Pimping The Legacy Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr – Are Gay Rights The Same As Civil Rights? How The “Lunatic Fringe” Of Modern Religious Pharisees, Wishy-Washy Politicians, And Secular Humanists Masquerade In Deception And Disinformation

Submitted by Terence Blackett

 

On Monday January 17^th marked the 25^th anniversary of The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday – a day that saw “multi-racial” groups breaking bread together; political leaders setting aside their partisan politics to speak of the need for greater unity (even if only just so glibly); sprinkled with the solemn tributes and affirmations as well as the pontificators who lauded the name of MLK. Somehow you could feel this sense of fuzziness, and for a moment, you thought that some of the rival factions were literally going to break out in the singing of “kumbayah” my lord…

Sadly, the dust always settles and the smoke finally clears and it’s back to business as usual with the customary wrangling, infighting and squabbling over every inch of social terrain. It’s seems that after “THE DREAM” comes the cold, bitter morning of reality and we are somehow shocked into this polarized sense that we simply do not see eye to eye and are incapable of getting along.

A pedantic lurch back through the mid to late 1950’s and 1960’s history carries a stark reminder of a time when as Black folks our parents and grandparents faced in many ways a myriad of social pressures – monetary, political and religious alienation which has contributed and has been responsible for the psychic scar that remains a blot on the landscape of Black empowerment. This has due in part to the contemporary eyes of postmodernity through which we view that recent historical past but especially for those who were not privy to live through it. But even if we did, the memories have faded to a mere shadow of what life was really like. What does stand out is the socio-sexual revolution of the 60’s – and although this seismic shift in the last [50] years has defined the latter half of the 20^th century, we are seeing its resultant social metamorphosis now in the 21^st century.

Restitution For Colonial Era Is Due

Barbadians celebrate National Heroes Day today. A time to celebrate those who significantly contributed to the foundation for advancing Barbados. The following article (reproduced) is meant to provoke thought and awareness given the new challenges which have emerged in our new world.

“Mahatma Gandhi, with no weapon but truth, brought England’s Indian Empire crashing down. Another man of peace, from a small island off the coast of India, is now committed to an even more ambitious task. He would restore what he sees as the equilibrium upset by Western Europe when it set out 500 years ago to conquer the planet.

As if that were not enough, he wants the Christian churches to recognize that as legitimators and beneficiaries of those wars of conquest, they are obligated in justice to return the unjustly acquired benefits. Wait a minute. Didn’t the colonial era end shortly after World War II? Hasn’t the number of sovereign nations more than doubled in 50 years to 185?”

Read full article

A Sociological Analysis Of The Modern Plantation

Submitted by Ras Jahaziel

 

www.rastafarivisions.com

The most barbaric feature of this modern age is the obscene disparity that exists between one side of the world and the other. It is a disparity that reflects a long history of vampire economics that enables one side to amass great riches by sucking the other to death. Now in the twenty-first century on one side of the world in the land of plenty, drugged citizens eat themselves to death, while on the other side death eats its citizens because food is ARTIFICIALLY too scarce. Slavery is over, they say, but because of the economic imbalance that was created by slavery and colonialism, the children of slave-masters can yet sail over to distant lands and buy themselves a native or two at a relatively low price.

As a result of the inherited disparities, desperate “third-worlders” now lay their lives on the line in their grim determination to reach “Hamburger Heaven,” the home of the white man. In absence of the question “WHY,” it is quite easy to assume that there does exist a natural inferiority and superiority in the grand scheme of things. After all, the general opinion is that “these Negroes are always killing one another back home on their dark continent, and even those that have long lived in the land of plenty still fill our jails because they are prone to be violent.”

This is the prevailing view because THE REAL TERRORIST has long had the technology to make his lie look like the truth. From such a perspective, the victim of robbery and exploitation becomes the cannibal that needs to be caged, the savage that needs to be imprisoned, the terrorist that needs to be hunted, and The Robber is the good guy who has been called by God and Jeezus to bomb savages out of darkness so that they may see the light of white-civilization and democracy. In this skewed version of reality, the word “holocaust” will never be attached to the ongoing genocide of Africa’s peoples, because it seems that word has long been copyrighted by Caucasoid Jews.

Read full article HERE

Popular Culture And Scientifically Cultivated Ignorance

Submitted by Ras Jahaziel

 

The British explorer, H.M. Stanley was enthralled by the economic prospects Africa had for his country:

He is reported to have said “There are 50 million people beyond the gateway to Congo, and the spinners of Manchester are waiting to clothe them. Birmingham foundries are glowing with red metals that will presently be made into iron-work for them so that our trinkets shall soon adorn those dusty bosoms, and the ministers of Christ are zealous to bring the poor benighted heathens into the Christian fold”

– (H. M. Stanley, Journalist and Explorer)

 

In the above statement it is clear that Slave dealers were not only interested in slave labor, but they also saw Africans as a potential MARKET…. if their wants and desires could be effectively re-arranged. From out of this mercantile desire on the part of Slave dealers sprung a billion dollar industry to manufacture a product called POPULAR CULTURE.

This re-arrangement of the African’s taste buds has been so successful that today the African’s head is stuck in a Macdonald’s box…figuratively and literally. The African is COLLARED AND TIED in the European STRAIGHT JACKET…figuratively and literally. So too are dogs and cats and all domesticated creatures captivated by their taste buds and by their bellies. Just as destructive as the military force that was used to capture the African is the insidious manipulation of popular culture to capture the soul of the African.

CAPTIVATION of a people’s taste buds, CAPTIVATION of their wants, CAPTIVATION of their idea of beauty, CAPTIVATION of their idea of God equals CAPTIVATION OF THEIR MINDS.

Think Outside Of The Colonial Box

Submitted by Ras Jahaziel

Marcus Garvey

This excerpt that follows is chosen to strengthen the point that what we are clinging to in our colonial mentality is nothing more than European invented identities that were created solely for the benefit of Europe/America.

The slave economy of the past was never for the benefit of the slave. Similarly the slave economy of the present was never designed for the benefit of the modern slaves that do not like to see themselves as slaves because they have fridges and telephones and TVs in their rented and mortgaged houses.

As an African you have to look past the enticing trinkets of Europe and face the fact that you are still doing the same exact thing that you were brought on the slave ship to do…PROVIDE CHEAP, EASILY AVAILABLE, AND EASILY DISPOSABLE LABOR. The truth is that you have graduated from the field to the sweat shop, and you survive on what is left over after the modern slave-master or CAPITALIST counts his billions. How long should we sit here with our fates pinned to the fortunes of the billionaire white man while praying that he will soon have an economic recovery?

This is the time when we have to dare to reinvent ourselves in our own image, and we must not be content to cling to the fragmented arrangements that were made solely for the benefit of The Colonizer. If you were far-sighted you would see that this is the only thing left for us to do if the future generations are to be saved from a fate where prostitution is the main vocation.

Funding Interdependency: The Genus and Transgenesis of White Supremacy – The Quest for “The Golden Fleece” and The Black Man’s Search for Lasting Empowerment

Submitted by Terence Blackett

Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, or failures  – Cabral

Sometime during the 16^th century, the “darklords” of capitalism and science embarked on a sinister plan to create a seismic collision between two opposing forces of nature which would result in a stratified order of eugenic superiority for human beings. On the one hand, white privilege. On the other hand, according to Chung-Hao Ku – “the plague of the ostracized, cast into the ghetto of the pathologized, animalized, monstrous other.”

Though a tough analysis of the facts – the slow, spurious nature of scientific racism of the 16^th century prepared the pathway for a new form of adaptogenesis to take place which would culminate in the hierarchical societal structures of the modern 21^st century.

This anthropocentric hierarchy between the white race and Blacks has set the stage for a world dominated by white largesse, handouts (in the form of supposed “charity) and the control of the earth’s resources especially in Black nations where we were brainwashed into believing that we were not good enough to rule ourselves.

Dead-Men Walking: Postmodern Slavery And The Psycho-Social Symbology Of Black Self-Hatred – The Mis-education Of The Black Man, And Jewish Control Black Wealth And Resources

Submitted by Terence Blackett

It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men. – Samuel Adams

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – murdered Civil Rights leader and social justice modernist prophet in one of his memoirs, “STRENGTH TO LOVE” under the subheading – “The Answer To a Perplexing Question”, p.128 states:

“The first calls upon man to remove evil through his own power and ingenuity in the strange conviction that by thinking, inventing, and governing, he will at last conquer the nagging forces of evil. Give people a fair chance and a decent education, and they will save themselves. This idea, sweeping across the modern world like a plaque, has ushered out God and escorted in man and has substituted human ingenuity for divine guidance…”

Dr. King’s argument, though cited 46 years ago emerge in a prophetic window, painting an ominous picture of the cult of inevitable regression hanging around the necks of Black folks like the Albatross in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The history of ‘The ‘Middle Passage’ of the 1600’s bear a malevolent inconvenient similarity to a ship manned by dead-men, inimical to a version of “Pirates of the Caribbean”, while bearing a stark resemblance to that frightening poem by Coleridge where the souls of the dead sail perpetually through the mist of primordiality to some unknown destination.

Who Or What Am I?

A few weeks ago we listened to veteran journalist David Ellis expressing exasperation on air about all the race talk around in Barbados. His position as we understand it – educated Barbadians need to conceptualize positions which would move the country forward. We believe if Ellis were to think a little on that utterance he would realise it was an  asinine statement. Bear in mind the issue of race is being discussed in many countries around the globe including the great USA which is described as representing the melting pot of people from all backgrounds. He should also bear in mind the greatest Roman philosophers who we quote freely today were always prepared to enter the public squares to discuss the issues, good and bad with the people. The debate facilitated cross fertilization, more importantly the approach allowed the PEOPLE to vent and for the learned to respond. Hopefully both sides were the richer for the exchanges. It is a model which BU is committed to following for as long as we exist.

For any people including Barbadians to understand who they are and what they want to become, an understanding of their past lives must feature prominently. Decisions in the present cannot be divorce from experiences of the past. The psyche of the Barbadian has been influenced over time based on ALL of our history. Sadly our past is tarred by the experience of slavery and the colonial governance system which enforced it.  Today when we survey our system of government, church and other institutions and symbols which support civil society, the vestiges of our colonial relationship remain visible to all who want to see. For us to move forward as a people we have to discuss and debate how institutions which were active in our pre-emancipation period must be reconfigured to ensure a  Renaissance which the late Right Excellent Errol Barrow would have envisaged for our small but proud nation when he uttered that Barbados would be friends of all and satellites of none. Sad to say Barbados has progressed admirably if we use economic measures but boy have we neglected the social structures which are the intangibles of equal importance.

To understand the Barbadian and the negative reaction we have had to the large influx of Indo-Guyanese, we have to revert to history.

Race And Slavery: The Behavioural Conditioning Of A People

Submitted by Yardroom

“The first step, advised those who wrote discourses on the management of slaves, was to establish and maintain strict discipline…they – slaves – must obey at all times, and under all circumstances, cheerfully and with alacrity, affirmed a Virginia slaveholder…

The second step was to implant in the bondsmen [slaves] themselves a consciousness of personal inferiority.  They had to know and keep their places, to feel the difference between master and slave, to understand that bondage [slavery] was their natural status.  They had to feel that African ancestry tainted them, that their colour was a badge of degradation.” [Plantation and Frontier, pp108-11, De Bow's Review V11, 1849]

The third step…”We have to rely more and more on the power of fear…we are determined to continue masters, and to do so we have to draw the rein tighter and tighter day by day to be assured that we hold them in complete check”. [The Pecular Institution, Kenneth M. Stampp p146]

Slavery: A Somewhat Specious Disputation

Submitted by Looking Glass

Imagine a man born in Ethiopia, raised and educated in Puerto Rico presenting slavery as an epithet for Negroid in a three-piece suit. What Irony. He forgot the briefcase and brolly. Dr Yosef Jochannan’s specious disputation is a convenient distortion of reality. Yes slavery (and attendant atrocities) has existed and will continue to exist. However, to present slavery as an epithet for Negroid is an over-characterisation. Negroes were not the first human beings to be enslaved. Slavery is not and never was unique to the Negro. There was white slavery going back to at least Roman times. Later other ethnic groups were also enslaved. The implicit assumption that slaves everywhere endured the same treatment is unsustainable. Today slavery is rampant in Africa, India and elsewhere. He forgot that Africans also sold their brethren into slavery both yesteryear and today

Regarding Africa Cecil Rhodes in keeping with the prevailing sentiment candidly stated that “we (the mother country and other colonists) must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives in the colonies…The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories…..” The sentiment was also echoed by Nigerian governor, Lord Lugard and former French president Jules Ferry (Goldsmith, Development & Colonialism) This suggests that the primary purpose was not enslavement/slavery as such but economic progress and ‘development.’ Workers including slaves were consumers just as they are today. Then as now progress was measured by the value of what consumers consume and their contribution.

Also then as now progress and economic development required an ongoing supply of an array of human resources—political, organizational, management and technical. The Cecil Rhodes Foundation and ‘associates’ directly and indirectly contributed substantially to the economic development of much of the world. Africans may not have won Rhodes Scholarships but they benefited substantially in other ways.

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

President Obama and First Lady

The albatross clinging to the back of the Black race continues to remind Black people everywhere of the pain left by slavery. Yes the Black race has made strides since emancipation day but in a fragmented way. As a collective we are woefully short of where we need to be in order to leverage the talent of the Black race.

The rich culture lived by Africans before undertaking the arduous journey of the Middle Passage has been diminished through generations of slaving under a non-Black establishment. Those who understand the concept of culture i.e. the shared characteristics of a people would have witnessed the culture of the Black man subsumed by the more dominant of the colonial masters. Commonsense exposes the fact that the Black race compared to any other race experienced a physical and psychological abuse by another race never visited on any other race in the history of mankind.

The Race Card

Barbados Underground (BU) is thankful for all the complaining we hear about our blog because it means we have freedom of speech. Thanks to Nancie .J Carmody who made the following quote famous: “I am thankful for all the complaining I hear about our government because it means we have freedom of speech.”

The evergreen race debate like immigration, homosexuality and topics of this tenor which BU is driven to blog about will always evoke passion. It is the nature of the beast. How can we debate the issue of race in a manner which is acceptable given the strong views likely to be provoked? The fact that we have people from different backgrounds whether influenced by race, education, socialization among other factors will make the race dialogue interesting.

BU finds it difficult for a Black person to be accused of being racist. It is our belief the word racist is often used interchangeable for ‘bigot’ or ‘prejudice’ by some. The BU household is always willing to learn from the BU family and welcomes feedback on our position.