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Reparation? Not a chance
Mark Wignall
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Mark Wignall
Questions for Black History Month: Is blackness a skin colour, race or a state of being? Considering that Planet Earth is controlled by the economies of countries stocked with people from European races, the Japanese and increasingly, China, is it fair to say that the black race is an inferior one?
From my standpoint, there ought to be a law against "celebrating" Black History Month in Jamaica. Black self-denigration has generally declined since the days of my childhood to now, but in recent years there has been a resurgence of self-hate among the poorer social classes in urban Jamaica where violent criminality as a subject to be learned supersedes anything remotely resembling "reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic".
And who can blame these people? The higher up the social ladder one climbs in Jamaica, the more likely it is that one will lose some pigmentation. Poor black people are simply doing what many of our bright black people who received higher education in the days before independence did.
Where the educated black faces were allowed to believe they had finally arrived at the holiest of holies and from then attached themselves like leeches to those brown and white faces who controlled the "commanding heights of the economy", the poor black people in the townships in the urban centres had no such opportunity to enter the hallowed gates.
The poor in the ghettos saw not only money in uptown Jamaica. They saw what appeared to be civil order. If, they reasoned, order would not come to the ghetto, and the ghetto could not dare violate that sacred line into social and economic heaven, the next best available was to partly mimic the great house as was done in the days of slavery.Considering that most poor black people in Jamaica are quite convinced that the picture of that white guy, that one hanging on the walls of too many homes in Jamaica, is actually Jesus Christ, and he is the Son of God, it took much less than a leap of faith for them to begin to remove the pigment from their faces.
So there we have it. The European races used their technology to sail to West Africa where Arab traders and warring black tribes conspired over a long period to kidnap other black people and drag them across the Atlantic to the Americas and the "West Indies".
Ironically, slavery was carried out in the name of God and his son who, as far as poor black people see it today, is white.
In 2007 black people around the world who do not make computers, spaceships, microchips and ipods want the producers of those items to turn around and give us some of the money they have made in their long time at the bat. Don't hold your breath.
I learnt a long time ago that if the chance of something happening is about 10 to the hundredth power to one, it will not happen. I believe reparation falls into that category.
First, we are arguing from the standpoint of mendicants, with Omar Davies and Portia championing the triumphs of another "jingling" of small change dropping in our begging bowl. The surest way to turn off a rich person is to be a beggar to him.
One of my sharper readers, a youngster not yet 30, sent me the following: "Our system of government is the Westminster model, a model copied from one of the major players in the slave trade - Britain. Our politicians convene to deal with the nation's matters in the House of Parliament. In the House of Parliament lies a sceptre - that is in plain sight for both sides of the house to see - that is a symbolic representation of the Queen of England.
"When any member of the royal family visits, there is always pomp and pageantry - paid for using taxpayers' money. The streets are re-paved and children line the streets with Union Jack flags waving them enthusiastically. There is a residence called King's House where a person with the title of Governor General resides. Who is he, you might ask? Well, he is Queen Elizabeth I
Mark Wignall
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Mark Wignall
Questions for Black History Month: Is blackness a skin colour, race or a state of being? Considering that Planet Earth is controlled by the economies of countries stocked with people from European races, the Japanese and increasingly, China, is it fair to say that the black race is an inferior one?
From my standpoint, there ought to be a law against "celebrating" Black History Month in Jamaica. Black self-denigration has generally declined since the days of my childhood to now, but in recent years there has been a resurgence of self-hate among the poorer social classes in urban Jamaica where violent criminality as a subject to be learned supersedes anything remotely resembling "reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic".
And who can blame these people? The higher up the social ladder one climbs in Jamaica, the more likely it is that one will lose some pigmentation. Poor black people are simply doing what many of our bright black people who received higher education in the days before independence did.
Where the educated black faces were allowed to believe they had finally arrived at the holiest of holies and from then attached themselves like leeches to those brown and white faces who controlled the "commanding heights of the economy", the poor black people in the townships in the urban centres had no such opportunity to enter the hallowed gates.
The poor in the ghettos saw not only money in uptown Jamaica. They saw what appeared to be civil order. If, they reasoned, order would not come to the ghetto, and the ghetto could not dare violate that sacred line into social and economic heaven, the next best available was to partly mimic the great house as was done in the days of slavery.Considering that most poor black people in Jamaica are quite convinced that the picture of that white guy, that one hanging on the walls of too many homes in Jamaica, is actually Jesus Christ, and he is the Son of God, it took much less than a leap of faith for them to begin to remove the pigment from their faces.
So there we have it. The European races used their technology to sail to West Africa where Arab traders and warring black tribes conspired over a long period to kidnap other black people and drag them across the Atlantic to the Americas and the "West Indies".
Ironically, slavery was carried out in the name of God and his son who, as far as poor black people see it today, is white.
In 2007 black people around the world who do not make computers, spaceships, microchips and ipods want the producers of those items to turn around and give us some of the money they have made in their long time at the bat. Don't hold your breath.
I learnt a long time ago that if the chance of something happening is about 10 to the hundredth power to one, it will not happen. I believe reparation falls into that category.
First, we are arguing from the standpoint of mendicants, with Omar Davies and Portia championing the triumphs of another "jingling" of small change dropping in our begging bowl. The surest way to turn off a rich person is to be a beggar to him.
One of my sharper readers, a youngster not yet 30, sent me the following: "Our system of government is the Westminster model, a model copied from one of the major players in the slave trade - Britain. Our politicians convene to deal with the nation's matters in the House of Parliament. In the House of Parliament lies a sceptre - that is in plain sight for both sides of the house to see - that is a symbolic representation of the Queen of England.
"When any member of the royal family visits, there is always pomp and pageantry - paid for using taxpayers' money. The streets are re-paved and children line the streets with Union Jack flags waving them enthusiastically. There is a residence called King's House where a person with the title of Governor General resides. Who is he, you might ask? Well, he is Queen Elizabeth I
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