Peter Espeut JUST BECAUSE slavery ended 170 years ago last Monday does not mean that its influence has ended. Just because we ceased to be a colony 42 years ago this Friday does not mean that the colonial mentality is dead in Jamaica. But not everyone agrees.
There are those who discount the influence of the "then" on the "now". "Events so long ago in the past cannot have any significant influence on the present", they might say; "it's what we do NOW that matters, and it is lazy people and malcontents and people with chips on their shoulders that keep blaming slavery for Jamaica's present problems. We can't remove slavery from our past; are you saying that therefore we are doomed to underdevelopment forever?" they might ask.
The premise, however, is false: the past does have a profound impact on the present, and we have to turn to sociology the science of society for an explanation; economics can't deal with it. One of the fundamental social processes (called socialisation) is the reproduction and replication of society by the transmission of norms and values from one generation to the next; in addition, social institutions have a remarkable persistence through time, since every generation is socialised into them. Newton's First Law of Motion might do a cross-over into social theory to say: "The culture and social institutions of a society will remain intact unless a social force acts upon them for change."
SOCIAL CHANGE
Stability is normal; societies have a remarkable capacity to remain intact; it is social change that is remarkable and rare! How was it that a few thousand whites could keep hundreds of thousands of Africans and their descendants in slavery for so long? Did whites cook their own food daily? Were they not vulnerable to ambush while riding their plantations by day, or enjoying its pleasures by night? Why were there so few slave rebellions? Because for its very survival the Jamaican plantation system had to convince black people that they were no-good, powerless and inferior to the whites.
Emancipation may have brought freedom of a kind, but post-emancipation Jamaican society was still plantation society, and there were other ways to teach self-denigration. Why is it that 170 years after Knibb and Buxton and Macaulay and Wilberforce so many Jamaicans still speak of "bad" hair, and cream it and texturize it and braid it to mimic white people's hair? Why is it that 172 years after Sam Sharpe and 270 years after Nanny and Cudjoe, so many Jamaicans call others "dark", and bleach their skin in a vain attempt to become white; and seek the "brownings" as bed partners? The lessons of denigration learned in slavery are still being taught today. Why?
What happened 170 years ago was a legal change: human beings who were the legal property of others, ceased to be so.
LOYAL SUBJECTS
The British government by an Act of Parliament took away the property of their loyal subjects in places like Jamaica, and then properly compensated them. Jamaican slaveowners received some eight million pounds sterling (£8,000,000) to make up for the loss of their property. The slaves who had been owned (like cattle) received no compensation for the loss of their freedom and dignity and homeland.
The intent was not to achieve social change (if so, the slaves would have received compensation and would have been prepared for a new and equal status in society); they were given no land, no money, no training. The intention was that they would have continued to work on the plantations for very low wages, living in the same houses and cultivating the same provision grounds (but paying rent for both).
They could not sit as jurors, stand for election, or even vote; they had little say in how society was run. Their former masters remained the plantocracy: the magistrates, the prosecution and the juries, the members of the House of Assembly and the Vestries. The whole weight of the legal and political system weighed heavily upon the backs of the former slaves. Emancipation had begun, but the process still had a far way to go. Such was the hardship, that within thirty years of full freedom there was a major rebellion in St. Thomas of peasants who openly challenged the unfair system.
The House of Assembly saw the handwriting on the wall and abolished itself, opening the way for the reforms of Governor Sir John Peter Grant. But black people remained second class citizens in their own country (third class, really, after the coloured children of the elite, who sided with the white side of their family). It took the emergence of a Marcus Garvey 50 years later, to ask questions about race which are still uncomfortable in some quarters today.
As a project, Emancipation is still incomplete. And 42 years after political independence from Britain, no matter their colour, our judges are still bewigged, and our mayors are still "Your Worship", and the colonial education system designed to keep our people illiterate is still working in the interest of the heirs of our former slavemasters. As a project, Independence is still incomplete. We need to celebrate Emancipation and Independence, but this week we also need to reflect on what we still have to do to achieve full freedom and respect indeed, love for ourselves and one another in this potentially great nation. We are not there yet.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
