I have been promising to take a deeper look at the role of religion in preparing the axiological scaffolding that supports a civilization and in particular, the role that Colombian and Cromwellian Christianity played in shaping The Caribbean and the Americas of today, which demanded the surrender and capitulation of many indigenous and imported identities (not just African, though eventually that would become the most obvious one) for subordination and annexation to the imperialist expansion of Western European civilization. However, I recognize that exposing the Out-of -many-one ruse touches many a raw nerve, and it is important that I proceed with surgical precision lest the operation be aborted due to the reactionary reflex triggered from the unanesthetized pain released as the subcutaneous psychological regions are disturbed to reach the site of the problem, and overwhelms the capacity for sanguine reflection.
If you want a crowd to gather here in the Caribbean, just say Jesus! A crowd appears. If you want a crowd to scatter, just say Racism! So let me be gentle with our raw racist nerves before I deal with the religious question.
This eagerness to dispense with the reality of racial identity derives precisely from the psycholgical pain associated with the forced fusion of conflicting interests and identities through absolutely brutal processes which required the mollification of religious and ideological propoganda designed to serve as an analgesic.
As pointed out before but which is absolutely essential to understand, the mother of all racisms is the Black and White variety. The wider color spectrum comes later: The Red and yellow, Black and white equally ‘loved’ by Sunday School Jesus all have serious problems with each other, but it is the Black and white responsible for the most damage, and truth be told, notwithstanding the need to rhyme with ‘sight’, it is the white that bears the greater burden of reparation being responsible for the entire process of miscegenation having initiated it, ideologically impelled by the imperial impulse of Christian Dominionism.
Let me be clear, the urge to move beyond race (if that were possible) stems from the need to move away from the divisity of racism. But it is not race that divided us, it was imperialism. (And I am well aware of the claims that Black and white were invented in the Americas. Rather than calling them bogus, which would seem facetious, considering all the intellectual capital expended in their exposition, let me just say that whatever merit they may seem to have, the overall argument is, for want of a better word, skin-deep.)
When two nations are in conflict, does that imply we get rid of the concept of nationhood, or that we deal with the actual reasons behind the international conflict? Family is as much a social construct as ‘race’. Should we do away with family because of a divorce? Or try this one. The way to achieve functional ecumenism is to abolish denominations. No one wishes to address the raw issues of race, more specifically of whiteness and blackness, so the cop out is to ‘deconstruct’ both, wipe the dirt under the carpet and whistle about post racial societies on the cusp of human civilizational development. A ruse. A cop out. A very damnable deceit, because it leaves a spate of unresolved, unreconciled, unmanageable, glaring absurdities undigested.
My protestations about this ruse are by far not an attack on the unifying ethos itself. Out of many one is the nascent rallying cry of the African Jamaican soul. Despite the obviously bogus charges, point out the divisity in Garvey or in Bob. Who would frame either as post-Black or post-African is under the most damnable delusion. Umoja is at the centre of all African philosophy. Ubuntu. Maat. However expressed. It is the cooption of such a sacred value for so blatantly nefarious a purpose, i.e. the defense of unrepentant Western Imperialism that is the abomination.
Tell me exactly what part of your identity feels threatened if I say I am Black and I’m proud? Or even I’m Indian and I’m proud, or Chinese or Jewish? The Chinese, Jew and Indian get to remain who they are, only Africans are encumbered with the appellation ‘descendant’, distancing self from ancestral culture. Why pick on us? Why dont you talk to the Jews and get them to be ‘descendants’ too? Wai iz mii aluon yu waa shuo op at di paati niekid?
What part of you feels threatened by my assertion of my ancestral identity? Truth be told, only one answer emerges from the crowd and it is white guilt masquerading under any number of intellectual ruses and psychological distractions. But since when are we responsible for the bloodguiltiness of others? I am yet to hear one good argument from any of the advocates of ‘Post Racialism’ exonerating themselves from this most serious charge (that they are merely apologists for Western Imperialism whether knowingly or otherwise coopted.) I am still listening. Any takers?
YeKengalé 