The DISH

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Volume 9 Issue 23…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…June 9, 2006

Venue for an Artist

Nanny

Lorna Goodison

My womb was sealed

with molten wax of killer bees

for nothing should enter

nothing should leave the state of perpetual siege

the condition of the warrior.

From then my whole body would quicken

at the birth of everyone of my people's children.

I was schooled in the green-giving ways

of the roots and vines

made accomplice to the healing acts

of Chainey root, fever grass & vervain.

My breasts flattened

settled unmoving against my chest

my movements ran equal

to the rhythms of the forest.

I could sense and sift

the footfall of men from the animals

and smell danger death's odour in the wind's shift.

When my eyes rendered light from the dark

my battle song opened into a solitaire's moan

I became most knowing and forever alone.

And when my training was over

they circled my waist with pumpkin seeds

and dried okra, a traveler's jigida

and sold me to the traders

all my weapons with in me.

I was sent, tell that to history.

When your sorrow obscures the skies

other women like me will rise.

About Me: Born in Jamaica, Lorna Goodison, attended the University of Iowa and was a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College. Author of a number of books, including Tamarind Season, I am Becoming my Mother and Heartease, her work has been translated into many languages, widely published and anthologized. In 1997, Goodison won the Daily News Prize. Learn more about her at www.poetryinternational.org.

Hood Notes

Nanny of the First Maroon War

Slaves that fled into the mountains after the British captured Jamaica (1655) were called Maroons, which comes from the Spanish word 'cimmarron' meaning "wild" or "untamed." In folklore, legends and documentation, a famous Maroon rebel leader, Granny Nanny is the only female listed among Jamaica's national heroes. The small wiry woman was instrumental in winning against the British during the First Maroon War from 1720 to 1739.

Described as a fearless Asante warrior, Nanny possessed a fierce fighting spirit; she used guerilla warfare to win battle after battle against the British. A skilled tactician, she led Maroons on pre-dawn raids, ambushed columns of British troops and generally made Maroons formidable foes, "thorns and pricks" in the side of the British.

It is reported that an angry Nanny disagreed with the peace treaty Maroons struck with the British in principle, because she knew it meant another form of subjugation. That agreement included some land and money paid to Maroons for the return of captured slaves, and it obligated Maroons to fight for the British against the French or Spanish.

Immortalized in songs and legends, Granny Nanny became a symbol of unity and strength for her people. Like the heroes of the pre-Independence era, she met her untimely demise at the instigation of the English circa 1734. Yet, her spirit remains as a symbol of that indomitable desire to never yield to captivity. (Sources: www.bccns.com/history_maroons.html and www.jamaicaway.com/Heroes/NannyPage.html)

Bit of History

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

When Christopher Columbus reached Jamaica May 4, 1494, he found the Arawaks. Forced into hard labor, they died in large numbers. Bartholome de las Casas, "the Apostle of the Indians," appealed to Spanish authorities to replace them with Africans, whom he said were better suited for strenuous labor. What he failed to understand was that slavery is an evil no people should endure. Soon men and women from West Africa were wrenched from their homeland and brought to Jamaica.

Organized systems for trading in humans developed throughout most regions of the world. The worst of these was the transatlantic slave trade, which was designed to supply Spanish and Portuguese, who were colonizing the Americas, with cheap labor. Intent on exploiting the resources of the new world, Europeans felt Africans, whom they believed had the greatest work capacity, were ideal. Thus, during the sixteenth century the transatlantic slave trade became a very lucrative business.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert drafted the first Code Noir (1685) to control slavery. "We declare slaves movable property." This code made slavery legal. The text of Colbert's Code Noir served as a model for Louisiana's Black Codes (1725). Later in 1784, Spain revised it as the Cdigo Negro Carolino. It was also promulgated in the American colonies in 1789.

Over the next century, the English joined the race for American colonies, followed by Denmark, France and the Netherlands. The English crown gave the Royal African Company a monopoly over the African slave routes (1712). The powerful Royal Navy countered competition for slave shipping lanes, which became known as "the Middle Passage."

Brazil, like other parts of the Americas, the Caribbean and southern United States depended on the slave trade to fuel their slave-based economies of farming, mining and agriculture. The slave trade made Europeans rich. At its peak, the slave trade took about 90,000 slaves per year from Guinea alone.

The disgrace for whites who profited from the slave trade is the total inhumanity, degradation and dehumanization of slaves. While they reduced humans to commodities and labor units, millions died crossing the Middle Passage. Providing minimum amounts of food, clothing and shelter to slaves that survived the Middle Passage, they demanded maximum work effort at the end of the slave route. Whites in general sucked the life out of millions of human beings for profits.

Haiti: Pearl of the Caribbean

The Haitian Revolution and abolition of slavery shaped the political, social and cultural environment of the Caribbean region. On the eve of the American Revolution, Saint-Domingue, a French colony on the island of Hispaniola, generated more revenue than all thirteen North American colonies combined. The world's largest coffee producer, it provided 75% of France's sugar needs. Such productivity was equaled only by the exceptionally cruel and brutal plantation economy built on slave labor. During the 1780s, slave mortality rates were so high 40,000 new slaves were required per year. Writer Eric Williams described "this pearl of the Caribbean" as "the worst hell on earth."

The colony's social structure was divided into four antagonistic groups - white plantation-owning elite, mulattos, freed slaves and bond slaves. The French Revolution inflamed tensions between these factions until open class conflict broke out, precipitating a massive slave rebellion in August 1791. Unable to restore order, French commissioner Sonthonax gave the slave armies controlling the countryside permanent freedom in exchange for support against the white planters seeking greater independence from republican France and repeal of civic rights given mulattos.

Rebellion led to a full revolt in which Toussaint L'Ouverture masterminded several brilliant military campaigns. Leading an army of freed slaves, he defeated the planters, French, Spanish, British and black and mulatto rival armies. By the turn of the century, he ruled Saint-Domingue. Deceived by French peace overtures, he was captured; his army reassembled under Jean-Jacques Dessalines. By the end of the war (1803), Napoleon had lost over 50,000 troops.

Breaking the chains of colonial slavery, Toussaint's forces overcame the psychological barrier that doomed every other slave revolt in defeating the armies of the most powerful imperialist nations on earth. This example provided great inspiration for subsequent African and Latin American liberation movements. Toussaint provided crucial support to Simón Bolívar in his struggle against Spain. Striking a death blow to slavery, Haiti motivated slave rebellions in Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil and the USA, and inspired those working to end colonialism in Africa. (Sources: www.radicalphilosophy.com and www.metmuseum.org)

News You Use

The Slave Route Project

Prompted by a proposal from Haiti and some African countries, the 27th Session of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approved Resolution 27 C/3.13, the "Slave Route" Project in 1993. Supported by the African Union Organization during its 56^th ordinary session in Dakar, the project was officially launched at the First Session of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route in September 1994 in Ouidah (Benin), one of the major African slave ports.

The slave trade and slavery were recognized as "crimes against humanity" at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001. The goal of the "Slave Route" project is to raise worldwide awareness of these dark times, which left a "permanent imprint on the culture and economy of the world." An educational based effort, the project is built around scientific research, teaching history, promoting living cultures and preserving places of remembrance. It addresses the dynamics of the greatest movement of people in history through the transatlantic slave trade, conservatively estimated at over 20 million.

Inextricably intertwined with the history of the Caribbean and the Americas, slavery and the slave trade placed Africa and Africans at the center of cultural, political and socioeconomic development of nations like Jamaica, Aruba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Bahamas, The Turks & Caicos Islands, Brazil and Cuba. Between 2001 and 2005, UNESCO recognized 90 masterpieces, including 17 in Latin America and the Caribbean, which represent oral expressions and traditions, music and dance, rituals and mythology, knowledge and practices related to nature and the universe and traditional crafts.

Cuba published more than 270 studies and articles, and identified 735 locations that mark African heritage on the island. Meeting in Havana (5-17-06), where hardly a spot on the island was untouched by slavery, the UNESCO Regional Office for Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean, in cooperation with the Museum of Africa, the Fernando Ortiz Foundation and the National Council of Cultural Heritage of Cuba, defined the criteria and methodology for the identification and inventory of the Places of Memory of the Slave Route Project.

Focusing on ports where African slaves were brought in or taken away, fortresses built with their sweat and tears, sugar mills where they labored their lives away, caves where runaway slaves found refuge and plazas that hosted rebellions throughout Cuba, Jamaica, Aruba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and other nations in the Caribbean and the Americas, they documented numerous slave sites.

A prime example is the Maroons of Moore Town in Jamaica, UNESCO proclaimed it a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. This current initiative will preserve and transmit this outstanding heritage to future generations. The activities of this project will also contribute to the main objectives and goals of the Slave Route Project.

To learn more about the Slave Route project go www.unesco.org, www.tcmuseum.org , www.golocaljamaica.com and www.ipsnews.net)

Disgruntled says: The DISH reader jim6263@cwnet.com recently recommended the documentary Life And Debt. Directed by Stephanie Black and written and narrated by Jamaica Kincaid, the film looks at the primarily negative effects of globalization on Jamaican industry and agriculture. After reading the viewers' comments at www.IMDb.com on the devastating impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies on developments in this country, I put this film on my list for viewing this summer.

Disgruntled feels: Exploited! The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University conducted a survey of 2,864 people, including 1,328 black men. The survey results, published in the June 3, 2006 edition of the Washington Post (Black men torn between promise and doubt….By Steven A. Holmes and Richard Morin), show these black men neither know their history nor understand the system that values them as less human. While blacks make bad decisions, like any other people, as a group, we are the most exploited people in this country. And, that exploitation plays a role in our success and failure.

Disgruntled wants to know: With national elections less than five months away, the uniter and his party have pulled out a string of issues that have worked in the past to energize the religious zealots of the Republican Party. Will these divisive issues and their loaded code, including "gay" marriage, "activist judges," repealing the estate tax, anti-flag burning bill, school prayer, etc., help the GOP at the polls, while the country slides towards hell in a hand basket?

Intuit's Vibe

Beyond the Pale

By John Maxwell

Katherine Dunham, who died last week at 97, was one of the most important figures of twentieth century culture. The daughter of a black father and a French Canadian mother, she immersed herself in scholarly explorations of African/Caribbean cultures, particularly the Maroons of Jamaica and the people of Haiti. She even became a voudun 'priestess' while completing her master’s degree in anthropology.

Dunham's life was a century of struggle to restore the dignities of the peoples who resided in her soul. She was not only a major figure and powerful influence in modern dance but was, at the same time a leader in the struggle for civil rights in the United States and in Haiti. Fourteen years ago, at the age of 82, she survived a seven-week hunger strike in protest at her government's treatment of Haiti.

She must have died of a broken heart. There are eight million Haitians in a country turned into a concentration camp. Their leader was stolen and transported as cargo to the heart of darkness; he was no doubt expected to be killed and perhaps, eaten.

After two years of brutal repression - supervised by the United Nations Security Council on behalf of the civilised world - the people of Haiti have been reduced to a condition in which they are less free than they were 200 years ago. Their legitimate leaders are in exile or in jail, and the civilised world looks on approvingly as these uppity blacks are starved and coerced into good behaviour. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they were among the original signatories, 60 years ago, obviously cannot apply to them.

They have elected a President, under rules set by people who don't believe in rules and scorn elections. The omniscient and all wise President of the United States, Mr Bush says the Haitians are not entitled to freedom and his judgment is backed up by that certified black intellectual, Dr. Condoleezza Rice and by Mr Annan, the world's Commissioner of Police cum Ombudsman - also a black person, and a citizen of Ghana. These two, who undoubtedly benefitted from the struggles of Katherine Dunham and people like Martin Luther King and Marcus Garvey, provide American racism with all the legitimacy it needs to cancel the human rights of the Haitian people and millions of others.

It was the Haitian people after all, who were the first nation in the world, before the Americans, the French and the British, to proclaim and promulgate the universal rights of all human beings, whatever their sex, race or economic condition, to democratic equality.

The Haitians were premature and presumptuous. As William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, famously said 90 years ago: "Imagine! Niggers speaking French!" That, plus their democratic pretensions, was enough to damn them forever. (For the complete essay, contact Maxwell at jonmax@mac.com)

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email kmuhammad3@comcast.net USA Today article on Black Spending Habits: These are tough economic times, especially for African-Americans, for whom the unemployment rate is more than 10%. Alarmingly, rather than belt-tightening, the response has been to spend more. In many poor neighborhoods, one is likely to notice satellite dishes and expensive new cars. In 2002, the year the economy nose-dived; we spent $22.9 billion on clothes, $3.2 billion on electronics and $11.6 billion on furniture to put into homes that, in many cases, were rented. Among our favorite purchases are cars and liquor. The only area that blacks seem to be cutting back on spending is books.

Email Black_and_Proud@yahoogroups.com Surprise! All-White Juries Are Unfair To Black People..By Judge Greg Mathis...Racial disparity in the court system has been a problem for many years. From arrest to trial to sentencing, many African-Americans are all too aware of the legal system's injustices. Others, however, have failed to acknowledge them. Now, there is solid proof that racial biases can affect a key component of the justice process: the jury. Recent research shows that all-white juries can be, and often are, biased when deciding the fate of a black defendant. Perhaps this "new" evidence can pave the way to change, ensuring juries are diverse and fair.

Email www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc Raleigh, NC- A state-appointed commission is urging North Carolina to provide reparations for the 1898 racial violence that sparked an exodus of more than 2000 black residents from Wilmington. The 500-page report that was produced after six years of study also said the violence, which killed as many as 60 people, was not a spontaneous riot but rather the nation's only recorded coup d'etat. Along with compensation, the commission recommended incentives.

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