#BT Column – Our past, our present and beyond

I was as excited as all the other primary school children who lined the streets in order to see the queen passing. After what seemed like a very long wait, the queen did appear. I remember a brief glimpse of her face and a waving white-gloved hand. But if we didn’t catch a full view of Her Majesty, we already had a vision in our heads of what a queen was: a lady of incomparable beauty (who, of course, looked nothing like us), and who wore a crown of jewels and lived in a big castle. Fairies along with many servants attended her, and she ruled over everyone except a king.

We also understood that the queen and her visit to Barbados were to be held in great awe and reverence. We learned this, not only from what we were told, but it was all made very clear from the hushed, respectful demeanour of parents, teachers, pastors, priests and all the other adults around us.

Fast forward to these contemporary times and the interesting dichotomy that occurs for those of us who were living in that era. Now that we have a greater awareness of our colonial history, is there some mechanism by which we may go back to such events and pretend away the excitement we felt then? Can we remove those feelings somehow from what is already part of our experiential DNA?

Which brings me to another related point with regard to our history of colonization. What do we do with the joy and pleasure we felt on growing up and reading the poetry of William Wordsworth (daffodils and all!), Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and the more modern writers like T.S Eliot? Worse yet, what if we discover that some of these were racist? I should confess (with a fitting measure of trepidation, I suppose), that I am among the many lovers of the works of William Shakespeare – and taught my students to love them too!

What kind of mental and psychological manoeuvrings may now be employed in order to change, not only what we of a certain era were taught, but what we also enjoyed and appreciated? The answer, I think, is that while it is impossible to change the past, we can indeed change/adapt/adjust our perspectives on the past. Such changes may be challenging, but I believe they are necessary.

But before I attempt any suggestions as to how we may change our perceptions of history, let us look briefly at Christianity, which is one of the “casualties” mired in the debate surrounding our colonial legacy. Is it really fair to argue that Jesus Christ himself had anything to do with the evil manipulations carried out in his name by one race in order to enslave another? In any case, history proves that Christianity was preached in certain countries of Africa, for example, long before the enslaved were brought to the New World.

We may of course argue successfully that the African religions were practically wiped out or submerged under colonial rule. Indeed, the intention behind colonization was clear: cut a people off from their homeland, identity, customs, language and their religion, and you have a slave who in turn will breed generations of other slaves. Your labour force is pretty much guaranteed.

Furthermore, ensure that the enslaved individual is indoctrinated into a religion (note I said “religion”), that is engineered to reflect the images and values of their oppressors. And do so with the full sanction of the Christian Church. No wonder there is such a rejection of the church by so many who feel they have been sold a defective barrel of goods; nothing at all to do with the true Christ.

But more to the point: by what processes do we bring about meaningful change? And what is this desired change, anyhow?

In my view, those in the era as illustrated above cannot change whatever joys, pleasures and excitements were experienced back then. But armed with the historical facts and insights we now have, we must face the truths of how we were mentally, psychologically and socially conditioned to think and act in ways that kept us captive to Empire.

It must not end with this awareness, however. In fact, that is just the beginning. We must help to carve out for our country and ourselves a new way of being. A new Barbados Republic way of being. It must not be said that having come out from under the wing of the monarchy, we simply lost our way.

Let us not be disingenuous enough to say that nothing good at all came out of the colonial era. Whatever the source of the motivations, we were a more disciplined society.
We were more respectful. We had a greater sense of community. Acknowledging this takes nothing away from our realisation that the African customs and traditions passed on to us also made a significant contribution in this regard.

It is inevitable that times, customs and perceptions change. History cannot. It is fixed. It may be tampered with in the telling, but the truth of what has happened remains. The challenge is for us to face not only the facts of history, but the truth of who we are now in this present moment.

Are we happy with who we are and how we treat one another? Are the ills of race and class divisions still very much a reality of Barbadian life? Are we doing enough in the interest of economic enfranchisement for our people? Are we truly committed to providing the kind of education that allows for all our children to have a fair and equal chance with whatever skills they have? How caring are we of the senior citizens among us? How we tackle these issues will determine the kind of meaningful changes we want to see.

When all is said and done, queen or no queen, we owe it to ourselves to do the best we can in the interest of this country. Our small size and economy still, unfortunately, make us dependent on the so-called super powers. But I maintain that we in the Caribbean, the New World, are a resilient, proud and creative people. Many of us will never know
for sure our African tribal or other ethnic roots. We have had little choice but to put down our roots where we have found ourselves; roots that are similar, but also different and varied, many of them intertwined in ways that may surprise us.

We must indeed discard practices and indoctrinations of the past that have proved harmful and unprofitable to us on the whole. But let us be careful how we carry out these various processes. In seeking to completely pluck up a particular kind of root, how far do we run the risk of damaging another kind? What if we could work towards making the ground ready for all our people to grow and flourish!

Esther Phillips is a poet laureate of Barbados and long-serving educator.