The Tribune

This column is a reprint from 2018, with some additions

TWO stories here at home showcase the vicious and bitter legacy of racism, which many seek to ignore or sideline with comments like, “that was such a long time ago” and “why can’t we move on.”

A dear friend was sitting outside at a local eatery with an acquaintance. Also sitting outside were three white women, who appeared to be expats. One of the women had a dog with her.

A truck pulled up outside the eatery and two black Bahamian men got out of the vehicle. The dog barked ferociously. The acquaintance of the friend asked the owner of the dog why it was barking so loudly.

The owner replied that the dog did not like men. But her friend quickly added that the truth was that the dog did not like black men. The three women then laughed to the shock of this writer’s friend and her acquaintance.

The men also heard the racist comment, which the women who laughed obviously thought they could say openly and then laugh about.

At another store, this columnist listened as two of the female employees, in their 20s, talked about a mutual friend. One of the employees noted that their friend was pretty and has a nice body.

The only “problem”, she noted was that the mutual friend was too dark.

Neither these young black Bahamian women nor the white expats saw the need to publicly bleach their statements. While there is no moral equivalence between the incidents, imagine what is said in private.

The colonial masters and perpetrators of racism did not solely intend to victimise. They also intended for the victims of their racism to internalise their supposed inferiority.

The legacy of racism remains insidious. A number of those who would adamantly declare that they are not racist offer views and commentary drenched in racist mindsets and the often seemingly incurable disease of white privilege.

The controversy surrounding the Windrush Generation in the United Kingdom is but another example of the bitter and vicious legacy of slavery and racism perpetuated by the colonial powers.

The Windrush generation emigrated from the English-speaking Caribbean to Great Britain from 1948 to 1971. Most arrived as British citizens, a fact critical to what subsequently happened to many of the emigres.

They were named after SS Empire Windrush, the ship that took the first group from the West Indies to Britain in 1948.

Eventually over 500,000 left for employment and a new life in what many viewed as their mother country because of the impact of British colonialism on their Caribbean colonies over many generations.

The British colonies in the Caribbean were deeply immersed in British culture. Students in these countries knew more British history than Caribbean and world history. Very little to no African history was taught.

More was known about the Anglo-Saxons than the Yoruba or Ashante. West Indian children knew numerous martial and other British songs, including fight songs for British schools.

During World War II, Britain was happy to have West Indian soldiers join in the fight to defeat Germany and its allies. The Bahamas sent a number of men, and a significant amount of material to help the war effort.

Other British colonies in the West Indies sent even more men, including fighter pilots who braved the skies and fought valiantly and ferociously in the service of Great Britain.

West Indians served as ground forces and on the seas. Many succumbed on numerous fronts in the war. The brave men of the Caribbean were lionised for their bravery and service.

At the end of the war, during which Britain lost many men, there was an acute labour shortage, especially in England. The shortage afforded an opportunity for British citizens from the Caribbean to work in the United Kingdom.

These West Indies were thoroughly familiar with British history, culture and customs. They were English-speaking and Christian.

But they were also black, and brought with them their own Caribbean heritage and historical and other accents.

The same Britain that welcomed West Indians during the Second World War now want them out of the cities and towns of the United Kingdom. The West Indians were good enough to fight for Britain. But they were not good enough to live in Britain.

The racist backlash against the men and women from the West Indies was nasty and ferocious. Again, the vast majority of the Windrush generation were British citizens.

For decades, these men and women faced all manner of racism and discrimination, including in housing and in the job market.

Bahamians of a certain generation may remember Conservative MP Enoch Powell, who famously delivered his “Rivers of Blood” speech, which criticised mass immigration to the UK, especially from the New Commonwealth. He opposed anti-discrimination legislation being proposed at the time.

To his credit, then Conservative Party Leader Edward Heath removed Powell as the Shadow Defence Minister. The speech was widely criticised, though polls showed that an overwhelming number of the British public agreed with Powell.

The “River of Blood” speech, delivered on 20 April 1968, was on what Powell deemed would be the consequences of what he viewed as unchecked immigration. A portion of the speech is an allusion to Virgil the Roman poet.

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.

He continued: “Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the 20th century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.”

Though there has been considerable racial progress in Britain in the ensuing years, racism remains a horrible legacy in Britain and elsewhere.

In 2010, records which would have proven the citizenship of many of the Windrush generation were purposely destroyed despite warnings from public offices that the destruction would cause considerable harm.

The harm included the detention and deportation of some who could not prove their British citizenship. Some who left the country were denied re-entry.

Some were unable to access services in the National Health Service and services to which they were entitled as British citizens. Some people reportedly died because they could not access health care benefits.

As the Home Secretary, former Prime Minister Theresa May helped to perpetuate a “hostile environment” toward immigrants, and individuals from the Windrush generation.

Great Britain, like the United States of America, is inherently racist, evidenced in the killings and brutalisation of black men by some police and shooters.

Late last month, a 21-year-old gunman in Jacksonville, Florida, “fired eleven rounds at one woman sitting in her car in Jacksonville, before entering a shop and shooting another two people”.

Sheriff TK Waters noted: “Finely put: this shooting was racially motivated and he hated black people. He knew what he was doing. He was 100% lucid. He knew what he was doing and again, it’s disappointing that anyone would go to these lengths to hurt someone else.”

Today. a majority of the British public is outraged at the treatment of the Windrush generation. Labour MP David Lammy, who is Opposition Leader Sir Keir Starmer’s Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, and whose family hails from Guyana, some years ago expressed in the Commons his moral outrage at what happened to many in the Windrush generation.

After one of his speeches, he was inundated on social media with vile comments which reveal the bile and depth of racism still prevalent in Britain.

One writer wrote to Lammy: “For God’s sake man stop your vile and obscene speeches knocking this country down. Be grateful that we have taken you in as a black man and given you a life here, as we have done for all those black people who came to live here.

“Be grateful man for the country that gave you a life, and stop knocking it. Otherwise, go back to your country of your forbears and let’s be rid of you.”

The writer continued: “If you cannot say good about us, then go back, it is as simple as that.

“Your recent speeches have been vile and so unforgiving to a country that has given all that you are, but believe me, we can very well do without you.”

“Be grateful or go back to wherever you originally came from. You are like a little child and do not realise how lucky you have been and how well treated, by the country you so easily knock.”

Many, including some here at home, seek to wish away and turn a blind eye to the evils of slavery and the history of racism against black people, including the diabolically false equivalence of the Atlantic slave trade with other slave trades in history.

The traumatised citizens of Jacksonville, especially the families of those brutally murdered, and those of the Windrush generation and their families, know that such racism and its denial are tragically, perniciously and unrelentingly still with us.