Dear Editor,
I refer to my ancestral brother’s response to my letter which addressed his bold claims and accusations. I am not sure why he complains about my bringing to bear my “knowledge” when he admits that his position is guided by his “life experience”. He is welcome to undertake an analysis of the validity of one over the other. I am only interested in the representations, claims, and prescriptions he makes whether by his knowledge or experience.
And in any case, I did admit that the “knowledge” was not mine. I said it was the product of a little research, nowadays available to all. Do remember, my brother. “Read”. That is my only prescription to you in exchange for yours to embrace a whole new religion so I can see my face and skin colour in it.
Tacuma accused me of using an ocean of words. I must say he hasn’t done too badly himself. Mine was just 20% longer than his (1555 vs 1292 words) But mine, in his estimation, is an ocean. So be it. To the matter at hand. And I will make up for the excess words this time. I’m down to about half!
What he claimed had certain clear implications.
1. “Africans” who experienced centuries of slavery suffer from a “disease”
2. One symptom of this disease is the various manifestations of what he calls “self-hate”
3. This disease is apparent in diasporic Africans. (It is very clear that while the discourse began with a response to President Granger’s criticism of African Guyanese, Tacuma took the trouble to establish a dichotomy between two sets of “Africans” – those in Africa and those in the diaspora including Guyana.)
4. He has a prescription for a cure. This cure is that they must turn en masse to a certain conceptualization of God.
5. This god is required to have a black skin among certain other features which he identifies with being “African.” This has to be a phenotypical African. Otherwise his argument would not make sense.
I have no problem in agreeing with the contention that African-Guyanese would balk at the idea of black representation of God. What I take issue with is the blithe acceptance:
1. That behaviour patterns in African Guyanese must be diagnosed as self-hate but the parallel behaviour in others must have a different classification. (This is the very strategy that colonials have used that has managed to present themselves as superior and other groups as inferior. The Haitian revolution was called “Nigerismo” in Brazil: Same action as Americans fighting for independence, different classification. American Independence was based upon “freedom” – a freedom which did not include Africans. Haitian independence was based upon real freedom, from real slavery, for every man, woman, and child. But in the mind of many you know which one is superior to which? That is the issue I have a problem with. The African woman’s braid becomes acceptable when it is given the name the “Bo Derek” hairstyle. So many black people say they understand these things. And yet… Groucho Marx (or whoever) was right. Some people think and others think that they think.)
2. That the experience of diasporic blacks is in any way different from that of Europeans. (The only difference is that the experience of black slavery -in the Americas, that is – was more recent. See below)
3. That there is some kind of “Africa” where a monolithic culture existed before the coming of the white man with a single religious belief. (The “Africans” in Africa he is setting up as a model is an abstraction that no longer exists if it ever did. You can’t tell me to behave like “Africans” if “Africans” behaved differently at any given time and across time. Which Africans? When?)
For example, and in conclusion, here are excerpts from a book “Africa being an accurate description of the regions of Egypt, Barbary, Lybia, and Billedulgerid, the land of Negroes, Guinee, Ethiopia and the Abyssines : with all the adjacent islands…” by John Ogilby written in the 17th century (available on the net- yuh get dah buddy? Nah me nalidj – de net!):
“They have in Cairo, Bazars,* … There are also stately Houses, which they call Ochelles, where they sell Blackamores, wherein are divisions to keep Whites to sell; where Men will yield from twenty to sixty Pieces of Eight, and Women especially Whites, five hundred Piasters; yea, a thousand, according to their Beauty: yet no Christian may bring a Slave to Land on pain of his life.” (In Africa they were selling and enslaving people too – or do we take out Egypt from Africa for this purpose?)
“… Beyond this they pass not up the Nile,*because of the fore-mention’d precipices. It is very hot there in Summer, and the Inhabitants are Tawny of colour; not caused so much by the great heat, as by their commixture with the People of Nubia and the Moors.” (Looks like we may have problems even with the phenotype!)
“The Metropolis of the later is Cynopolis,* or Dog-town; because the Inhabitants for the most part worshipped a Dog; but at this day ‘tis call’d Monphalus.” (Could this be a great new religion?)
Yours faithfully,
F. Collins