with him. He was one of us—even though he was born in Kingston, Jamaica as William Anthony Maragh.

“Maragh” is an East Indian name, but Super Cat’s Blackness is not brought into question—and by no means am I saying that it should be. However it’s worth noting that it isn’t in light of all of the racial identity politics surrounding one of the most recognized people of Jamaican descent in the form of U.S. presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. Is it because we still like to dance to the “Ghetto Red Hot” remix and we don’t know whether Kamala can? Is it because Kamala is a woman?

A lot of Americans—white, Black, and in between—have questioned Harris’ Blackness. It isn’t just because of her East Indian mother, but because many doubt that her Jamaican father is actually a Black man. After all, “Jamaican” is a nationality, not a race. So a Jamaican may, or may not, be Black.

I am of Jamaican descent and have been to the island a few times. I know some things about its history, culture, and identity politics as a journalist who has interviewed numerous Jamaican entertainers, politicians, artists, and business people. Jamaicans are comprised of indigenous Arawak Indians, Africans, East Indians, Chinese, and Syrians.

I have East Indian and Chinese ancestors in my bloodline but you would never suspect it looking at me. I am a proud Black man. I’ve never proclaimed to be “mixed” although within the scientific ambiguity of modern racial classifications, I technically am. But so are most West Indians and Black Americans in North America, which is what makes the conversation around Kamala so ironic.

If you’re a descendant of slaves you’re not “100 percent” any of the racial classifications that white men created without asking you whether you wanted to play in their dirty classification game. I identify as Black because I understand that whenever a black shadow is cast by solid matter, then visible light is present.

As a Black man my presence in the world is undeniable confirmation of a greater presence of photonic majesty and captivating radiance. I am Yehwe (no spelling error) made flesh. That’s what I mean when I say that I’m Black. I encourage other Black people to define themselves without a white geneticist’s permission.

I decided to look into the background of Kamala Harris’ purportedly Black father, professor Donald Harris. It didn’t take me long to find his written work which is very extensive and spans decades. This is not surprising since he is a Stanford University professor. Of course he writes a lot, right? What surprised me though is what Donald had to say in the writings I’ve read.

Months after Malcolm X’s assassination Donald Harris wrote a two-part series article about him that was featured in the April 4^th and April 11^th 1965 editions of The Gleaner, Jamaica’s most recognized newspaper. A  lot of people may not know that The Gleaner is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the Western hemisphere, as it was first published in 1834. It’s older than The New York Times and Washington Post. This September The Gleaner will be 190 years old.

Donald Harris

Although Harris’ article entitled  “Malcolm X: The Man and His Mission” is written in a journalistically neutral tone (which is common among strict academic writers of all races) you can see that it is a pro-Malcolm X write-up that was written at a time when—if we’re honest—most African Americans outside of the North East wanted nothing to do with Malcolm X. Malcolm was a local phenomenon who was starting to get national attention for his eloquent defiance of the white inferiority complex masquerading as White Supremacy.

In his articles Donald Harris frames Malcolm’s assassination as the grave loss that it truly was. More importantly, he acknowledged that Malcolm’s views were expansive and possessed validity and value. In 1972 Donald wrote another thought piece entitled “The Black Ghetto As Colony: A Theoretical and Alternative Formulation” where he advances Marxist remedies for the transgressions of capitalism against the Black masses. This man is Kamala Harris’ father. I disagree with some of his written views, but the man is a Black man.

I don’t trust Kamala Harris. I think that she’s a social climber who does not have a clear vision for her presidency which makes her unworthy of it. Some people want leadership positions because of what they think they can get out of being your leader on paper. For others, leadership is the natural unfoldment of a life of diligent service.

I’m not voting for the Red Clown or the Blue Clown because I’m not aspiring to move into a three ring circus tent. That being said, Kamala is a Black woman. Black people who go hard trying to prove that she’s not are focusing on Identity Politics that have absolutely no bearing on whether she’s a competent manager and a sound-minded leader who has the best interests of working class Black people at heart. That is what REALLY matters.

The Democratic party knows this. That’s why its crafty white liberal leadership is over emphasizing Kamala’s Blackness to Black voters as if her race alone has intrinsic value to Black Americans who demand tangibles from their elected officials. At this time, I do not see any presidential candidates who fit the bill as a dedicated servant of the American people.

What is the conversation about whether Kamala fits into any common definition of Blackness intrinsically worth? After all, Sexyy Red is Black, and she’s literally selling young Black girls “Gonorrhea,” “Yellow Discharge” “Nut (cum)” and “BlueBallz” lip gloss. An intelligent Black person would try to figure out a way to convincingly prove that Sexyy Red is not Black before crusading against Kamala Harris for not being the 100 percent pure Nigga that NONE of us in the Western Hemisphere are either.

If we pursue that path of contorted logic to its inevitable then we have to revoke Bob Marley, Beethoven, Alexander Pushkin, and Super Cat’s Black card. I’m not willing to do anything of the sort. Neither should you.

Blackness is a spiritual hierarchy more than it is a stratification system rooted in skin pigment. The primordial Black hand stretches beyond all timelines and realities like a young Michael Jordan dunking from the free throw line. Let us now embark on an ancient journey above the rim of time and space.

You are gliding into the Nile Valley. You are now in ancient Kemet, The Black Land to be exact.

“Kemet” did not mean “The Land of the Black Soil” or “The Land of the Black People.”

Black soil and Black people existed in abundance across the globe around 3,100 BCE when dynastic Kemet was founded, so naming the land Kemet based on race or soil characteristics makes no sense.

Neither would have been a distinguishing factor that shaped national identity at THAT time in THAT region because black soil and Black people weren’t unique. They were the rule, not the exception when it came to early civil society.

The definition of “Kemet” as described by many in Afrocentric scholastic circles is based on a Post-Holocaust assumption that Black people were always struggling to stand up to some invincible tide of whiteness that could wipe them out at any moment, therefore they needed to build an entire identity around their skin pigment. That would be the mindset of a defeated people struggling to maintain unity without a mature and complex culture that could facilitate their global dominance. The primordial Black man didn’t see himself as a victim because he wasn’t. He stood supreme in the world with no peer but his woman.

Saying that “Kemet” means “Land of the Black People” would be like having an NBA basketball team called “The St. Louis Tall Black Guys” in a league where most of the players are tall Black men. There’s no distinction there, and great societies like to distinguish themselves from their neighbors, even if there neighbors are the same color that they are.

Where there is no distinction, there is no identity, because being able to say “THEY not like us” creates the outline within which we can define and manifest who and what YOU are. In the early ancient world, skin pigment would not allow you to do that because every major player on the world stage was Black. Kemet was the land of Alchemy, THE BLACK SCIENCE. Not all “Black people” had this science.

Al-Kemy is The Chemistry, or the Kem Ast Re. It is the science of life that allowed Black (Kem) super humans to nurture themselves (Ast/Auset/Divine Mother) with the elements on the periodic table that were found in the bushes of Africa’s interior.

However, these elements that make up the periodic table are themselves alternate expressions of the hydrogen atom (Atum Re). All natural elements are variations on the hydrogen atom which is also known as Ra, or Re.

“Kemet” was one of multiple names for a Nile Valley society that possessed the science of blackness (or at least aspects of it).

Ancient Sumer and Akkad had this knowledge as well. It was the land of the Black Headed ones, the land where people had the technical science of Blackness in their BRAINS. They were great scientists. They had highly advanced and nuanced systems of divination, and understood the chemical power of plants and stellar resonances.

However their greatest wisemen had not undergone the fermentation of the soul, the bloom of the heart that would grant them complete and total access to the Treasures of Darkness. In that black cube lies the gifts of the realm of spirit which is Black. Those ancient priests of Kemet, Sumer, and the Indus Valley are going through that rite of passage now through their experience within the wilderness of North America. These are the days of futures past.

Where ever you find ancient serpent iconography abundant you will find this alchemical life science.

Among one ethnic group in Benin, Togo, and Ghana who once occupied Kemet, Sumer, and the Levant, it is the path of Yehwe.