YeKengalé

It is noteworthy that Garvey first addresses the issue of education, specifically what one does with it. What kind of education has the effect of alienating one from one’s own people? He speaks of the possible use of education to ‘slight, oppress or discourage’ one’s people. The insinuation is that there is a Phd that separates one from the common struggle of one’s people and another that prepares one to participate in the common struggle of one’s people. There is a masters degree that prepares one to participate in another society’s priorities and mission and disconnects them from their own. There is a Bachelor’s program which is the first step to immigration and separation from the problems of their own community but prepares them to contribute to a foreign economy without first securing allegiance to the project of nation building in the place that gave them succour.  

This is the age-old challenge to Caribbean educators aware of the issue even before the independence movements started in the 60’s and every successive educational administration in all our territorities since then has initiated reforms intended to address this very concern, reciting the goals of indigenous education as mantra, and indeed this 60 year project, better conceptualized as a transformational journey has certainly taken us through many changes as evinced by the many new and revised texts, curricula and pedagogical approaches introduced every decade.

That the clarion call to address this issue seems to increase in alarm over time rather than abate is not a curse upon past efforts, which have been both strenuous and measurably effective, but an indication of the distance not yet covered and that the road ahead is being continually lengthened by the subtle and subversive efforts of those whose colonial tentacles are still very active in our institutions at every level, from whom our umbilical cord has still not yet been ultimately severed for all the superficial declarations of independence as fait accompli.

It is therefore more than timely to draw attention to Garvey’s keenest insight, still clearly not yet fully apprehended by our civic and educational leaders however earnest and exhausted, if not by now jaded, confused or overwhelmed by the enormity of the task before them which can appear impossible within the context of the climate they operate within.

Yes, Garvey was an icon of the self-educated, which in light of present challenges and opportunities, should be a thriving example and source of inspiration for all our young. If his spirit still seems disconnected from the current generational mainstream, it has, I suggest, to do directly with something Garvey had already learned by the time he was six years of age, which many adults and thought leaders today seem extremely slow to figure out themselves; This lesson fueled his impassioned vision invoked in almost every public speech. A truth he always invoked with a number. Only foolhardy leadership wont respect the power of this number, which has always been the greatest weapon of our resistance all through slavery and colonialism, and will cause us to continue to prevail today.

That number for Garvey was 400 million. For us, that number has metastasized fourfold to 1.6 billion, making us the largest population on the planet, i.e if we recognize who we are – and that is the objective of all eurocentric ideation and intent, that that should never happen, because of the certain knowledge that the day that knowledge of self is solidified, they lose, whose success was purchased at our expense and has always been unsustainable without our tactit cooperation by ignorance.

Garvey could speak confidently about his people, because he knew who they were … and who they weren’t … You really arent qualified for freedom if you cant distinguish between friend and foe. You know who you are, you know where and with whom you belong.

That number has a name, and that name has a nation (and I know some are so servile as to think that because I use a language I have to observe its rules, but I am not bound by the boundaries others have drawn up when they cant even maintain those borders themselves! I mean ‘nation’ in a broader sense) Africa for the Africans at home and abroad. And now for the elephant in the room. Everyone comes out with their intellectual drivel about racism and divisiveness who, if their lives depended on it, cant recognize that Garvey and Pan Africanism is the most unifying force possible within the Caribbean space and no other movement is likely to succceed in providing a unifying and integrating ethos throughout the region by the sheer inescapable logic of mathematics. Numbers.

In every continent on earth peoples share space and cooperate across race, religion and political ideology. Democracy is supposed to be the greatest idea humanity has yet conceived in governance, so why would we want to continue in the Caribbean to build a civilization where power is vested in the few and leveraged against the many? Force of habit? Even in those exceptionally rare spaces in the Caribbean where Blacks do not constitute the clear majority, the reality of the region as a whole, as is apparent to the entire world, as has become apparent to The African Union, only we seem clueless, is that we are as African a people as any on the continent. This obviously does not in any way diminish the value of the minorities who live among us and share our nations and culture. How so? We have never been a supremacist people.

In fact, only in recognition of this truth do we uniquely qualify to distinguish ourselves as a people, by demonstrating that out of many we truly can become one people. And here is our special destiny revealed. We believe we can succeed where the Americans failed miserably, where the Canadians, for all their pursuit, are still far from apprehending.

Every time I use that phrase (Out of many one) I have to expose the ruse of those who deceitfully use it treacherously to subvert Mr Garvey’s life’s work and goal. Nobody in Jamaica is going to the Jews, the Chinese, the Indians, and asking them to surrender their ancestral identity to be Jamaican. Nobody needs to place a hyphenated ‘descendant’ after their name to qualify their identity. They know who they are. They are as Chinese or Jewish or Indian as they are Jamaican and they can chat the coarsest patois to prove it. They have never been confused about who they are. So to all of you so brilliant and bright with your heads in the clouds conceptualizing a radically raceless world, hope you are happy dreaming but there will be no surrender of Africa for the Africans. None …. ever.

Take your confounded mind and take a look at reality, there is no place on earth where either race miscegenation or language differentiation has altered the basic people groupings and their ancestral continental domiciles. Race is erasable (come with your PhDs and your skin-deep philosophies and sleight-of-mouth theologies, I’m ready for all the educated idiots whoever they may be and soon also will every babe and suckling weaned from a Caribbean woman regardless of racial heritage).

Yes, race leaves its mark on phenotype, but is so much more – it is nothing as trivial as mere pigmentation or any other phyisical feature. It essentially is about spirit – about human story: human voice and vision stamping itself upon soil and cell, writing into space and time, geography and genealogy unique signatures and stories that echo throughout generations and across territories like a steady stream renegotiating its banks and boundaries with the changing seasons.

Here are the global demographic realities some deluded and misguided ideologues, who think themselves wiser than Mr Garvey, want ridiculously to wish away either with religion, or political administration, or social engineering. (Good luck with that.) All figures include their diasporas:

Africans – 1.6 billion

Indians – 1.5 billion

Chinese – 1.46 billion

European – 1.1 billion

It would take a particularly foolhardy ideologue to consider that these figures have no bearing at all on such things like foreign policy, markets and economic strategies, cultural identity and political organization. It may be true that political and religious movements can seriously cut across (or compound upon) natural allegiances and alliances. But for those ridiculous enough to think that the love of humanity requires denial of race reality rather than dealing with race reality, (and those of us who want to deal in love learn its language, Justice) listen again to Mr Garvey: “Any leadership that teaches you to depend upon another race is a leadership that will enslave you.” Africans at home and abroad take heed.

Bot tel dem agyen Piita. Kaa dem haad a hierin bad.