EMANCIPATION
Almost two centuries later …
ALMOST TWO centuries later, we are conflicted, it seems, over whether slavery still affects us today. Because many are of the view that it doesn’t, they say the call for reparations is unnecessary and is only taking us back into the past. I suppose for many others, the past never totally left us if we are still suffering its effects.
So, let’s get back to basics. We are no longer being brutalised for free labour and the plantations are out of commission. You and I, living, breathing people here and now are free to build our lives and our country. However, if you break a man’s legs and then put him in the starting blocks of a 100-metre race, you can tell him he is ‘free’ to run his race but it won’t change the fact that you crippled him.
I am going to spend this article outlining how I think the living, breathing people here and now are affected by the slave trade.
First, there is a direct economic impact for descendants of the enslaved that is literally being felt and experienced today. When the slave trade ended, the planters were actually compensated for releasing the Africans they had working for them. The enslaved? They got nothing. This was less than two hundred years ago. In other words, your great grandfather may have been one of the ‘got nothings’.
NO ROCKET SCIENCE
It’s not rocket science that if your great grandfather had no money, no education and no skills, he would be starting from scratch in building a life for himself. Your grandfather wouldn’t have been much better off and your father probably wouldn’t have been able to leave you more than a few shillings and an old bed frame. You, hopefully, are just now pulling your family line towards the path of economic recovery.
Which brings us to the stinging and divisive issue of wealth inequality. Contrary to what some people think, rich people are not all rich simply because they work hard and poor people are not all poor because they are lazy. It may be so in some cases, but opportunities matter and make a big difference. If I am born to parents who can afford private tutoring for all the subjects I struggle with, and can afford to send me to a private school with a pool and a tennis court at the back and free piano lessons as a part of the school curriculum, I have a clear advantage in soaring through life. That’s nothing to feel guilty about, but that’s something that should be acknowledged.
In Jamaica, only a few are born with the proverbial ‘gold spoon’ hanging from their mouth. It just so happens that a disproportionate percentage of this ‘few’ are typically not of African descent. In some cases, they are direct descendants of great-grandfathers who were paid tidily to free captives just under 200 years ago. That’s the uncomfortable truth. The comfortable truth is that we can still be friends.
Governments must work out how they will right the wrongs of history that their countries promulgated through law. I don’t think that can be left up to individuals.
INEQUALITY
As a direct result of wealth inequality, there is the spin-off of education inequality which in turn affects wealth some more, and so on. I think the average well-educated, middle-aged black person in Jamaica will confess that they benefited from free education under Michael Manley’s era. Great! That was the big break descendants of the enslaved needed. Now, people like myself have to pay through their teeth to go to school. But, that’s for another time.
Free education was a big deal. It made paupers into princes and elevated a downtrodden generation into confident nationbuilders. Those who could afford the education obviously reaped the same benefits. But neither was free education always around, nor did it last forever. Many who preceded the free education era could not afford to go to school and there was no one to pay for them, so they remained uneducated.
Education significantly impacts wealth and has literally changed the home situation for countless Jamaicans who were born in poverty and who now live well. So the point here is that if you can’t afford a basic education, your chances of elevating your economic situation are severely crippled – which means you stay poor.
Clearly, the issue of sweeping wealth inequality is, on its own, unfortunate. But there are other spin-offs. Another never-ending debate surrounds the relationship between poverty and crime. I doubt it can be said directly that poverty causes crime but there certainly is a high correlation. The poorest countries for the most part have the highest crime rates. And we are not talking about drunk driving or pickpocketing. We are talking about murder, rape, scamming and some of the most diabolic and egregious crimes. I doubt that can be a coincidence.
The writer of Proverbs seems to see a link. He tells God:
“… Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.”
Poor people aren’t inherent wrongdoers. That’s not the point. But when people work hard and achieve nothing their entire lives while they see others getting fat off their hard work, there is high potential for animosity.
Clearly, a number of societal ills, as I see it, stem from the slavery period which ended just under two centuries ago. I am out of space, but in Part Two I will outline the psychosocial impacts I think slavery still has on us today and how many of those have resulted in our own economic self-sabotage as a country and also individually.