My Fellow citizens today we celebrate Emancipation Day, as a national holiday. It is important to note that we, in Trinidad and Tobago, are unique in that since August 1, 1985 we have been commemorating, every year, the abolition of slavery in the former British West Indies, on this date.
We have long recognised slavery as the sad, dark side of human existence, in that almost every people, every race across the world has had this wretched experience but we from West Africa have suffered the worst.
Historians continue to document these cruel exploitations, in human societies, from century old events in the Arab world to the evolution of democracy in ancient Greece, developments which helped to shape modern Western civilisation of which we are a part.
Our scholars identify the African slave trade, and slavery as different in the entire human existence.
Slavery existed there, before the Europeans came, but it was considered “internal” and “patriarchal”, according to our own renown, international scholar, CLR James, who also told us that in the 16th century Central Africa was a territory of peace, and a happy civilisation; the home to a peasantry, which in many respects was superior to the serfs in large areas of Europe.
But this way of life was disrupted by the European’s intervention. In a UNESCO study on Race and History, Claude Levi-Strauss, described this intervention as “the decisive moment in the history of human civilisation”.
He, however, did recognise the later Industrial Revolution in England and its transformative significance in which mechanical power changed human life, and societies, worldwide.
1550 to 1850:
Some have charted the slave trade over a period of three centuries, from 1550 to 1850, during which millions were kidnapped out of their homeland, shipped across the “Middle Passage” into the Americas.
James gave a conservative estimate of 15 million, who landed after that crossing; some estimates say 50 million, others even go higher, which made the slave trade one of, if not the most profitable of commercial activities in that period.
Though European traders travelled the world, buying and selling various goods, the success or failure of their ventures, historians have argued depended, in the main, on the slave trade.
Our late Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams demonstrated conclusively, in his acclaimed work, Capitalism and Slavery, that it was the capital, derived from the slave trade and slavery, which created the Industrial Revolution of the 1760s. This then transformed England into the workshop of the world, and later allowed it to create its global empire.
North America:
Even Karl Marx wrote that modern civilisation, and particularly the United States, owed its economic development to the enslavement of the African people.
“Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries”, Marx wrote in 1847, “would be transformed into patriarchal countries”.
WEB Du Bois, one of the few Black persons to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard in the 19th century, looked at the slavery in the Caribbean, just like James, and identified the Haitian Revolution as one of the main causes of the suppression of the slave trade, and its later effects on international commerce.
The 21st Century:
But let us fast forward to the 21st century, what have been the long-term effects of the slave trade and slavery on its descendants?
From this vantage point we can only see the struggle of a people, trying since 1838 to establish its personhood and dignity in a world, in which racism has been deeply institutionalised.
Slavery has left many a black person scarred and denuded of basic values. In the eyes of some the perception remains that blacks have been placed at the bottom of every “good” list, and the “top” of every bad one. Despite, their strengths, resourcefulness and intelligence, they are forced still to cry out to the world that “Black is beautiful, too”.
The Collective Unconscious:
Recent studies in social psychology now suggest that the scars and oppression of slavery are lodged - generations after - in their Collective Unconscious i.e. in the minds of Africans in the Caribbean and the Americas.
In short, theirs, as we say, is a double whammy: Institutionalised racism on one hand; and the mental chains of pain and suffering -- held within their own psyches.
The new Dawn:
But this is the 21st century, a tectonic shift is taking place; there is a new “Scramble for Africa” The world’s superpowers are turning attention to Africa, again, as the new economic frontier. The UN predicts that by 2025 there will be more Africans than Chinese people in the world, as African economies are among the fastest growing in the world.
Trinidad and Tobago:
What this means for the African person in Trinidad and Tobago is a question that every one of this race must ask. I urge that we all acknowledge this past. We must continue to research the rich, historical ancestry of African civilisations – the legacy from whence we came. We must continue to remember how we came here and what we are engaged in building here, a new society based on equality and harmony in our colourful and vibrant democracy.
Remember the struggles of the fore parents on and off the plantations to the birth and growth of this nation.
Then let us find ways to unlock, and emancipate ourselves from the mental chains, and, finally, embrace the opportunities of the 21st century -- with an understanding that Trinidad and Tobago will only achieve the future which we all, as citizens, create for our generations to come.