Letter of the Day | Emancipation more important than freedom

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Although freedom and emancipation have a close relationship, they are not necessarily the same thing. Emancipation, apparently, is the ability to positively affect or change your current circumstances, while freedom, on the other hand, means having those circumstances, or green light, to do whatever you want to do.

For instance, the man who murders and ends up behind bars had the same freedom as that man who was working to support his family or helping someone in need. For that reason, freedom is neither a good or bad thing, except for what it is used. A baby may be free to eat a little more substantive food than to drink mother’s milk, but not necessarily liberated from their mother. Just as a man could be physically free to work, yet not emancipated from a dependency syndrome.

Similarity, a man may be free to develop his finances, but is burdened by self-imposed slavery to banking institutions and lending agencies. A person could become a slave to envy, hate and jealousy, not because he’s denied the opportunities of his fellow man, but because a culture of entitlement dictates that if he’s deprived, some force in nature determined it to be so.

Likewise, we are also free to embrace the Jamaican Creole, along with the reggae music or any other indigenous creations, as much as we are to berate them. Emancipation is a self-earned freedom, yet not all freedoms equal emancipation. If a man is without direction, he could become a slave to the very freedom he’s blessed with. The value of emancipation is that it proves what the free man is made of.

HOMER SYLVESTER

New York