Black activism no special feat
RATHER THAN engaging in a meaningful and enriching discussion, Dr Orville Taylor sought to parade his activist credential, which amounted to his support of a well-known reparation advocate and joining the thousands of Jamaicans who turned out to honour their ancestors at Kingston Harbour in March 2007, an event, incidentally, that as a young assistant, I helped organise. He went on to mention that “against dissenting voices, including some from my university, I’ve pushed black pride, ‘Africentricity’, reparations, and recognition of the stains of plantation life long before it was fashionable and certainly before my primary place of employment ... created a centre and made reparations its official position”.
NOTHING NEW
But what Taylor failed to mention to his readers is the “irrefutable fact” that he is not a “stand alone”. What he is taking credit for is nothing new. And this is exactly the problem when one takes a narrow approach to historical examination.
There is a rich academic tradition at the University of the West Indies that has sought to instill black pride in Caribbean people. There was Walter Rodney, who, despite dissenting voices within the university, “grounded” with oppressed youths in Hermitage and August Town. Doyens such as George Beckford and others from the plantation economy school produced insightful and impactful studies on the legacies of the plantation system. Cultural icons such as Rex Nettleford and Barry Chevannes spent their entire careers teaching black pride.
There are many other Pan Africanists at the university who have made sterling contributions. All he had to do was to examine the history of that noble institution since its creation in 1948, and the writings of these intellectual giants, and he would have realised the rich tradition. As Walter Rodney opined, “the faculty and programme at UWI were helpful ... they were at least raising the nationalist question, and by raising the nationalist question, it ultimately pointed me, for instance, in the direction of Africa” (Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual).
I would also encourage Taylor to spend some time looking at the genealogy of the reparation movement because Rastafari carried the flame of reparation and repatriation.
Taylor’s obsession with the “divisive influence of the plantation” is a narrow interpretation of plantation life, and it does not provide a full account of the experiences of enslaved people during the period. Furthermore, his account lacks the broad outlines of the power dynamics within the plantation complex. This is evident when he stated that “among the enslaved victims on plantations, we failed to see the larger picture. Thus, Sam Sharpe was betrayed by his peers. In the 1760 Tacky Uprising ... he was snitched on by other Africans”.
The larger picture, I might add, is what Sam Sharpe and those brave freedom fighters achieved during the 1831-32 War for Emancipation despite British brutality and a system of divide and rule encouraged by enslavers who paid some black people to fight on their side. Had Taylor taken the long view, he would have noticed that the 1831-32 War was the culmination of a 200year anti-slavery/anti-colonial war.
The liberation ideology espoused by Nanny, Chief Tackyi, Sam Sharpe, and the thousands of men and women who stood on the right side of history to