What was emancipation all about?

THE EDITOR: What was Emancipation Day all about? The answer is that it is in memory of our ancestors/fore-parents who were forced to bear the brunt of slavery 170 years ago. In spite of all this reverence, our inter-personal relationships mirror our true feelings. The prevalence of Black on Black crimes that we blame on poverty and oppression. Indiscipline, irresponsible young people that have very little interest in an education, while their Indo counterparts do. There is no respect or human feelings for the elderly, not to mention the predominance of low self esteem. Our youths gravitate towards the negative influences emanating from the US; such as the unsavory dress code and foul street language just to name a few. So just tell me, did Emancipation Day address these underlying problems that have taken over our country? In the interest of objectivity, I hope my concerns do not fall on deaf ears and that I am not misunderstood.

These are unanswered questions that continue to boggle my mind, such questions like: Why is it a jeweler of Indian descent, who collected as little as 25 cents a week, from my grandmother for jewelry he had sold her, and a Syrian man who walked around selling clothes, tied with a cord, now 25 to 30 years later, these very people of the Indo and Syrian race of such humble beginning are now the wealthiest race of people in the country? To this day, Afro Trinbagonians remain at the bottom of the totem pole, as super-consumers. Ironically, we continue to rebuff our own, if they were to offer us the very service we readily accepted from people of other races, in the past. One is left to question our loyalty and our solidarity. Will any Emancipation Day ceremony address such innate problems? Emancipation is a mental process, a state of mind. We should all bear in mind that our ancestors and fore-parents may have been released from slavery, but they were not truly emancipated mentally.

Their fifth or sixth generation maybe. If we are still struggling with emancipation mentally, 170 years later, what chances did our ancestors have?When a relatively prominent Afro Trinidad organisation as the NAEAP requests a radio license and is rejected, while a radio license is approved for Iwer George for the purpose of promoting soca music, something must be wrong. And all of this occurring under a Government purported to be serving without favour or affection the needs of all its citizens. If anything, we are left to believe that our priorities are skewed, and it will take more than Emancipation Day devious rhetoric and African “dress-ups” and “dress-downs” to set things right.

Our focus at this point in time should be towards parity and empowerment and is hardly the time for a dissertation on the legacy of slavery and how it has affected our psyches as a people. If anything, we should be instructed on how to break the chain of poverty, complacency, helplessness and dependency, from which we obtain a great deal of comfort, much to our detriment. Emancipation has its place, but it should be commemorated in a much more positive manner. It should be incorporated with empowerment instead of being made into an exposition; designed to explain what is difficult to understand. I would be remiss if I fail to quote from I-Ching a Chinese philosophy book: “While the inferior man seeks to put the blame on other persons, bewailing his fate, the superior man seeks the error within himself.” Truer words were never expressed.

ULRIC GUY
Point Fortin