Decolonisation of the Bahamian Mind

BAHAMIAN APPROACH TO HISTORY: FIRE > READY > AIM...! 

How do we Bahamians de-colonise our minds, in a manner and by a method that does not corrupt our history, whilst reprioritising our historical personalities appropriately, by some disciplined measure?

By Professor Gilbert Morris

Nassau, The Bahamas

I began this year with a post-called: “Decolonisation of the Bahamian Mind”.  It was the result of conversations with friends and Caribbean colleagues over the holiday....who concluded with me that ideas, concepts, vision and strategies mean nothing if our people’s thoughts were aligned against their own interests.

First amongst these interests is to remove from their minds a thinking inferiority.  Second, to remove the feverish orientation toward and prioritisation of what is foreign.  Third, to remove markings, signs and monuments on the Bahamian landscape that prioritises enslaver and colonial personages, hovering over our daily lives, infecting our children with their pride-of-place paramountcy.

As is typical, we leapt over the thinking part straight to the monument removal; essentially because the thinking part is hard work and one finds soon enough, we are hideously poor at disciplined conceptualisation, rooted context or discerning relevance.  Now so many delight in removing monuments...no doubt inspired by events in America and elsewhere!

Well, its simple...requires no thinking...and one gains an adrenaline rush to have achieved something in a country where Turtle’s achieve more in a day!  Unfortunately, that’s a short term “feeling good” neuro-stimulant that does nothing to change our situation or to cultivate a resolve to create or own a Bahamian future.

Had we taken time to think, we’d know that removal of statutes from a place of prominence is not - can’t and shouldn’t be imagined as - elimination from history: Christopher Columbus is part of our history, without whom any discussion of that history would amount to idiot babbling.  This is a crucial understanding that demands we locate him - with scholarly discipline - in the structure of a Bahamian historical narrative that is intellectually honest, and not the product of flailing gum-clicking, Jungaliss analysis.

Had we taken time to think, we’d notice that our lazy, reactionary approach to national pride - which is so impotent it hasn’t prevented D Grade national averages, elephantine Debts, Criminal Slaughter of our own, Skullduggery and backward tribal politics - such that we’ve done far more damage to our heritage than Columbus ever could.  This admission and a reflective national conversation would have shown us that we never bothered to think how to de-prioritise Christopher Columbus and what he symbolises, yet claim or monetise the motherhood of the Americas for our direct benefit, whilst locating Columbus at a level of our cultural meaning that removes him as the hood ornament of our history driving toward a Bahamian future.

What a thinking deliberative period would have confirm to us additionally, is the  historical manner in which we speak of Christopher Columbus as if he knew us.  He didn’t.  He couldn’t!

When we speak of him we speak of an aboriginal atrocity he initiated, informed by a reform of Dr, Martin Luther King Jr.’s clarion that: ‘Injustice in any period is a threat to justice in any period’.  This “period” break in the colonial hegemony in The Bahamas - between the aboriginals of these islands and ourselves - inhabits ‘enigmas of arrivals’, thousands of historical wedges, cultural drips, slippages and anthropological bleeding points, as these islands magnetised then metastasised a myriad of cultural nuances from the surrounding near abroad.

This Bahamas was a way station, a pastoral colony, a private haven (still), and was crucial to the economic establishment of the Carolinas - and was a direct contributor to the American Revolution as a nexus of risks and allegiances, and so a geostrategic default territory...yet also - lest we forget and forget ourselves - a direct beneficiary of the Haitian revolution, and a contributor to the rise of Canada in the salt, Cod and Molasses trades; amongst many other things.

What is the true and proper psychology of a people of this rambunctuous history, and how do they de-colonise their minds, in a manner and by a method that does not corrupt their history, whilst reprioritising their historical personalities appropriately, by some disciplined measure?

Let us note for good measure, that every demand peters out to conundrums, which undermines the demand itself: So, does the demand to remove monuments, apply to lawyer’s wigs, to knighthoods, to QCs, to The Commonwealth, Anglican Church and the Queen?

Or does our voices of defiance trail off to shameful silence when the true implications of what we demand comes into view?

Moreover, how would such a people (Bahamians) - now rightly, if only lately enthused - employ this moment of nascent awareness to plow into a future that corrects the terrors of failure they inflicted on themselves?

That is a question that should be answered before we rush out in our typical unthinking bossiness - being as our grandparents say: “too fast” - and so constrain ourselves to contemplate organically what it means to de-colonise our minds from our over-churchified plantation thinking; to repriortisation of Columbus’ and other egregious monuments; to the plastic culture we sell in our plantation tourism model; to our vapid reprobate politics; our education, economic and strategic failures; to our obsession with what is foreign; to our slavish devotion to other people’s things...which permits foreigners to find one skullduggerer, who freely sells the country out for second hand BMWs, trips to Walmart and grinning selfies!

Source

Randol Fawkes' Appeal to The United Nations for Independence of The Bahama Islands

RANDOL FAWKES’ APPEAL TO THE UNITED NATIONS ON BAHAMAS NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

MR CHAIRMAN,

 

DISTINGUISHED REPRESENTATIVES OF THE COMMITTEE ON COLONIALISM

I am here today to secure the encouragement and the concrete assistance of the United Nations in the efforts of the people of the Bahama Islands to prepare themselves for independence.

In this we seek your expert advice and technical assistance in the promotion of the political, economic, and social advancement of The Bahamas that would make a transition from colonialism to freedom less painful than it otherwise would be.

It is our conviction that eternal colonialism in the Bahamas prevents the development of international and economic cooperation, impedes the social, economic and cultural development, and violates the spirit and letter of the Charter of the United Nations.  We therefore hope that the United Nations will recognize the indisputable right of The Bahamas to complete freedom and will help us to achieve and exercise our sovereignty and the intergrity of our national territory.  In faith believing, I relate the following:

On September 1966, your petitioner requested a select committee to take into consideration the advisability of inviting the government of the United Kingdom to convene a constitutional conference with a view to establishing the independence of the Bahama Islands.

Before the speaker could reach the item on the agenda calling for the appointment of select committees, The Premier, Sir Roland Symonette read the following prepared communication:  “I wish to make the following communication to the House in view of the public interest that has been aroused on the question of a constitutional conference on independence.  This is a statement that I would have given to the House on Thursday the 25^th August if the motion on the agenda for the appointment of a select committee on the subject had been proceeded with on that day:

As a result of the 1963 Constitutional Conference, the Bahamian Islands now enjoy a constitution which gives the people, through their representatives, virtually full control of their internal governmental affairs.

It has been suggested that because some other countries - perhaps less able to accept full autonomy – have become or are becoming independent, The Bahamas should do the same.  The government regards this attitude as misconceived.  Independence could be requested, and would no doubt be granted, and this government would be glad to manage the external affairs of the country but the facts must be looked squarely in the face.

Complete independence would impose on our country the financial burden of responsibility for security, defence and external affairs.  This burden is at present largely borne by Her Majesty’s government, at small cost within the framework of Britain’s defense and diplomatic commitments, but it would be extremely expensive, both in money and in manpower for The Bahamas government to take on the task of establishing embassies and high commissions abroad, and of raising and the equipping its own armed forces.  Considerable government funds would have to be diverted for these purposes which, in the view of this government, would be much better spent on the progress and development of the Bahama Islands for the good of all the inhabitants.  For these reasons the government cannot support proposals for a constitutional conference at the present time.”

In due course, the motion was put but was lost by a vote of thirteen to seven.   Both Progressive Liberal Bahamian Party and the National Democratic Party supported the motion, but the United Bahamian Party not only denied the courtesy of a select committee, but no member of the party participated in the debate.

Now if we were to examine the statement of the Premier, we will find that his argument against independence is facetious.  The premier stated that The Bahamas could not take on the expense of establishing embassies and high commissions abroad, but Gentlemen The Bahamas government is now maintaining very highly paid administrative offices in major cities of the world.  Some of them in London, Miami, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, St. Louis, Washington, and even in Bonn, Germany.

In many of these offices, Bahamian personal is either nil or negligible.  So the excuse that we cannot maintain an embassy is tenuous indeed.

According to the United Kingdom, we are not Africans, yet “Bahamians” is not a legal term under the constitution, and no one can say with any degree of truth that we are British.  As a people we are without history, without culture, and without a national identity.  We study British history, British culture, and even British weather, but about ourselves, we have no past – and in colonialism, no future.

Because of the colonial status, the value of the Bahamian dollar is questionable.  Should the British pound be devalued, it would have serious consequences on the economy of The Bahamas.

Because of our colonial status, Bahamians pay a penalty in the form of high custom duty for trading with countries other than the British Commonwealth.  Our economy is tied to the Western Hemisphere.  Indeed everything we eat and wear comes from the Caribbean, North or South America.

It has been suggested that The Bahamas has a democratic constitution based on municipal suffrage – one man, one vote.  Because members in the House of Assembly are not paid, only the rich are financially able to represent their districts – hence membership in the present assembly is composed mainly of the merchants and professional class, but the labouring class has only very limited representation.  In the past 200 years, only on two or three occasions have the Out Islands been able to have representation by a person who resides in the Out Islands.

This situation is aggravated by the fact that there is no local government of the Out Islands.  These areas are governed only by an appointed commissioner, but there are other elected bodies to assist in the administration.  Without more education and greater participation in government, the people will not be prepared to master the responsibilities of independence.

We therefore, request that the United Nations take swift action to influence Britain to set a time-table for the eventual independence of the Bahamas and; in the meantime a commission of United Nations experts should be appointed to make a survey of the political, economic and social conditions of The Bahamas with a view to introducing adequate measures that would prepare the Bahamian people to master their own responsibilities.

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