(Presentation made to Church Teacher’s College)
Decolonizing the mind
What is decolonizing? In a nutshell larger than a peanut, it is the process by which foreign colonies of imperial nations which dominated them seek their own vision and mission, determining their own path from a controlled colonial past.
Remember that vision comes before mission because if you do not know where you are going any road can be taken! Remember the objectives of the colonial past were inconsistent with the strategic outcome of the vanquished. The mission must avoid neo colonialism. There is a formal end to the colonial past but the infrastructure is still in place to facilitate the colonials. For example, I recall when there were only four local principals of high schools: Kingston College – Bishop P. Gibson, Excelsior – Mr. Powell, Merle Grove – Mrs. Speid, and Clarendon College – Mr. Stuart. How did we get there?
Although enslavement was abolished, personnel from Britain held power. The Jamaica Constabulary Force was established in 1867. The first Jamaican Commissioner of Police, Basil Linton Robinson from Harry Watch, was appointed 106 years later in 1973. Remember that although we are “Out of many one people” 90 per cent of Jamaicans are descendants of enslaved Africans.
A frightening story never shared in my educational process was the shock of a family who went to the field far away, left the children at home and the children were captured and taken to the West to work on plantations. A similar fate would be meted out to the parents — separated, ne.ver to meet again.
According to Alex Renton in his book Blood Legacy, which all Jamaicans should read, Europeans justified enslavement by stating that enslaved Africans were half human and half animal. Three years ago, when I heard this from Alex I cried, bawled so loudly that I had to recuse myself from the lecture for a while. Alex sent a copy of the book to me. It tells the story of how 76 enslaved Africans on the estate at Rozelle, St. Thomas transformed scrap iron into wrought iron and because they were regarded as goods, not human, British ironmaster Henry Cort claimed the copyright and this propelled the Industrial Revolution in England. The story was reported in the Guardian newspaper of Britain, on 5 July 2023.
Our own Jamaican Professor Sir. Geoffrey Palmer, from Malvern, the first black professor in Scotland, described the people who profited from slavery as: ”Those who carried out the most profitable evil the world has known”.
The Rt. Excellent Marcus Garvey said: “A people without the knowledge of their past, history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” This is the statement I want to guide our discourse towards decolonizing.
Karl Marx said: “If you tear a nation away from the heritage you can make it into the shape you want.”
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, in a speech to the British Parliament on 15 May 1823, said: “The slave sees the mother of his children stripped naked and flogged unmercifully; he sees his children sent to market to be sold at the best price they will fetch; he sees himself not as a man but a thing, an implement, of husbandry, a machine, a beast of burden.”
Most Hon. Michael Manley said: “The enslavement of the body that endured till 1838 was nothing to the enslavement of the mind that endured since.”
I repeat, 90 per cent of Jamaicans are descendants of these persons.
Our Jamaican enslaved story
In summary Professor Hillary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of The University of the West Indies, said, “Jamaica was the Caribbean’s largest slave market. Britain imported to Jamaica 1.3 million beginning in the 1660s. At the end of enslavement in 1838, there were 300,000, remaining. Therefore slavery in Jamaica was genocidal.” You now know why Martin Luther King Jnr. wrote the book, Why we can’t wait. Think of the end of enslavement in 1838. The planters received 20 million pounds. The enslaved , nothing, nothing!!.
Let me pause to offer thanks to God, to the Moravian missionaries from Carmel now in Westmoreland, then in St. Elizabeth who in 1753 invited missionaries to Jamaica to teach literacy, started school at Rowe’s Corner in St. Elizabeth and built the first primary school at Lititz in St. Elizabeth, complete with a tank for the community.
Thank you God for the missionaries who built Free Villages including J.M. Phillipo from Spanish Town who spent 50 pounds in lending our ancestors to acquire lots. Unfortunately, the village is not named after Rev. Phillipo who did not get a licence to preach when he came to Jamaica. Instead, the village is named after the Governor Sligo, hence Sligoville. Talk about decolonization?
Free on Paper, enslaved in the mind
Education:
How many of you heard the Clerk of Parliament at the official opening reading the declaration in the name of King Charles III? or an advertisement for support for victims of Hurricane Melissa and the accompanying music is the tune of a British national song, I vow to the my country.
Independence in 1962.
I attended the Independence concert at the State Theatre in Cross Roads and the only Jamaican musical item on the programme was the National Anthem. We have come a long way. This therefore is a mandate for Church Teachers’ College to commission its director of music to compose music for our National Song and arrange the first performance by massed choirs from Manchester.
Remember that at the installation service of our own Jamaican Bishop Rose Hudson Wilkin at Canterbury Cathedral in 2019 as Bishop of Dover, a paraphrase of Psalm 27 , “Jah is my Keeper” (Creation) by Peter Tosh was sung. My generation was taught that the standard to guide us was British and the Jamaican language was regarded as backward and inferior. Thanks to UNESCO for the declaration in 1999 that children should be taught in their mother tongue and that February 21 every year is regarded as Mother Language Day.
Thank God a Jamaican visiting the Sea of Galilee was confident with the language because when he saw a boat available for tour and asked the price for the ticket, the tour guide said, ”70 euros” to which the Jamaican bawled out, “Seventy euros!, Lawd God, no wanda Jesus walked.”
Yes, I know we have been decolonizing the education but is Civics in school still under a bushel? Are students aware that after Emancipation a small Education Grant was given but children had to pay fees to attend primary schools and Manchesterian Wilfred Bailey — father of Hon. Amy Bailey and Senator Elsie Bailey from Bailey’s Drug Store in Christiana — decolonized education in 1894 by mobilizing teachers to form a union – the Jamaica Union of Teachers now The Jamaica Teachers’ Association, to abolish such fees.
Thanks to Rt. Excellent Sir Alexander Bustamante whose Government in 1948 approved 640 acres of land for the establishment of The University of the West Indies and Manchesterian Rt. Excellent Norman Manley whose Government in 1957 introduced free high school education and also free education at Teachers’ Colleges.
Government:
Consequent on the labour unrest of the 1930s the Moyne Commission was appointed by the Colonial Government and serious recommendations were made, including freedom for labour.
Governments since 1962 continue to have on their agendas Constitutional Reform, especially to replace the Monarchy and the UK Privy Council with a Caribbean Court of Justice.
There is a Reparation Council which works with CARICOM on a 10-point plan for compensation as well as repatriation of objects removed from Jamaica. You might be aware that in 1790 British surveyors removed some Taino religious carvings, called Zemis, from a cave at Carpenter’s Mountain in Manchester. The objects are now in the British Museum and the Government has been pursuing the return of the objects.
The Rastarfarians:
We owe a debt of gratitude to this religion for their policy of separating from the Colonial masters and to undertake what Sir Philip Sherlock and Professor Rex Nettleford taught us, that we should be creators and not imitators. Homework is to list the way we need to decolonize: Issues include music, (Bob Marley’ s One Love voted song of the Millenium by the BBC in 1999 and album Exodus Album of the Century by Time Magazine in 1999). In 2018 UNESCO officially inscribed Reggae music on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity Why not more discourses about our heritage and a museum in every parish. Is there a museum at this college? Manchester was the first parish to start a library service. Church Teachers’ College will you light the torch and lead Manchester?
Conclusion
In conclusion, the charge to this generation is to continue the journey of decolonization with alacrity, aware of neo colonialism and being mindful of the quotation by William Wilberforce: “You can look the other way, but you cannot say you did not know.” Our own Jamaican Professor Colin Channer said, “Our ancestors did not arrive through Immigration But through Customs because they were regarded as goods.” I always add the TV ad to it. “Look at us now”.
“If we stick together, we can go places.” The past is history, the future is a mystery but the present is a gift, that is why it is called a present as we again commend the Rastafarian community for their decolonizing role and whenever I speak in Mandeville I always speak about Timbuctoo, a place in Africa which had a university before Europe. There was an international competition to submit a poem of four lines with the last word being TIMBUCTOO. Two poems were shortlisted, one by an international and the other by a Jamaican Rastafarian. The international poet wrote:
Slowly across the desert sand trecked a lowly caravan,
Men on camels, two by two, their destination – Timbuctoo.
The Rastafarian wrote.
Me and Tim went down de road
when tree men tap an wan fe teef we loade,
They were tree and we were two,
So I buck one and Timbuctoo.
PRESS ALONG SAINTS, PRESS ALONG
