by Arley Gill
25 March 2023, is commemorated as “The International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The 2023 theme is: “Fighting slavery’s legacy of racism through transformative education.”
Today, we remember the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery and the transatlantic slave trade were brutal and inhumane systems built on, and guided by, an unscientific and socially constructed belief in Black inferiority; simply put, European enslavers believed that Africans were not fully human and therefore suited for enslavement.
Sadly, out of this false and misguided notion emerged four hundred years of plunder, gross indignities and unimaginable suffering for Africans and their descendants. Through slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, this false belief in Black inferiority produced a festering boil on the soul of humanity — anti-Black racism.
Today, we have an opportunity to expose the many lies that slavery created about Africa and Africans and to challenge those who continue to coddle slavery’s legacy of racism. We must uproot this legacy by teaching and speaking the truth about slavery and by emptying our minds of the untruths that we have been told and taught in our homes, schools and churches about who we are as African people.
The truth is that slavery and the transatlantic slave trade stole and destroyed lives and futures on the African continent. They also destroyed cultures and found ways to control and colonise the minds of those they enslaved in the Diaspora. Enslavers understood well the importance and strategic value of ripping Africans of their history, culture and spiritual practices.
However, despite concerted efforts to strip enslaved Africans of their humanity, and their way of life, the spirit and culture of Africa survived — through resilience and sheer determination; survived—and is surviving — the brutally repressive efforts by those deeply invested in erasing African culture and spirituality, as a way to maintain and control their inhumane and brutal systems of oppression and subjugation. By doing so, they ensured that the lingering legacy of slavery’s racism remained alive and well.
As a result, we continue to witness the rise of global white supremacy and anti-Black racism — evidenced by the senseless murder of George Floyd in the United States and recent treatment of African students and people of African descent in Ukraine.
But there is hope. The exploding global movement for reparative justice is an opportunity for each of us to shed light on ways the legacy of slavery’s racism continues to corrupt and distort how we see ourselves as people of African descent, the ways in which we view the African continent; and, our relationship to African culture and spirituality.
For us, descendants of enslaved African people, we must commit ourselves to unlearn the lies we are being taught about who we are as African-descended people and connect the dots on how beliefs about Africa and blackness — false beliefs that undergirded slavery and the transatlantic slave trade — are playing out in our society today, and do the necessary work that will lead us to liberation and true emancipation.
So, as we remember the 13 million victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade — let us use today to remember the truth of who we are as people of African descent. We must also demand a transformative education curriculum in our schools and other institutions of learning that liberates us from mental slavery and its lingering legacy of racism — a legacy that is rooted in fear, hate and hostility toward Africa and people of African descent.
As Marcus Mosiah Garvey reminded us, “a people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture, is like a tree without a root.” It is only then — when we’ve developed an accurate knowledge of past history, origin, and culture — that our education will be considered truly transformative.
Attorney Arley Gill is Chairman of the Grenada National Reparations Committee.
The writer of this comment regrets that your newspaper refuses to publish his views either in the form of full-length articles or comments. The commenter recognizes the paper’s right to process all articles and comments and to refuse to publish those that might be classified as “spam”. Even so, while there would be cases in which such a practice might be justifiable, the self-serving application of such a policy could only be regarded as needless censorship. Meanwhile, there are certain subjects, like my comment on Ras Dakarai’s piece titled “OUR REPARATIONS”, that this commenter finds almost impossible to resist paying attention to and which your paper refused to publish. The present article squarely falls into that category. To the best of my belief, Mr. Arley Gill was a history major and teacher of history before becoming a lawyer. Mr. Gill should, therefore, be fully knowledgeable of the importance of HISTORIOGRAPHY or the study of historical writing in the overall scheme of attempting to chronicle the past. It is because of their awareness of historiography that mostly male historians called the subject “HIS STORY” and why in this age of feminism, women are insisting that their accounts of the past should be typified as “HERSTORY”. It is from such a perspective that white historians spoke of Africa as the “dark continent”, of Africans as “savages”, of our forefathers as “slaves” rather than as “enslaved AFRICANS”, of the dehumanization of Africans as “slavery” rather than as “the ENSLAVEMENT industry”, of the criminals who benefitted from the forced labor of BLACK people as “slave masters” rather than as “enslavers”, etc., etc. Historiography demands that BLACK writers should be more deliberative in their choice of words in their attempt to chronicle the AFRICAN past. It is encouraging to find that Mr. Gill’s glossary includes the transformative word “enslavers” rather than the Eurocentric nomenclature “slave masters”. But it is, indeed, troubling to notice Mr. Gill’s inability to himself “uproot [slavery’s legacy of racism] by teaching and speaking the truth about slavery and emptying our minds of the untruths that we have been told and taught in our homes, schools, and churches about who we are as African People.” Words both denote and connote meaning. And in most instances, such a distinction is not merely a matter of semantics or splitting hairs. As the reputed Jewish rabbi commonly called Jesus observes: “AS A MAN THINKETH SO IS HE.” And because words are the tools with which we think, we must always be mindful of the words that are stored in our toolkit. For example, the use of words like “descendants”, “descent”, “descended” must be considered highly suspect and should be replaced by other more positively sounding words like “progeny” and “heir.” “Slave trade” was, in fact, “human trafficking”. “FREEDOM” must always be regarded as an intrinsic attribute of the African people. And so, the use of the word “emancipation” which implies being given one’s liberty by another should never be encouraged. And on, and on….
How about a National Day of Rememberance about an incident that was far more important than slavery: the complete anhilation of the ORIGINAL inhabitants of Grenada – who were exterminated by the Whites and whose labds the Blacks took or were “given”? How about THAT!!!!
Yet our African young men and women are not allowed to wear their natural African hair style.
A white tourist gets Corn row and the locals thinks it’s cool.
I’m a white woman with “corn rows”. My Scottish granny called them “ tight braids”.
Hair is hair, it does not define a person. The person within is what counts. No time for hatred, finger pointing or sassy mouthing. Love each other, no matter skin color, braids or baldness. My Polish relations were enslaved during World War II. Slavery still happens, worldwide, to this day. Is it wrong? YES! Do I blame you? NO! Don’t point at me, the whites woman with corn rows. Doesn’t that make you one of them?
Excuse me, not allowed to wear their “natural African hair style” ?? Africa is a huge country with many different tribes, all of whom would have their own STYLE of hair. What is NATURAL ? Show YOUR natural hair style. No one is prevented from wearing the style of hair they PREFER which is why there are so many hairstylists and barbers. Your claim is nonsense and FALSE.