Orville Taylor | Schizophrenic reparationists

What a spectacle it was. The celebrity couple, their Royal highnesses … came, saw and … hmmm … did they conquer? Honestly, I would have liked for our indigenous ‘Royalty’ L A Lewis to be accommodated. Truth is, he is such an unpredictable soul, that if given access, he might have done something inappropriate, like hug the Duchess or expose his thigh in the name of fashion. But as we say, puss and dog do not have the same luck.

In welcoming them, our prime minister said that we were “moving on”, and “in short order” would “fulfil our true ambition” of becoming an “independent, developed and prosperous country”. However, we need help.

On their departure, I am more confused than before their arrival. This takes me back to the 1960s, when Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II landed here, three years after the Coral Gardens incident when her subjects, members of the Rastafarian community, and her royal employees, members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), were killed

In the year preceding her arrival, embattled heavyweight champion of the world, Muhammad Ali, fighting racism in his native country, had visited, with even this newspaper calling him by his ‘Babylon name’ Cassius Clay, and misspelling it ‘Mohammed’ Ali. Freedom fighter, the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, who eventually lost his life to the bullet of a racist, came here in 1965 as well. Both of these men lived in a society which was so unapologetic about slavery, that it took a civil war in which around 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians died. At the time many Americans wanted to keep the vestiges of slavery.

In fact, it would not be until March 25, 1966 before the US Supreme Court abolished the poll tax, which was a barrier against universal adult suffrage in the USA, some 22 years after Jamaica did.

SENSE OF PRIDE

Yet, the visit by the Queen was seen with a strong sense of pride by a people whose schizophrenic leadership waxed strongly Afro-Saxon.

Jamaica’s political elites of both political parties, in our Parliament, were comfortable with the banning of black-oriented books, and keeping out Caribbean American ‘blacktivist’ Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). Ultimately, consensus between our two major parties was that Walter Rodney should not be allowed to return to his job on the plantation of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

Yet, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie II visited Jamaica on Thursday, April 21, 1966, a month after the other monarch. When Jah Jah touched down, there was a bit of an earthquake; not the literally ‘Isaat Mabrok’ Capleton and other Rastafari chant about. Rather, it was that it was the largest assembly of black people in Jamaican modern history. That the advent of the black king, as prophesied by Marcus Garvey, drew larger crowds than the official head of our state is still for me, as a Rastaphile blackademic, is still a basis for great pride.

A little four-year-old, seeing pictures of the little black man, King of Kings and the Lion of Judah, meant the world to me. My king looked like me. Of course, elder Taylor disabused be of any notion that he was God himself or even ‘Jessus’; but I saw myself at a time when lots of my friends were talking about pretty hair and nice brown skin.

This was the 1960s, a decade after in the aftermath of World War II, the losing Axis nations had to pay reparations to the Allies, including Great Britain, some US$23 billion for the six years of destruction and loss of human capital. Slavery in the British Empire lasted centuries with multimillion casualties.

MISSING STEPS

As the Prince acknowledged, the horror of the enslavement of our ancestors, “I want to express my profound sorrow,” lamenting that “Slavery was abhorrent, and it should never have happened.’’ However, there was the missing next steps of an apology and a way forward. Regret without reparation is inimical and antithetical to the concept of justice.

I carry no brief for any of the current conflicted advocated of both reparations and the removal of Her Majesty as the Head of State. At least as far back as 2007, in the article below my position was clear. At the time we had senior members of our parliament and political elites hugging up their Queen’s Counsel (QC) title, a status which itself creates fundamental inequalities and inequities, if not iniquities in the administration of justice. Read: http://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070401/cleisure/cleisure4.html

As I watched the Rastafari beat drum with the royal couple, something which many houses of Rastafari would not allow a ‘bald headed’ man like myself to do, I realise that the reach of slavery is still strong among ‘I and I’ as a race.

We are still too conflicted regarding the stature of the monarchy and reparations. When my first cousin John Taylor became a Lord (before his fall from grace), he could not fathom why a graduate of The University of the West Indies was so unimpressed with the title, which meant nothing to me.

We are not going to win this reparations war as long as there are black slave drivers, and house slaves who are so happy with their empty titles and privileges, that despite their narrative, like to be called by the titles as if they are ‘deputy Brits.’

- Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.