est. 2007

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Bringing News and Opinions to the People

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Open Letter to Prime Minster Mottley and Minister King

Open letter to The Hon. Mia Amor Mottley, Q.C., M.P. (Prime Minister) and
 The Hon. John A. King, M.P.(Minister of Creative Economy, Culture and Sports)

 

Dear Prime Minister and Minister of Culture,

John_King
Minister of Culture, John King
mia_mottley
Prime Minister Mia Mottley

I am sure by now you are aware that people in Bristol removed the statue of slave trader, Edward Colston, and deposited it in a nearby river. With this act, people in that city sent a clear message to the world that they would no longer tolerate the glorification of accomplices in the commission of crimes against humanity and those who grew rich from their sordid involvement in human trafficking.

In the present climate when there is a heightened global awareness of the need for zero tolerance towards racism and its symbols, it is unconscionable that in Barbados, a country where over 95% of its citizens are descendants of enslaved Africans, that a monument like Colston’s in Bristol, sits in the heart of our capital city. It is an affront to the people of Barbados and to those all over the world who are standing up to speak out against racism that Nelson’s monument continues to sit in the heart of Bridgetown. It is long overdue that this odious tribute to racism be removed.

There are no longer any excuses that can be made for your government’s failure to remove it. I am therefore writing to you as a concerned Bajan to call on you to do the right thing and remove this affront to the people of Barbados and to all those who today are courageously raising their voice against racism.

It would be very fitting, if it was replaced with a tribute to Nanny Grigg and to the many thousands of unsung Bajan women whose self-sacrifice, ingenuity and struggle have played a decisive role in our people’s progress from the pit of degradation that the English slave masters threw us into.

Yours

Tee White

595 responses to “Open Letter to Prime Minster Mottley and Minister King”

  1. Greene Avatar
    Greene

    @Charles Skeete

    Facetious nonsense. all the years of people discussing the removal of Nelson no one has ever went beyond that and certainly not to mention the names you called.

    why do we indulge in these whataboutisms?

  2. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @ Charles Skeete

    Your language is brilliant. But the Nation newspaper ran a profile of the late John Connell some time ago in which Barrow was said to be very hostile to John’s background. It is there (or should be) in the paper’s files. By coincidence, John’s father was…..
    There is the myth of Barrow, and there is the reality. The current prime minister’s grand father was an enormous help to Barrow in setting up the DLP, Barrow later turned on him. Barrow, the Father of Independence, was not a nice man.

  3. David Avatar
    David

    @William

    It is why history is replete with examples to show it is the young cohort in society who lead fundamental change.

  4. Tron Avatar
    Tron

    Why does Alex Downes, the initiator of the anti-Nelson campaign, actually still have a white name? Why doesn’t he give himself a beautiful African name like Ngugulawa Xixlixumomu? Mr Downes is doing a typical cherry-picking job.

  5. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    How do you know he does not have an African name, i have one, i don’t run around advertising it, no need to, but it can be used whenever and wherever, bet you that you would be too ashamed to use any…

    the handle i use is African, google it..

  6. Greene Avatar
    Greene

    Nelson should be dragged into the careenage and Grantley Adams looking across to parliament erected in his stead, if the area isnt subject to redevelopment

  7. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    I remember when i told some people on BU that i practiced the Yoruba language, the slaveminded ignorant among them thought it was something to make fun of, but wait until they have nowhere to go when the colonial system is through with them….

    but some also know i also practice French and Spanish and they have no problem with that, their enslavers….if they only knew how they enslavers think, they would run from now…lol

  8. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @William

    Apologies, but I am not aware of having put a case for Nelson. My intervention was in referencing Christopher Codrington, and in particular his legacy to Barbados and Barbuda. In Barbuda we have a black government using the excuse of a devastating hurricane to deprive locals of their land rights.
    As you raised the matter, I am not in favour of re-writing history, be it moving or destroying statues or renaming districts. schools, or buildings. No one is defending Nelson. I am defending historical accuracy. I am not a big Barrow fan, because I think his PR machine has misled the nation.
    I believe Grantley Adams has done more for us as a nation then Barrow, inspite of his Swaine defence and that the Barbados Workers’ Union has done more to organise Barbadian workers.
    What else are we going to do as part of our rejection of our history?Abandon the English language on the grounds it is not native to Africa? Or abandon motor vehicles on the ground the discovery was not made in Africa? Stop taking medicines unless they came from Africa? Or abandon our knowledge on the basis it came from Europeanised education?
    This vacuous nationalism, or hostility to everything European, is not real politics, it is an indulgence. It is like dressing in dashikis and giving children names like Keteisha, and Maleisha, and Jamal and thinking we are going back to Africa.
    Rewriting history has nothing to do with the progress of the nation. Our roles as mature people is to guide the young when they go wrong, but not to restrict their enthusiasm.
    Our real challenge now is to deal with a government that is showing all the signs of being more incompetent than Stuart’s.

  9. robert lucas Avatar
    robert lucas

    @ Hal June 10, 2020 7:36 AM
    This not the first time that I have told you that when push come to shove, that the native British will throw the non-British out. You do not have the history or the genetics that say you are British. This is not the first time you and I ,have clashed on this point. You would have to be an idiot not to expect that the British would be hostile to the defacement of Churchill’s monument. You really think that the majority of the British ( I include the Welsh and the Scots). are going to take shit from people who do not look like them? This is not the first time that I have told you so ,that the natives will throw your asses out . You can keep as much noise as you want ,you are not British. A passport can be revoke, You are keeping a lot of noise because of Brexit. do you really think that the British care two -shits about what non-genetic people living in the UK think?

  10. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    A Muslim who does not value symbolism. Wonder why they flock to the Mecca, risking life and limb in a stampede.

    I find when one has no answer it is indeed best to say nothing. Only dishonest people try to disguise that fact with stupid “big” word labels.

    If you so choose, the last big word is yours

  11. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @ Robert

    You are manufacturing nonsense. You clearly do not read my contributions to BU because your latest contribution is nonsense. You are joining the BU brigade of making it as you go along.

  12. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Nope! No Hitler statues. Black people are the only ones expected to tolerate these indignities.

  13. Freedom Crier Avatar
    Freedom Crier

    ‘IT WAS DURING THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIES THAT BRITAIN BECAME THE FIRST COUNTRY TO BAN AND ACTIVELY SUPPRESS SLAVERY.

    Slavery was a vile trade, no doubt about that. It should though be seen in it’s historical context.

    For starters, 4 points.

    Blacks routinely enslaved each other, white slavers rarely had to go inland to find slaves, The slaves were already on the beach. The true story of and written by Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797) is a good place to start. Try googling for his book or start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano
    If we are going to erase statues with slave connections we will have to destroy every king, queen and most of the famous people of history as all without exception were involved one way or another.
    The Atlantic slave trade terrible though it was pales into insignificance when compared with the Africa Arab slave trade.
    Try reading about the depredations by the Muslims off Turkey and especially of the Barbary coast upon white Christians.

    BY THE WAY, OLAUDAH EQUIANO SERVED ON HMS RACEHORSE ALONGSIDE A YOUNG HORATIO NELSON AND WENT ON TO WORK WITH LEADING BRITISH ABOLITIONISTS.

    WHAT WE NEED IS NOT STATUES PULLED DOWN IT IS MORE INFORMATIVE EDUCATION. One might as well knock down the Pyramids as they were allegedly built by slave labour. Such vandalism would be bad for tourism!

    I highly recommend the story of Olaudah Equiano to people of all colours, nations, religions and philosophises.’

    Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa (/ˈvæsə/),[5][6] was a writer and abolitionist from, according to his memoir, the Eboe region of the Kingdom of Benin (today southern Nigeria). Enslaved as a child, he was taken to the Caribbean and sold as a slave to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more but purchased his freedom in 1766.

    As a freedman in London, Equiano supported the British abolitionist movement. He was part of the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group composed of Africans living in Britain, and he was active among leaders of the anti-slave trade movement in the 1780s. He published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), which depicted the horrors of slavery. It went through nine editions in his lifetime and helped gain passage of the British Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished the slave trade. Equiano married an English woman named Susannah Cullen in 1792 and they had two daughters. He died in 1797 in Westminster.

    Since the late 20th century, when his autobiography was published in a new edition, he has been increasingly studied by a range of scholars, including from his homeland.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interesting_Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Olaudah_Equiano#/media/File:Olaudah_Equiano_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_15399.png

    An accurate painting based upon the log and drafts of HMS Racehorse, the ship Olaudah Equiano sailing with HORATIO NELSON.

    HMS RACEHORSE by Gordon Frickers…

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2647153862169685&set=p.2647153862169685&type=3&theater

  14. lawson Avatar
    lawson

    Right Robert we had the Vikings the romans the French the germans were thinking about it but stopped people should not confuse kindness with stupidity or complacency , the radical mob only have to go to any soccer game to know the brits are no shrinking violets when it comes to backing there team or country.So to think that dumping some statues is going to somehow make them back down has no memory of the blitz

  15. Tony Avatar
    Tony

    “In Nelson we find a man in heartfelt solidarity with British slaveholders against the perceived menace of Wilberforce” .

    Nelson, whose victories as a naval commander had earned him a parliamentary seat in the Lords, was suggesting here that he would use his political position to speak up against the ideas of the famous British abolitionist campaigner William Wilberforce. His fiery words might seem shocking to modern eyes. Nelson even surprised himself. “I did not intend to go so far,” he confessed, but he went on to admit that “the sentiments are full in my heart and the pen would write them”.

    Nelson’s sentiments present us with an untold side to his story. This is generally recounted as a tale of patriotic heroism – of a man doing his duty to protect the nation from a Napoleonic menace. Nelson the dutiful patriot is certainly in evidence in the letter he wrote aboard the Victory in the Caribbean. But we also find a man in heartfelt solidarity with British slaveholders against the perceived menace of Wilberforce and his campaign to abolish the slave trade. This letter, documenting a crucial moment in the war against Napoleon, is therefore also a vivid piece of evidence from another struggle of no less global-historical significance: the internal battle within the British empire about whether British colonialism could, or should, continue without the transatlantic slave trade.

    Nelson wrote his letter for a long-standing friend: a slaveholder named Simon Taylor, one of the wealthiest Britons of his generation. Taylor lived in Jamaica, where he owned three huge plantations and claimed ownership over more than 2,000 slaves: men, women and children forced, like countless other captives, to work and die producing huge quantities of sugar. The profits from slave-produced Caribbean sugar were staggeringly high, making fortunes for men like Taylor and flowing back into the wider British economy. This slave system was little other than a lucrative system of institutionalised manslaughter. Poor conditions for slaves meant that deaths outnumbered births, and white managers continually had to replenish their enslaved workforces from slave ships bringing new captives from Africa. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, more than 3 million people had been taken across the Atlantic in British ships, destined for lives of slavery on New World plantations.
    Resisting Wilberforce
    Taylor and Nelson had first met in 1779, while the 20-year-old Nelson was stationed as a junior naval officer in Jamaica during the American Revolutionary War. Taylor was the elder of the two, approaching middle age when they became friends. As well as making a huge personal fortune from Caribbean sugar and slavery, he had established a great deal of political influence, which extended beyond Jamaica to London. Taylor was soon to emerge as a powerful voice in the political struggle over the future of the slave trade. Unsurprisingly, he was furious about rising anti-slavery sentiment in Britain and stood bitterly opposed to Wilberforce’s campaign.

    The fact that Nelson shared Taylor’s strong dislike for Wilberforce and abolitionism is a stark indication of how out of step he was with the rising humanitarian sentiments of his own times. But in this respect, Nelson was hardly unique. Other British naval officers harboured similar views. Many of them had spent long stretches – months or even years – on one of the Royal Navy’s West Indian stations, often forming strong affinities with white slaveholding colonists.

    While stationed in the eastern Caribbean during the 1780s, Nelson met and married his wife, Frances, the niece of a wealthy slaveholder in the British island-colony of Nevis. The Duke of Clarence (and future King William IV) had also served with the Royal Navy in the region, and spoke up forcefully in parliament against Wilberforce and his plans for the abolition of the slave trade. So too did Admiral Lord Rodney, who before Nelson’s dramatic rise had been the most celebrated British naval commander of his age. The influence of such men helped to ensure that the early abolition campaigns of the 1780s and 1790s ended in failure. No wonder slaveholders like Simon Taylor were keen to cultivate their friendship.

    Success, sugar and slaves: the uncomfortable story of Simon Taylor
    For nearly two decades, Wilberforce found his calls for an end to the slave trade blocked by conservative elements in parliament. The main reason was that, for all of its obvious inhumanity, the commerce in human beings underpinned a system of Atlantic trade that had defined the 18th-century British empire.

    Slave-produced colonial sugar was the nation’s most valuable import, and trading ties between Britain and its colonies were governed by laws designed to strengthen the Royal Navy. These ensured that trade between British possessions was carried on in British ships, crewed by British sailors – skilled mariners who could be pressed into the navy during wartime. In addition, import duties collected on British colonial produce helped fund a treasury whose primary objective was to raise funds for the defence of the realm, which included the high cost of maintaining the nation’s war fleet. Pro-slavery spokesmen like Simon Taylor, the Duke of Clarence and Lord Rodney wasted no opportunities to emphasise that the slave trade, colonial commerce, British greatness, and national security were all interlinked.

    Nelson’s private pro-slavery leanings have all but been ignored, but they help expose the man behind the myth
    Abolitionists were, eventually, only able to counter this old vision of empire when they learned how to go beyond simple moral arguments against human trafficking and offer, in addition, a more pragmatic case. By the early 19th century, British abolitionists were trying to reassure conservative-minded members of parliament that ending the transatlantic trade in slaves from Africa would not damage the colonies or bring about an immediate end to slavery itself. Rather, they claimed that ending the slave trade would trigger useful reforms. Without the option of turning to the slave ships for new recruits, it would be in the slaveholders’ best interest to ensure that births outnumbered deaths on the plantations. This would require an improvement in conditions, which should also make slaves more contented, and so lessen the likelihood of a large-scale slave uprising (the prospect of which struck fear into the minds of colonial slaveholders and British politicians alike). Many abolitionists hoped that such changes could slowly prepare the way for a smooth transition to freedom at some point in the distant future.
    Nelson, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, remained unconvinced, influenced instead by the advice of his old friend Simon Taylor. Taylor believed that, despite their claims to the contrary, abolitionists were a dangerous influence. In one of his letters to Nelson, he complained that proposals to end the slave trade spelled “nothing but evil” for “unhappy colonists” in the islands of the British Caribbean, pronouncing that parliament’s decision on the matter would determine whether “the lives of all the white people” in the sugar colonies would be sacrificed. Guided by racist assumptions about the violent character of black people, Taylor presented Nelson with lurid warnings of how white slaveholders could be “butchered, massacred, and murdered” by slave uprisings inspired by misguided reformers acting “under the pretence of humanity”. Reflecting those prejudiced fantasies back to Taylor in his letter from the Victory, Nelson contemplated that the success of Wilberforce and his allies “would certainly cause the murder of all our friends and fellow-subjects in the colonies”.

    Would Nelson have spoken out?
    Parliament finally outlawed the slave trade in the British empire in 1807 (the abolition of slavery outright followed in the 1830s). In the Caribbean, there was none of the violent bloodshed predicted by the slaveholders; and the measure was popular throughout the British Isles. Would Nelson have followed through on his proposal to speak publicly against it? He had assured Taylor that he was willing to launch his voice against the abolitionists in parliament, but he was under no obligation to act on this suggestion.
    Nelson’s private pro-slavery leanings have been almost totally ignored, but scrutinising them helps to expose an overlooked facet of the man behind the myth. It also does far more besides. Nelson, like anyone, was a complex human being, shaped by the world in which he lived. His attitudes towards slavery were moulded by close and long-standing ties between the Royal Navy and the British Caribbean. And, more broadly, his views help us to understand what abolitionists like Wilberforce had to overcome. Nelson’s sentiments were just one reflection of a more widely held ‘old-school’ defence of a profitable 18th-century British colonial system dependent on the slave trade. When Nelson wrote bitterly about the “damnable and cursed doctrine” of Wilberforce, he revealed a dislike for “meddling” humanitarians, a callous animosity towards enslaved people, and a desire to preserve the existing system – a system that, to some, seemed synonymous with British strength, and which had helped to build the navy that Nelson led into battle at Trafalgar.

    Paradoxically, however, the outcome of the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 created some of the circumstances for the eventual success of British abolitionism less than two years later. Trafalgar confirmed the crushing of French and Spanish sea-power by the Royal Navy. The fact that British maritime strength was now overwhelming helped to ensure that parliament felt safe to embrace new ideas about the future of the empire. Finally, British politicians summoned the confidence to ignore the warnings of doomsayers who urged that ending the slave trade would be a disaster for the colonies and make Britain vulnerable to other maritime powers.

  16. William Skinner Avatar
    William Skinner

    @ Hal
    If I have misunderstood you , apologies are genuinely offered. However I can’t understand why you are suggesting that I am now promoting tearing down everything and looking for African names. Nothing in my submission remotely suggests such.

  17. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @William

    I am not suggesting you personally, but others on this stream are. I am glad you do not subscribe to that reactionary, ahistorical and hysterical view. It is a diversion.
    I will give an example. A council in East London has just taken down a statute of a former slave owner, following the George Floud affair, the man responsible for the building of the East London docks. And they are pleased with themselves.
    But t he building where the statute stood, The Museum of London (Docklands) has one of the most comprehensive collection of documents on the history of slavery and the rise of the sugar industry, including on Barbados.
    I know that because I was shown them by senior staff. I was asked by the Museum to write a history for them and, for a variety of reasons, it did not work out.
    It was when they were showing me round that I was introduced to the documents. In fact, I asked if when the project was over it I will be allowed to come back and do research on their files and they said yes.
    It did not work out so I did not. I said that to say this: what was more important, removing a statute or access to invaluable historical documents|?
    Remember, the old capitalist gave away a lot of money for good causes: the Barbados public library; schools; donations to vestries; etc.

  18. David Avatar
    David

    @William

    Enjoyed your contribution to the national discourse earlier.

  19. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @ The Fibbing Clown June 10, 2020 8:02 AM
    “LEAVE NELSON WHERE HE IS, HE OWNED NO SLAVE AND DID NO TRANSPORTATION OF SLAVES.”
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Who do you think used to protect the slave and cargo ships engaged in the Atlantic triangular trade?

    Lord Nelson might not have owned slaves himself but his first wife Frances belonged to a very wealthy slave-owning family on the Island of Nevis and from which the Admiral was able to enjoy the life of a dandy of his day.

    Would you support the erecting of a column or obelisk to memorialise the contributions made by Sharp, Clarkson, Wedgwood, Wilberforce et al in the proposed Freedom Park?

    The blacks of Barbados ought not to overlook the important role played by the Quakers in Britain in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies even though their counterparts in Barbados were complicit in the undermining of those efforts.

    The veneration of Nelson by the formerly enslaved African people of Barbados is tantamount to the Jews glorifying Eichmann.

    We are sure that after the ‘relocation’ of the Admiral’s statue to its ‘rightful place’ then the soul of poor Olaudah Equiano would now rest in peace after his days spent in the hellhole of the concentration-like slave camp called Barbadoes.

    Here is an extract of a “treatise” written by Lord Nelson in support of slavery:
    “I have ever been and shall die a firm friend to our present colonial system.” He went on to explain: “I was bred, as you know, in the good old school, and taught to appreciate the value of our West India possessions; and neither in the field or in the senate [House of Lords] shall their interest be infringed whilst I have an arm to fight in their defence, or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable and cursed doctrine of Wilberforce and

  20. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    Something from a minority Bajan white mixed ancestry perspective. Dispeling some of the myths and showing that the descendants of the other pawns are only now recognizing some realities, just as we are.

    All white Bajans should read this ASAP. Written by white Barbadian Annalee Davis who grew up on a plantation in St. John

    “On race and whiteness from the context of Barbados #1

    In this global #BlackLivesMatter moment, we are seeing a shift in conversations about race and it feels like a tipping point. White people in Barbados and the wider Caribbean don’t normally speak about whiteness in our context. Is it a generational shift in that younger people are less willing to live socially segregated or oppressed lives? I’m not sure, but it feels like the time to speak about whiteness and call out the more covert ways in which racism and white supremacy have affected our lives in this Small Island Developing State. And as some others have written about their own monologues, this could be more articulate, but I’ll throw my hat in the ring.

    I was raised as a white Bajan and benefited from the inherent benefits that whiteness endows. Like elsewhere, race is categorised by social indicators and in my case, those indicators included being raised on a sugar plantation in St. John, Barbados by people who identified as white. Although I have mixed-race ancestry, I grew up in a time of binaries when you were either white or black and I didn’t learn of my maternal family’s mixed race, indentured background till I was much older. (I’ll possibly write about those complexities in another post.)

    I’m not sure exactly when I became conscious of my own whiteness but I was quite young. It’s hard not to be aware of colour in a place like Barbados but I didn’t have a language to speak about racial & economic differences. I was curious why I and those working on the plantation inhabited socially separate lives. I tried to imagine what life would have been like on the land where I lived during the time of slavery and while I didn’t learn about Guyanese poet Martin Carter till decades later, his notion of tongueless whispering was something I intuitively wondered about as a child – could I hear history’s voices by placing my ear to the land?

    My private primary school was small and exclusively white. I sat the 11+ examination and went to Christ Church Foundation School where I first experienced being a minority in school as one of three white girls in a class of 30+ students. I made friends but struggled academically. My parents transferred me to The Ursuline Convent. I recall the headmistress challenging my mother, suggesting that if she wanted me to get a good education I should remain at Foundation, and if she wanted me to be a lady I should go to the Convent. Although it wasn’t stated, I think there were racial and class undertones to this discussion. The student body at the Convent was differently composed- approximately 60% white, 40% black, and a few expatriate students. Although our classrooms were racially integrated, when the school bell rang, we mostly retreated to the segregated lives we were accustomed to. Both white and black Bajans were complicit in leading segregated lives – it was easier than change but that’s embarrassing.

    While I belonged in Barbados in some ways – my family has been here continuously since 1648 – as a member of a white minority growing up in a newly independent nation, there was a simultaneous sense of ‘unbelonging’. I wanted to be part of the larger landscape but, as silly as it sounds, I didn’t know how to. I understood that sentiment decades later when I read Jean Rhys and recognised a similar longing in her Wide Sargasso Sea- I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

    In 1980 I went to school in Ontario, Canada. I was curious if I might belong more easily in a white country? I certainly did not. That was an important lesson. Thinking I was white and being in a country with lots of white people did not mean that I belonged in any way, shape, or form. Many of my peers at school in Canada hailed from across the Anglophone Caribbean and it was there where I unexpectedly experienced my Caribbean self amongst White, Syrian, Chinese, French Creole, Black and Indo-Caribbean peers. I felt exhilarated to be part of a larger social space, radically different from the small white enclave in which I had grown up and decidedly grown apart from. I understood then that there was an impoverishment to my social world in Barbados – imagine, being part of a population of about 8,0000 white people and this was supposed to satisfy you intellectually, romantically, socially, culturally? Impossible, or impossible for me. There are many who live out their lives in small social white circles.

    Eventually choosing to become an artist and return to work in the field of culture in Barbados, a young independent black nation, was a double edge sword. While it created an alternate milieu from the confines of the environment I grew up in, it didn’t automatically confer belonging to the larger cultural and social milieu. How could it, given the transitional nature of the times, shifting from more than three centuries of British colonial rule to local black governance?

    Out of this context, and as an artist, I became concerned with how shared historical suffering reveals itself communally today. How do individuals and nations manage trauma and the desire for self-fulfillment in small places where social life and kinship are predominantly lived in separate social spheres and for which our lives are so much poorer? How could I operate in this setting? What was my role as an artist and as a white person?

    Later, marrying outside of the white Bajan milieu, having Anglo/Creole-Bajan, Indo-Trini-Hindu, Irish-Catholic children, and living in Trinidad for several years, exposed me to the Indo-Caribbean experience, further cracking open the early social insularity of my upbringing. I chose to raise my children differently and honour their plural selves. In Trinidad, my son went to a racially diverse school that observed Christian, Muslim, and Hindu religious events.

    When we returned to Barbados from Trinidad, the social apartheid was even starker to me. I chose their primary school carefully – different from my experience, it was the most racially integrated school on the island. My children were happy there and felt they belonged. The decision for them to attend government secondary school was important to me. They weren’t to be blanketed in private institutions for the next five years. While that transition was markedly different from their primary school, and they experienced race and class in challenging ways, I stand by my decision to foster their understanding of the larger, national space and who they are within that.

    White supremacy, capitalism, and the plantation are the foundation of Barbadian society, and racism has been and continues to be toxic to both Black and White Bajans. We need to call it when we see it and we need to talk about it in our segregated circles. While my own multi-layered history includes indentured labourers and mixed-race ancestors, I have benefitted most from my white settler colonial ancestry. And even though Barbados is the only country in the world where I am read as a white person (for example, I am brown in Jamaica, somewhat red in Trinidad, am from some Spanish speaking country when I am in the USA and no one is sure where I am from in the UK), I am white here in Barbados and fully aware of the historic injustices and contemporary manifestations of our ugly past. (I have been working through the term White Creole – also problematic and that will require possibly another post…)

    What I do know is that living racially segregated lives limits the fullness of ourselves. It limited my emotional development and social evolution as a young person. Opportunities like the one we have now at this moment to speak up and speak out don’t come along often. Participating in potentially awkward discussions about race, racism, white supremacy, and whiteness, in small postcolonial spaces like ours, within families like ours, working to shape more equitable societies and committing to anti-racist lifestyles, is vital to our collective well-being. I’ve tripped up so many times but I continue to learn, aim to be conscious of my own biases, to be sensitive to the trauma of plantation history which was so f*****g brutal in its relentless, centuries-long terrorisation and humiliation of tens of thousands of people.

    Every day, I see the mill wall from my studio where people were dehumanised. I am not removed from the reality of our past. I know what lies below this soil and my work is about the plantation in all its ugliness and its potential for transformation. The Empire tried to ruin intimacy between people of different races and in so doing fostered madness. White people today can choose to live different lives, to behave differently, to think differently, to love differently, and to stand up for equity and justice. White Barbados needs to have a conversation with itself. The time has come”

  21. Tron Avatar
    Tron

    @ Donna June 10, 2020 11:10 AM

    A good point. This shows that the German-Austrian process of coming to terms with the past has taken a very different course than in Great Britain and the USA. The Germans had to pay many billions for their crimes between 1933 and 1945 (especially against Jews and Eastern Europeans).

    The British, on the other hand, did not pay a cent for their crimes (16th century to 1960s in the colonies) to their numerous victims. Remember the starvation deaths in India, remember the massacres in Kenya AFTER the Second World War.

    The British boast of having defeated A. H. But they are hiding their millionfold injustice in the colonies. It is time to sue Britain and claim at least one trillion GBP.

  22. Tron Avatar
    Tron

    A start to restitution would be a special tax for British tourists, which they would have to pay personally. I suggest $10 a day on the island as compensation.

    Injustice does not pass away, injustice is only forgotten!

  23. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    I have no issue with removal. But why just bury it? Surely some person or institution somewhere, would pay to ‘add it to their collection’, or even the Barbados Museum where those interested in viewing it, can pay the admission fee. One person’s junk is another’s treasure. The island’s is bankrupt, no different than selling BNTCL or Hilton.

  24. robert lucas Avatar
    robert lucas

    @ Hal June 10, 2020 7:36 A
    I have told you in the past that, to be British one has to have an ethos which span over two-thousand years that have made the British who they are. Apart from the ethos there is the genetic component which recent immigrants including you ( in most cases do not have). I have drawn this to your attention many times and have said that I hope that I am wrong in what will happen. Do you really feel that, the British are going to allow recent additions to the population to deface their monuments in an attempt to coerce them into doing the biddings of outsiders? You have to be really deluded if you feel so. You are not their kith and kin. you keep a lot of noise saying that there should be more minorities on TV and so on. When requested to state what percentage of the British population the minorities make up, you are very quiet. Globalism is ending and countries are reverting to the real norm about identity and nationalism. I have told you in the past on this Blog that, globalism is a thing of the past as well as multiculturalism and that for your sake I hope I am wrong.
    I

  25. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    See…both sides can share equal blame for keeping a repulsive slave society infested with racism and apartheid over 50 years post independence….to oppress the black majority and enrich themselves for 2 generations..

    the black faces in the parliament do it because theyLLOVE BRIBES, THEY LOVE CORRUPTION….they absolutely HATE TO SEE THEIR OWN PEOPLE WITH ANYTHING, defintiely don’t want to see another black person like themselves wealthy, mind you, the same black people they have to BEG FOR VOTES… they do not want to see the descends of the elderly and any beneficiaries inherit their birthright, they prefer steal it,, they don’t even want to see their own people as successful business owners with large bank accounts.. …that is why they set up with anyone to rob them generationally…

    how many times have we heard people from Canada, US, UK and everywhere complain about how nasty minded the creepy crawly lowlifes in the parliament are to their own people and many were whites expressing those sentiments….AND THEIR UTTER DISGUST..

    then ya got the old dried up racist apartheid tiefing criminals like Cow Bizzy Maloney Bjerkham etd who when helping rob the population with the sell outs in the parliament would take that same money they stole and BRIBE the lowlifes in the parliament to keep the racism and apartheid against the majority going indefinitely….and that is only when they are not being helped by the thieves for lawyers to steal inheritances from the elderly, rob the pension fund and treasury and people’s bank accounts because they all sit on every board and know who has what..

    but is it not ashame though, it takes the younger generation IN THE MINORITY CLASS who can see this for what it really is given their experience and in realizing that this is not how it’s supposed to be, to expose it to everyone, they have recognized that nothing about the racism, apartheid and slave society built to last on the island is normal, natural or right…and even if the Black majority still don’t recognize it, the younger generation have no plans to leave this stinking BLIGHT and CURSE on the land to their children, grandchildren and future generations…

    Mia and them currently sucking on taxpayers can make those first steps to start dismantling this UTTER EVIL in the lives of Black people at any time….but let’s see what comes first…more bribery and corruption or dismantling racism, apartheid and the slave society consuming more and more of their people’s lives…

  26. Vincent Codrington Avatar
    Vincent Codrington

    @ KK
    @ Charlie Skeete
    Good work in bringing some balance to this debate.

    In the interest of clarity and accuracy: Was the Battle of Trafalgar, which Nelson led ,fought and died in, not the precursor to the abolition of the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade ? Just asking.

  27. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    “remember the massacres in Kenya AFTER the Second World War.”

    they did pay out some money to the Mau Mau when they got sued, but it was not nearly enough..

    everyone once in a while the cousins would jump out in the press with some bullshit platitude that does not even sound real while tweaking their CURRENT EVIL ASS PLANS…..or send one of their little imps or pimps…to warble some nonsense.

  28. Freedom Crier Avatar
    Freedom Crier

    DON’T KNOCK NELSON FOR FAILING TO FIGHT SLAVERY – HE HAD A WAR TO LOOK AFTER

    The descendant of a 19th-century abolitionist points out that even Wilberforce had his flaws.

    William Wilberforce (1759-1833), may have headed the parliamentary campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, but he was not without flaws.

    However, to condemn Nelson for not joining the fight is surely to ask a great deal of a Naval Hero overly occupied elsewhere. The anti-slavery movement only began in the 1780s, and was largely suspended during the wars with France; the bill abolishing the slave trade didn’t receive royal assent until 1807, two years after Trafalgar.

    Wilberforce himself was by no means perfect, disapproving of female campaigners and opposing Catholic emancipation. So let’s recognise that we all have flaws, even while we strive to do good where we can, and very often fail in the attempt. WE ARE ALL COMPLICATED BEINGS CAPABLE OF GOOD AND BAD AT THE SAME TIME.

    Trafalgar square, Bridgetown, Barbados

    http://www.manioc.org/gsdl/collect/images/index/assoc/HASH01a2/510fd0c7.dir/B_972332101_FR_620526593_001_0070a_p.jpg

    1920 Print Caribbean Trafalgar Square Bridgetown Barbados Statue Nelson

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/46/08/574608338773847d8401a2e0c34c4e77.jpg

  29. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @ Robert

    You have gone back to the same stupid argument again. Where did this come from? Why target it at me? I am not part of the conversation and do not want to be part. If you want to sound off, go ahead, but leave me out of it. But do not fabricate things about me. Thanks for your concern, but it is not welcomed.

  30. robert lucas Avatar
    robert lucas

    @ Hal June 10, 2020 11:09 AM
    “You are manufacturing nonsense. You clearly do not read my contributions to BU because your latest contribution is nonsense. You are joining the BU brigade of making it as you go along.”
    Did you say this ?

  31. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @ Robert

    I did. I am not part of this conversation; it is not something I am interested in and plse leave me out. I say again, I am very particular in what I am on BU or ay other Facebook blog. Do not put words in my mouth.

  32. Freedom Crier Avatar
    Freedom Crier

    Lord Nelson was Critical in bringing about an End to the Slave Trade. The Battle of Trafalgar was Won in 1805 which meant that Britain Controlled the High Seas…

    Then when Wilberforce passed the international Slave Trade Act two years later, 1807, Britain was able to control the seas and actually enforce that Act against all other colonial slave trades…

    If it wasn’t for British control of the high seas, the international slave trade may well have continued.
    He was absolutely critical in dying for his country and actually making sure that Act counted and didn’t lay dying on the statute book.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Bridgetown_Trams_at_Trafalgar_Square%2C_Barbados_%28col._Allen_Morrison%29.jpg

  33. Tron Avatar
    Tron

    None of your proposals are radical enough. We must ban EVERYTHING that looks like white racism!

    We should also ban Hawaiian shirts and shirts with flower patterns, because the right-wing radical Boogaloo movement wears such shirts. Furthermore, brown and black shirts must be banned because these are the colours of the Nazis and Italian fascists. Grey shirts are prohibited because they symbolize the Confederate army.

    Only plain white, yellow, orange, red, blue and green shirts are politically correct!

    Not to forget the scrapping of all Mercedes on the island. If I remember correctly, the so-called fuhrer always showed himself to the people in a black or silver Mercedes. It may therefore be necessary to extend the ban to all black and silver cars.

  34. Greene Avatar
    Greene

    progress cannot be stopped. what we are witnessing here, in my opinion, is a glitch in the march towards globalisation, in the context of young people seeing themselves as children of this earth. the problem with globalisation as presently structured, is that it is not equal, not inclusive of non 1st world issues and people. the fight against it by some 1st nations is that they will lose their position in world politics and influence and the oneness of their population and culture

    the protests we are seeing now may stop or taper out in a week or so but they are not dead. we have a world where billionaires have more disposal cash than nations have. where in the last 3 month one man made 23 billion dollars whilst treating his staff like shiite and while millions of people have been laid off, fired and where lots of people live marginally. what is the social utility of being a billionaire? is a multi millionaire not enough? when is enough money enough? especially when loads at the bottom are suffering? why are the rich (USA) bailed out and the middle class asked to pay more? is that fair? why are the goods of rich countries foisted upon poor countries sucking up their resources which ought to used at home on their people? why are people still divided by the construct of race?

    young people see this and are fed up of it all. seemingly they dont want it.

    so all this talk about globalisation being dead is premature and is the hope of a dying right wing brand, their death throes so to speak. yes, there may be a pause, but, in my opinion, that is a reset not a final resting place.

    March on, mother earth. one earth one people onward.

  35. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    the mental agony is real..

    “Crew member on cruise ship anchored off Barbados commits suicide Jun 10, 2020 | 0 | A female crew member on one of the cruise ships anchored off Barbados has committed suicide while waiting to be repatriated. Barbados police confirm they are treating the death as a suicide and identify the victim as a 28-year-old assistant waitress.”

  36. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    @ robert lucas June 10, 2020 12:57 PM

    But the British isles have always been invaded by so-called immigrants; from the Romans to the Vikings to the French under William the Conqueror.

    In case you have not visited the UK in recent times the country is fast becoming an “island” of immigrants with the fast expanding majority of those immigrants from the Indian sub-continent.

    There are entire areas/communities which are now under the demographic control on non-Whites. For example, Bradford, Leeds, Leicester and districts in East London and West London like Southall aka Little India.

    Afro-Caribbean or those of African descent are becoming a rather insignificant minority.

    It is not the blacks which the ‘traditional Brits’ have to worry about but the Muslims who are breeding exponentially and will soon be the demographically dominant and ‘majority-culturally’ minority group.

  37. Miller Avatar
    Miller

    (Quote):
    In the interest of clarity and accuracy: Was the Battle of Trafalgar, which Nelson led ,fought and died in, not the precursor to the abolition of the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade ? Just asking. (Unquote).
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    So what about the role of the Haitian Revolution and the political contributions of the Abolitionists underpinned by the encroachment of the industrial revolution technologies which made the employment of slave labour a more expensive and technically less efficient enterprise.

  38. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    No once could have said this better…”if statues were “educational” they would have Hitler perched on the town square in UK”

    I would take it further for Barbados…they would keep a symbol of racism and hatred of Black people in the form of Nelson perched on the town square where SLAVES WERE SOLD for centuries….but absolutely REFUSE to teach African history, African culture or the hundreds of African dialects in the schools….post independence 50 years later … the African descended are only allowed by corrupt governments to observe African history once a year…and they are telling themselves all of that is a good look…..so many people are repulsed by them if they only knew.

  39. lawson Avatar
    lawson

    I agree with Waru for once , Bussa in my view if real is not an educational, but more of an obstruction , people going into a round a bout and looking at the statue can without knowing cross lanes. Family have had an accident at that spot and I am sure they are not the only ones. All idols should be gotten rid of even that mermaid with the nice tits in Copenhagen.

  40. TLSN Avatar
    TLSN

    Now this is a leader. He could have remained silent in his bunker. But chose to speak out.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/west-indies-captain-faced-racism-india-ipl-stint-200610111531104.html

    Hal and Waru have often raised their objections to minority groups on the island: the Muslims, Hindus, Jews. Syrians, Lebanese et al. These groups need to be monitored very closely. It is said, by some, that they have a corrosive influence on the island. We have enough empirical evidence as to how they operate and interact with Africans from countries as diverse as Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Guyana and Trinidad – to name but a few. The findings are disturbing and would suggest to me that these groups should be limited in their capacity to undermine the well-being and the welfare of the majority population at best; and at worse some may need to have their citizenship revoked.

    The current buzz words are “white privilege”. Within Barbados we need to broaden this term to include the above minority groups. We need to be alert to the fact that these other groups/guests are not here to enjoy a slice of the cake; they are here to take the whole of the cake. We should be fearless in our approach and recognise that Barbados majority population needs to save guard the country for her African people.

    Where does that leave the rest? I do not have the slightest of concerns!

  41. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    This what she likes, promoting shite instead of dismantling the corruption they built on the island that’s violating the people’s human rights. She aint got no time to address the racism or protest the police brutality and killing of a black man but she got time to promote shite to get laughed at. Some say as a favor to Skerritt.

    By Caribbean News Global f

    “LONDON, England – The automatic renewal of Baroness Patricia Scotland’s term of office as Secretary-General has not found consensus among heads of government of the 54-nation Commonwealth.

    “This was revealed in a letter dated June 8, 2020, from British prime minister Boris Johnson to all Commonwealth heads of government. The letter was leaked in London and a copy has been seen by Caribbean News Global. In the letter to his colleague head of government, Johnson disclosed that a proposal from Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley to “reappoint Baroness Scotland as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth for a second four-year term now” did not get support.”

  42. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    “The findings are disturbing and would suggest to me that these groups should be limited in their capacity to undermine the well-being and the welfare of the majority population at best; ”

    we have been saying for years that these tiny minority groups who are racist as hell are toxic and only see the majority population as captured slaves to enrich themselves off…generation after generation…that is what both governments have allowed on the island for over 50 years in exchange for their bribes…that is all they lie and deceive the majority population to get voted in to the parliament to do…sell them out, generationally.

    ya should see what people are saying on FB about them.

  43. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    “All idols should be gotten rid of even that mermaid with the nice tits in Copenhagen.”

    christ Lawson….not even a piece of stone is safe from you..

  44. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    BTW…most of those indian players that are racist themselves, they came out of the dark holes of nowhere in those indian cities…the darkest, nastiest slums you could ever want to see, just like the business people from the 60’s that dumbass Barrow allowed into the island…came form the darkest, deepest holes of Calcutta and other slums…many of them got dropped off by boats and swam to shore on the island and next thing you know they are citizens….and bring a whole tribe with them shortly after….and these are the scum, they and their 1st and 2nd generation descendents running the drug, gun and other smuggling and illegal trades on the island enabled by those in the parliament and merrily practicing their racism..

  45. lawson Avatar
    lawson

    True especially yap money

  46. David Avatar
    David

    If you do not have anything intelligent to comment why not go for a walk?

  47. lawson Avatar
    lawson

    lol David how it must be so hard for you to endure stupid white people But not as hard as smart white people I bet eh.

  48. WURA-War-on-U Avatar
    WURA-War-on-U

    Look Lawson…Miiram Webster is updating the definition of racism to include oppression….don’t forget to tell Justin…

    https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-merriam-webster-definition-racism-kennedy-mitchum-20200610-tj3qi6awi5eyxb5hkblf62glyu-story.html

    so naturally we gotta update it for Barbados too…because oppression is used as a weapon against the majority population….and have been for decades…

  49. David Avatar
    David

    @Lawson

    It is a challenge.

  50. robert lucas Avatar
    robert lucas

    @ Miller June 10, 2020 2:01 PM

    I have never visited the UK or Europe ; I am strictly a new world person. I have said that eventually the native British will drive out the recent arrivals. It is only a matter of time. It is going to be history repeating itself. In due course the governments will get more to the right and more nationalistic and interested in preserving their culture. If you think a civil won’t happen up to you. All the seeds for civil war are already present.

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