The Tribune

DURING the 1962 general election there was mass propaganda circulated by the United Bahamian Party (UBP) and parroted by others, including many black Bahamians, of the supposed innate inferiority of black people.

A major slogan of the UBP campaign was: “Vote PLP and Starve”, suggesting that blacks could not govern themselves. This racist screed and other attacks were part of a larger colonial and imperialist narrative about the “inherent” deficiencies of the descendants of Africa.

As far back as 1661 a law was promulgated in Barbados -- the epicenter of British colonialism in the Caribbean -- that was also adopted by Jamaica, Antigua, South Carolina and other jurisdictions.

The law described Africans as a “heathenish, brutish and uncertain, dangerous kinde of people”. The law noted that because of this white owners should take almost absolute control over such brutes.

During that 1962 election contest, in a school room in Fox Hill, an historic area in which the descendants of various African peoples lived, a 34-year-old Arthur Foulkes and others addressed a crowd.

They refuted the false racist narratives spun by the white oligarchy in order to retain their economic, political and social power over black Bahamians. Foulkes, a journalist, began to describe the rich heritage of those of African descent in The Bahamas.

He spoke movingly of the history, beauty, longevity and dignity of former African kingdoms and people, who had been enslaved, exploited and raped by European colonial powers, including the British Empire.

In the front row, a number of black women shed tears. Foulkes, a PLP candidate for the Eastern District of New Providence along with A.D. Hanna, was at first taken aback. But he quickly realized that this was the first time these people had heard this history – their history.

COLONIAL

The colonial masters were determined to sever black Bahamians from their African roots, including their histories and identities.

Concurrently, the colonialists exuberantly celebrated their own antecedents in approved texts, rituals and pomp and circumstance, through which they indoctrinated generations of black people, including school children, who were made to celebrate events like Empire Day and royal tours.

The British and other colonial hegemons understood that they had to control black bodies through the brute force of military and physical power. They knew also that they had to control black minds and spirits through the brute force of false propaganda and selective narratives.

The best way to control a people was to convince them of their own inferiority and the superiority of whiteness: white images, white bodies and even a white saviour.

A friend recalls that in her teenage years she teased a much older female relative that the picture the latter had in her bedroom of the iconic blond blue-eyed Jesus, with the light of Heaven caressing his pure white skin, was historically inaccurate.

The older relative became distressed and dissolved into a paroxysm of deep anger and frustration. She chastised the younger woman: “You think he will make all these pretty white people, and come down and make he self black.”

The conflation is purposeful and degrading: If Jesus is “pure” white – though there is no such thing as pure white or a “pure” race – then white people, including the British monarch and their family are a part of this divine plan.

Blacks were destined therefore to be ruled by their racial superiors by divine and royal fiat, which became synonymous.

BIG LIES

The “big lies” about black inferiority and white superiority took penetrating root in people of colour. The false narratives were repeated in school texts, church sermons, advertising, all manner of checkered histories and publications, and in myriad other ways.

In Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War, journalist and historian Howard W. French argues:

“The way we think about history is entirely wrong … The problem is not just that the people and cultures of Africa have been ignored and left to one side; rather, that they have been so miscast that the story of the global past has become part of a profound ‘mistelling’. ...

“The rich diversities of the many different people of Africa became subsumed into a single category of ‘blackness’ that obscured and ignored proud histories and cultures and treated all the inhabitants of the continent and their descendants as being one and the same.

“That was ironic, of course, given that populations were deliberately distributed in the Americas and Caribbean to prevent family and kinship groups being able to communicate with each other, reducing the chances of rebellion against the Europeans who were heavily outnumbered.”

Many students returning home to The Bahamas from the University of the West Indies in the 1960s, came back with a greater sense of consciousness about their African and Caribbean roots and identities.

Often, when they identified themselves as being black, they were mocked by parents and others who insisted that they were “brown skin”, “coloured” or “mulatto”, but definitely not “black”.

CIVIL RIGHTS

When Sir Milo Butler began his civil rights work for racial equality, he was pilloried and mocked by the white merchant class, some of whom referred to him as “the big black man” and “buffoon”.

He also was an embarrassment for a number of black Bahamians, who thought he should behave better for the white people, including the British.

We have made considerable progress since the 1960s, including that revelatory school room event in Fox Hill in 1962. But exactly 60 years after those women shed tears when learning of their history, some are still struggling and mired in racial inferiority.

Most Bahamians, including many of our elites in every sector, are still wholly ignorant of the wider sweep of Bahamian history, including our African roots and the brutality of British colonial rule.

In a recent article in the New Yorker, entitled, “The British Empire Was Much Worse Than You Realize”, Sunil Kilnani interrogates the self-serving history of the British:

“It’s startling to recall that, not so long ago, leading historians accepted the images of empire’s end that were projected in propagandistic newsreels – governors general in plumed helmets and starched whites inviting grateful natives to the podium.”

When he became our first Bahamian Governor General, the ever enlightened and always emancipated Sir Milo wore the plumed helmet once in an act of demystification and never wore it again.

SHIBBOLETHS

So many of us are still slavishly acting as “grateful natives”, still psychologically, and emotionally handcuffed and paralyzed by antediluvian mindsets, shibboleths and visceral racial insecurity.

Many black Bahamians in the 2020s are terrified at the prospect of becoming a republic, much as many in the 1960s were terrified by the thought of majority rule. How far have some of us really come?

Just as Sir Milo, Sir Arthur and his generation, and others, had to struggle to educate and inform the mass of Bahamians about self-determination, national pride, racial dignity and other democratic values, leading to majority rule and independence, it seems that the work to become a republic will take a long time and extensive education.

There is a seamless historical and political thread connecting majority rule, independence and becoming a republic.

During the recent visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to the region, Jamaican Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, confirmed that he would be pushing for his country to become a republic. Both major parties in Jamaica have already stated their support for republican status.

In Belize, Prime Minister Dr. John Briceño, noted that his cabinet recently agreed to set up a People’s Constitutional Consultation Commission to review the question. Where are we in The Bahamas, the third leg of the visit by the Cambridges?

In a recent report in this journal, former Member of Parliament Leslie Miller put it starkly: “‘That’s [becoming a republic] really dead talk. In my lifetime it ain’t (going to) happen. …’

“ ‘The average Bahamian who thinks about a republic are those who can get press, think about Haiti and those other third world countries. Not realizing that America is a republic and most of the countries around the world are republics. But it’s not going to happen in our country in the next 50 years.”

“Asked by The Tribune why he was of this view, Mr. Miller said: ‘Because we don’t have the guts to do it.

“ ‘Those at the top would have hollow rhetoric on it, but they are not going to go to the front,’ the former Tall Pines MP said. ‘First of all, if they have a referendum, they (will) get beat because our people are ignorant towards what is a democracy, what is a true democracy.

“Despite this, Mr. Miller said he would support a push toward The Bahamas becoming a republic, adding ‘I would love to see it in my lifetime, but it ain’t (going to) happen so I don’t think about it. I’ll be gone by then.’ ”

After coming to the British throne, Queen Elizabeth II completed the transition from empire to Commonwealth. Her successors, Prince Charles and Prince William, will watch as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and others become republics.

Will The Bahamas be the last to go? Will we finally summons the dignity and will, or will be embarrassed as Caricom leaders mock a future Bahamas prime minister as to why the British monarch remains the country’s sovereign?

Will a future UK Government or British king have to plead with a Bahamas governor general or prime minister to become a republic, because it was now terrible public relations and an embarrassment for the United Kingdom to have Bahamian subjects in a Britain and a Commonwealth more cosmopolitan than a Bahamas that was still acting like the Bahama Islands of the 1950s and 60s?

How long will Britannia still rule our national consciousness and our dignity? How many more years or decades?

Moreover, will some future Junkanoo group again perform to “Rule Britannia” on Bay Street during another royal visit?

“Still more majestic shalt thou rise,

More dreadful from each foreign stroke,

As the loud blast that tears the skies

Serves but to root thy native oak.

“Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never will be slaves.

“To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine;

All thine shall be the subject main,

And every shore it circles, thine.”