Emancipation Day

The day the British Empire announced the end of slavery has come and gone 188 times and the descendants of both slavers and slaves seem not to have committed themselves to a realistic new arrangement. The Brits have kept their grip on the lives of the emancipated with the consent of succeeding generations by means of a snail-paced empowerment, leading many of us in the emancipated progeny to utterly reject the French, Canadian, American and British imagination of freedom. The creative spirit and process have provided valuable sustenance for the unfinished journey into a dignified liberation, against the conservative values of yesterday’s greatness.

Making music from steel

The British government gave my ancestors neither hoe, cutlass, bucket or land when they proclaimed emancipation. A few brave women and men knew it and have been the inspiration for alternate forms of civic society. People who are just waking up in Barbados and Jamaica to weak-kneed parliamentary democracy are not much of a role model for the generation that will lead Black people into their own just, pluralistic and indigenous communities.

Waiting for others to define our future is a waste of time. It is the reason that Black people are still divided, inspired by the leaders of the same kind of government that enslaved us in the first place. Luminaries of the struggle in North America and in the islands of the Caribbean over more than 40 generations may look like flickering candles in an age when the Holy See travels to Canada to apologize for its role in a horribly immoral colonial enterprise. May the lamps surviving among us change the course of education and empowerment.

American Nightmare at Peak

During Black History Month all kinds of venues have been prepared so that Black people can have their spot in the reflected light, but America has had 200 years to execute justice in the land. Defining that justice is becoming more and more improbable.  It is incredibly damning that politicians are incapable of deciding what truth is or is not.  It is a horrific traffic jam when the religious leaders have essentially hypnotized themselves to see nothing but rich, duplicitous, armed to the teeth, and murderous as the destiny of patriotic individuals, and they did it by publicly venting malice againts the first and highly esteemed Black president, and they spent eight years doing practicing their craft.

A new day of honesty not likely to happen

There is a song we sing that reminds us that Christ is convincing and final.  It goes “I need no other evidence, I need no other plea”.  Black people do not need more evidence that a shameful play is being kept alive and religious and political powers, all across the globe.  We need no other plea than “Take your hands off our necks”.

An open agreement between power and the powerless

If there is to be a day when the confession and the eager pursuit of all the instruments of government, the good graces of religious groups, the accountability of our community associations agree that justice is not being served, why not today?  None of these entities have demonstrated effective control of the direction society takes.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of us are using antiquated sources for our wisdom quest, and for guidance on how we conduct our lives, and we are pretending we do not know that not every ancient practice or convention is sustainable.  The nightmare is not going to end

  • when all the instruments of the state maintain the smokescreen of legality (secular or sacred)
  • when lipservice to morality is a mere attempt to be obedient to founding principles
  • when no western government dares to confess the same thing that any religious group confesses and pursues
  • when they have installed an avowed bigot as chief exec
  • when theft and sexual assault defines the character of the nation
  • when the external enemies of the state (according to official American intelligence sources) are the architects

Black History comes to light when all attempts to keep us chained to the very system that raped our mother, and with near impunity abuse, assault and murder us.  Discrimination is a crime, no matter who or what.  Slavery continues with absence of freedom from fear of religious and xenophobic leaders.  We still believe that some people are chosen and we are not.  What dementia could have dreamed up that idea?

Do we believe that the interests of Islam, Judaism or Hinduism are incapable of inspiring  a new generation of honest freedom fighters?  Or are Christian lawyer disrupters like Jay Sekulo, half-baked rabblerousers like Giuliani, and vacuous experts like Ben Carson the best thing since the murder of the Nazarene?

No-one else gets 490 years to get it right.  America and Canada have seen what happens when racial insensitivity is not checked.  Their mother England (or is it really Allemand?) is a mere shadow of the Britannia that ruled the waves.  The British people can hardly have a reasonable debate at home much less negotiate with the EU over the end of a relationship which the British people gave minimal effort.  Remember how they kept their currency instead of committing to the alliance’s financing conventions?  The current distress and catastrophe in America and the UK is deserved.

Do not bother to wake up

They should get twice as much  – mercy is not for corporate and state entities – of the misery as they dished out to Indians in Asia, Aboriginals in the Americas and Australia.

Do we not hear Marcus Garvey’s message in the voice from heaven?  Do we not detect that the justice that applies to the proud nations is not atoning justice like the justice of the cross?

“Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; Rev 18:4  for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Rev 18:5

​Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. Rev 18:6

Both shores of the Atlantic pond are facing the music for racism, but America is proud of its great record of wealth and idleness, oppression of the poor and needy, and the Judeo-Christian Frankenstein they created.

It is not for greatness
but for lateness
in righting the wrong
we sound the gong.
"timber everywhere" (the felling of Babylon)
money-love  delivers none from fear

 

Black History Month

Here we find two words that stir up the thunder diluted with month. Since my descent from African stock in the diaspora dawned on me I have never lost sight of the difference between the African genius and the world into which her children were thrust.

Discrimination based on skin colour has been driving policy on the planet for a long time, longer than most know. The sister and brother of Moses had a problem with Moses’ Ethiopian wife. That may be the first on public record.

Annual Reveille

The problems with BHM include the facts of (1) people of African descent playing games with colour and (2) far too many of us reluctant to embrace Africa as mother. That is pathetic because the “mothers” of the dominant nations of our times have all been imperialist, serial rapists.

  1. They all are imitations of the papacy. They all want to have authority over life (what people think and do)
  2. At some point they have demanded worship
  3. They love to be called amazing.

It was 1970 when I began to discover who my people in the Island nation of Antigua and Barbuda were. My conviction then was “I am an African and proud of it”. It remains.

Global Struggle

If there are no African leaders raising the banner of the cause of Africans everywhere are we not to conclude that the vision of our common struggle is either dead or irrelevant? But who dares utter that evaluation about having coming a long way and having a long way to go? Not I. The struggle is not an infinite or unending journey. If we are not taking a firm stand everywhere – in church, school, mosque, synagogue, workplace, sport, and government – we might want to consider leaving the issue alone. Black History is either exercises in justice or fine sayings to educate people and warm their hearts.

Our struggle must be in our image