Love in the Time of Slavery... (or 'Blackman, why yuh so?')

It is my observation that the Media, instead of championing the condition of the poor and the dispossessed in society, have come down on the side of the monied class and have morphed into something like news telling for the wealthy and a bourgoise fireside chat. They seem to have forgotten that media was initially the champion of the poor and the downtrodden against the property owners and the bourgeoise, those struggling to eek out a life under the boot of a capitalist system that had no heart and little need of one. 

That they were supposed to speak out against the abuse, not facilitate and encourage it.

The smirky 'house negro' tone in most of our 'established' columnists' fare needles me at my very core and reminds of Morpheous's description in the Matruix: "Those people are not our enemy, but because they fight to the death to defend the system, they have become our enemy."

Reading some of their offerings one tends to forget that they are writing against themselves, the silliness of this will be debated by others at a more opportune time.

The instability in our society cannot be managed by aggressive policing no more than flooding can be managed by old talk and Ministers posing in rubber boots.

We have come too far along this dirty road, and the people at the very bottom realize that the system is now broken to the point where, not only can they take a chance for themselves, they feel like they have no other choice.

A banker colleague (read dickhead I know) explained to me a couple of years ago his take on the importance of negroes to the economy where conspicuous consumption and bottom level labor is concerned, and I had to struggle to contain my revulsion even as my innards fought to regurgitate my lunch all over his pretty patent leather shoes.

When one realizes that an entire race has been kept in a state of deliberate subservience as worker/consumer drones (remember the schoolyard joke? 'I don't mind niggers, I think every home should have one'), kept for the most part functionally illiterate so that they can be marshaled and handled by their masters as workers and consumers, one begins to understand what is really afoot. When one understands that crime is THE direct offspring of this deliberate policy of subjugation, one begins to get a better view of the situation and a greater understanding of where we are, why we are here, and where we are likely to go.

Home ownership has been deliberately moved out of the grasp of the masses by Government policies and unethical and immoral banking regulations that are designed to keep black people subjugated and in something like slavery, with the whipman replaced by the bill collector. 

When over seventy per cent of all property is owned by less than one per cent of the people know that you are sowing the wind. What you reap in this case may be far worse than any whirlwind if the tea leaves are correct.

Back to my point (or somewhere close to it). It is an unfortunate truth that most of the poor in this country are principally black, and it is an even harder lash of the whip when educated black fools who have been blessed by being educated and who now understand why their Afro-Trinidadian brethren make some of the stupid choices and decisions they make on an hourly basis, turn around and kick their black brothers lower instead of helping their condition to rise.

To quote Cro Cro "Black man iz not so..."

There are other institutions besides the banks and the media that fail black and oppressed people.

The People's National Movement is an organization that needs to be metaphorically burnt to the ground for the evil it has perpetrated on the very people it pretends to represent. Black leaders work hard to get up high within that Party to distance themselves from their blackness and are the first at cocktail parties to begin the conversation; "yuh know why black people so stupid...?"

Is it that they believe that by their 'success' they have somehow washed off the curse of their own blackness and are now 'spectable folk? 

Why is this so?

Show me one PNM policy or initiative that didn't further the enslavement of blacks when they were in power and I will retract this statement.

Please be prepared to debate the long view and the big picture when you are coming.

My brother who is far more educated than I am never tires of describing this malady in the context of the 'house negro' from slavery days, the one whose lot is just as sordid as his brothers, is as much property as they are, but who decides to cozy up to 'master' for a chance to sleep indoors.

For this privilege, not only will he rat his brother out, he will actively conspire against him on the side with the slave owners and, given the chance, will cut his brother's throat on his Master's bidding.

Is that in any way you? 

Where is the media that embraces and espouses the challenge the people face to 'make a living' day in and day out, that fight the system on behalf of the people?

Where?

Most of the current crop of media people in this country are a disgrace to the profession and are much worse than the house negroes described above.

These fools actually count themselves as part of the ruling class because they have been allowed indoors.

I have challenged them and continue to, and in exchange I am threatened and exiled.

So be it.

What I intend to do is to continue to fight the system and anything that comes down on the wrong side of the people, and to the Media Association of Trinidad & Tobago, in these instants, right now that is you.

Check your agenda, see how shackled you are by your own policies and, if you are happy with your position where the poor, the oppressed and their condition is concerned,  then 'to ass with me' as they say.

To my black and high brown brothers and sisters I humbly suggest that instead of pissing down on YOUR brothers and sisters from your new heights that you check your history. The plight of the black condition is the curse hanging over your own children's heads, to be unleashed when massah has no more use of you. 

Use your 'new' thinking ability to change the lot of your fellow man, and stop fighting the overseer for the whip.

If I were a black man I would be marching for the upliftment of the Aro-Trinidadian condition and black rights every day in this town.

To quote and paraphrase a black brother of mine in the struggle for a better world - "Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another Inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned -there will be war.

Until there no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation, until the colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes -there will be war.

Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race -there will be war.

Until that day the dream of lasting peace will remain in but a fleeting illusion to be pursued but never attained - there will be war.

And until that day, Trinidad & Tobago will not know peace.

I would love to meet and shake the hand of the man who came up with the idea that the best way to keep niggers in their place is to put other niggers to keep them there. 

To the rank and file knife and fork east indians who disavow their heritage and think they are white or in any way different from their kin and clan, check yourself, because to the monied class and to those who holds the 'paper' to your slavery, don't smile, you are niggers too.

Carry on.