The Tribune

“THE arc bends toward justice, but it only bends toward justice because people pull it towards justice. It doesn’t happen on its own.”

• Eric Holder, former US Attorney General

BARACK Obama often quotes the ethical instruction of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The proximate provenance of the instruction is traced to Theodore Parker, an abolitionist reformist Unitarian minister.

A Harvard Divinity School minister, Parker proclaimed in an 1853 sermon, partially inspired by other religious thinkers: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”

Dr King’s more compact version has often been misunderstood. Author Mycal Denzel Smith argues that the quotation “carries the risk of magical thinking. After all, if the arc of the moral universe will inevitably bend toward justice, then there is no reason for us to work toward that justice, as it’s preordained.

“If it is only a matter of cosmic influence, if there is no human role, then we are off the hook. This isn’t how King meant it, as evidenced by the work to which he dedicated his own life.”

The long, difficult and generational global struggle for equality throughout human history demonstrates that realizing the basic necessities of freedom and equality, let alone the hunger and thirst for fuller justice, spans decades, centuries and more.

EQUALITY

One of the more protracted struggles is equality for women amidst entrenched and ancient misogyny and deep-seated prejudices, so often rooted in fundamentalist and religious bigotry and power structures.

The nature of human sinfulness is such that it has often been the church and religion that have been among the most oppressive and recalcitrant, utilizing religious texts and “tradition” to safeguard male domination and to reinforce inequality.

On the eve of half a century as a sovereign state, The Bahamas is one of the few countries in the region and the world where there remains a constitutional barrier for certain women to automatically transmit citizenship to their children.

A proposal to amend the Bahamas Nationality Act by the governing PLP to address this glaring inequality is necessary and welcome. Speaking to Eyewitness News this past April, Constitutional Father, former Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes explained: “That’s a good step what is being proposed now but that’s legislation, which is all right, which is good. But still, the change needs to be made in our fundamental law because some future Parliament can change that.

“The whole idea of having these things entrenched in the Constitution is that they’re not so easy to change… And I hope, despite all the talk that there would be at some point, we decide to do that.”

The march to equality on this matter has been a long road, encumbered by prejudice, political calculation, indifference and fundamentalist mindsets. It has also been a difficult journey, heartbreak and disappointment for many women, men and their children.

PROMISE

The last FNM government led by Dr Hubert Minnis promised legislative changes but sadly, failed to do so. This is yet another reminder for those who deem that they have the time to correct historic wrongs: act when you can for chance often passes us by.

In 1972, 12 days before Christmas, the Bahamas Independence Conference convened at the red Dutch brick Marlborough House in central London, which now houses the Commonwealth Secretariat.

There was disagreement between the governing PLP and the opposition FNM in terms of passing on a right of automatic citizenship to children born outside The Bahamas of a non- Bahamian husband to a Bahamian wife. The argument of the PLP was that the woman should follow the man.

This denial of full equality by the PLP was not an oversight. It was a matter of contention between the FNM, which argued for full equality on the citizenship question, and the PLP, which defended its antiquated and discriminatory position as an international norm.

During a break in the formal talks, one of the most senior PLP leaders was pressed by an FNM delegate on the matter. The flippant response was that if Bahamian women got such a right, they would then want the right to use the men’s washroom.

The unhumorous quip exemplified an entrenched sexist mindset in the party which came to power because of the women’s vote and the efforts of the suffragettes. Given its large majority, the PLP could have taken Dame Dr Doris Johnson or another woman as a delegate to the Constitutional Conference but did not.

It was a tragic irony that ten years after women’s suffrage and at the birth of a new constitution committed to equality, the party which ushered in majority rule, opposed full equality for Bahamian women.

During the 25-year reign of Sir Lynden’s PLP, full constitutional equality for women was never addressed, though it likely would have easily passed under Sir Lynden. In 2002, given a chance to correct an historic wrong, former Prime Minister Perry Christie and his party failed a test of history and justice.

Having voted for constitutional equality in the House, the self-declared progressive and liberal party, now turned regressive, reactionary and illiberal, reversed course in one of the grossest acts of expediency in Bahamian political history.

POISONED

On the grounds of so-called “process”, the PLP campaigned against the constitutional equality referendum. In doing so, the party likely poisoned the well for referendums for a generation or more.

That the argument of process was made by a contemporary PLP was an insult to the legacy of those who demanded racial justice and majority rule in the face of those gradualists and racists of yesteryear who also argued process.

When asked if the failure of the 2002 referendum hurt Bahamian women, Mr Christie, in a terribly sexist statement dismissively and insensitively said no. When the PLP called an equality referendum in 2016, it also overwhelmingly failed with scores of men and women again voting against the equality measure.

When US President Lyndon Johnson pressed for the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act after the trauma of the assassination of John F Kennedy, he did so in the face of overwhelming opposition in the American South, where the Democrats would go on to lose their electoral grip.

Many may not recall that the benchmark civil rights legislation was not about race alone. “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as race, in hiring, promoting and firing.”

With seismic determination and leadership, Johnson pressed his powerful political muscle and leaned in to bend the moral arc as much as he could at the time. Decades later, the vicious racism of America remains. But there has been progress though there is a never-ending journey ahead.

There are two moral aphorisms by Dr King which might guide the continued quest for equal rights generally and for Bahamian women. The first is: “A right delayed is a right denied.” The proposed change to the Nationality Act is right and good but is still not a constitutional right.

Dr King also lamented the “paralysis of analysis”. There are some calling for more consultation on the proposed change. This really means delay and an opportunity to oppose the legislation. We have had too much of this “consultation”, a euphemism for inaction.

But there are other voices who should be listened to on this matter, such as former Chief Justice Dame Joan Sawyer, who supports the expansion of the Nationality Act, and various religious leaders who have already expressed support for constitutional equality.

The Opposition, which should support the legislation, should also be consulted. Any improvements to the proposed change should be welcomed.

If Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis and the current PLP pass this legislation, it will go some ways to ease historic wrongs and injustice.

Still, the road ahead on women’s equality requires many other measures to further bend the moral arc, even as others continue to work mightily to bend the same arc away from justice and equality.