By Staff Reporter | NewsAmericasNow.com

News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Thurs. June 3, 2026: The timing is no coincidence. Days after Trinidad and Tobago broke ranks with CARICOM – reserving its position from the regional body’s statement of concern over escalating US measures against Cuba and aligning itself with Washington through the US-led Shield of the Americas security pact – President Donald Trump has nominated a Trinidad-born former Florida Lieutenant Governor as the next United States Ambassador to Port of Spain.

The nomination of Jennifer Johnson-Carroll, 66, sends a unmistakable diplomatic signal across the Caribbean: countries that align with Washington get rewarded. Countries that don’t – get Kari Lake.

The Reward

Carroll’s biography is extraordinary by any measure. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, she immigrated to the United States at the age of eight, enlisted in the US Navy in 1979, and served 20 years in uniform – retiring as a Lieutenant Commander in 1999. She went on to become the 18th Lieutenant Governor of Florida – serving from January 2011 to March 2013 under Governor Rick Scott – becoming in the process the first Black person, the first woman, and the first Trinidadian American ever elected to statewide office in Florida, and the first Black Republican elected to Florida statewide office since Reconstruction.

A long-time Trump ally who served as a surrogate during his 2016 presidential campaign and later as a Commissioner on the American Battle Monuments Commission during his first term, Carroll now stands to return to the country of her birth – not as an immigrant child leaving for American shores, but as the United States’ most senior diplomatic representative to the government of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Context: Trinidad’s Strategic Choice

Carroll’s nomination arrives at a moment of significant geopolitical realignment across the Caribbean – one in which Trinidad and Tobago has made a clear and consequential choice about which side of an intensifying US-Cuba confrontation it stands on. When CARICOM foreign affairs ministers expressed their profound concern over escalating US economic and commercial measures against Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago – alongside Guyana – reserved its position. The two nations, both significant energy producers with deep commercial ties to the United States, declined to join the regional consensus in support of Cuba.

Both countries are only 2 of three Caribbean official members of the US-led Shield of the Americas alliance – a security pact signed by 17 Western Hemisphere countries in March 2026 focusing on countering transnational organized crime, drug trafficking, and illegal migration through enhanced intelligence sharing and military cooperation.

The nomination of a Caribbean-born, historically significant diplomat to serve as US Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago — at precisely this moment of regional fracture – is the kind of diplomatic gesture that Washington makes deliberately and the region understands immediately.

The Contrast With Jamaica

The difference between Washington’s approach to Trinidad and Tobago and its approach to Jamaica could not be more pointed.

For Trinidad – which sided with Washington on Cuba and signed the Shield of Americas pact – Trump nominated a Trinidad-born woman with a historic record of public service, military service, and political achievement who literally grew up in the country she will now represent America within.

For Jamaica d which has not broken with CARICOM on Cuba and which is currently hosting the USS Nimitz in Kingston Harbor in what the US Embassy carefully described as a goodwill visit d Trump nominated Kari Lake. An Arizona-born television anchor with no known connection to Jamaica or the Caribbean and a public record of calling for the mass deportation of immigrants.

The message to the Caribbean is clear. Alignment with Washington opens diplomatic doors. Distance keeps them closed – or worse, puts an anti-immigration hardliner behind them.

A Caribbean Heritage Month Footnote

Carroll’s nomination arrives during Caribbean American Heritage Month – a month the Trump White House has not seen fit to formally recognize with a proclamation. The irony is not lost on Caribbean diaspora observers that the administration’s most symbolically positive gesture toward the Caribbean community in June 2026 is the nomination of a Caribbean-born woman to a diplomatic post – while simultaneously declining to issue the standard recognition of the month dedicated to celebrating Caribbean Americans.

Carroll’s nomination is subject to Senate confirmation.

By Staff Writer | NewsAmericasNow.com

News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Weds. June 3, 2026: On the second day of Caribbean American Heritage Month – a month the Trump White House has still not seen fit to formally recognize – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the United States Senate that the Trump administration has taken back control of the Western Hemisphere.

Those were Rubio’s words Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – delivered as the USS Nimitz, one of the world’s largest nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, sat docked at the Port of Kingston, Jamaica, 90 miles from Cuba, and as the United States quietly met with Guyana’s Foreign Minister to discuss oil investment and sovereignty protection in what analysts say is a deliberate strategy to reshape the Caribbean’s geopolitical alignment.

For the millions of Caribbean Americans marking Heritage Month across New York, Florida, Connecticut, and beyond – the message from Washington could not have been clearer. The Western Hemisphere belongs to the United States. The Caribbean’s role in that hemisphere is to fall in line.

The Testimony: Control, Regime Change And A Contradiction

Rubio’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee produced some of the most revealing language yet about the Trump administration’s vision for the Caribbean and Latin America. Touting the January operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro – a key ally of Cuba’s communist government – Rubio declared that the administration had taken back control of the Western Hemisphere, as reported by NPR.

On Cuba specifically, Rubio was unambiguous about his position. “I really don’t believe this system is capable of reform, unless new people take over or a new mindset takes hold,” he told the committee, as quoted by NPR, language that analysts describe as a clear call for regime change.

But here is where the contradiction emerges – and where the Caribbean should be paying close attention. The Helms-Burton Act, which Rubio has long championed, requires credible steps toward democracy before the US embargo on Cuba can be lifted. Rubio’s vision is nothing less than the collapse of the Cuban communist system – an Eastern European-style regime change, as Christopher Sabatini of the Chatham House think tank described it to NPR.

President Trump, however, appears to have a different vision. In Venezuela, the administration toppled Maduro but left the state largely intact – opening up business deals for American companies. That kind of arrangement, analysts told NPR, might appeal to Trump in Cuba as well. But it is not what Helms-Burton requires. And it is not what Rubio has called for.

“So he’s going to have to confront his own constituency and his own conscience, if you will, in a policy that Trump is dictating in which Trump will want a victory,” Sabatini told NPR. “But it’s not the same absolute victory that Marco Rubio and many of his constituents have imagined, literally, for more than six decades now.”

The Caribbean – caught between two competing American agendas neither of which considers regional interests – is watching two powerful men pull in different directions over a crisis that will be felt from Havana to Kingston to Port of Spain regardless of who wins that internal argument.

The Man Who Has Never Been To Cuba

One of the most striking details to emerge from coverage of Rubio’s testimony is a fact that Cuba’s own Foreign Minister raised last week and that Cuban history professor Lillian Guerra of the University of Florida confirmed to NPR this week: Marco Rubio has never been to Cuba.

“He is very unaware of how – what life is like in Cuba. He’s never been there,” Guerra told NPR. “And I think that he needs to be cognizant of that.”

Rubio’s parents were born in Cuba but left before the revolution. The Secretary of State is driving the most aggressive US pressure campaign against Cuba in decades, a campaign that is reshaping Caribbean geopolitics, fracturing CARICOM, and placing a nuclear aircraft carrier in Caribbean waters – has never set foot on the island whose future he is helping to determine.

Guerra also noted that a PBS genealogy program found that Rubio’s third great-grandfather owned a tobacco farm in Cuba – and slaves. “That was shocking to him,” she told NPR. “But it wasn’t to anybody who’s Cuban on the island.”

The Quiet Guyana Meeting

While Rubio testified on Capitol Hill, a separate and significant diplomatic meeting was taking place that received far less attention – but that tells an equally important story about Washington’s Caribbean strategy.

US Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau met Tuesday with Guyanese Foreign Minister Hugh Todd, according to a State Department readout issued June 2, 2026. The meeting focused on reaffirming the strong and expanding partnership between the United States and Guyana, expanding US private sector engagement in Guyana, and reaffirming the United States’ commitment to Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity – the latter a clear reference to the ongoing dispute with Venezuela over the Essequibo region.

The timing is striking. Guyana was among the CARICOM members that reserved its position from the regional body’s statement of concern over US measures against Cuba – breaking ranks with Caribbean solidarity to maintain its alignment with Washington through the US-led Shield of the Americas security pact.

The day after the USS Nimitz docked in Jamaica – the day Caribbean American Heritage Month began without a White House proclamation – the United States was quietly consolidating its relationship with one of the Caribbean’s most strategically important nations. Oil investment. Sovereignty guarantees. Commercial partnerships.

The Caribbean is not being consulted about its future. It is being managed. And the difference matters enormously.

The Administration That Is Talking To Raul Castro’s Grandson

Perhaps the most extraordinary detail to emerge from NPR’s coverage of Tuesday’s testimony is this: even as the Department of Justice pursues a murder indictment against former Cuban President Raul Castro – and even as Rubio calls for systemic regime change – the Trump administration is simultaneously talking to Cuban officials, including Raul Castro’s own grandson.

The contradiction is breathtaking. Washington is indicting the grandfather for murder while negotiating with the grandson. It is deploying a nuclear aircraft carrier to Caribbean waters while offering $100 million in humanitarian aid. It is calling Cuba a failed state while pursuing back-channel conversations with its leadership.

For the Caribbean – which has watched this contradiction play out in real time – the message is not one of principled foreign policy. It is one of raw power, managed carefully enough to keep all options open.

Caribbean Heritage Month: A Warship And A Silence

Against this backdrop of geopolitical maneuvering, regime change rhetoric, and quiet diplomatic realignments, Caribbean American Heritage Month began on June 1st with no proclamation from the Trump White House – breaking with a tradition maintained by previous administrations – and with little more than social media posts from elected officials who even represent Caribbean diaspora communities.

No formal recognition. No acknowledgment of the millions of Caribbean Americans who have contributed to this country for more than 250 years. No statement addressing the communities most directly affected by the administration’s Cuba policy, its immigration enforcement operations, or its military posture in the Caribbean.

Just a warship in Kingston Harbor; silence from the White House and Rubio speaking of taking back “control” not partnerships.

RELATED: The Archbishop And The Chambermaid: Cuba and The Caribbean’s Impossible Choice

By Nyan Reynolds

News Americas, NY, NY, Mon. June 1, 2026: When people hear the word segregation, they often think about White America and Black America.

They think about separate schools, separate water fountains, separate lunch counters, and separate entrances. They think about politicians standing on courthouse steps declaring that segregation should exist today, tomorrow, and forever. They think about police dogs, fire hoses, marches, protests, and brave men and women who challenged a system that told them they were less than human because of the color of their skin.

That is the segregation we teach in our classrooms. It is the segregation we see in documentaries. It is the segregation we remember every February when conversations turn toward civil rights and racial justice.

But there is another segregation that we rarely discuss. It happened inside the Black community. And if we are honest with ourselves, it is still happening today.

Before going further, it is important to understand what the Brown Paper Bag Rule actually was.

The Brown Paper Bag Rule, sometimes called the Brown Paper Bag Test, was an informal social practice that emerged in parts of the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and became most prevalent during the Jim Crow era. The concept was simple and troubling. A person’s skin tone was compared to the color of a brown paper bag. If their complexion was lighter than the bag, they were often viewed more favorably in certain social circles. If they were darker, they could face exclusion from clubs, organizations, churches, social gatherings, and other spaces where complexion influenced acceptance.

It was never a law. It was not practiced everywhere. Nor did it represent the beliefs of all Black Americans. Yet it became a symbol of a deeper issue that scholars today call colorism: the preference for lighter skin tones within communities of color. Its roots stretched back to slavery and the racial hierarchy that elevated whiteness as the standard of beauty, intelligence, and social worth. By the time America entered the twentieth century, some of those beliefs had found their way into Black communities themselves, creating divisions among people who were already facing discrimination from the outside world.

The Brown Paper Bag Rule reminds us that segregation was not only something imposed upon Black Americans. In some ways, segregation also became a lens through which Black Americans were encouraged to view one another. Think about that for a moment.

While America was telling Black people they were not good enough because they were Black, Black people were sometimes telling other Black people they were not good enough because they were too Black.

How does something like that happen? How does a people struggling against segregation become divided among themselves by the very thing being used against them?

The answer is uncomfortable. Segregation did not simply separate races. Segregation taught lessons. And some of those lessons were learned far too well.

To understand this reality, we must go back further than the Civil Rights Movement. We must go back to slavery itself.

For generations, America has established a hierarchy based on race. Whiteness represented power. Whiteness represented beauty. Whiteness represented opportunity. Whiteness represented acceptance. Blackness was placed at the bottom of that hierarchy. These ideas were reinforced everywhere. They appeared in politics, education, employment, entertainment, and social customs. They shaped who was considered worthy and who was not.

Over time, those beliefs did not remain outside Black communities. They found their way inside.

Many lighter-skinned Black Americans were descendants of the very system that oppressed their ancestors. They were often the children of slave owners and enslaved women, born from relationships that frequently involved exploitation and violence. In some instances, lighter-skinned enslaved people worked inside plantation homes while darker-skinned enslaved people worked in the fields.

Both groups were enslaved. Both groups lacked freedom. Both groups suffered under the same institution.

Yet, differences in treatment created social distinctions that survived long after slavery ended. When emancipation arrived, the chains were removed, but many of the attitudes remained.

Opportunities were often distributed unevenly. Lighter skin sometimes translates into greater access to education, employment, and social acceptance. Darker skin frequently carried stereotypes that had been created by a racist society. The result was a hierarchy that persisted within a community already burdened by discrimination.

The Brown Paper Bag Rule became one symbol of that reality.

It was never merely about complexion. It was about value. It was about acceptance. It was about proximity to a standard that Black Americans themselves had not created.

Perhaps that is what makes the issue so painful. The struggle was never simply against external segregation. The struggle was also against internalized beliefs that taught people to measure themselves according to someone else’s definition of beauty, intelligence, and worth.

Even today, many Black Americans recognize remnants of these conversations. Listen carefully. The evidence is everywhere.

How many times have we heard someone describe a person as attractive primarily because they are light-skinned? How many jokes have been made about dark skin? How many songs, movies, and television shows have reinforced the idea that certain features are more desirable than others?

How many young girls have stood in front of a mirror questioning whether their complexion makes them beautiful enough? How many young boys have been teased because they were considered too dark?

We often laugh about these things. We package them as harmless jokes. We turn them into memes. We build entire social media conversations around them.

But jokes have histories. Ideas have origins. And many of those origins can be traced back to a period when America openly taught that the closer one was to whiteness, the more valuable society considered them to be.

The laws changed. The attitudes did not always change with them. Some of those beliefs settled into families. Some settled into neighborhoods. Some settled into the culture. Some settled into us.

I remember growing up hearing conversations about complexion that seemed normal at the time. People often discussed skin tone as casually as they discussed height or eye color. Yet beneath many of those conversations was something deeper. There was often an assumption about attractiveness. An assumption about social status. An assumption about desirability.

The comments were not always intended to be harmful. That is what makes them so dangerous. Prejudice often survives not because it is openly celebrated but because it becomes normalized.

A child does not need to hear hatred to develop insecurity. Sometimes all it takes is hearing that lighter is prettier. Sometimes all it takes is hearing that darker is less desirable. Sometimes all it takes is a joke repeated often enough that it begins to feel true.

For many Black children, complexion becomes one of the earliest ways they learn how society evaluates appearance. Long before they understood history, they understood comments. Long before they understand segregation, they understand comparison.

That reality deserves more attention than it receives. We cannot spend decades teaching children about the damage caused by racial segregation while ignoring the ways similar ideas continue to influence perceptions within communities today.

This conversation is not about assigning blame. It is not about creating division where none exists. Nor is it about suggesting that all Black Americans think the same way.

The overwhelming majority of Black families reject these ideas entirely and celebrate the beauty found in every complexion.

The purpose of this discussion is understanding. History matters because it explains why certain conversations continue long after the laws that created them disappear.

History helps us understand why some wounds remain sensitive decades later. History reveals that prejudice is rarely satisfied with dividing one group from another. Eventually, it teaches people to divide themselves.

That may be one of segregation’s most enduring victories. Not the separation of schools.

Not the separation of buses. Not the separation of drinking fountains. Its greatest victory may have been convincing generations of people that human worth could be measured by physical characteristics.

That is a lesson America taught repeatedly. And unfortunately, it is a lesson that echoes far beyond race.

When society teaches people to rank one another according to appearance, everyone loses. Communities become fractured. Self-worth becomes conditional. Human dignity becomes negotiable.

THE BROWN PAPER BAG RULE

The Brown Paper Bag Rule serves as a reminder of how dangerous those ideas can become. It reminds us that oppression does not always operate from the outside. Sometimes it finds ways to live within the communities it once targeted. Sometimes it survives in conversations, assumptions, preferences, and jokes long after the original system has been dismantled.

That is why confronting this history matters. Not because we wish to dwell in the past. But because we owe honesty to the present.

A mature society does not hide uncomfortable truths. It examines them. It learns from them. It grows beyond them. The next generation deserves that honesty.

Young Black boys deserve to grow up knowing that their worth is not determined by how dark or how light they are. Young Black girls deserve to know that beauty is not measured against proximity to whiteness or any other manufactured standard.

They deserve freedom from insecurities they did not create. They deserve freedom from hierarchies they did not invent. And they deserve a future where complexion is viewed as a characteristic rather than a ranking system.

As we turn the pages of history, we will find countless examples of America struggling with race. We will read about segregation, discrimination, and the long road toward equality. Those stories are important, and they must continue to be told.

But we should also tell the whole story. We should talk about the segregation that happened between races and the divisions that sometimes happened within them.

We should talk about the visible scars and the invisible ones. We should talk about the laws that separated people and the ideas that persuaded people to separate themselves.

Because the Brown Paper Bag Rule was never really about a paper bag.

It was about identity. It was about belonging. It was about value.

And until we fully confront the legacy of those ideas, we risk allowing them to quietly survive under different names, jokes, and conversations. History asks whether we recognize that reality.

The future depends upon what we choose to do with the answer this Caribbean American Heritage Month and beyond.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nyan Reynolds is a U.S. Army veteran and published author whose novels and cultural works draw from his Jamaican heritage, military service, and life experiences. His writing blends storytelling, resilience, and heritage to inspire readers.  

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