Sorry Usain, Culture Is Not A Good Enough Reason To Cheat

Usain Bolt’s name is in the headlines today. Not for his athletic ability but for the way he’s responded to some relationship drama. You may remember shortly after the Olympics in Rio, Bolt was seen with a few women who were not his longtime girlfriend, Kasi Bennett.



Not only was he seen partying with one woman. There were photos of him kissing another. And then there was the last one, the one no one could ignore. It was him in bed with a Brazilian woman.

As you can imagine, there was plenty of discussion about Bolt’s fidelity and whether or not his relationship with Bennet, who Bolt calls his “First Lady,” would continue. But after weeks of wondering, Usain posted a picture that seemed to slam any speculation of a breakup.

The picture, though it got people talking, didn’t address whether or not Usain cheated. It did confirm that the couple didn’t break up. And recently, in an interview with GQ, Bolt seemed to explain why his relationship with Kasi is able to withstand his philandering and why the rest of the world is needlessly pressed. Basically, it comes down to a lack of cultural understanding.

Bolt: “The British press is always trying to make me out to be this bad guy who loves women and how all I do is women and stuff.”

GQ: Why are you a bad guy if you love women?

Bolt: “I was telling this English press guy,” he says by way of response. “You can’t judge a different culture by your own culture. In England when you get famous the first thing you do is get married and have kids. In Jamaica it’s different—like my parents had me and they got married 11 years later.”

“In Jamaica, we wine on each other. It’s our culture. People see it the first time, they’re like, What is going on? It’s like they’re having sex in the club! No, that’s just the culture. It’s how we are.”

Basically, that’s how Jamaicans get down. Don’t worry about it. I read the tweets about Usain’s words and rolled my eyes. As a woman of Jamaican descent, I knew there was some truth to them. And wondered if this was worth me writing about. There are so many examples of men in my own family operating under Bolt’s rationale of “The culture made me do it.”

Still, there was a part of me that rolled my eyes because the statement is not true for all Jamaican people. That’s Jamaican male culture…(some of the men.) And while some women accept it, completely unbothered; more often than not, the Jamaican women connected to these womanizing men spend too much of their life feeling betrayed and embittered. I know that too from the Caribbean women who share a story similar to the one Usain shared about his own parents. I know that from my own Jamaican family. I, shameless plug, wrote a whole book about it.  And while men, Jamaican and otherwise, might regard it as a part of their culture and their nature to be “out here.” They’re not accounting for the feelings they hurt and the humiliation they cause for not only the women but the children that are born of these numerous relationships.

Some might argue that Usain’s girlfriend is not one of the women who has a problem with his womanizing. They may assume that because she decided to stick around that she’s completely fine with her boyfriend not only sleeping with other women but the entire world knowing about it.
I wouldn’t be so quick to make that assumption.
While Bolt’s half-sister said that Kasi was likely accustomed to her brother’s behavior, her activity on social media sent a different message. After the compromising images of Usain and his temporary boo appeared online, a woman tweeted:

“@usainbolt you traded your life with a #goddess @kasi_b for a one night fling with someone who ill never even come close. I can’t.”

The tweet was far from viral but Kasi was one of the hundred something people who liked it. That doesn’t sound like a woman who’s cool with her arrangement, even if it’s one she agreed to. She may have accepted Usain not being faithful to her. But perhaps she wasn’t accustomed to seeing photographic evidence of his stepping out. And I’m sure she wasn’t prepared for the world commenting on the nature of her relationship.

Bolt’s half-sister, Christine Bolt-Hylton, was one of the people who had something to say. In an interview with The Mirror, she insisted that the her brother and Kasi wouldn’t break up. And then she took it a step further by saying she doesn’t believe anything happened with Bolt and the Brazilian woman who was in bed with him. She chalked it up to his willingness to take pictures with his fans. Perhaps what was most telling and drastically different from Usain’s own words was her complete denial that Usain was cheating based on his moral convictions.

“Usain doesn’t believe in cheating. Normally when we speak he says he is against stuff like that. He has never done this before as far as I know. When he was much younger he was popular with the girls but from whiny they have been together he hasn’t done anything like that. He would never cheat. He was brought up by his parent never to do such things. He was brought up in a Christian home and his mother doesn’t support that lifestyle. So I don’t think he would every cheat.”

I’m sure his mother doesn’t support that lifestyle, waiting, over a decade after the birth of their child, to get married. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows something about said lifestyle. Her son’s words make it seem like she might.

It’s painfully clear that Christine was covering for her brother in the media. Some will argue that’s the right thing to do as his sister. I don’t agree. That’s the type of enabling that has led so many men to believe their actions are acceptable. But that’s another topic for another day. The question I want to ask is, if infidelity in romantic relationships were such a time-honored staple in Jamaican culture, what was the point in her offering a rationalization? It would just be what it is. She would have said what her brother told GQ instead of trying to dismiss it with Christianity and turning a blind eye to some pretty incriminating pictures.

The point is, there are quite a few traditional and commonly accepted male behaviors that men think are cultural. They think they are so ubiquitous that the women in their lives just have to be okay with them. Like lesser pay for equal work or men legislating whether or not a woman should have the right to get an abortion. Hell, even our President-elect’s “locker room talk” has been dismissed as cultural. But culture is just not a good enough excuse anymore for disregarding, diminishing and degrading women, especially if that woman is one you claim to love.