THE EDITOR, Sir:
I AM responding to Dawn Ritch's article entitled 'The White Man's Burden' which appeared in the Sunday Gleaner (June 22). I open with a quote from Aime Cesaire from 'Discourse and Colonialism':
'To admit once and for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here (in colonialism) are the adventurer and the pirate (...) appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected shadow of a form of civilisation which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies.'
The white man's burden to civilise the world was/is a product of a twisted world view in which the white man thought that he was naturally better endowed intellectually and spiritually to lead everybody else. This narcissistic perception led to the conquest and exploitation of foreign nations in an attempt to feed his ego and also build his empire through stolen goods.
Although others would have us think otherwise, Europe would not have made the strides they did had it not been for their gleanings from the New World and Africa. Walter Rodney's 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa', is essential reading for all persons like Ritch who might harbour any doubts on Europe's exploitation of Africa.
Ritch appears to be one of those people who would like to see us back in the 'good old days' of colonialism, under the watchful eyes of our masters who must save us from ourselves. She infers in her article that blacks have contributed nothing to the upliftment of their fellows and have only struggled against each other. She has certainly got the wool pulled over her eyes by the neo-colonial system.
I am absolutely outraged that Ritch could not find, or refused to recognise the many black people who had stood up for their fellows over the decades and in her myopic historical outlook she begins and ends her list with Paul Bogle and Sam Sharpe. What about Marcus Garvey, whose influence has impacted on African (continental) philosophy? What about the Leonard Howell and the Rastafarians who helped to set us on the road to a black identity and whose influence has now spread to the rest of the world? There is the Rt. Hon. Hugh Lawson Shearer, Walter Rodney (Guyanese) and there are so many other black people to mention who took up the gauntlet to lead/fight for blacks.
In an attempt to support her point, she presented the biggest lie ever told that: "the people who have stood up for the rights of black people in this country are invariably brown-skinned, Chinese or white, and many have been of the female gender."
If Ritch reads her history, she will discover that blacks in this country who have committed themselves to 'the cause' have met with fierce resistance by the Babylonian system. The opposition of the white system to Rastafarianism in its early years, the opposition to and banning of Walter Rodney, the attempts to suppress Marcus Garvey and his philosophy, and the reluctance of 'white establishments' in the past to economically support the work of blacks for blacks. It was easy for people like Mary Seacole (God bless her) to carry out her work because her skin-colour was her ticket.
'Black man time' is long overdue in Jamaica, and I say that without apology, or racist intentions. While the US and many of the societies of Europe had hundreds of years to reach where they are, aided by slave labour and appropriation of other people's property, Jamaica is still young and is still recovering from the economic and psychological effects of slavery and colonialism. We have never truly been given the chance to lead, and I can assure you we will not take as long as the British did to perfect it.
The black man's burden is trying to rise from the situation our colonial masters left us in, while listening to people like Miss Ritch tell us that we can't do it. It is time to dispel the white mythologies.
I am, etc.,
JOSEPH T. FARQUHARSON
jotifa@yahoo.com
University of Cambridge
United Kingdom
