Sugar no saviour, says Prescod

Barbadians have been urged to reject the notion that the sugar industry freed this island as well as others in the region from bondage.

Special Envoy on Reparations and Economic Enfranchisement Trevor Prescod insisted on Wednesday that this false narrative was a grave insult to the struggles endured by African slaves during the height of the transatlantic slave trade.

Giving brief remarks at a lunchtime organized by Write Right PR Services lecture and delivered by Barbadian-born civil rights activist and author Terry Morris on his book Raped and Robbed: Time For 21st Century Reparations and No Justice, No Peace!, Prescod said while the sugar industry supported a lot of the infrastructural development in the region, it was also accompanied by acts of savagery.

“You know the things, the evils, and the atrocities that came along concomitantly with sugar? Some of the most felonious crimes on the face of the earth, in order to sustain that industry called sugar that led to super capitalism that led to the inferior role that all of us are expected to play in society,” Prescod argued.

“Don’t urinate on me and call it rain….

These people urinate on us, some of us even call it sugar. Any time that you hear a Pan Africanist tell you that sugar made us free, this is a Pan Africanist madman.”

Morris echoed similar sentiments and criticised black academics who were often educated at the highest level in western universities but seldom used their knowledge to uplift their countries.

“The knowledge you gain from these institutions, you couldn’t put towards the benefit of your people? “Moses came from an oppressed group, Moses ate Pharaoh’s food, Moses studied Pharaoh’s books…. Moses applied the knowledge to the advancement and liberation of his people. Why can’t you be like Moses?” he added in a biblical reference to illustrate his point.

“Harvard or Yale . . . Oxford and Cambridge, there is a reason those institutions exist… They exist to provide leadership for England [and] the United States. That is why they exist. I’m not telling anybody not to go to a higher institution; in fact, if you get a scholarship, go but understand your purpose of going,”
Morris added. (SB)