British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent call on the Caribbean to move on from slavery is a most insensitive statement from a leader of a country which should know better. The Prime Minister was on a visit to Jamaica which was seen as a golden opportunity for the former colonial master to renew its commitment to repairing the damage caused by centuries of exploitation of the labour and the soul of our region. His statement came as a shock to many who have come to see Britain as a softer, gentler imperial country.
What makes Mr. Cameron’s statement even more galling was the fact that he was a guest of Jamaica—a case of sticking it to your host in her own home. And as if to make matters worse, the PM offered to help Jamaica build a prison for Jamaican prisoners being sent back to the island.
The Prime Minister was clearly out of order. In case he may have forgotten, it was the wealth garnered from slavery in our Caribbean that is responsible for Britain’s prosperity today. Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” and Eric Williams’ “Capitalism and Slavery” should be required reading for the PM whose family we are reliably informed befitted directly from the slave trade and slavery. This denial of the history of what American scholar Joe Feagin calls “Unjust Enrichment” and “Unjust Impoverishment” forms an integral part of the White Racial Frame which blinds many from seeing the case for reparations for slavery. We cannot move on to a more humane world order by denying four centuries of history; a history that has shaped the current inequities that we claim to want conquer.
In telling us to forget our history and move on is really telling us to deny our vey being as a Caribbean civilization. What we know today as the Caribbean was largely shaped by the slave experience and the other consequent experiences—the experiences of denial, survival and overcoming. We cannot move on from that and Mr. Cameron and others must not bully us into a denial of our narrative of being. We have the right and the agency to define who we are on our own terms. That is what independence ultimately means for us.
It is the height of disrespect in all its manifestations for the premier representative of the former colonial master to tell the children of the colonized to forget the whips and dogs and dehumanization and violence, all of which we still confront in particular and general ways. No, Mr. Cameron that is too much to swallow. In the name of decency, please take it back.
To add insult to injury, Mr. Cameron offers Jamaica money to build a prison. Is that what they really think of us–still prisoners? We overcame the prison of slavery, indentureship and colonialism and we are surviving the prison of Structural Adjustment. We want reparations in the form of education and economic development; not prisons. We want reparations just as the slave masters were given reparations in 1834. For us reparations is not request—it is an entitlement that is rooted in our persistent quest to repair the historical damage done to us.
We in the Caribbean desire a working partnership with Britain—we always have. Here in Guyana we acknowledge the solidarity and aid of successive British governments. But we also want to be respected as a free and equal people. In the interest of mutual respect PM Cameron must correct his disrespect.