De-Africanization and Abolition: Identity Formation in the ...



Structural Discrimination & Knowledge Production in Post-Colonial Societies: Examples from the Caribbean

©Verene A. Shepherd

The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

9th Session of the WGPAD

Geneva, April 13, 2010

Madame President, distinguished representatives of States, NGOs and Civil Society, it is an honour to have been invited to join the other members of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent to carry out their prescribed mandate. I also wish to register my appreciation to the staff of the HRC Secretariat for the efforts they made to get me to this meeting at such short notice. I recognize the presence of the Distinguished Representative from Haiti and bring greetings and an expression of solidarity from the Haiti-Jamaica Society. Caribbean people recognize the importance of Haiti in the regional emancipation movement in the 19th century and in the global struggle of people of African descent for dignity, human rights and justice; and we hope that the post-earthquake reconstruction efforts will keep those ideals and historical legacy firmly in the forefront.

I am saddened by the events that resulted in my appointment to the WGPAD, especially the death of Prof. Rex Nettleford. I cannot hope to fill his shoes. In addition, it is an enormous responsibility to hold the title of “expert” on people of African Descent. But Prof. Nettleford would have wanted me to embrace the challenge and to contribute to the on-going project of mental and political decolonization, intervening in the discourses of structural discrimination, especially in the field of education in Africa and the African Diaspora.

Nettleford often liked to recall that he, like so many of us, was bred in the crucible of a colonial education. But he was proud of the fact that, as Bob Marley said in his “Babylon System”, “we refused to be what they wanted us to be, [because]… we are what we are”, people who, in his poetic formulation, used “guerilla” or Maroon strategies to seek to proclaim and live a more liberating narrative of self. Such a liberating narrative of self allows those affected by the triple effects of colonialism, slavery and patriarchy to be anchored to a more empowering past. It has long been argued that education is a key component of development, a needed investment in nation-building and a means of empowering a nation’s people and developing their minds. Marcus Mosiah Garvey put it well:”Education is the medium by which a people are prepared for the creation of their own particular civilization and the advancement and glory of their own words”.[i]

It is with the obstacles to that post-colonial project of mental liberation through an education system that promotes a more liberating narrative of self with which I am concerned today. A related pre-occupation is the racism that masquerades as classism even in contexts where African descended people are in the majority; as well as the sexism in some of the texts used in the schools in many of our societies. In this regard, I am addressing dimensions of structural discrimination in education that depart from the usual, and very critical, preoccupation with access and physical infrastructure. The typical definition is “the policies of empowered race, ethnic, gender institutions and the behaviour of the individuals who implement these policies and control these institutions which are race/ethnic/gender neutral in intent, but which have a differential and/or harmful effect on minority/race/ethnic/gender groups.”[ii]

But I am looking more at situations when a neutral, or seemingly harmless, policy, rule or practice [such as competitive examinations that place children in secondary schools], has a discriminatory effect against a certain group of people; when a policy or procedure which appears to treat everyone equally [everyone is free to take the exams and progress to a secondary school], has the effect of disadvantaging certain groups.

So, let me stress that the problem in many post-colonial societies is not the laws with regard to education – laws which appear to guarantee the right to access to primary and secondary education for all - but their insidious practices. I am more concerned in this particular presentation, therefore with quality, equity, relevance and impact on racial identity and ethnic pride. More specifically, I wish to address:

• Differential access to quality secondary education because of the competitive entrance process and the disadvantageous primary education in some cases

• Education that does not always accept cultural differences (e.g. Rastafari; non-Christians)

• The content of history education/history textbooks, which does not empower people of African descent, Asians and indigenous peoples

• Sexism in history education

While some of my empirical examples might be grounded in the Caribbean reality, the issues I will raise have broader application which can guide us as we search for a meaningful agenda for 2011.

In order to contextualize the discussion I need to revisit the colonial legacy, which will no doubt be familiar to many in this audience. Historically, discrimination has been a major cause of the lack of access to primary, secondary and higher education in the Caribbean and Latin America because of the racism of the colonizers. In the case of the British-colonized Caribbean, concern with popular education was not manifested until 1833 when the “Negro Education Grant” was introduced.[iii] Up to then, Caribbean society was characterized by the presence of a majority of uneducated, under-educated or downright illiterate people from all classes and ethnicities. When popular education was introduced, it became a potential avenue for social mobility. But that potential was not realized for the majority because colonial education was structured, since the nineteenth century, to maintain class divisions and to narrow opportunities for such mobility. The idea of popular education had been accepted as part of a system geared to producing leaders and followers and preserving the region’s racial status quo. As Janice Mayers emphasizes, the development of the English education system, the model for the British-colonized Caribbean’s system of education, is attributed principally to the philosophical basis of the Platonic ideal. With its stress on inherited inequality and differing capacities for performing appropriate social functions, this philosophical source supported a stratified society and education for leadership.[iv] By the 1870s there had developed a 2-tier system of education that cemented the class system. Thus in the late 19th century, a governor in Jamaica, Sir Anthony Musgrave, would reject the suggestion of compulsory elementary education in the interest of allowing the planters access to child labour.[v] The distinction between elementary and secondary education was effectively made by a colonial official in Barbados in the early 20th century, as Mayers points out:

The purpose [elementary] is a school training which will end at a comparatively early age, and may produce the intelligent and industrious labourer, or form the groundwork on which may be built the technical skill required by the mechanic or artisan. The latter [secondary] is carried on to an age when manhood is approaching, and aims at fitting for their work the thinkers of the community, those who follow the learned professions, the leaders and organisers, or at least those who serve in the higher ranks of industry and commerce.[vi]

Obviously, the desire for social control and character formation was still paramount among decision-makers in the 19th and 20th centuries

OUR PROGRESS:

The former colonies in the African Diaspora have come a long way since emancipation and independence, with improved access, resources and infrastructure, allowing higher literacy rates (Table 1) and upward social mobility.

TABLE 1

|COUNTRY |LITERACY RATE (% ) |POPULATION SIZE |

|BAHAMAS |95.8 | 307,552 |

|BARBADOS |99.7 | 257,083 |

|GUYANA |99.0 | 777,000 |

|JAMAICA |79.9 |2,391,000 |

|MONTSERRAT |97 | 11,852 |

|ST KITTS & NEVIS |97.8 | 42,291 |

|ST LUCIA |94.8 | 152,335 |

|SURINAME |90.4 | 520,000 |

|T’DAD & TOBAGO |98.7 |1,116,595 |

|ANTIGUA & BAR. |99.0 | 65,962 |

|GRENADA |96.0 | 96,600 |

|CUBA |99.8 |11, 050,729 |

|DOM REP |89.1 | 7,998,766 |

|ST. VINCENT & GRENADINES |88.1 | 119,818 |

|DOMINICA |88 | 71,183 |

|BELIZE |75.1 | 307,899 |

|HAITI |54.8 | 6,780,501 |

Source: UNDP, 20009

They have engaged in revisionist curricula to rid their societies of the legacies of colonialism. But the impact of the colonial ideology of education has proven hard to dislodge. And the multiple effects of colonialism, slavery and patriarchy are still evident in their education system, a situation which promotes social exclusion. This is why many argue that the region I come from still displays structural discrimination in its system of education. States would deny that they intend to, but the effects are there as proof and we have to continue our fight to eliminate them.

THE EVIDENCE OF STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION:

So how is structural discrimination manifested in some ex-colonial societies? One manifestation in the former British colonies is the differential access to quality education because of the competitive nature of the movement from primary to secondary level. Let me elaborate for those unfamiliar with this system. The existence of the British colonial relic, the Common Entrance examination, or its modern day reincarnations (see Table 2 below), means that there is no automatic progress of 11 year olds from primary to secondary schools.

TABLE 2

|BAHAMAS |Grade Level Assessment Test |

|BARBADOS |Common Entrance Exam (CEE) |

|GUYANA |National Grade 6 Assessment |

|JAMAICA |Grade 6 Achievement Test (GSAT) |

|MONTSERRAT |Continuous Assess’t Programme |

|ST KITTS & NEVIS |Continuous Assess’t Programme |

|ST LUCIA |Common Entrance Exam (CEE) |

|SURINAME |High School Practice Tests (HSPT) |

|T’DAD & TOBAGO |Secondary Entrance Assessment |

|ANTIGUA & BARBUDA |Common Entrance Exam (CEE) |

|GRENADA |Common Entrance Exam(CEE) |

|Source: |Must pass to progress to Sec. Sch. |

In addition, despite protestations to the contrary, certain schools get all the so-called “bright” children, leaving other schools to cope with more academically challenged students. So, some students are exposed to good teachers, good infrastructure, smaller classes and co-curricular activities that balance their educational experience. Others have never touched a computer, sit in hot, overcrowded classrooms with barely trained teachers. They typically have less facility in the formal language of education, being more fluent in the creole language, which, they are told, should not be spoken in the classroom. Language, then, constitutes one key element in discriminatory practices in education.

Another issue, and this applies more broadly, is the content of the history curricula. For developing countries, the issue cannot only be related to that of the provision of hardware and software but also of inputs. More specifically the provision of quality inputs in terms of the textbooks used, must be related to the overall objective of education as articulated by governments, which is to improve not just access, but also quality, equity and relevance.”[vii] The debate surrounding the factors responsible for the lingering racist and sexist content of the syllabus (like the quarrel over classism in the movement from primary to secondary), ebbs and flows, but it cannot be denied that structural discrimination is the result if not the intent.

I have singled out history education because alongside its socializing function, post-colonial education has a major responsibility for identity formation; and this identity can best be fostered though history education that also incorporates gender identity. We do not often include the content of education in discussions of institutionalized racism, but increasingly textbooks and curricula are coming under scrutiny because of the effect they can have on people of African descent, especially women. An education that empowers boys by teaching that they were naturally in the leadership and managerial positions while women existed in the private sphere; that empowers Asians (who are represented as innately business savvy as opposed to people of African descent who are lazy and non-entrepreneurial) and that does not stress the non-slave dimension of the African experience is potentially damaging to the psyche of people of African descent.

With respect to the matter of sexism, my contention is that several of the books used to teach history to children reinforce hegemonic masculinity and therefore the images about masculinity already perpetuated by the larger society, the home and the media. The school curriculum, like the media and other external forces, gives boys a role-identity, an imaginative view of themselves, the basis on which they continue to aspire to hegemonic models of masculinity.[viii] Thus while the forces of production are reproduced through the capitalist economic system, ideological state apparatuses reproduce the social relations of production.[ix]

In the specific case of history education, despite great strides since the 1970s, the texts do not all provide boys with the kind of information they need to overturn their views of women as the subordinated sex; and gender stereotypes abound. Many still believe that the woman’s place is in the house (and they do not mean the House of Representatives); that women are more suited to inside work and that females have certain inherently physical and psychological characteristics which predispose them to non-marketable roles such as child-rearing and home maintenance. Masculinity is presented as essentialist; i.e. intrinsically different natures are attributed to men and women. These attitudes find legitimacy in the larger society and are reinforced through education. The treatment of resistance is a case in point, with many texts ignoring women’s fundamental role in armed revolt. If anyone is in doubt, then this sample of those who participated in the 1831/32 emancipation war in Jamaica and were punished for such role, should provide evidence.

TABLE 3

|Name |Property/ |Parish |Sentence[x] |

| |Enslaver | | |

|Catherine Brown |Cascade Pen – |Hanover |Death – commuted to 50 |

| |Mrs. Griffiths | |lashes & 6 weeks |

| | | |imprisonment. |

|Catherine Clarke |Dr. W. Skirving |Hanover |50 lashes & 3 months in |

| | | |prison at hard labour |

|Name |Property/ |Parish |Sentence |

| |Enslaver | | |

|Ann James |Free |Hanover |Death/executed |

|Christina James |Cascade Pen – |Hanover |50 lashes & 3 months in |

| |Mrs. Griffiths | |prison at hard labour |

|Eliza James |Coventry |Hanover |100 lashes, 2 months & 50 |

| | | |lashes when discharged |

|Susan James |Coventry |Hanover |200 lashes, 2 months & 50 |

| | | |lashes when discharged |

|Ann Ramsay |H. Bean |Hanover |100 lashes, 6 months & 50 |

| | | |lashes when discharged |

|Mary Campbell |Not stated |St. Elizabeth |150 lashes |

|Nancy Campbell |Ipswich |St. Elizabeth |50 lashes |

|Sarah Darling |Mitcham |St. Elizabeth |15 lashes |

|Anna Freeburn |Ipswich |St. Elizabeth |50 lashes & 3 months in |

| | | |prison |

|Sarah Jackson |Ginger Hill |St. Elizabeth |Transportation for life |

|Sophia Maitland |Not Stated |St. Elizabeth |25 lashes |

|Jane Maitland |Not Stated |St. Elizabeth |25 lashes |

|Matty | Ipswich |St. Elizabeth |50 lashes |

|Amelia Murray |Not Stated |St. Elizabeth |100 lashes |

|Betsy Powell |Not Stated |St. Elizabeth |20 lashes |

|Priscilla |Ipswich |St. Elizabeth |Transportation for life |

|Caroline Smith |Lacovia |St. Elizabeth |100 lashes |

|Charlotte Smith |Ipswich |St. Elizabeth |50 lashes |

|Mary Walker |Not Stated |St. Elizabeth |10 lashes |

|Suzanna Wright |Mitcham |St. Elizabeth |25 lashes |

|Nancy Wright |Mitcham |St. Elizabeth |20 lashes |

|Rosanna Wright |Not Stated |St. Elizabeth |25 lashes |

|Elizabeth Ball |Free |St. James |24 lashes |

|Jenny |Kirkpatrick Hall |St. James |Death |

|Eliza Lawrence |John H. Morris |St. James |50 lashes & 6 months in |

| | | |prison |

|Kitty Scarlett |Cambridge |St. James |Death/commuted to |

| | | |transportation |

|Rebecca Grant |Content |St. Thomas - East |100 lashes |

|Frances Douglas |Charlton |St. St. Thomas Vale |39 lashes |

|Frances Duncan |Dumfries |Trelawny |Death |

|Eve |Pantrepant |Trelawny |1 year in prison |

|Mary Fowler |Dromilly |Trelawny |6 months in prison |

|Elizabeth Samuels |Bunkershill |Trelawny |100 lashes & 6 months in |

| | | |prison |

|Annie Steele |Orange Valley |Trelawny |3 months in prison |

|Charlotte Reid |Lambs River |Westmoreland |6 months in prison |

|Eliza Whittingham |Cowpark |Westmoreland |Death |

|Jane Whittingham |Cowpark |Westmoreland |Death/hanged |

Another issue relates to the cues that history education send out to children of African descent. Despite the efforts of post-colonial regimes, misrepresentations and stereotypes about people of African descent persist in some of the textbooks used to teach history. Indeed, the Caribbean has been affected by a historically constructed image that still influences self-knowledge as well as global attitudes towards its citizens. This image, paraded as ‘truth’ and ‘ knowledge,’ was the product of the minds and pens of generations of writers from the North Atlantic System, who appropriated the project of producing knowledge on the Caribbean for overseas consumption. The knowledge produced had a discrete political purpose: to support European imperialism and “dislodge and disorient” the Caribbean in the same manner that it did Africa and the Orients, following Dani Nabudere’s and Edward Said’s formulations.[xi] Caribbean scholars were forced to engage in a project of reconstruction, constructing indigenous interpretations of the Caribbean experience, fashioned by explicit formulations and theoretical constructs and offering the antithesis to the imperialist view of the Caribbean world.

I cannot go into all the details of how the Caribbean was represented. I will simply select a few examples relevant to the writing of slavery and the post-slavery period. The early writings produced, especially descriptive accounts of Africa and Africans, were not necessarily the result of careful research grounded in truth and objectivity. Yet, this ‘knowledge’ was powerful enough to result in the condemnation of indigenous and African ethnicities to the experience of the colonial ‘Other’ and to have a lasting impact on Caribbean and African diasporic identity, imagination and consciousness. In the specific context of slavery, the purpose of the production of knowledge about Africa and Africans was to prolong slavery and colonialism and discourage self-confidence among Black people by demonizing blackness and the geographical origins of African diasporic peoples and promoting whiteness (or even Creolité/hybridity) as the ideal.

Of the works produced by contemporary and modern writers, it is perhaps the subject of slavery that has attracted the most attention, however; and the existence of enslaved and free Africans within a white supremacist social order fuelled a spate of writing that painted a less than empowering image of Blacks. A sampling of some of the works produced about Africa and Africans by writers such as Edward Long (1774), Maria Nugent (1802-05), M. G. Lewis (1815-17), Cynric Williams (1823), A.C. Carmichael (1833), Thomas Carlyle (1845), Anthony Trollope (1860), James Anthony Froude (1888) all originated the negative representations of Africa, which are still embedded deeply within the consciousness of Caribbean people.[xii]

The misrepresentations of Africans in the Caribbean intensified after 1791 and the outbreak of the Haitian revolution and 1804 after the declaration of independence, and were geared towards maintaining slavery and avoiding the Haitian experience. Slavery and its systematic brutalities had long engendered a deep-seated insecurity among colonizers in the Caribbean, but such fears intensified after 1791 and the news of violence against the colonizing population in Haiti during the emancipation and independence struggles.

Some writers demonized Africa itself and produced ‘knowledge’ that gave the impression that Africa’s citizens were loath to return to homeland. Thomas Carlyle, in his proslavery essay entitled “The Nigger Question” gave political imagery to the concept of “Quashie” as ‘Black mind and body that was unprepared for freedom.’[xiii] Ignoring the evidence of a workforce that had produced commodities that energized the English industrial revolution, he insisted on categorizing the Caribbean black person as someone who emerged out of slavery unable to rouse himself/herself to continue to work. A century and a half later, Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison, armed with a battery of metaphorical representations, reacted to the epistemic violence of the imperial project by calling for a renegotiation of such ‘bad words’ to create an internal liberating narrative of self.[xiv] .

Colonization, slavery and patriarchy then, were grounded in racism. Such racism was not only manifested in the treatment of our ancestors but in the way in which their story was told. As a result, since the period of modernity, Caribbean people have sought to eradicate and dismantle historical representations of the Caribbean in text and image that mostly reflected European colonial subjectivity and authority”.[xv] The production of alternative knowledge was a particularly critical aspect of what Bill Ashcroft et. al refer to as the counter-colonial resistance[xvi].

Now, even a cursory survey of the historiography of slavery and the transatlantic trade in Africans, of decolonization and the emergence of modern Caribbean societies will indicate that there is abundant evidence that can be used to convince Caribbean people of the achievements of their ancestors.[xvii] We no longer have to look too hard to prove the glorious and free African origins of Caribbean black people; of the role of enslaved people’s agency in opposing the Middle Passage[xviii] and in destabilizing the slave system; to find the political role of enslaved communities of men and women in the Caribbean, who in the context of the wider Atlantic dimensions of the trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans, were its fiercest foes. We do not have to dig too deeply to find evidence of the search for self-worth and economic identity; in fostering a sense of self-reliance; of cultural survival.

Caribbean historians have told the other side of the abolition story, centering the role of Black activists in the campaign. We have no shortage of writers telling us about our ancestors’ attempts to create an Atlantic world citizen out of the culture inequality in a world of partners that were not really partners. We can produce evidence from Eric Williams, Joseph Inikori, Selwyn Carrington and most recently Robert Beckford in his documentary ‘The Empire Pays Back’ and even in former British Prime Minister Blair’s 2007 non-apology, that our African ancestors were fundamental to the industrial development of Europe.[xix] By his own admission, former Prime Minister Blair stated that: “Britain played an active role in the transatlantic trade, which had a profound impact on Africa and the Caribbean; and acknowledged that Britain’s present-day economic prosperity and rise to global pre-eminence was due partially to its participation in the trade”[xx] - a strong case for the reparation movement if you ask me.

Whether reflected in the research on colonial, post-colonial or postmodern Caribbean societies, our scholars have intervened in and destabilized the dominant discourse that used to argue that the Caribbean was a place devoid of ideas and intellectual thought. Political ideology and concepts of human rights were already sophisticated in the political philosophies and ideologies of black abolitionists [xxi] long before the emergence of the philosophical teachings of Marcus Garvey, Aime Cesaire, Franz Fanon or Bob Marley.[xxii]

But, despite the fact that Caribbean historians have spent the last 60 or so years writing a more empowering history; and UNESCO has, since 1998, embarked on an elaborate project to break the silence and address the issues of shame and guilt surrounding the teaching and learning of topics related to Africa and enslavement, especially among vulnerable children, ignorance and shame about the past persist. New knowledge has not resulted in the transformation of our societies in ideological, philosophical and psychological terms, small steps along the way notwithstanding. And despite the evidence provided by slavery scholars about the brutality of the enslavers, the feelings of ‘shame’ continue to be attached firmly to the descendants of enslaved people – to the victims of the system rather than to the perpetrators. This influenced the late Caribbean historian, Elsa Goveia to observe, with reference to Jamaica, that“… In a country such as ours, where shame about the past too often fills the place that should be held by knowledge, knowledge of the past must play its part in our liberation from the bonds of the past.”[xxiii] The perpetrators, though, even in the midst of overwhelming evidence, have refused to take the reparation issue seriously. Indeed, there is apparent strengthening of their 2001 Durban position, noises from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Anglican and Methodist Churches, notwithstanding. Former British Prime Minister Blair stopped short of an apology in the midst of the 2007 Bicentennial when he declared:

“…the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was – how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition, but also to express our deep sorrow that it ever happened, that it ever could have happened and to rejoice at the different and better times we live in today.”[xxiv]

Education has a critical role to be play in the process of mental liberation and symbolic decolonization. So, there is still much work to be done. For one, we need to lobby Education Ministries to ensure that the textbooks used in the schools support the project of Black liberation; that history becomes a compulsory subject. The legacies of colonialism are proving hard to dislodge. Critically, the inequality based on existential awareness, feelings of social worth and spiritual value, the contemporary core of the ranking game that has derailed our journey towards social integration, nationhood and human development, must be fought and defeated.

Of course, many Caribbean and Latin American countries will deny that their education systems contain features of institutionalized or structural discrimination, even sexism, racism and classism. They posture as independent states where the legacies of colonial rule have long disappeared; as multicultural societies where the constitution protects citizens from discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity, colour, gender or religious persuasion. They are more likely to point to the existence of such institutionalized racism in European countries, even those that have an international reputation as successful, advanced capitalist states; highly networked, knowledge societies, imbued with human rights and gender equality, and with a strong commitment both to the environment and to the welfare of their citizens. [xxv]

Such countries are fast becoming culturally diverse, but in them, the immigrant student, normally of African or Asian descent, is targeted as having a language and/or behavioural problem not conducive to the receipt of European education. Many such “problem” students are then steered in the direction of sports or technical education, apparently more suited to their so-called “natural abilities”. In these societies, they would argue, government policies regarding multiculturalism and antiracism in education have favoured rhetoric over actual strategies aimed at change.[xxvi]

But what is referred to as “unintended” or “structural” discrimination, is clearly evident, even in states with black majorities. In such scenarios, racism masquerades as classism, because low-income students, (usually black even in multi-ethnic societies) from non-elite neighbourhoods have differential access to quality education. Clearly, social forces or policies that have racially disparate adverse effects are “discriminatory” by result, whether intended or not.

The situation is compounded in ethnically diverse populations where those who are descended from the indigenous peoples, indentured labourers and enslaved Africans are exposed to a type of education that is far from empowering. The content of education then serves to reinforce stereotypes rather than be mentally liberating. Part of this is related to the fact that there is an inherent failure to regard cultural differences in an egalitarian way and ranking remains the engine that drives the political sociology of too many countries. In its simplest definition, ‘ranking’ is a metaphor for social ordering, social and cultural hierarchizing. It represents the linguistic, oral and literary aspects of social culture that is the ritualized and politicized codes and consciousness of difference. I am less concerned with ritual in Foucault’s sense of “signs taken as wonders”, [xxvii]and more with the phenomena associated with the wonder of how signs have been taken. For some, situating difference establishes the boundaries of belonging; for others, situating difference is a way of signifying the opposite tendency of ‘unbelonging.’ This tension between ‘belonging’ and ‘unbelonging’ is a fundamental characteristic of the ‘ranking game’, a ritual that is invested with all the social and political capital available to the society.

Stuart Hall is correct to assert that the persistence of such colonial creations as ranking contradicts the cultural desire of postmodern mentalities for the celebration of difference in an egalitarian fashion rather than hierarchically.[xxviii]

Conclusion:

As we plan for 2011 and the International Year for People of African Descent, let us vow to address structural discrimination in education, especially in the Global South. We will have to give Haiti a large portion of our attention but let us not forget other hotspots in the Caribbean and Latin America, especially where African descended people are in the minority. Above all, let us be clear that racism often masquerades as classism in countries where African descended people are in the majority. In such cases, inferior educational opportunities and facilities trap them in a cycle of poverty. This too must be eradicated.

ENDNOTES:

-----------------------

[i]Amy Jacques Garvey, Compiler, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (Massachussett, 1986: p. 6)

[ii] It would be useful to consult Fred L. Pincus, “Discrimination Comes in Many Forms: Individual, Institutional, and Structural,” in Maurianne Adams, et. Al., eds., Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (New York, 2010 edition)

[iii] See Shirley Gordon, A Century of West Indian Education: A Source Book (London, 1963)

[iv] Janice Mayers “Access to Secondary Education for Girls in Barabdos, 1907-1943: A Preliminary Analysis”, in Verene Shepherd, ed., Engendering Caribbean History: Cross-cultural Perspectives (Kingston, 2010)

[v] UK National Archives, C.O. 137/495, Despatch No. 138, Gov. Musgrave to the Earl of Kimberly, 16th June 1880.

[vi] Report of the Education Commission 1907–09 (hereafter Swaby Report), Barbados, p. 2, quoted in Mayers, “Access to Secondary Education…”.

[vii] Economic and Social Survey: Jamaica 2001, section on Education and Training (chapter 22)

[viii] Kay Deaux and Brenda Major, “A Social-psychological Model of Gender”, in Michael Kimmel, ed., The Gendered Society Reader, (New York & Oxford, 2000), p. 85.

[ix] L. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, in B.R. Cosin, ed., Education Structure and Society (Middlesex, 1972) p. 1, quoted in Cole, ”Official Ideology”, p. 2

[x] National Archives, Britain, C.O. 137/185

[xi] This was discussed in Dani Nabudere, “Development Theories, Knowledge Production and Emancipatory Practices”, 50th Anniversary Conference Reviewing the First Decade of Development and Democracy in South Africa, Durban, October 2004. See also, Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 1992)

[xii] Edward Long, History of Jamaica, 3 vols. (London, 1774), Maria Nugent, Journal of a Residence, Matthew Gregory (“Monk”) Lewis, Journal of a West Indian Proprietor Kept During A Residence in the Island of Jamaica (Orig. pub. London, 1834. New edition, Oxford, 1999), p.87. Cynric Williams, A.C. Carmichael, Domestic Manners and Social Conditions (London, 1834); Thomas Carlyle, Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question (Fraser’s Magazine, 1849), Anthony Trollope, James Anthony Froude, The English in the West Indies: The Bow of Ulysses (London, 1888);

[xiii] Long, History of Jamaica; Froude, The English in the West Indies, Carlyle, Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question.

[xiv] Poem read by Lorna Goodison at the Opening Ceremony of the 2nd Conference on Caribbean Culture, UWI, Mona, January 9, 2002.

[xv] Petrina Dacres, “Monument and Meaning”, Small Axe, No. 16 (Sept 2004), p 149. See also in the same volume, Carolyn Cooper, “Enslaved in Stereotype: Race and Representation in Post-Independence Jamaica”, 154-169

[xvi] Bill Ashcroft, et. al, eds., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, (London& New York, 1995), p. 1

[xvii] Elsa V. Goveia, A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies to the end of the 19th century, (Mexico, 1956)

[xviii] See Anne C. Bailey, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame (Kingston & Miami, 2007)

[xix] Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944)

[xx] Bicentennial Watch, #1 Sunday Herald, Jamaica, Jany 7, 2007

[xxi] See for example, Denis Benn, The Caribbean: an intellectual history, 1774-2003 (IRP, 2004; O. Nigel Bolland, The Birth of Caribean Civilisation: A Century of Ideas about Culture,Identity, Nation and Society (Kingston & Oxford, 2004); Brian Meeks and Folke Lindhal, eds., New Caribbean Thought: A Reader ( Mona, Kingston, 2001); Veronica Marie Gregg, Caribbean Women: An Anthology of Non-fiction Writing, 1890-1980 (Indiana, 2005)

[xxii] Garvey, The Philosohy and Opinions

[xxiii] Elsa Goveia,”An Introduction to the Federation Day Exhibition on Aspects of the History of the West Indies”, in W.K. Marshall’s “Foreword”, in Hilary Beckles, ed, Inside Slavery: Process and Legacy in the Caribbean Experience (Kingston, 1996), p. vii

[xxiv] See the New Nation Newspaper, November, 2006

[xxv] For a discussion on direct and structural discrimination in Europe, see Paul Lappalainen,” Institutional Racism in Sweden and Europe”,

[xxvi] Ibid.

[xxvii] Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power”, Critical Inquiry, 8 (1982), pp. 777-795 and The

Archaeology of Knowledge (London, 1972)

[xxviii] Stuart Hall, “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity”, in Anthony King, ed., Culture, Globalization and the World System (London, 1991), pp. 19-41.

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