Letter of the Day | ‘Fire bun’ the idea that we benefited from slavery
Published:Tuesday | July 25, 2023 | 12:05 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Florida wants to teach African Americans to be happy about slavery because the enslaved benefited from having been taught “useful skills”. The enslavers and their descendants, who are now trying to make us believe this falsehood, have always been in denial that they captured engineers, doctors, and skilled men and women from West Africa, then brought them here in chains. In short, Africans were not slaves, rather, they were made slaves. We cannot afford to become victims of the Stockholm Syndrome. In this state of mind, black people see it necessary to bond with and sympathise with their captors or abusers, buying into their racist doctrines.
I recall a conversation with the late Wilmot ‘Motty’ Perkins, recorded for posterity on YouTube, that he took the same warped position that we benefited from slavery. I asked him whether he felt that, should my beloved sister be kidnapped by a wealthy uptown man who thereafter raped her but had her living in luxury, we would consider her to have benefited being the victim of rape and abduction. What if he denied her the opportunity to become a lawyer?
What of Onesimus, a Boston, Massachusetts enslaved man who, in 1716, prevented the death of millions of white people when he imparted the cure for smallpox? It is important to note that the white minister of religion who enslaved Onesimus, recorded in his diary that he was “having to watch him carefully” due to “thievish” behaviour, and that he was “wicked” and “useless”.
Later, the reverend master began to accept Onesimus’ brilliance once the latter taught him a procedure that would cure the deadly smallpox disease. The procedure consisted of rubbing pus from an infected person into an open wound. Under a doctor’s supervision, they ensured the symptoms remained milder, and eventually the infected person was inoculated against smallpox. It took the Black Lives Matter movement, 300 years later, to unearth this fact hidden from the world by racist doctrines, similar to the Florida dogma that we need white endorsement to become worthwhile.
If ever there was hate speech – which has now become a Florida state policy – it is the demeaning statement that, even after enduring hundreds of years of torture and abuse, slavery was a benefit to the enslaved. It was this thinking that prompted whites to raze the town of Rosewood, Florida, in 1923 and kill over 150 prosperous, independent African Americans. A 100 years later they want to burn our worth and rich history once more.
In the language of Rastafari, we must “fire bun” the racist and callous notion that we benefited from the holocaust of slavery. All we need is to be left alone so we can breathe, and be allowed to continue to grow in stature and wisdom.
BERT SAMUELS
Attorney-at-Law