By Akola Thompson

TWO days ago, we celebrated Guyana’s emancipation from slavery. It has been 178 years since Guyana became emancipated from slavery, and the idea that someone was allowed to own grandmothers, fathers, mothers and their children and do with them as they pleased still leaves a bitter taste in our mouths; because, whether we are proud of it or not, we are descendants of those who were once enslaved.So, every year, we look back on the year 1838 and celebrate our foreparents’ liberation from chains and the cruelties associated with chains, and we believe that we ‘have made it.’

Somewhere along the line, our idea of freedom changed; we have come to believe that true freedom lies not in freedom of thought, but in freedom from physical bondage. In this belief, we have forgotten that liberty often is not given, but has to be actively pursued and taken, and the first step in doing that is to realise that we need to be liberated from the oppressive shackles which still exist within our minds and continue to hold down our people.

The problem with mental slavery largely remains that not many put too much stock into it. Because how can someone be a slave if that person is not chained, not owned, not beaten and sold? Who’s to say that not liking the colour of your skin, the shape of your nose, texture of your hair and history of your people is something you learnt on your own, and did not have forced into you?

For some reason, many see this knowledge or reminder of our mind’s entrapment as trying to undermine the significance of Emancipation Day and the struggles of our ancestors, when in actuality what we are trying to do is honour our ancestors and acknowledge their right to be wholly, rather than partially, free.

Another battle which looms large is not undermining the physical liberation we would have acquired, but rather trying to stimulate true liberation of mind; as we are still blind to factors which continue to influence our decisions and threaten to cheapen the freedom of mind, body and soul that was fought for and gained.

There remain so many things which were set up not to educate, but to continue the lack of enlightenment of black people and begin a culture of brainwashing and colonial mentality that continues to undermine African history, culture, opinions, and identity in a shameless attempt at getting us to embrace Western thoughts, visions and appearances. We have become a people who see peace, order and normality in a world filled with injustice and suppression, because somewhere along the line we became comfortable with this negativity about self and the inferiority which comes with such sentiments and continues to skew Black Nationalist discourse.

The sad thing about most of this is that even those who somehow manage to escape and learn of the disastrous after-effects colonialism had and continues to have on us do not see the need to educate, but rather continue to further oppress for their own gain, validating this very same mentality with cleverly veiled politics and policies which have no basis in the logic of their own reality.

Largely, while we can’t blame those who let their minds remain enslaved (as we live in a world where we are taught — through not only the media and history, but our elders as well — that our blackness is not good enough), there comes a time when we must all seek to question the caricatured representations of ourselves in the media, and question the education and religions which teach us to hate not only ourselves, but others.

We must, at some point, remove ourselves from those who seek to become the definers and define us. We must reach a point where our first instinct is not to mimic, but to create and embrace. Only then will we have been truly emancipated.