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Coward or stupid majority?
REV MERVIN STODDART
Saturday, June 14, 2008
I spent over 40 years researching this column, plus another 12 hours or so flipping through documents in book shops, libraries, the Internet and my personal collection of over 2,500 volumes. Yet, there were no definitive answers to the questions researched, hence my readers must forgive me this one time for presenting more questions than answers. My problem statement could say something like "It is not known to what extent cowardice or stupidity is responsible for the perennial phenomenon whereby a majority of people allow themselves to be oppressed by the minority."
How could shiploads of black African slaves allow crews of 20 or fewer white slave traders to take them successfully thousands of miles over several weeks to the earthly hell known as slavery in the United States of America or to the lesser hell of slavery in the West Indies? Several sources cite chains of iron and ignorance, as well as gunpowder, as the explanations, but could those three weapons of mass destruction by themselves accomplish the enslavement of so many by so few without the majority stupidly refusing to attempt to eliminate their captors and free themselves? Were there morbid fear and cowardice among the peace-loving, God-fearing captives as their strange-looking, drunken, shooting captors transported them, or were the captives most fearful of their black Judas-like abductees?
Was it cowardice or stupidity that prevented hundreds of thousands of black slaves in the Americas from refusing to plough lands, pick cotton and do dirty laundry for a few thousand white slave drivers without pay or proper compensation? Weapons, brainwashing and systematic torture to "break in" the slaves appeared to explain the slaves' failures to free themselves, yet it was still inexplicable how so few could have enslaved so many for so long. Did language barriers and other schematic juggling by the slave masters leave the black captives totally dumbfounded and bereft of plans for exterminating their white captors? Is it that Haiti's François Dominique Toussaint Bréda, later called Toussaint L'Ouverture, was the only brilliant slave so that he alone could have led a successful slave rebellion to emancipate an entire nation, or was it that other equally brilliant slaves were too cowardly to try? That is not to say that Nat Turner, Sam Sharpe and other slave rebels were not brave and brilliant, because the records show that just as Judas Africans helped to enslave their countrymen, so too Benedict Arnold black folk betrayed Sharpe, Turner and other brave freedom fighters. Recent history also teaches that Judas Jamaicans and Benedict Arnold Blacks betrayed Michael Manley, Walter Rodney, Malcolm X and other would-be deliverers from mental and economic slavery. My own ignorance had caused me to oppose Manley's efforts at reform, and for that I repent.
Is it easier to say that Native Americans were too cowardly to prevent the white man's genocide against them or is it more realistic to conclude that the Indians were treacherously tricked and outsmarted? Perhaps more than in any other case the gunpowder factor was used to explain the demise of the coloured Indians by the pale-faced Europeans (it was later that "white" became a description for people as scientific racism evolved). Gunpowder and other weapons of mass destruction were the commonest explanations for the minority oppressing the majority in South African apartheid and colonialism in Rhodesia and other places globally.
Nevertheless, the Mahatma Gandhi in India and Sir Alexander Bustamante with Norman Washington Manley in Jamaica, plus other champions of independence elsewhere proved that there were ways to get around the oppressors' weapons even by more powerful, peaceful means. Dr Martin Luther King Jr called it "soul force" and Bob Marley recommended that we "chant down Babylon". Both impressed me since they projected the pacifist nature of the Christ. However, in the case of King's Civil Rights Movement, the obvious question was "Why did black Americans have to march and rally for their God-given birthrights?" If the majority of white Americans were decent people, why were they not the ones protesting against the oppression and disenfranchisement of blacks by the US Congress? If America's churches, black and white, knew anything about God's justice and Christ's love, why wasn't every single American church a daily place of protest against genocide, slavery, Jim Crow and other historical and modern atrocities?
Haiti again exemplified in April 2008 that when the wise, brave majority has had enough of their no-good prime minister or leader they can do something about it. Yet the protests of the Haitians and the resignation of their prime minister were not enough to free Haiti from Euro-American oppression and economic slavery. How long will it take Haiti's majority to free themselves fully? When will Jamaica's majority free themselves from their three most pressing problems: Euro-American mental slavery, stupid murders and violence nurtured by garrisons, and economic slavery that debilitates poor people? When will the majority of Africans, West Indians, Arabs/Muslims and other oppressed peoples of the world use their numbers to eliminate or cast off their minority oppressors? Does stupidity or cowardice prevent such prospects?
Rev Dr Mervin Stoddart writes out of Florida.
INMerv@hotmail.com
REV MERVIN STODDART
Saturday, June 14, 2008
I spent over 40 years researching this column, plus another 12 hours or so flipping through documents in book shops, libraries, the Internet and my personal collection of over 2,500 volumes. Yet, there were no definitive answers to the questions researched, hence my readers must forgive me this one time for presenting more questions than answers. My problem statement could say something like "It is not known to what extent cowardice or stupidity is responsible for the perennial phenomenon whereby a majority of people allow themselves to be oppressed by the minority."
How could shiploads of black African slaves allow crews of 20 or fewer white slave traders to take them successfully thousands of miles over several weeks to the earthly hell known as slavery in the United States of America or to the lesser hell of slavery in the West Indies? Several sources cite chains of iron and ignorance, as well as gunpowder, as the explanations, but could those three weapons of mass destruction by themselves accomplish the enslavement of so many by so few without the majority stupidly refusing to attempt to eliminate their captors and free themselves? Were there morbid fear and cowardice among the peace-loving, God-fearing captives as their strange-looking, drunken, shooting captors transported them, or were the captives most fearful of their black Judas-like abductees?
Was it cowardice or stupidity that prevented hundreds of thousands of black slaves in the Americas from refusing to plough lands, pick cotton and do dirty laundry for a few thousand white slave drivers without pay or proper compensation? Weapons, brainwashing and systematic torture to "break in" the slaves appeared to explain the slaves' failures to free themselves, yet it was still inexplicable how so few could have enslaved so many for so long. Did language barriers and other schematic juggling by the slave masters leave the black captives totally dumbfounded and bereft of plans for exterminating their white captors? Is it that Haiti's François Dominique Toussaint Bréda, later called Toussaint L'Ouverture, was the only brilliant slave so that he alone could have led a successful slave rebellion to emancipate an entire nation, or was it that other equally brilliant slaves were too cowardly to try? That is not to say that Nat Turner, Sam Sharpe and other slave rebels were not brave and brilliant, because the records show that just as Judas Africans helped to enslave their countrymen, so too Benedict Arnold black folk betrayed Sharpe, Turner and other brave freedom fighters. Recent history also teaches that Judas Jamaicans and Benedict Arnold Blacks betrayed Michael Manley, Walter Rodney, Malcolm X and other would-be deliverers from mental and economic slavery. My own ignorance had caused me to oppose Manley's efforts at reform, and for that I repent.
Is it easier to say that Native Americans were too cowardly to prevent the white man's genocide against them or is it more realistic to conclude that the Indians were treacherously tricked and outsmarted? Perhaps more than in any other case the gunpowder factor was used to explain the demise of the coloured Indians by the pale-faced Europeans (it was later that "white" became a description for people as scientific racism evolved). Gunpowder and other weapons of mass destruction were the commonest explanations for the minority oppressing the majority in South African apartheid and colonialism in Rhodesia and other places globally.
Nevertheless, the Mahatma Gandhi in India and Sir Alexander Bustamante with Norman Washington Manley in Jamaica, plus other champions of independence elsewhere proved that there were ways to get around the oppressors' weapons even by more powerful, peaceful means. Dr Martin Luther King Jr called it "soul force" and Bob Marley recommended that we "chant down Babylon". Both impressed me since they projected the pacifist nature of the Christ. However, in the case of King's Civil Rights Movement, the obvious question was "Why did black Americans have to march and rally for their God-given birthrights?" If the majority of white Americans were decent people, why were they not the ones protesting against the oppression and disenfranchisement of blacks by the US Congress? If America's churches, black and white, knew anything about God's justice and Christ's love, why wasn't every single American church a daily place of protest against genocide, slavery, Jim Crow and other historical and modern atrocities?
Haiti again exemplified in April 2008 that when the wise, brave majority has had enough of their no-good prime minister or leader they can do something about it. Yet the protests of the Haitians and the resignation of their prime minister were not enough to free Haiti from Euro-American oppression and economic slavery. How long will it take Haiti's majority to free themselves fully? When will Jamaica's majority free themselves from their three most pressing problems: Euro-American mental slavery, stupid murders and violence nurtured by garrisons, and economic slavery that debilitates poor people? When will the majority of Africans, West Indians, Arabs/Muslims and other oppressed peoples of the world use their numbers to eliminate or cast off their minority oppressors? Does stupidity or cowardice prevent such prospects?
Rev Dr Mervin Stoddart writes out of Florida.
INMerv@hotmail.com