Annual Review | Published: 31 December 2021 | Jamaica Homes News
Key Takeaways: 2021 in Six Lines
- COVID Vaccines Roll Out: Diaspora Communities Navigate Hesitancy and Access
- Tokyo Olympics: Thompson-Herah Wins Historic 100m/200m Sprint Double
- Biden Inaugurated 20 January; Capitol Stormed Four Days Earlier
- Windrush Lessons Learned Review: Home Office Found ‘Institutionally Racist’
- Jamaica Remittances Exceed US$3.0 Billion for the First Time
- COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow: Caribbean Nations Demand Action
The Year in Review
2021 began with one of the most extraordinary four-day sequences in modern American political history: the storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January — an attempt to prevent the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory — followed four days later by Biden’s inauguration on 20 January as the 46th President of the United States, with Kamala Harris taking the oath as vice-president. The contrast between the violence of 6 January and the constitutional normalcy of 20 January was stark and globally watched; for Caribbean-American diaspora communities, both days carried the weight of a democracy simultaneously tested and defended.
The COVID vaccine rollouts of 2021 — beginning in the UK in January and the US shortly after — transformed the pandemic’s trajectory while revealing new inequalities. Diaspora communities navigated vaccine hesitancy within Caribbean-heritage communities that had historical grounds for scepticism of medical establishments, alongside genuine structural barriers to access including work schedules, language, and digital literacy. Jamaica’s own vaccine programme, dependent on international COVAX supply chains and bilateral donations, lagged the pace of host country rollouts, creating a new dimension of concern for diaspora families tracking island conditions. At the Tokyo Olympics, postponed from 2020, Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah won the 100m in 10.61 seconds and the 200m in 21.53 seconds — a sprint double that placed her among the greatest female sprinters in Olympic history and continued the Caribbean dominance of global sprinting in the post-Bolt era. The Wendy Williams Windrush Lessons Learned Review, published in March 2021, concluded that the Home Office was “institutionally racist” in its design and implementation of the hostile environment policy — the starkest official acknowledgement of structural racism in a British government department in the modern era. Annual remittances to Jamaica exceeded US$3.0 billion for the first time, a milestone that confirmed the pandemic-era surge in diaspora transfers had not been a temporary phenomenon but a structural shift to a higher base level.
Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2021 | Jamaica Homes News. Compiled from four quarterly editions published April, July, October 2021, and January 2022.
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