Murder and Mayhem

08, Mar 1999
'What is it, one may ask, about black life that seems to so irk every other section of humankind? What is it that makes black life seem so readily dispensable?'

'Despite 400 years of slavery and continued institutionalised anti-black racism, there is no international Black Defence League. That says something!'

The crime John William King committed should not have shocked us. King tied a black American to a truck and dragged him at high speed till his head was torn away.

There is abroad in this world a certain traditional, blatant disregard and contempt for black existence. What is it, one may ask, about black life that seems to so irk every other section of humankind? What is it that makes black life seem so readily dispensable? And even if it is not through definite deeds like that done by John William King, it is the vituperative bile from every other that is reeked willy-nilly on black humanity.

Before, in epochs gone by, black people could be and were secretly butchered all over. In the southern states of America, for example, black men could have been lynched and left hanging from trees with their penises chopped off and stuck into their mouths.

Today, there can no longer be any such secret butchery, given the realisation of the global village in which information is electronically packaged and disseminated in the blink of an eye. However, though the secrecy is over, the butchery continues.

Two weeks before John William King's atrocious crime, another black man, Garnett Paul Johnson, of Grayson County, USA, was invited out for drinks by some white acquaintances and afterwards they doused him with gas, tied him to a tree and burnt him alive, "to see how he will light."

The lone white female present at the scene said she vomited at the sight of Garnett sitting upright, glowing in the dark. She said, "He was moaning like he was in pain." Garnett's charred corpse was beheaded with an axe.

Winnie Mandela talks about whites in South Africa shooting black children as they play in the fields. One girl was shot to death as she rode on her brother's back, happily laughing and singing.

The Australian Aborigine who came to TT in 1997 talked about the genocide against her people and described how white Australians on occasion buried black babies up to their necks in the ground and kicked their heads off.

Yet there are so many goodly people who criticise militant blacks for claiming that our kind have been made to endure perpetual and permanent victimhood, moreso psychological victimhood.

Because, mind you, even if the physical brutality is not perpetrated against us personally, we are all diminished, like the poet Donne, by the very fact that these hate crimes happen at all. The question still is: why?

The Jewish people, having experienced the Holocaust, have said never again must it happen, and they have organised internationally Jewish Defence Leagues that are geared to defend every single Jewish life anywhere in this known world.

Today, they are very much in the thick of things, attacking, defending and counter-attacking, focus-fixed on their immediate enemies. All and sundry will think twice now before committing any anti-Jewish action.

Despite 400 years of slavery and continued institutionalised anti-black racism, there is no international Black Defence League. That says something! We, too, have come to accept the cheapness of black existence. We are worth nothing to ourselves. That is the psychological violence which constitutes the legacy of slavery.

It is most damaging to the psyche of a people to have lost the sense of self-preservation of one's kind and, integral to this, the defence of space, physical and metaphysical, that is an instinctive human requirement.

Sir Vidia Naipaul, in his dismissal of most West Indian literature, contends that the concerns therein are largely about race and race relations.

That is a poor reading of progressive West Indian literature which, in our view, is concerned with restoring health and strength to the damaged psyche of a rudderless people.

Something in Vidia's cultural make-up clouds his vision to a deeper West Indian reality so obvious in the literature.

How could he not understand that such psychological restoration is the black man's burden on a worldwide basis? And, what is the effect of all this on black youth who come to accept that there is little value to their life?

The violence that they sense is readily perpetrated against their kind throughout the world, they seem only too willing, in like manner, to readily give back.

What then about self-esteem that we all deem is absolutely essential to the educational process? What responses should we then expect from our black youth in this modern world?

And do not for one moment think that TT is exempt from such senseless atrocities.

In South Trinidad, a school principal driving home knocks down a black youth. The villagers insist that he take the child to the hospital.

He assures them that he will comply, so the child is placed in the car and the principal drives off.

A mile up the road, he stops and dumps the injured child, who is not of his kind, on a garbage heap.

When the child's parents arrived home, they immediately go to all the hospitals in search of their son, but to no avail.

The police were informed, the car number was obtained from the villagers and the principal located at his home. He confessed, and took the police to the garbage heap.

The child survived, but today he is a vegetable. The principal was "slapped on his wrist" by the magistrate who heard the case.

The point to note is that unlike the other cases mentioned where the black people could be said to be victims of social degenerates or elements of arguably a lunatic fringe, one will be hard-pressed to so describe a local school principal.

How could someone with such social standing be so casually dismissive of black life?

We have got to be extremely careful how we proceed today in TT, especially as all kinds of people are presently declaring "war" on other people over all kinds of issues. Enough said.