I wrote North Amerikkkan Blues basically between 1970 and 1971. By the early 1990s, all of my writings from the 1970s were out of print, and so Assad Shoman, who had scored a big hit with 13 Chapters, approached me, on behalf of Angelus Press, to see if we could do an anthology of those out-of-print writings. This was done in the form of X-Communication, published around 1994.
Between July of 1970 and January of 1971, I was tried twice by jury in the Supreme Court of British Honduras. The second trial was for housebreaking and stealing, a criminal charge without any redeeming political aspect. There was clearly a potential for absolute disaster in the second trial, as opposed to the case with the seditious conspiracy trial, which was an attempt at political persecution. In that period of my life, I was unemployed, my marriage was on the rocks, and while there were still elements of romance and drama in my life because of my youth, I was an angry and agitated young man. The power structure of Belize had targeted me for destruction.
This anger and this agitation were reflected in North Amerikkkan Blues. Disaster was closing in on me, and I wrote of my time at Dartmouth College in the United States in a desperate attempt to explain to the people of Belize, and indeed the world, how I had gone from Phi Beta Kappa in May of 1968 to jail cells just two years later.
There are things I said forty years ago in Blues which were honest, but ill-conceived. For instance, there were a couple comments I made which could be considered anti-Semitic. The tone of the book is brash, even cocksure. Still, it is less than fair to judge material written when you were 23, and a hounded political activist, from the comparatively placid perspective of four decades later.
At 23 I was lashing out at people. Again, I believe that I was wrong, for instance, to reveal the initiation rites of Dartmouth’s Zeta Psi fraternity, which I had “integrated” in the fall/winter of 1966/67. A few of the Zete brothers had issues, but none of them did me anything to deserve this kind of disrespect. The fraternity treasured the secrecy of its initiation rites.
I have to explain what the fraternity system is about. There are maybe 25 to 30 fraternity houses at a university like Dartmouth, which at the time had a student enrollment of 3,000. (Around 1977, Dartmouth went coed, after being all male from birth in 1769.) There are fraternities which are sort of elitist, in that they seek to attract campus hot shots in such activities as sports, student government leadership, and the like. Some fraternities are “straight arrow” types, you know, emphasizing decency, so to speak. Some fraternities are rowdy. Zeta Psi was a drinking fraternity, and more rowdy than decent.
But remember, the undergraduates of these universities are young men averaging between 18 and 22 years of age. Almost all are single, and college years are considered wild years. Everybody at Dartmouth is of above average intelligence, and most of their parents are wealthy.
I don’t know how it is now, but in those days the American political establishment would never send a black, foreign student to anywhere near an inner city school where he/she would be mingling with his/her own ethnicity and class. They sent you to the cold of New Hampshire or the mountains of Arkansas or Tennessee. You were forced to learn to function among a huge white majority and, if you were not by nature an Uncle Tom, you experienced different sorts of problems.
In my case, at Dartmouth I became lonely and homesick. I had come from a large and close-knit family in little Belize. At Dartmouth, I was a nobody. Plus, I was broke. So, in lieu of a social life, I began to drink to maintain my sanity.
It was cheaper to drink if you were in a fraternity, plus there was more social life in a fraternity than in the residential dormitories. You had to pay to join a fraternity, but Zeta Psi paid half of my fees, if I remember correctly.
The initiation rites took place in the winter of the school year. Sophomores “rushed”, which is to say, applied to join the fraternity in the fall of a school year, and the following term was initiation. The guys who were already “brothers” routinely tried to frighten you about “hell night,” as it was called. The process was about bonding, creating solidarity amongst the new class of brothers who were experiencing the ordeal. At the end of the day, the initiation rites do not inflict permanent injury. It’s young guys testing each other by playing games.
My decision in 1970 to describe and expose the Zete hell night was just plain egotistic, and disrespectful. The decision no doubt came from my UBAD braggadocio. But young men often behave like that – reckless. In fact, about 8 or 10 years ago, the Zeta Psi house at Dartmouth was shut down because they committed some publishing indiscretions with respect to some young ladies. (Zete has been reinstated.)
When I see our young brothers in Belize doing a lot of craziness, and some of it is horrible, I do understand how one thing leads to another once good, strong systems are not in place to move you from boyhood into manhood. Belizean society wants to impose harsh discipline upon wild young men, but every society must have its warriors. We have a dilemma here. This is planet earth, you know, not heaven. It’s real out here.
There are some people whose ideal is for Belizean boys to become fags. This is a serious aspect of Belizean society which is seldom discussed and never exposed. It’s a really hypocritical aspect of the Belizean reality. For sure in my youth I was homophobic, as it is called, but that is no longer the case. Jesus Christ, however, recommended the millstone to those who molest the children.
With respect to those who are homosexual, Belize has become a place where this is pretty much respectable behaviour. I’m saying to you today, with no apologies, there ain’t enough real man training in Belize. And you can take that how you like, and stuff it if you want. See, I had a flashback. Please, forgive.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.