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World Down Syndrome Day

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From The Publisher

PublisherFrom The Publisher
Next week Tuesday, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the President of the United States of America. His election to office on the night of November 4, 2008, was one of the most emotional moments in the lifetimes of those black generations which had lived through the 1960’s, and indeed blacks everywhere and of all generations. But those of us from the Sixties especially, could never have believed during that time that such a night as that of November 4, 2008, could or would ever be.
 
There are Belizeans who have studied in both the United States and the Caribbean, and they are better Belizeans for it. The first such Belizean was probably Dr. Leroy Taegar, who studied at Marquette in Milwaukee and at the University of Chicago before doing medicine in Jamaica and Trinidad. Dr. Taegar’s insights are superb. He has said to me that I would have done better in life if I had spent time in the Caribbean. He is probably right.
 
Still, I had to play the hand which I was dealt. It so happened that when I was 17 years old, I saw an opportunity to study in the United States, and I fought for that chance. Thousands of our post-Hattie generation were flocking to America, and there is where I ended up in late August of 1965 – Brooklyn, New York, and then Hanover, New Hampshire.
 
Early in 1966, Guy Mhone from Malawi and I attended a couple meetings of the Dartmouth Afro-American Society, which was led by Forrester “Woody” Lee. This was the exciting time when Stokely Carmichael had coined the “black power” slogan down in the hell hole for black people that was Mississippi, and it was a paradigm shift from the submissive non-violence being preached by Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
But I think that both Mhone, a Malawian, and myself, from British Honduras, reached the conclusion that American black students didn’t have the time to pay attention to our Third World situation. In the fall of 1966, I joined a white fraternity, and Mhone hung out at Cutter Hall – which was the cosmopolitan dormitory where foreign students and international ideas circulated.
 
In the winter of 1967, Woody Lee led the Afro-American Society (Mhone and Hyde absent) in a radical demonstration against the racist Alabama Governor, George Wallace, who was visiting Dartmouth to speak as part of his campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. That demonstration polarized the Dartmouth campus, and was the event which forced me out of my “foreign diplomat” position in Hanover. Dartmouth’s American black students had demanded respect, and my solidarity, in a big time way.
 
American black people are, in the main, Americans before they are blacks. This is a pragmatic position. American blacks are the financial and technological elite of the black world, but they have not stepped up as leaders of the black world. Here in the Caribbean, American blacks have accepted American foreign policy’s victimization of Castro’s Cuba and Bishop’s Grenada. They know about Cuba, and they don’t care. They didn’t know about Maurice Bishop, and they didn’t care. And when it comes to Guatemala and Belize, you would be talking Greek to most American blacks if you mentioned these two countries. 
 
Now, here’s the thing. American blacks don’t need Belize. They function in the greatest economy on earth. It is we in Belize, just 600 miles from America with a racist threat hanging over our heads from a giant neighbour, who need American blacks. It is really amazing to me that governments in Belize have not made contact with the United States Congressional Black Caucus and have not educated them about Belize’s situation. The Black Caucus is strong, and they will be stronger under Obama.
 
Barack Obama was not elected to help or save American blacks. He was elected to help and save the United States of America, which has a 10 or 12 percent black population. Culturally, however, American blacks are much more than 10 or 12 percent of America. And, compared to the blacks in the rest of the world, they are, to repeat, our financial and technological elite. Theoretically, if the American Black Caucus decided to say to Washington, listen, Guatemala will not touch or punk Belize, then Belize would be in a much better situation. I said, theoretically.
 
The election of Barack Obama will not, in and of itself, improve our Belizean situation with respect to the Guatemalan military/oligarchy. It is the Congressional Black Caucus which is important.
 
Belize has reached where we have because the Caribbean was solid for us, and because in 1977 Panama fractured the Central American monopoly support which Guatemala had been enjoying. Blacks in Belize are now clearly a minority, but there is a definite racist element to this Guatemalan claim. Belize is near enough to the United States where we should be able to pressure the Congressional Black Caucus to give us special consideration.
 
You may argue that they haven’t been able to do anything about Haiti. True, but Haiti had already been devastated before the Congressional Black Caucus began taking shape two or three decades ago.
 
Emotionally, I am excited about Barack Obama’s inauguration. Geopolitically, however, I am grappling with the challenge of how Belize can find a way to get American black allies. It wouldn’t be easy. I explained about Mhone’s and my experiences. American blacks are not Caribbean-lovers, because they have seen the U.S. white power structure use Caribbean immigrants to take away jobs from them. In Belize, we couldn’t just holler black, black, and expect Americans of color to react on instinct. The world remains a white supremacist world because we black people do not know how to work together across the border lines. Think about it.
 
You know the deal. Power to the people.

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