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Black History Month

Feb 08, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Notwithstanding its older roots, Black History Month is now observed and celebrated in February, in keeping with a standing United Nations declaration. It was overdue when first announced, it is fitting that this recognition is extended to those who are members of, or identify with, the global community of people with a proud African heritage. In Guyana, with its own significant segment of the national population, Black History Month is also observed and cheered and cherished, but it is noticeable for the attention (or lack thereof) that is afforded to it by those outside of the extended and diverse African or Black family. It would be proper for a quick dash to be made into the pages of history itself, to gather the years and centuries of the African experience, particularly in the New World, and to set the underpinnings of the thrust of this writing.
Though no introduction is needed, the history of Black people in America, this region in its widest expanse, inclusive of Guyana, has been nothing less than harrowing and poignant in the pathos of a people reduced to the lowest human denominator, and made to suffer incomparable cruelties and brutalities under a succession of beastly masters, some foreign, some local, some from their own, some not from that last fold. Perhaps, the most telling irony of the piercing of people with African roots was and is that their captors and tormentors numbered heavily among those who held the Prince of Peace as the mainstay of their belief system and faith. A belief system that speaks refreshingly about the brotherhood of man, the fraternity that comes from genuine fellowship, and an ethos that was of nonviolence and love of neighbour as oneself.
All that eroded, and were devoured, by the wanton and heinous covetousness that empowered, or made many a man and master feel entitled to a false sense of superiority, and hence the right to enslave as chattel, as beasts of burden, those who fell into their chaining grips. It is called mammon and the love for financial advantage on the backs of others considered less human. There was dehumanising at the beginning, which was later succeeded by its no less devilish blood relations, which are demonising, marginalising, and ostracising. In what must be the miracle of miracles, the guiding hand of divine providence, the enslaved African community survived, and as a testimony to their profound good faith and goodwill, they mostly adopted the said belief system of their persecutors.
From this background, it is clear, there can be no doubt, not a speck of it, that the road of the Black population on this side of the map has been long and hard and horrendous. The Incas and Aztecs, perhaps more than most, can identify with the circumstances, the lot, the enduring fate of the Black community. Broad genocide was followed by homicide, which is largely unstilled.
Given the historical array of such punishing facts and gruesome realities, more than a month of Black history is called for, demanded with increasing intensity. To begin with, there must be a broad and deep spread of appreciation for what Black people were compelled to submit to, and to endure for an eternity that has not truly ended with all the tentacles of oppression still not completely closed out at the roots. In Guyana, there is disconnection and contradiction regarding what has been the real contributions of this society’s Black presence. That is, the rich fullness of those contributions in all of their splendors and sacrifices, the vastness of their influences, and the many positives and the emphasised negatives taken together, and shaken with vigour so as to get to the bottom of what is real, what is imagined, what is exaggerated, and what is concocted.
By no means should this be interpreted and possibly misconstrued as a search for the local identity of a people, but as a quest for the thoroughness of truths, if only to facilitate the segment of this society that joyfully asserts itself, to be graced with what is only their rightful due. They must neither be ignored nor disrespected, for they also have their rightful place at the national banquet table.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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