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Emancipation and Freedom

Aug 01, 2011 Editorial

In this United Nations-declared “International Year of People of African Descent”, the commemoration of Emancipation Day holds special significance. It was, after all, the enslavement of African peoples by European peoples to furnish labour for their plantations in the “New World” that initiated the train of historical events that still haunt people of African origin. Notwithstanding “emancipation”.
In the words of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at the launching of the event at UN Headquarters in New York earlier this year: “The international community has affirmed that the transatlantic slave trade was an appalling tragedy not only because of its barbarism but also because of its magnitude, organized nature and negation of the essential humanity of the victims. Even today, Africans and people of African descent continue to suffer the consequences of these acts.”
“The international community cannot accept that whole communities are marginalized because of the colour of their skin. People of African descent are among those most affected by racism. Too often, they face denial of basic rights such as access to quality health services and education. Such fundamental wrongs have a long and terrible history.”
So the question has to be asked, “What was emancipation all about?” For us to answer that question, we have to first consider, “What was slavery all about?” And we have to note that this “peculiar” institution was not just about providing labour: it was that but much more. It was the justification that the Europeans provided that is crucial, because it does not just linger into the present – it suffuses it. The good Christian Europeans decided that Africans were not quite humans.
For the longest while they debated not only as to whether Africans possessed souls – this might be excused as a theoretical proposition based on the insubstantiality of the entity – but as to, for instance, whether the blood of Africans were the same as that of Europeans. Snatching them from their homelands, forcing them to labour in the most brutal conditions and not permitting them any form of education, the Europeans also decided that Africans were mentally inferior.
Much has been made of the “humanism” of the British abolitionists to end the institution of slavery in 1834 but it was a humanism that made “emancipation” an empty ideal. All it meant was that the ex-slaves were not now required to labour for free. It was a removal of the physical chains and even that was made a mockery. In Guyana, for instance, indentured labour was brought in – partially using taxes on the ex-slaves! – To undercut their bargaining power.
What emancipation was, was not the freedom to recover the humanity that was denied them during the hundreds of years of slavery. Few remember that the vaunted American Constitution, touted as the epitome of the declaration of “human rights”, originally defined the African as three-quarters of a human being. It took more than another hundred and fifty years for Africans to even sit at the same counter as whites in coffee shops.
And it is this freedom “to be” that must be placed on the agenda this year if emancipation is ever to fulfil its heady promise. We echo, once again, the call of one activist: “to bring up the issue of justice for current and past acts of discrimination that have led to the situation today. We need to talk about the past and present race hierarchy that exists is societies and to encourage countries to become involved in development through positive action that will ensure equality for people of African descent. To show that discrimination against people of African descent is not a remnant of the past, but is something that is happening today and that feeds on itself and grows of its own accord. (We must) dispel the myth that discrimination against people of African descent ended when classical slavery disappeared from the world and recognize that institutions are products of history and often reflect traditional power relations.
And finally not only recognize the consequences of continual discrimination, but also to identify the tools to combat it. Happy Emancipation Day.

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