The shackles of economic slavery continue to hold us down

THE EDITOR: Permit an observation about the writers who complain about the non-use of the Country Club to host visiting Nelson Mandela. The argument (from non-Black letter writers to various newspapers) is that we must show Mandela how we have shaken the shackles of White suppression and now live as one in this Rainbow Country. What rubbish! It would only take a White to come to such a conclusion or a White masquerading as an Indian since most Blacks still carry their white “slave name.”

We only have to look around us to see who live in exclusive, guarded communities, own the majority of large businesses and drive expensive new vehicles (not foreign used). The same people who meet “their kind” in the malls and groceries and greet each other like long lost brethren and would not say “boo” to a Black man. No, our shackles are still there and once their financial part of the rainbow (the gold at the base) is secure they are prepared to say forget about slavery, forget about the brutality and rape, forget about the land grabbing and everything else . . . once they can convince Trinis and the world that those days are over.

It doesn’t matter what argument that Blair and Bush come up with in explaining the wanton brutality of Iraqis, it was their kind that went into the entire African continent and committed the atrocities there while inflicting the greatest brutality over Mandela’s own South Africa decades after the world recognised slavery was reprehensible in all its forms. It was their kind who unleashed brutality over the Indian sub-continent and massacred thousands when the people asked for independence. It was their kind that virtually wiped out the indigenous people from the South American continent and almost all from North America as well. 

It is their kind who are on record as paying millions of dollars in bribes to hapless Black people allowing them to rule the countries of the Third Word for so long. And, it was their direct ancestors who carved up the Middle East and are facing the murderous consequences today. And all this was done for economic wealth. You know, the difficult part to understand is that, if given the chance, they would do it all again. So don’t tell me that we must show Mandela how we have grown and transcended those boundaries here in TT. What we should really be telling Mandela is, for example, how the oil and gas companies walk away with 99 cents on every dollar from the gas being extracted from our soil and our elected government (no doubt taking the petty million dollar handout) still give them a tax holiday.

S JOSEPH
St James