The emancipation of violence

THE third topic in the Emancipation Support Committee’s (ESC) Kwame Ture lecture series was “Urban Violence and African Youth”. Of the three speakers, one was David Mohammed, a Nation of Islam representative who has bodyguards; the other was Lasana Kwesi, a cultural activist who had taken part in the 1970 Black Power disturbances. Only the third speaker, psychologist Yvonne Bobb-Smith, had no known history of violence.

Master of Ceremonies Tracy Wilson, in opening the event on Thursday, stated that the purpose of the ESC lectures was to provide info to “empower” African people and get those “outside the race” to appreciate and respect them. “You are better and greater than you are,” he told the audience which had filled three-quarters of the auditorium at the Port-of- Spain City Hall, “even if sometimes you forget.”

He also assured the audience: “You are the descendants of a large group of people who chose to survive.” Apart from making “empowerment” being synonymous with “self-esteem,” the implication that the 1,500,000 Africans who died during the Middle Passage chose to die was lost on Wilson.

Wilson then introduced Mohammed, who was described as a motivational speaker and radio talk show host. That Mohammed held a black belt was also listed. “He’s young, he’s bright, he’s articulate,” said Wilson.

Mohammed started off almost immediately with the blame game. “Slavery made Africans other than who we are,” he declared. Africans, according to him, used to live in peace and tolerance, but after being enslaved and brought to the West “African people have become the greatest haters of themselves.”

This was why black men killed other black men. But the guns they used to kill weren’t brought in by those using them. “Guns are brought in by those who have land and buildings,” said Mohammed, and the round of applause from the audience presumably meant that they didn’t think Afro-Trinidadians owned either. Mohammed added, “And never doubt that there’s a conspiracy behind this.”

He then listed classified US documents, complete with titles and dates, which showed that the US government for the past half-century had organised programmest wipe out African people — including the creation of the AIDS virus. The audience lapped up this paranoid fantasy. Nor did anyone seem to notice the contradictions of Mohammed’s rhetoric.

He called on Africans to take responsibility for the situation they had created, but said the Government had a responsibility to build 11- and 12-storey buildings “in the heart of the ghetto”.

He said that his leader Louis Farrakhan had called on black people to put down the guns and buy real estate, open businesses, and become productive: but Mohammed’s own CV didn’t list any income-earning activity, save his salary as a No I rep. He also recommended that people “de-secularise” their approach to religion, and he called for tolerance between the different Christian sects and between Muslims: the omission of Hinduism being quite deliberate.

Kwesi spoke next. Wilson introduced him as a poet, events coordinator, and cultural activist and noted that Kwesi had “lectured at some of the most prestigious universities” such as Howard, MIT, and the University of Southern California. This, however, did not prevent Kwesi from blaming capitalism for the problems of African people.

Speaking in the manner of a preacher, Kwesi sought to rouse the audience with an historical overview of Black Power, starting from the 1960s. saying that “the term ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ evolved in that period.” This, he claimed, was based on respect and the concept of “one African family”. Apparently, the use of that term in the Bible, and therefore amongst Christian sects hundreds of years before, was irrelevant. Kwesi then came to 1970, where he claimed “the crime rate was the lowest you can imagine, statistically, in that period.”

Again, the fact that Trinidad and Tobago had the ninth highest murder rate in the world (ten per 100,000) back then didn’t affect Kwesi’s rhetoric in the slightest. The media, he claimed, had unleashed a “manic brutality” on the “beautiful movement” of Black Power. “And now we are paying the price for it,” he said. He then read out a eulogy he had delivered at the funeral of a Black Power activist, promising “I will not bore you with the whole thing” but still reading for over ten minutes.

Only when the MC finally decided to pass him a note to wrap up did he pause, but said he had not even dealt with his main focus. Since, however, this was apparently based on the assertion that Jamaicans had realised the importance of an education system that prepared people for life, the audience probably didn’t miss anything worthwhile, given that Jamaica can hardly be cited as a successful Afro-Caribbean society.

Bobb-Smith spoke next, saying that Mohammed and Kwesi were two “hard acts to follow”. And she didn’t follow.

Her contribution rambled over social capital and whether the Soca Warriors had built any, the lack of studies of the psychology of local criminals, the lack of community organisations to fight inequity. If she had a point, it came late since the two previous speakers had both went far over their allotted ten minutes and, by 9 pm, some people started to leave.