Last week I got into the current state of mind of our young people. It’s not a pretty picture, but then, our current society doesn’t present a pretty picture, and our so-called “leaders” bear a significant share of the responsibility for where Belize is today.
When I lived in Dangriga several years ago, I remember talking to an acquaintance of mine – a shop owner who was certainly a member of the “middle class.” He knew that there was a lot wrong with a lot of things, but he was just realizing how corrupt, decadent and despicable the Garifuna leadership really was. It should have been so obvious, yet the majority of the Garifuna people just couldn’t seem to get it, even though many of them led a hand-to-mouth existence while the “elite” lived high on the hog off the lands and the proceeds of money that was intended to improve the life of their people.
He looked at me philosophically, sighed and said, “Well I guess if you don’t know, you just don’t know.”
“They don’t know” is one of the biggest understatements ever. Evan X and others have been fighting for years to include African and Mayan history in the school curriculum. They have encountered stubborn and unyielding resistance from the power structure, led ironically by the “royal Creoles”. Now that African and Mayan history has “official” blessing, where will the teachers come from? African and Mayan history is not part of the educational experience of 95% of our current teachers, so where will they get the knowledge that they need to teach the subject?
It’s even worse than that, though. Our young people know absolutely nothing about the modern black experience – zip, nada, jack shit! I showed a videotape of a documentary on James Brown recently. Some, not all, to be fair, thought that James Brown copied Michael Jackson’s moves! It didn’t occur to them that the man who just died at the age of 73 came before the man who is in his late 40’s! Fewer than ten students overall knew anything about tap dancing: that’s where James Brown and others learned their moves.
Frankly speaking, all of this scares the crap out of me. They don’t know that the Haitian revolution was the only truly successful slave revolt in the Western Hemisphere. Names such as: Toussaint L’Overture. Dessalines, Christophe, Petion may be dimly remembered by some from a high school course taken a long time ago. Those who never had the opportunity to go to secondary school or who dropped out of primary school (there are no longer any truant officers, remember? GOB says it can’t afford them) never heard of them at all. They don’t know that the USA and Europe isolated the new republic and absolutely refused to trade with it, helping to create major problems. They don’t know about the infighting that took place among the ex-slaves and the mulattoes. Remember that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
They don’t know about other slave revolts in the Caribbean, Brazil and the United States. The name Nat Turner means nothing to them. Neither does Harriet Tubman, Mary Fields or Frederick Douglass. They would probably ask if the “underground railroad” referred to the New York City subway system. They don’t know that a black man, Lewis H. Latimer, actually patented the first electric light bulb while working with the Thomas A. Edison Co. in 1886. It was Thomas Edison who improved on Mr. Latimer’s invention, not the other way around!
Belizeans love to watch Westerns, but they don’t know about a black cowboy and gunfighter by the name of Nat Love. Born a slave in 1854, he became known as “Deadwood Dick”. Black cowboys were numerous in the American West. Many of them were lawmen, bona fide U.S. Marshals. Belizean youth sing the words of Bob Marley’s song, “Buffalo Soldier”, but how many of them know that the “Buffalo Soldiers” were all-black U.S. Calvary units whose name was given to them by the Native Americans who feared and respected them? How ironic, Africans fighting Native Americans for the benefit of Europeans. No, they didn’t all look like John Wayne!
Yes, they love Bob Marley, but they don’t know about Marcus Garvey, about the United Negro Improvement Association or about how Marcus Garvey was framed by the U.S. Government (with the support of the British government) and deported back to Jamaica because he was too successful in his appeals for black people in both America and the Caribbean to take control of their own economic destiny. The name Uriah Butler means nothing to them. Do they know that the “steel pan” was a Trinidadian creation and that playing it was actually banned for a time by the colonial authorities, desperate to maintain the lie that black people had nothing that they could call their own?
They don’t know about the Africans who led the fight against colonialism – Patrice Lumumba, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta. They know nothing about traitors like Moishe Tshombe who sold their people and their souls to the devil for money and prestige; the ancestors of our corrupt politicians who are presently doing the same. Most of them probably can’t list the accomplishments of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, nor are they aware that Israel openly supported apartheid in South Africa, acting as a proxy for interests in the United States who wanted to hide their hands. This is the same Israel that has supported the murderous military dictatorships in Guatemala, the same Guatemalan military that pushes Guatemala’s “claim” to Belize.
They aren’t aware that the current U.S. Vice President, Dick Cheney, led the campaign in the 1980’s against a Congressional resolution advocating that Nelson Mandela be freed from 27 years of captivity in South Africa’s jails. This is the same Dick Cheney who advocates the “legitimacy” of torture as an acceptable technique to fight “terrorism”.
They love hip hop and listen to Tupac Shakur, although some of the younger ones are beginning to look at a man who died in 1996, 11 years ago, as ancient, but they don’t know that his first name, Tupac, was taken from Tupac Amaru, the last Inca, the one who led the resistance against the Spanish conquistadors to the end. Tupac’s last name – “Shakur,” is Arabic for “Thankful to God”. They don’t know that the bass lines and drum tracks for so many of the tunes that they listen to were lifted straight from the recordings of James Brown and Rick James, among others, and that many R&B musicians had to sue some of the hip hop guys in court just to get paid for their work. How many of them know about Public Enemy, Chuck D and Co.? Have they ever listened to “Fear of a Black Planet”?
How many of them know about Bird, or Trane, or Miles? What about Max Roach, Bud Powell, Art Blakey and Thelonius Monk? When they watched the Grammy’s yesterday, did they realize that the short, elderly black man introduced as Ornette Coleman, who presented one of the awards alongside Natalie Cole, was one of the most innovative and revolutionary jazz musicians of the last 50 years? Know what he did? In the late 50’s and early 60’s jazz was becoming harmonically more and more complex. All Ornette did was to redirect emphasis back to the melody! For this he was vilified and scorned, even by his peers! It’s taken years for most people to realize how great his contributions were! He’s fortunate. At least he is finally getting his props while he is still alive!
Who can speak knowledgably about the writings of Countee Cullen, Ralph Emerson, Langston Hughes and James Baldwin? Tell me, what was the Harlem Renaissance? Who was nicknamed “Pops” (Louis Armstrong)? Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was one of the most prolific African-American composers. Think he wasn’t aware of his culture and lineage? Then why did he write compositions and give them names like “Satin Doll”, or “Black, Tan and Beige”? Why did John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie write “Kush”? How many people know that Kush refers to the area south of Egypt that is now called the Sudan, and that some of Egypt’s greatest glory was achieved under the leadership of the black Kushites?
How many of our youth will ever be exposed to the poetry of Imamu Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, or Ted Joans? Ever hear of Maya Angelou or Gwendolyn Brooks? What about Nikki Giovanni? I guess that singer and actress Lena Horne is ancient history. So is Pearl Bailey. Do young listeners of Gospel music know about and listen to Mahalia Jackson? What about Alberta Hunter or Bessie Smith? Do they know about “Lady Day” – the incomparable Billie Holliday?
This could go on for page after page. How many Belizean youngsters really know about Samuel Haynes? Sure he wrote the poem “Land of the Gods” that was later adopted for Belize’s national anthem, but how many of them know that he was a World War I veteran who was a leader of the 1919 Belize City rebellion, a close associate of Marcus Garvey and a respected black journalist in America (back then, black journalists were not employed by white owned “mainstream” newspapers; they could write only for “Negro” newspapers) and also served as a consultant to then New York City Mayor, John V. Lindsay, on “race relations” during the 1960’s? How many young people really know the significance of the work of Antonio Soberanis in the 1930’s?
You see, that’s why the same thing keeps happening over and over again. Universal Health Services is no different from the DFC and everything else that preceded it. BTL has never obeyed a law it didn’t like, whether it was a Supreme Court order or laws against money laundering. In this case, BTL alleges that publicizing Jeffrey Prosser’s supposed intention to follow through on his Supreme Court victory is a “criminal act”. They are threatening, along with GOB, that the Police will stamp out any attempt by Belizeans to exercise their Constitutional rights and are screaming the tired old refrain of “political, political, political”.
Why are the union spokespeople being so damn polite? These guys are the real criminals and it’s time we treat them as such! You know why this stuff continues to happen? Because, young or old, THEY DON’T KNOW!
“My Ace of Spades”: by Ted Joans. “For Malcolm”, p.5, in “Part I. The Life”
MALCOLM X SPOKE TO ME and sounded you
Malcolm X said this to me & THEN TOLD you that!
Malcolm X whispered in my ears but SCREAMED on you!
Malcolm X praised me & thus condemned you
Malcolm X smiled at me & sneered at you
Malcolm X made me proud & so you got scared
Malcolm X told me to HURRY & you began to worry
Malcolm X sang to me but GROWLED AT YOU! !
Malcolm X words freed me & they frightened you
Malcolm X tol’ it lak it DAMN’ SHO’ IS! !
Malcolm X said that everybody will be FREE! !
Malcolm X told both of us the TRUTH…………
now didn’t he?
In memory of Ted Joans: born July 4th 1928, died May 16th, 2003. “Bird Lives!”