#BTColumn – Financial literacy and healthy diets

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by Marsha Hinds

The question of enabling self-repair in the Black race is an overarching one that the world has started to grapple with this year in renewed and urgent ways. I think that we have started small but useful projects in Barbados as well, although we must find creative ways to ensure that the gains are more deep-seated and everlasting than prior attempts.

I generally support the initiative of the Ministry of Small Business to launch financial literacy classes across the island. There are many Barbadians who have lost the knack of thrift and these opportunities will hopefully provide some solid, culture sensitive ways that individuals can realign their financial lives.

There are, however, many more Black people whose financial liberation lies just beyond their own fixing. What has to shortly follow the financial literacy initiative to ensure that Black people can fully benefit from a change in their positioning in the overall financial landscape of Barbados is a complete rationalisation of archaic and disadvantageous practices in the sector.

Take, for example, the way in which titles are currently released in Barbados. When a person wants to secure a mortgage in Barbados, they have to provide an unencumbered title to the bank. At the end of the mortgage, the bank is allowed to return the title to the owner with the bank’s hold still affixed to the title.

The homeowner then has to pay both his legal fees and the bank’s legal fees to have the property released. In addition to the legal fees, significant stamp duties are also incurred in the release of the property. In other jurisdictions this process has been simplified and is the sole responsibility of the bank and not the homeowner. If the bank is not willing to address these issues, then financial literacy by itself will not enable Black self repair.

Our eating habits are a part of the significant change needed to bring Black people further beyond our history of enslavement. Much of what we do in relation to food consumption patterns is steeped in our plantation experience.

African enslaved people were fed scraps and other things deemed not fit for consumption by other people in the plantation society.

While those meals were necessary to sustain 12 and 13 hour days filled with manual labour and physical tasks, we have become a lot more sedentary. At the same time, those meals have become embedded with cultural significance.

The question has to be how we balance teaching new consumption patterns and the preservation of our culture that is locked into food and celebrations of food.

When we think of self repair in relation to our diet, I don’t think we can separate healthier eating and food cultural significance.

From that point of view alone, no sugar November is poorly timed. Many of our delicacies which are associated with our national celebration have some element of sugar in their making. Cookies, tamarind balls, sugar and nut cakes – these treats are once yearly indulgences that many look forward to in November.

While I support every effort to adjust the diet of Black Barbadians to be one that is more moderate, fruit and vegetable complete with less added sugar and salt, November is not the best poster month for that. We can’t turn our backs on heritage after all, and one of the biggest rules of self-repair is to know when to be gentle with self. November is a month of gentleness!

Marsha Hinds is the President of the National Organisation of Women.