Still in mental slavery

In this paragraph we see the citation of violence (“warriorhood”) as a mark of status, as well as the rejection of more progressive status devices — education (“latin or math”) and social norms (“respectability”). Lovelace also describes the Laventillians as “this tribe marooned so far from the homeland that never was their home, the warriorhood that had not died in them, their humanness that was determined not by their possession of things.” Such elevation of left-wing ideology over social and psychological reality has led to some of the 20th century’s greatest atrocities, and its effects are no less pernicious on the small scale of the poor urban neighbourhood.

The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker in his book How the Mind Works, observes: “Marx and Engels thought that preliterate societies represented a first stage in the evolution of civilisation called primitive communism, whose maxim was ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’. (But) data from anthropology show that sharing is driven by cost-benefit analyses and a careful mental ledger for reciprocation.” This means that when people, especially men, cannot display their status through possessions, they find other ways to do so — violence being the favoured method. That is why, contrary to popular belief, the homicide rate amongst primitive peoples is 10 to 60 times greater than the rates in modern societies. So the gang violence that is a feature of inner-city landscapes is a mirror of these primitive norms.

To be sure, the murders along the East-West corridor are also driven by very specific factors: the URP handout; the drug trade; as well as the lack of education and employment. But such factors get indirect support from a wrong-headed ideology that stymies the development of an ethical and intellectual culture in that community. So, every year without fail, the Emancipation Support Committee invites some Afrocentric feature speaker who promotes superstition as scholarship.

Their guest for this year’s Emancipation, Stanford University psychologist Wade H Nobles, gave a speech at the PoS City Hall in June in which he started by telling the audience that God “is the source of all knowledge” and, later, that he had two ancestral female spirits always with him. Nobles also informed the audience that he was working on a psycho-cultural concept called “memes” (cultural traits which spread like viruses), but never mentioned that memes had been invented by the biologist Richard Dawkins. Perhaps Nobles didn’t want to reveal this because Dawkins is white; and, worse, British; and, worse yet, an atheist. Another ESC lecture I attended dealt with urban violence. For this, the ESC thought it appropriate to invite the local Nation of Islam representative and radio talkshow host David Muhammad — a man who believes that AIDS was invented by white scientists to wipe out all African people.

The other speaker on that panel was cultural activist Lasana Kwesi, who had taken part in the 1970 Black Power uprising. Kwesi’s intellectual probity can be judged by his assertion that, 30 years ago “the crime rate was the lowest you can imagine, statistically, in that period.” In actual fact, Trinidad and Tobago had the 9th highest murder rate in the world (10 per 100,000) back then.

So basically, the ESC promotes bogus history, bogus anthropology, pseudo-science. In addition, we have Professor Selwyn Cudjoe promoting education, not as good in itself, but as a weapon of demagoguery. And herein lies the irony of such persons quoting Bob Marley’s famous line, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.”

After all, you can only be mentally free by truly understanding reality. But the Afrocentrists favour ideology over fact, believe that truth is determined entirely by culture, and think that self-esteem leads to achievement, instead of the other way around. And the Afro-Trinidadian public intellectuals who have real substance, have not influenced the younger Afro commentators who, mired in socialist or PNM or racial mind-traps, have been unable to free themselves of the tribal tar.

It is impossible, in such a scenario, to create a true love of knowledge or rise beyond victimhood and its baseless sense of entitlement. And, when that skewed sensibility is married to the worship of warriorhood, it becomes easier to understand why Laventille cannot cast out its demons.

E-mail: kaldeosingh@hotmail.com

Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh