One hundred and seventy years later

Tomorrow will be one hundred and seventy years since our big day. Yes, the day when we were finally given the space to begin to work out our own lives. 1838 is always my point of reference. 1834 the ‘original’ emancipation day only made sense for a few countries like Antigua that decided not to undertake the Apprenticeship experiment. Really as we think about it, it was such a short time in historical memory.{{more}} I, who had at school been brought up on British and European history, who studied the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066 and went back to Ancient history, and earlier to the Reformation and Renaissance, realise fully that others were on the path to developing their own societies many moons before. But then we are also part of that ancient history. Our fore parents came from mighty civilisations in Africa. But things happened and our path was diverted and distorted as colonialism and slavery took hold of Africa. We are part of those who were taken away to experience a different kind of slavery and to some extent colonialism, elsewhere. So we always have to remember that we were given that space only a few years ago and that we have achieved quite a lot despite the obstacles and barriers. We must not be too hard on ourselves. Let us for a moment pull out the Caribbean Community as our means of identification and of being. We have produced Nobel Laureates. Some of our writers are recognised throughout the world. Our cricketers once dominated cricket internationally. Our athletes stand out. As we prepare for the Beijing Olympics Usain Bolt of Jamaica is the current world record holder for the 100 metres, having taken it away from another Jamaican, Asafa Powell. We could go on talking about the contributions we have made. But there are many ways of assessing ourselves and we always have to analyse and reflect on that journey which we are still undertaking.

We are now not only people directly descended from Africa. We are also combinations of different people, including the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. There are different dimensions to our being. When we remove from our shores and go to the so-called north, we are immediately identified as blacks, as Africans and we are immediately put into that broad category that still carries certain negative images. We can see that happening in the United States of America where Barrack Obama of mixed parentage, a large part of it black, is assessed with glasses that are framed with those negative images about blackness. Our Prime Minister who is of Portugese extract naturally focuses on the Caribbean Civilisation. And that is where we are lodged because we are now a people who have formed a civilisation that is more than Africa. So while we try to recover and to set the records straight about our African self or that part of us that is African, we as a people have also moved beyond that. We are trying to build a Caribbean Community. But that Caribbean Community is not going to mean very much until we have recovered the many parts of ‘us’.

As we move forward we have to think in holistic terms because this is what a society and a civilisation is all about. Today we as a people are assessed and labelled to a large extent on our economic being, on our economic performance based on categories which others have designed. In this era of what we call globalisation, we have found it necessary to forge a common path for our very survival. In doing so we have used as our base a common history and are beginning to broaden that framework, having started and seen ourselves as, largely, a people who were colonised by the British. We still put a large label on this and so we proudly consider ourselves members of the Commonwealth. We are reluctant to let go of the Queen as our Monarch, our head. We feel we will destroy ourselves if we let go of the colonial Privy Council. We talk about 170 years but there is more that has to be brought into the calculations. We might have been ‘freed’ from slavery at that time but we remained subjects of the British, under a different yoke, a different kind of slavery for a long time beyond that. We surrendered our legal British self only twenty nine years ago.

But this is where the dilemma is, for while we look back we also have to look forward and we have to use that looking back to guide and propel us forward. What we are seeing is not nice. We might very well be trapped by that same past that is supposed to guide and propel us forward. I listened recently to Sir Shridath Ramphal as he lamented on the Caribbean journey. We have pledged to transform our Caribbean societies into a vehicle that not only makes sense in the context of history but one that is needed to continue the journey into a world that is becoming a global village while at the same time being dissected into regional blocs. That vehicle is the Caribbean Single Market and Economy. We have been talking a lot about this and pride ourselves on coming up with this design for a future Caribbean. And here is where the agony begins. Sir Shridath laments the kind of vision and the kind of leadership that is supposed to be taking us into our version of the ‘promised land’. We are really not serious and our Prime Minister, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves brought us back to reality with a scathing criticism of who we are and what we have been up to. Unfortunately our Prime Minister is a path of the leadership that is leading us into that phantom creation.

Since the British left us, despite our talk about destroying the colonial state and creating a new environment and reality, what we have been doing is packaging the designs we inherited from them and fooling our people into believing that we have something new. Our Caribbean leaders have all admitted this for that is what is behind the call for and attempts to bring about constitutional reform. We have come up with different names but the package is the same. Two major aspects of our colonial being remain and until we get rid of them we are going to have difficulty moving on. We still embrace the Queen as our head. Why? What do we fear if we break that bond? Then the Privy Council! This has almost become sacred ground. One understands the concerns of some of our people about breaking that particular bond. But we can never be serious about a Caribbean Single Market and Economy and about our future as a Caribbean people unless we remove ourselves from that vestige of colonialism. Obviously we do not have faith in our people. Obviously we do not have faith in ourselves. We lack confidence. We fear the future. We who have borne the brunt of what slavery had to offer, we who maintained our humanity and preserved it all in our slave communities; we who fought against the inhumanity of slavery in song and dance, by running away sometimes, by rebelling sometimes; by feigning ignorance and pretending to be stupid; we who found creative ways of surviving slavery and colonialism are now afraid to move on. Or is it that we are still feigning? Is it that our leaders have become our new slave masters and we are awaiting the opportunity for a real emancipation? Are we serious about the CSME? The future looks gloomy indeed.