The Black Condition, here and now BY Leonard Tim Hector
Because, in particular, this is Black History Month I should say it. For, no one else will or would say it. Not a few people here regard Black History Month as a time to look out. Out on Africa. Out on Blacks in the United States. Out on Blacks in the Diaspora, be it in Brazil, the largest black population outside of Africa, or to the unique community of Blacks in the Bluefields area of Nicaragua, a large number of which were originally Antiguans & Barbudans. Or in Oriente Province in Cuba, where there is till now a large community of Benjamins, Osbornes and Georges who can lay claim to Antiguan origin. The World is, as it were, outside of us. A thing apart.
Therefore, we never in Black History Month examine the Black Condition here. That is anathema it would seem. Self-examination is unknown. There is nothing worse than the un-examined life.
Even more strangely, a non-black caused us in an historic speech to reflect on the Black Condition, here and now. And this non-black did so graphically, with supporting facts and figures. And too, the trivial media, true to their nature, diverted the nation from the essential points made by this non-black, to concentrate national attention on the side-shows, so as not to have the nation look on the essentials. Its essential human condition. The nature and reality of our being, not in the colonial past, not in the slave past, but in our neo-colonial present.
Before I go to the heart of the matter, I want to say something that will startle my readers. Nowhere other than Antigua and Barbuda is the race question as dominant or as concentrated. Not even in the U.S. or South Africa, or Zimbabwe. And nowhere is the race question more ignored than in Antigua & Barbuda. It is a blasphemy to raise it.
In whose hands is the wealth of Antigua concentrated? No census has ever looked at the distribution of income here by race. Never. That is taboo. It is a blasphemy, in fact. Historically, the wealth, the sugar wealth of Antigua was in the 17th and 18th century concentrated in the hands of 65 white families. The wealth became even more and more concentrated. That is, in less than 65 white families.
Antigua and Barbuda is the only country in the world, which had an actual White Syndicate in full charge since 1904. Long before syndication or conglomeration was noticed as an economic phenomenon, by V. I. Lenin, in a seminal work, Antigua, since 1904, had an all white Syndicate, which owned all the arable land in the place, and which controlled all of the major commercial enterprises in the place. The same all-white Syndicate controlled the Legislature. And, therefore, determined life, economically, socially and politically well past the middle of the 20th century. No other majority black country has been so unilaterally white-controlled for so long. White control is thus, then and therefore taken for granted here, un-natural as it is, it is natural as the white-clouded blue sky.
Antigua and Barbuda is the only place in the world, where a black government, sanctioned the creation of a white enclave of the American white rich and powerful, and gave it powers to set up barriers to totally exclude the black natives from the most beautiful spots in all Antigua and Barbuda. And this took place in the 20th century, not in the age of Cecil Rhodes who sought to, and did establish, his own white imperial enterprise in Africa, and now that murderous empire is being finally disembowelled by Mugabe, there are howls in all white newspapers, with black newspapers following suit. The fact of the matter is, whatever may be Mugabe’s errors, he is confronting head-on, the fundamental issue of the Black Condition. Namely, why should a handful of whites control vast economic resources in a black country? And why the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and OECD, are using every means, every device to keep the world as it is, namely, under white ownership and control.
Do not believe dear reader, that anything said above is not related to the non-black here, who took an historic stand and sharply focused us on the essentials of the Black Condition, here and now.
Incidentally, and this too is not a diversion, Antigua and Barbuda is the only place in the world where a relatively prosperous Coloured Class, in the 20th century, preferred to eliminate itself, chose to become extinct, when it numbered thousands, rather than align itself with Blacks here. They preferred to migrate to Canada. They preferred to remain childless. Coloured spinsters were numerous. They preferred to in-breed. They preferred any and all of these courses rather than marry or mate reproductively with a black person, off whom they made their living. Not even the venal mulattoes of Haiti were so self-destructive in their race hatred. And it is a white historian, Susan Lowes, married to a Black Antiguan thinker, Milton Benjamin, who pointed out in detail that unique historical fact, the fierceness of anti-black feeling right here by Coloureds. By 1921 the Coloureds who numbered 4,066 outnumbered Whites who were 1,980 in the same year, while Blacks were 31,064. Loving, Shervington and Athill were the predominant personages among the Coloured class. And what happened to this second most numerous class of Coloured Antiguans?
Let the historian-sociologist, Susan Lowes, speak: "By the 1860’s entire branches of each [coloured] family had disappeared. Those members who remained were from the less prominent branches, were less wealthy and held for fewer appointed and elected positions. [The Derricks, about whom there is a fuss calling them by the misnomer ‘plantocrats’ and some of whom make so much fuss asserting their historical importance, were not even numbered among the prominent or less prominent branches of the Coloured class. They were what they were, nonentities.] Thus if family members had stayed and had children, and if those children in turn had stayed and had children their numbers would have increased geometrically. Yet the opposite was the case."
A whole class of persons, the second largest class of persons, after Blacks, in Antigua and Barbuda, disappeared almost entirely due to what can only be termed hatred for Blacks. It is, to the best of my knowledge, unique in all history.
With that not as preface, but as context, I come to January 25, 2002 and the non-black, who passionately compelled us to look at the stark reality of the Black Condition, here and now. Here is the non-Black, speaking publicly in Antigua and Barbuda not from a street corner, but in a hallowed hall.
"Since they acquired the property [Half Moon Bay Hotel] HMB Holdings [from 1971] enjoyed tax free holidays and tax free concessions. For 32 long years (really 24) the Hotel made money as one of the premier resorts of the Caribbean. But it made not a red cent in contribution to the Treasury of this country.
"On a ridiculous conservative estimate, if we say that the government gave them [HMB Holdings] only US$100,000 a year for 36 years in tax holidays and duty free concessions, the people of this country have US$36 million invested in that property. And to the US$36 million, which is EC$97 million, we have to add the land which they got for free!" [Hold the word "ridiculous" in your head for a moment and its meaning will become fully clear about nine paragraphs from here].
"As yet, Madam President, I have not added all the years of duty free concessions on all the equipment and fixtures in the hotel and everything else that is used.
"But, we know, Madam President, that the figure of US$100,000 a year that I have used here is ridiculous. The taxes would have been much more than that. The truth is that the total figure in tax holidays and duty free concessions is close to US$200 million.
"Just think how many hotels we could have built with that money instead of putting it into the pockets of the shareholders of a single company, HMB Holdings.
"The people of this country were very generous, very generous indeed."
In plain terms, we are as generously foolish, as the natives, who sold Manhattan for a string of beads. At any rate the natives who sold Manhattan had a cultural value on a string of beads. What can we say of us blacks here?
Again the non-black speaking in the Senate on January 25, 2002 – a date, which ought to be rated as important in our annals, asked the relevant question:
"And what did we ask in return? What did we ask HMB Holdings to do in return for this great generosity of the Antiguan and Barbudan people? We asked nothing more than they keep the hotel open and provide some of our people with jobs!
"In the meantime, they shipped large profits out of the country year after year, from 1971. We never charged them a cent in taxes. Not in income tax, not in consumption tax, not in withholding tax. They got it all for free."
Consider the phrase ‘they shipped large profits out of the country". What else has been happening here since 1632, when Edward Warner conquered the natives of Antigua & Barbuda, and took possession of the island in the name of the King and Queen of England? 1632 to the present, same essential condition. Dispossession. Only this time it is the natives who are upholding, defending with might and main, with verbal thunderbolts, or radio Talk Shows this "ridiculous" condition – The Black Condition, here and now.
The record requires me to say, that the speaker in the Senate, who spoke these words, the non-black was none other than Senator Asot Michael, a non-black, Lebanese in origin, Antiguan and Barbudan by choice.
No black politician in government has ever said anything of the kind in Parliament. None would dare. Centuries of black inferiority and self-loathing, bred by black dispossession holds them in terror and terrorised of stating the truth, the simple truth of the Black Condition here and now – dispossession, and its twin, alienation.
That is, that all of our politics, all of our economics, all of our social existence, rather, our social histrionics, is predicated upon allowing whites to own and control all the essential avenues of life and living here. And, once they don’t make it too obvious that we can’t go in dey, can’t siddung dey, and don’t ask us to ride in the back of the bus – we go to the back as if by inferior nature so ordained – and don’t call us ‘nigger’ with insulting intent – we proclaim that all is well, and, indeed, we never had it so good. And to crown it all, we proclaim the absolute myth, "here every creed and race find an equal place, and may God bless our nation; where each endeavour and all achieve; and so out of many, one people; classless and free." By a process more ancient than alchemy, and more persistent than poverty we turn our historic dispossession, into it’s opposite – freedom. We proclaim by national slogan and billboard that "Tourism is in our hands", when it is they who are shipping away the millions from our labour and underdeveloping us. And this process of enduring, albeit eternal underdevelopment of ourselves, we declare to be "freedom", when freedom can only be the opposite, namely the free and full development of the individual, of her and his natural acquired abilities through social ownership and control.
I continue to say that the increasing number of young men (not women, though) I see on our roads emasculated and crazed by dope – crack – and the number of under-age girls pressed into sexual service in pursuit of the God, Nike, or God, Reebuck, or God, Versace constitute the biggest ideological statement made in this country. As they hustle for a living in rubbish bins or scrounging bottles, or in assorted hide-outs where they serve or are pressed into sexual service, they are the living metaphor that the entire dispossessed nation, rummages in rubbish bins, hustles for bottles as if they were mining gold, and is had every which way, in or out of Boardrooms. While the profits from our labour, as from 1632, are shipped abroad in ever-larger quantities, and not even for a string of beads in exchange. That, to be sure, is the Black Condition, here and now.
Whether one likes him or not, Senator Asot Michael, had the courage and the requisite passion, in an impassioned speech, to tell the nation of Antigua and Barbuda like it is. And the TV tape of that occasion should be kept in the national archives. It may prove a defining moment. Remember no government leader has ever said the like here in 35 years of self-government. Only one political party, ACLM, still in the wilderness of the damned, has ever said that and more. In a very definite way Senator Asot Michael passionately indicted what has passed for politics here, by his recurring reference to "for 36 years." The thirty-five years of self government, have been in essence the same as the preceding year, and the preceding 364 years back to 1632.
I am not done yet. In the minds of the hoity-toity black elite - and commoners have followed where they thought their betters led - Asot Michael’s reference to Ms Querard, majority owner of Half Moon Bay Hotel as "a white woman" or as "this white woman" was regarded as blasphemy, if not undiluted racism.
In this hysterical situation the "state compulsorily acquiring at market value" a white-owned asset, was twisted and distorted into a "seizure" by commonplace and mindless black DJ’s posing as "commentators" and "analysts". They wished to alarm the world that a "heresy", a "blasphemy", a "sedition" was occurring in Antigua and Barbuda, "the seizure of white property," which, incidentally, has "not paid a red cent" to the public treasury "in income tax, in corporation tax, in withholding tax, in consumption tax, in customs duties" for all 36 years of its corporate existence. That, for sure, makes it a little worse than Enron.
In short, any questioning of White Power here, even by a non-black is regarded as blasphemy.
I am reminded by one of the finest literary critics of this time, Frank Kermode, whose ideology I do not share, that nobody can say what blasphemy means in our world, though everybody senses when one does so.
Etymologically the word ‘blasphemy’, of Greek origin, had to do with damaging somebody’s reputation, as we use libel today. But it came to be used chiefly of trying to damage God’s reputation. The standard ruling on the subject occurs in Leviticus 24:16 "he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death and all the congregation shall certainly stone him." (Incidentally in that very passage the Greek version of the Bible – Septuagint – does not use the word "blaspheme’, only the Hebrew version does.)
At any rate, people here were calling for the death, the political death of Asot Michael for saying this "white woman" or for making other than not so complimentary remarks about "the white woman" who has exacerbated our dispossessed conditions by not paying a red cent into the Treasury, while enjoying lavish concessions from the State for decades. Asot Michael by challenging white power made an imperishable claim to be considered a legitimate heir of the one and only Father of the Nation – King Court.
It is blasphemy here to challenge "White Power". It is blasphemy to mention "whores" and "whites" in the same breath here. From Prime Minister to Pauper feel terrified at such a reference. As if whores are not people too, and only whites are people. When this shout of blasphemy against me was made, in a local rave and rant sheet, I took no notice, consigning such to where it properly belongs – the rubbish heap of ignorance. I am duty bound to state though; that the Rabinowitz, Connie and Bud, who were mentioned in the article, who have never been afraid to identify with black causes here, and to do so publicly, who have been a friend to Jamaica Kincaid, one of the exceptional writers of this time, though officially despised here, as all significant black achievers, are, except in sports called to say they were gratified by my comments, as did Bonnie Bufton, as did friends of the late Charles Hawley, all, the Rabinowitzs, Bonnie Bufton and the late Charles Hawley, very rare white people, who struggle and are on guard to free themselves from age-old prejudices, of race and gender.
Maybe I should stay awhile on blasphemy, because, I remind, the blasphemy of blasphemies here, at this historical moment in time, is to challenge White Power. In my continuing and never-ending challenge to White Power I am the bête noire of both parties, and even the non-party supporters. "And all the congregation shall stone him" (me). They all claim they do not know where I am, even though that is pellucid. I am against, inalterably against, white minority economic control of majority Black Antigua and Barbuda. And for a new system of social ownership and control, which gives Black, people here, effective control over the resources of this Nation. Clear? Very clear. Now back to blasphemy.
History tells that the real subtleties of definition of blasphemy had to wait for the great theologians of the 12th century. Then it was that blasphemy was the most fearful of sins, worse than murder, because it challenged God or questioned his ways to men, or compromised his honour, by, for instance, conjoining his name with "death" or "blood" or "oppression." The dogmatic differences between the main contending parties at the time of the Reformation were such that one’s rivals were bound to be blasphemers. Either because they celebrated mass and venerated the Virgin, the Saints and the Pope or because they didn’t, and worshipped the Bible instead. To both sides Jews, in their very existence, were blasphemy incarnate, while Blacks were ‘soulless’ and so irredeemable heathens to be subjected and dispossessed. So in 1553 the Inquisition had the Talmud publicly banned, and, at the same time, ruled that Africans of all types, be they slaves in the Caribbean or free persons in Africa be declared "soul-less". It followed that any vileness done to us, was not inhuman, and that, inhumanity in dispossession was our divinely ordained lot. Any challenge by us to the white powers that be, had to be put down with terror absolute. We, long subjected to that world view, incorporated it in our view of ourselves as we went along to get along.
Today in this society the black person, after centuries of enforced black inferiority and dispossession has come to believe that challenging "White Power" is a form of heresy, a type of blasphemy, a kind of racism, ridiculously termed, "racism in reverse". If you despise and oppose racists and racism, you are thereby a racist in reverse! That way of seeing dooms us to be deaf, dumb and blind in the world, and to demonise those among us who challenge White Power.
That is why we do not see, will not hear, and cannot speak out against the New White Power Order, known by some as the New Investment Order, or known officially as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). It is being negotiated into existence by the twenty-nine (29) members of the Paris based OECD backed by the most powerful country in all human history – the USA.
This MAI or New Investment Order as I prefer to call it specifically requires that host governments (read, black governments) guarantee to investors, usually white Anglo-Saxon Protestant or Catholic, the following:
Foreign investors must be free to export their commodities or services across all borders with no conditions attached. To universally purchase and own any structure of productive capacity of any other signatory nation with no requirement to sustain its viability, or its continued location in the signatory nation. To profit from any industrial or commercial enterprise with no requirement to reinvest in the country in which the resources are enjoyed and the profits derived. To bid for and own any privatised public infrastructure, social good, or cultural transmission without any limit on foreign control. To access any and all domestic government grant, tax incentive or subsidy with the same rights and on the same terms as any domestic firm. To be free of any and all performance requirements of even job creation, purchase of domestic goods, and technology or knowledge transfer to the host country. To resist any and all efforts at compulsory acquisition of foreign owned property as "seizures" To own any saleable resource of other countries and to have the right to enjoy its sun, sand and sea, extract its oil, despoil its forests, lay waste its mineral or other resources with no obligation to sustain such resources or to use them in the interest of the host country.
This , in short, is the new Credo of White Power. And to challenge it, is not just to blaspheme, is to bring down the wrath of God which is synonymous with White Power, on the heads of all innocent by-standers mainly. And this wrath is called counter-terrorism.
Those Black people, like us in Antigua and Barbuda who do not understand this, at this point in 21st century time, are doomed to sell "Manhattan" for less than a chain of beads – again and again.
Comments
Post a Comment