Our political system is the product of a colonial mentality

Apr 27, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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This past week, a video of a mother mercilessly flogging her daughter with a leather belt was aired on You Tube. The video quickly went viral.
This in turn led to strong reactions within Trinidad and Tobago where the mother and her child are from.
Things have reached the stage whereby there is talk about possible criminal charges of abuse being levied against the mother who has stood firm and said that he is prepared to face jail, since she was acting in what she considered to be the interest of her child by trying to prevent her from going down the path of deviancy.
Others have supported the mother. They have pointed to the fact that the daughter had posted semi-nude pictures of herself on You Tube, a social network that allows persons to upload personal videos. Thus, they contend the mother was merely attempting to put to right that wrong.
And this argument is precisely the problem, because it is predicated on the belief that something that is wrong should be righted, and righted by another wrong, even to the extent of using violence.
This is a tragedy of Caribbean societies. We who have suffered through the violence of the plantation system have instead of turning our backs on that violence, embraced and perpetuated it. We have nurtured a culture of police coercion through violence. The police like to rough-up persons, instead of breaking with the old colonial mentality which argued that subjects only respond to force and pain.
Our politicians have been calling recently for the government to take a firmer stand against interpersonal violence. But our political culture is also extremely violent. When opposition parties in Guyana lose elections and refuse to accept the will of the people, their first resort is to run amok in the city and burn, loot, rob and maim citizens and businesses. This is a perpetuation of a culture of violence. Some politicians are brazen enough to boast that the only language that the government understands is violence.
What they do not admit is that by taking such a stand, they are admitting that they do embody and are perpetuating that culture of violence of an inhumane colonial system that inspired the freedom struggles of West Indians.
The residual effect of that violent mentality that the plantation system branded on the collective psyche of West Indians is best exemplified by our political system which is not so much about building, creating and uplifting as it is about destroying, stifling creativity and dehumanizing others.
Our political system is vicious. Politicians make it a public spectacle of being at each other’s throats. Civility is often cast to the wind. Instead of using power to negotiate, compromise and work together, that power is used to exclude, to dominate and to cut and not approve of plans for the development of the country. The obsession is with making a point rather than being conciliatory. This happens on both sides. Those who have power use it in a vicious way to demonstrate who is in charge and who can do what to hurt the other side.
How then in this context of a vicious political culture – a direct byproduct of a colonial mentality from which we have not truly freed ourselves – can there be a call for the State to take a more proactive role in the face of interpersonal violence?
The State itself is a creature of a violent and coercive culture and therefore the State cannot, unless it sheds its violent traits, make any significant contribution to ending the culture of violence.
Indeed when you look at that incident of that poor child being mercilessly whipped with a leather belt by her mother, you appreciate how deep-rooted is the problem of violence in our society. Many of us have grown up under this culture of violence, beginning with being whipped in our homes by parents, grandparents and even uncles and aunts who were often given free licence to vent their anger on us.
And all this, it is said, is in the name of making us better.  Most of us have received “licks like peas” and most of us have failed to reject that violence and the culture that it spawns. Those licks have not made us better. It has allowed for us to continue with the cycle of violence which was initiated under the plantation system
And we fail to see that this is the same violence that is being manifested within our political system, whereby the objective is to ‘manners’ the other side. There is no little attempt at understanding and the exercise of patience. It is all about a demonstration of who has power and the vicious uses to which that power can be put.
Until we understand that we are still mentally tied to the violent plantation system, until we are prepared to make a break with that mentality of violence, the culture of viciousness in this and the other countries of the Caribbean will not end. And life inside and outside of politics will continue to be short, nasty and brutish.

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