YeKengalé

I believe the Caribbean is at an inflection point. The cushions that sustained our post-independence development model, preferential trade, migration as safety valve, the assumption that the rules-based order would protect small states, have been stripped away. What replaces them is not yet determined, it could be a deeper dependency, likely a scramble for bilateral patronage from whichever great power offers the most immediate relief. Or it could be something harder and better, a Caribbean that finally builds economies its people choose rather than endure, institutions that function without external validation, and a collective voice that speaks not from weakness but from the authority of people who have decided to save themselves.

– C. Justin Robinson,

Pro Vice-Chancellor and Campus Principal of The University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus, Antigua and Barbuda

I am in Montego Bay preparing for an upcoming conference and contemplating the above quote from Justin Robinson, taken from his recent collection of essays entitled: No one is coming to save us. It is one of the more lucid and frank challenges to Caribbean leadership and Caribbean people (I prefer to think of us as a ‘fellowship’ rather than a ‘followership’ even though the latter does seem to be the appropriate corollary to ‘leadership’, ‘fellowship’ tends to emphasize the democratic ideal that government and people are one i.e. that one represents the other ) I have come across and I highly recommend reading to every single active and literate Caribbean citizen.

Although the SOS (Save our souls!) signal is generally directed to outsiders as the only percieved available help when a sinking ship faces imminent peril and all insiders are crippled from effective response, Robinson’s SOS (Save our selves!) is a direct challenge to all riders and dependents on Caribbean Statesman’ship’, in keeping with the apostle Peter’s Acts 2:40 admonition [“Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”] to decide to take personal responsibility for one’s own salvation and to do those things necessary to procure it.

Such a challenge is wasted on people whose vision of reality orients them to an almost perfect denial, obscurance or diminuition of residential power (internal authority) and almost blind worship of presidential power (external oversight). Our lived experience for hundreds of years deeply convinced us that total respect belonged to the one with the ability to destroy us with impunity without consequence and that the bright ideas from upstarts with pretentions of dignity inevitably led to setbacks for all. I’m convinced that even without Thistlewood’s diaries, the memories of Darby’s dose still linger subconsciously somewhere in the genetic code of every Afro-Caribbean. We look around and identify the ‘Massa’ (slavemaster) of our generation and the dance steps we know so well from centuries of rehearsal automatically kick in. Preachers can preach ‘The kingdom is within you’ till blue in the face. We hear it but our filters immediately revert to the colonial context we have to treat with as a matter of fact and daily survival and as Jesus’ modern day disciples, we provoke the same question of marvel from him when unable to demonstrate the kingdom in power as in Matthew 17:17. [O faithless and perverse generation … how long shall I suffer you?]

It is this notion of power (and its definition) Robinson (like Orlando Patterson in Slavery and Social Death, and Freedom In the Making of Western Culture) tackles head-on in the opening chapter of his essays called “The Architecture of Power” which I mean to use as a springboard to repeat some assertions made in past deliberations. It is well established and perfectly understandable (in a sense it is almost inconceivable to think it could be otherwise) that we in the Caribbean especially, but also generally speaking, universally, we ultimately identify power as suggested above – the ability to dominate without restraint, which explains our commonly used terms – ‘Super-powers’, the ‘Powers-that-be’ etc. In none of these terms are we included in the definition. We define power outside of ourselves, and with strong historical justifications. I recall a recent conversation bemoaning the strong public reluctance to embrace the very term (much less the policies for) Jamaica as a cultural superstate. We are the first to react negatively to any assertion of our own dominance outside perhaps of the sports and artistic context. The whip and the dose would immediately kick us back into our reality even before Massa Washington makes a pronouncement. (Then there are those others who seem to dwell in some surrealistic dream as overcompensation for a dour reality that present themselves as kings but without thrones, dressed luxuriously in pompous vestments, but lacking substance.)

Robinson’s essays are explosive. They deserve much more public attention and debate. As Robinson asserts in his essays, this generation of Caribbean residents having grown up in a bubble we call a zone of peace have never truly allowed ourselves to behold the behaviors of Imperialist states. We assumed the protectionism of our Mafia Don, Uncle Sam. Wars were fought only on the other side of the world. It didn’t matter for what reasons. Didn’t concern us. We thought ourselves family, if even distant relatives, and above the fray. We never witnessed the peril of World wars. We chose to ignore evidence of Uncle’s true occupation (all puns intended).

Well perilous times are here now and the probabilities exist that they will get much worse. With other church/state partnerships from east (Russian Orthodox) to west (White Evangelicalism) in total compromise and perversion, bedded with Babylon, whether the church in the Caribbean truly distinguishes itself from a crooked and perverse generation and lights the way to human flourishing remains to be seen.

Groundbreakingly significant opportunities unfold in the upcoming week for decisions to be taken at all levels: Government, private sector, church, community, to more align Jamaica and the Caribbean with other global powers of similiar purpose, perspective and prospect in AFREG 5 to be held at the IberoStar hotel in Montego Bay. AU leadership, Billionaire tycoons, Church leadership will attend. Of course if mindsets are in the familiar quagmire, it will pass by as another pony show and talkshop rather than a watershed moment. Could this really be the time that ‘the kingdom is restored to Israel’? or could this be the beginning of times of refreshing, healing and repair? Given our consequential past – probably unlikely; given our possible futures, it’s worth our damned best try.