80th Anniversary of the 1937 Barbados Riots

I wrote this piece on my individuality1977 blog ten years ago.  It was about the 70th anniversary of the 1937 riots.  I thought I would reproduce it again with today being the 80th anniversary.  Sadly, in the ten years since, the state of affairs on the island have worsened and I shudder when I think about Barbados' future.

"70th Anniversary of the 1937 Barbados Riots- What Future for the Island?

July 26th, 1937- today is 70 years since the Barbados riots. Compared to rebellions, riots and revolutions that have played out in various parts of the world throughout history, these riots were negligible in terms of size and scale. They however had a considerable impact on the modern history of Barbados and helped to shape the island as we know it today.

Barbados in 1937 was a country sharply divided along the lines of race, with a small white elite holding economic and political power and a majority black population largely employed in the agricultural sector and suffering from poverty, lack of opportunity, unemployment, dismal labour conditions and general social and economic malaise. The racial structure that permeated the social, economic and political landscape rigidly reinforced these conditions. The economy was dominated by sugar and land ownership policies and patterns that promoted peasant agriculture and made it impossible to address poverty. The same open economy also made it difficult to redress poverty through wages and employment-related benefits. Barbados was a country still dominated by the plantation a hundred years after the abolition of slavery.

In any situation where people are oppressed, courageous men and women speak out and agitate for change and it was no different in Barbados. Men like Clennel Wickham and Charles Duncan O’neal were followed by a Trinidadian of Barbadian parentage, Clement Payne, who stood up for the working people of Barbados and advocated labour reform and the formation of trade unions.

Payne was able to inspire the common man and such was his influence that the Barbadian authorities deported him to Trinidad on July 26th, 1937. Crowds gathered at the news of his deportation and the anger and frustration that had built up erupted into riots that lasted for four days. The immediate result of the riots was 14 dead, 47 wounded, 500 arrests and millions of dollars worth of damage. The long-term consequences were far reaching.

The British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by Lord Moyne was appointed in 1938 to investigate disturbances and unrest in the British West Indies and it recommended in its 1939 report that Britain invest in development and provision of social services.

The years following the riots would witness significant social and political reform in Barbados as black Barbadians emerged to rule a country where they were a majority. Payne, who died in 1941, did not live to see his dreams realised but his bravery in rebelling against the status quo was not in vain as generations of Bajans have benefited from his actions. Payne along with O’Neal are National Heroes of Barbados, an honour many also believe should be accorded to Clennel Wickham.

70 years to the day the riots began, Barbados is at a crossroads, with a widening gap between the rich and poor, extremely high cost of living, dissatisfaction among the population over widespread sale of land to foreigners and the inability of normal Barbadians to afford land and a lack of opportunity for the youth. I often wonder what Barbados will look like in 10-15 years time and I think I have a clear picture. It saddens me. I cannot imagine what it will look like in 70 years!"

Articles about Climate Change and the Environment

These are some interesting articles I read recently about climate change, big oil and oppression of earth defenders:

Hopes of Mild Climate Change Dashed by New Research
“Planet could heat up far more than hoped as new work shows temperature rises measured over recent decades don’t fully reflect global warming already in the pipeline.”

With at Least 200 Killed, 2016 Was Deadliest Year Ever for Earth Defenders
"New report finds 'activists are being murdered, attacked, and criminalized by the very people who are supposed to protect them'"

Jerry Brown's Climate Plan Just Another 'Handout to Big Oil,' Green Groups Say
“Gov. Brown's legislation "doesn't do enough to protect vulnerable communities or to achieve California's ambitious targets for reducing carbon pollution," argued 350.org's Masada Disenhouse”

What Possessed Barbados to Withhold Support for a UN Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons?

Today, July 7th, a majority of the world’s nations voted at the United Nations to approve a treaty banning nuclear weapons.  Officially called the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, it aims for the ultimate destruction of all nuclear weapons and the prohibition forever of their use.  The treaty will open for signature in September and once fifty countries have signed on, it will enter into force.  The negotiations on the treaty had been taking place for many months, culminating this week in New York.  The nine nuclear armed countries and some of their allies had boycotted the talks arguing that nuclear weapons were a necessary deterrent required by international security concerns.  

Disarmament issues were one of the areas under my portfolio when I represented Barbados at the United Nations and I still have former colleagues involved in disarmament matters.  Some of them posted on social media today expressing their happiness at the successful conclusion of the negotiations and there were even some photos taken of the voting board.  The vote had been passed with 122 countries voting in favour, 1 against and 1 abstention.  Imagine my shock when I saw nothing next to the name of Barbados.  Barbados had chosen not to vote!  Yes Barbados had chosen not to join most of the world’s countries in an international effort to rid humanity of a weapon of mass destruction capable of destroying countless people in one strike. 

For the life of me, I cannot fathom why Barbados chose not to support the treaty.  First, as a small island developing nation we are more vulnerable than most countries to the threats facing the world, whether environmental, economic or security.  Any use of a nuclear weapon in our region would devastate us and our neighbours with our small land masses and dependence on the sea around us.  Nuclear weapons are an existential threat and as a country we have always opposed them.  Why would we suddenly change our stance? Second, this recognition of the severity of the threat posed by nuclear weapons led to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean establishing the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (Treaty of Tlatelolco) in the 1960s.  The Treaty resulted in the establishment of the world’s first nuclear weapons free zone (NWFZ).  Barbados is a party to that Treaty and I fail to grasp how we can adopt an antagonistic position on a universal treaty with similar disarmament intent. Barbados, Dominica and Nicaragua were the only three countries from the 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries party to the Treaty of Tlatelolco to not vote.  I am unaware why Dominica and Nicaragua did not vote but what interests me most is ascertaining why Barbados opted to act like it did.

Five years ago in 2012, Barbados also chose to vote in a contrary manner to most of the world.  On that occasion it was the UN General Assembly vote on Palestinian statehood, a course of action that lacked in principle and betrayed all the comments successive Barbadian administrations have made about self-determination.  While I remain fundamentally opposed to how Barbados voted then and the justification offered by the Prime Minister for its vote was nonsensical, I understood why it was done.  The Zionist pressure on his government was not something he or his Foreign Minister could resist, especially when a prominent Christian Zionist holds much sway with their party.  Political and economic expediency trumps principle every time when it comes to politicians.  On this instance though, I am at a loss to comprehend why Barbados would have a problem with an international treaty banning nuclear weapons. 

Developing Countries taking the Lead on Climate Change

This is a very good article written by Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International, about the climate change movement.  She points out that in the face of a flawed global governance reflected in the bare minimum nature of the Paris Accord, developing countries which suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change that they did not cause are doing the most to combat it. 

Timothy Morton and the Anthropocene

This Guardian Long Read article makes for a compelling read.  Its about the philosopher Timothy Morton who has articulated some interesting and controversial ideas about nature and the Anthropocene.  I think the writer does a good job of presenting Morton’s arguments objectively while also outlining the very valid criticism that has been levelled at him. 

Half a Century of Further Occupation

On June 5th, 1967, Israel launched an attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan, decimating their armies and air defences in a few hours. At the end of the so-called Six Day War, Israel had succeeded in capturing even more Arab land- the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, along with the Sinai and the Golan Heights- and had basically doubled the amount of territory it controlled. Sold initially by its officials, Western backers and media as a pre-emptive strike against an increasingly threatening Egypt and Arab world, later pronouncements and admissions by Israeli government officials along with declassified documents and information have discredited this claim and revealed that the attack was an aggressive move aimed at gaining territory.

The War led to the displacement of 400 000 Palestinians, about half of whom were already refugees from the 1948 creation of the Zionist state. These people and their descendants, numbering in the millions continue to live as refugees in various parts of the Arab world today. Forty years later, the people who remained in the West Bank and Gaza continue to live under a brutal and oppressive military occupation (and the settlement regime that accompanies it); an occupation which endures contrary to international law and despite various Security Council and General Assembly Resolutions.

The Six Day War is often viewed as a watershed in the history of the region, but in reality, the real watershed occurred in 1948 when the right to self-determination was denied to one people, the indigenous Palestinians, and their land was taken to create a state for another group.

Reflections on the Racial Complexities Confronting America

Last month a video emerged and went viral of an African-American man, Tyrone Mazyck, being abused and beaten up in a horrendous fashion by Arab store owners in North Charleston, South Carolina.  The video prompted a variety of responses, from defence of the store owners and derision of the victim to xenophobic and Islamaphobic attacks on Arabs and immigrants.  I do believe that what was missing in the aftermath was an honest examination of the different angles to this incident. My intention here therefore, is to distil a few pertinent points and add some much needed perspective.  

What the store owners did to Mr. Mazyck was wrong. There can be no excuse for this brutality and humiliation.  It has been claimed that Mr. Mazyck has a troubled past and had been caught stealing.  Even if this is true, the correct way to proceed would have been to call the police, not the bone chilling treatment involving a gun and a sword that was meted out.  One does not have to venture far to locate where this behaviour stems from and I have no hesitation in saying it unequivocally- racism.  Many Arab and South Asian immigrants harbour deep rooted racist beliefs towards persons of African descent.   Some of them deny it and those that are also Muslim spew the expected clichés when confronted that “there is no racism in Islam” and reference Bilal, the companion of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).  The evidence however, is overwhelming.  It can range from violence, use of words like “Abeed”, “Kala”, “Cheedee” and “Nurdo”, the spouting of rhetoric centred on black pathology, and both subtle and open discrimination to obsession with light skin and systematic aspirations to whiteness. 

I am of Gujarati origin and I grew up in a small, insular and rabidly racist Gujarati community in Barbados where the views held about black Barbadians are akin to those of white racist Southerners from the USA. I have been to India, North Africa and the Middle East.  I have interacted with Arabs and South Asians there and in other parts of the world- people born in those countries and people a few generations removed. I am speaking from intimate and vast personal experience when I talk about the racism of many Arabs and South Asians.

We know all too well the story of Arab and South Asian corner store owners in working class black neighbourhoods selling alcohol, cigarettes and lottery tickets. These storeowners, despite whatever they may claim, are not there for altruistic reasons. They are there for one reason- profit. That this profit is based on exploitation and on contributing to the socio-economic decay of these communities is of no concern to them.  What makes it even more insidious is that many of these storeowners are Muslim, peddling the very evils that Islam prohibits.  If they were genuinely interested in helping the community and in displaying how a Muslim should behave, their businesses would be socially inspired, contributing to the upliftment of these communities.  Instead, they demonstrate a callous disregard for the black communities on whose backs they enrich themselves, a disregard rooted in their racism.  It is this contempt and racism that most likely allowed the storeowners to abuse Mr. Mazyck so freely, contrary to every single statement of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) about how a Muslim must treat another soul.

The reaction of right-minded people was outrage, and rightfully so.  Unfortunately, the press conference of black leaders degenerated into a farce where these leaders in speaking out against the actions of the store owners, decided to spout xenophobic, Islamaphobic rhetoric.  It was quite ironic to hear black leaders talking about “this is America”, “foreigner” and “go back to your country” and appealing to the same very ideals and institutions that oppress their communities in a city like Charleston. A city where Walter Scott was murdered in cold blood by a policeman who was then incredulously found not guilty, a city where Dylan Roof murdered nine black churchgoers, a city where the rates for incarceration, school drop outs and poverty of black people are alarmingly high, a city where black people are routinely racially profiled and stopped by police, a city where gentrification is fast pushing black people from their neighbourhoods, a city where all of this is part and parcel of a deeply entrenched structural and institutional racism.  In resorting to anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant vitriol, they align themselves with the same very right-wing forces who hate black people.  It is these types of “leaders” that Malcolm X denounced with some very apt descriptions and whose failures to truly advocate for the people they pretend to speak for led to a new generation of younger leaders exemplified by Black Lives Matter.

Which brings me to the right-wing.  The most ridiculous part of this entire episode was witnessing Trump supporters online using the incident as justification for Trump’s Muslim ban.  These are racist white folk who espouse black pathology and who in their droves find themselves online justifying the murder of black people by police.  The irony of them pointing to the beating by Arab storeowners of a black man as a deplorable act that shows why Trump is right to want to ban Muslims! I’m still trying to process this and I don’t think I ever will manage to. 

This incident highlights how multi-layered the problems facing this country are.  On the one hand, it is quite depressing to see such polarisation and hate and often-time I throw my hands in the air and wonder what will become of all of us.  On the other, I feel encouraged when I see the voices of reason, of protest, of solidarity.  Voices that cross boundaries and form alliances to fight against hatred.  My sister, Dr. Haajima Degia, is a sociologist and she often talks about people confronting their discomforts in order for society to progress as a whole.  She makes a case for people to deconstruct the way they view the world, step outside of themselves and look into society as outsiders. The result- the revealing of uncomfortable truths but also a means of understanding why people do what they do and hopefully a society of people working together for the common good. There are signs that just as racists feel emboldened by recent political victories, others are willing to become allies and fight back. We just need to find a way to convince some of the right wingers to confront their uncomfortable truths.