Espeut is proposing that because Black History Month is seen as an imported rather than an Indigenous event, it opens conversations that might  
[^0]
[^0]:    7 B. Walters, 'Black my story - not his-story', Daily Observer, 4 February 1997.
8 V. L. Davis-Daly, 'My black history', Daily Observer, 6 February 1997.
9 P. Espeut, 'Honouring our own', Daily Gleaner, 19 February 1997.
10 C. R. Reynolds, 'Black History Month', Daily Gleaner, 18 February 1997.
11 P. Espeut, 'Honouring our own', Daily Gleaner, 19 February 1997.  
not otherwise occur. What seems critical here is his suggestion that expressions of racial pride or style from the United States are taken on in Jamaica as a way to enter into public conversations about race among those who might otherwise consider such discussions 'impolite', and by so doing, to direct attention to the dynamics of racial formation both within Jamaica and transnationally. U.S. Black History Month, in this context, becomes a resource through which Jamaicans might frame an ongoing local dispute regarding the degree to which Jamaican nationalism has 'succeeded' in eradicating racial divisions in the service of the national motto - 'Out of Many, One People'.