Dear Editor,
Afrikans are a gravely misunderstood people and it is understandable why anyone who has not got rid of the brainwashing education would misunderstand even Afrikan enthusiasm. All we did on Nomination Day was to be different in our expression, we broke no laws of the land, nor did we disrupt the smooth administration of the proceedings. Note: some collective sense of responsibility restrained the ebullient Afrikans so they remained in the City Hall’s compound downstairs. This kind of misunderstanding is to be attributed to a vicious line of slander by a long line of European scholars, politicians, anthropologists, psychologists; theologians, etc, who have chosen deliberately to vilify the nature of the Afrikan.
I viewed the proceedings from a television in Linden. A friend of mine when she saw the display said “this is wuh I can’t tek wid dese people.” In 2001 I worked with the PNCR public relations department and was integrally involved in shaping the original set of messages used by the party in that election. Thereafter I was sidelined. When the ads were returned from Trinidad where they were produced they were edited on the recommendation of a section of the PNCR coalition. The images edited out were the jubilant Afrikan women jumping and waving their flags in slow motion and Mr Hoyte’s raised and clenched fist above his head. I objected strenuously to the suggested deletions on the grounds that the images being deleted were integral to the Afrikan expression both in freedom and in struggle, and that their removal would cause Afrikans to wander away from the party. This powerful group’s response to my arguments was that “Indians are afraid of those images,” and the party’s aim was to attract Indian votes. I eventually relented in my objections.
Afrikans are entitled to be themselves and like no one else. The xenophobia demonstrated by the European scholars, etc, referred to above, arose from a sense of unjustified fear and was rooted in a misunderstanding of the Afrikan.
The United Nations in declaring 2011 ‘The International Year for People of African Descent‘ is acknowledging the justification of our struggles to be whole.
The gathering of nations in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimin-ation, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 to September 8, 2001, declared in Article 34: “We recognize that people of African descent have for centuries been victims of racism, racial discrimination and enslavement… Recognition should therefore be given to their right to culture and their own identity; to participate freely and in equal conditions in political, social, economic and cultural life; to development in the context of their own aspirations and customs; to keep, maintain and foster their own forms of organization, their mode of life, culture, traditions and religious expressions; to maintain and use their own languages; to the protection of their traditional knowledge and their cultural and artistic heritage; to the use, enjoyment and conservation of the natural renewable resources of their habitat and to active participation in the design, implementation and development of educational systems and programmes, including those of a specific and characteristic nature; and where applicable to their ancestrally inhabited land.”
Sisters “dance ah bottom but look ah top,” but dance on; everyone else fear not.
Yours faithfully,
Jonathan Adams
