I can’t believe we’re still a US territory.
In fact, I cringe every time I hear the term and have always prayed one of our elected officials would finally take a hardline stance towards lifting the US Virgin Islands beyond this debilitating political status.
As larger America heads into a defining period of both racial, economic and technological reckoning it’s high time our island nation define its identity within the political construct.
Are we going to continue on as fantasy, a backdrop to a postcard advertising drunken memories amid an enchanted land or will we finally become a real people connected by culture, yet protected by political validation?
It’s why in my recent NiteCap reboot I engaged on the topic with Rudy Giuliani, the 80 year old iconic former New York City Mayor and attorney for Donald Trump who’s still one of the President-elect’s closest confidantes.
Giuliani, who spent his honeymoon in St. Thomas and calls it his favorite vacation where he’s always wanted a home, says that while most Americans love vacationing in the Virgin Islands its local people and their issues are still very much an afterthought.
“You’re giving me a mission, because I have tremendous affection for the Virgin Islands,” says Giuliani during the exchange which begins at the interview’s 54 minute mark. “When Cuba closed you became the Southern vacation destiny, the Southern honeymoon destiny.”
Now we have the choice to craft our narrative in this hybrid society in which an experiment of colonial conquest met by African defiance has created arguably the most cosmopolitan and technologically advanced islands in the Caribbean.
Furthermore, existing on America’s margins has had its advantages as issues tearing at the social fabric on the US mainland like racism has never fully taken root here.
“Somehow in America and maybe it’s because of slavery and the way it played out; we tend to think in race too much,” says Giuliani. “We would learn something from you.”
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