I SIS …. DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA — Bernadette Charles

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This picture depicts how I feel when someone says to me “… stop talking so much about the slave trade, Chattel slavery and Reparation. Their reasoning is that slavery is long gone and opening up this subject will create a rift and a separation between black and white people…” WTH!!

Can someone please tell me! “When did this African Elephant leave the room?” When did REAL segregation end, when did REAL Apartheid between black and white ceased and deceased?

Whenever someone tells me to stop talking about slavery all I see and hear is someone trying to gag and muzzle me… To me this is yet another invitation for me to fake my own amnesia. I view it as a hypnotic suggestion to become unconscious and fall back into the deep sleep of Chattel slavery.

The truth is, I will not go quietly into the night. So, hear me when I say! I will not go deeper into unconscious sleep. I will not disappear into silence because I am now fully awake and will not return to the zombie-fie state of ignorance and low self-esteem I inherited from my ancestry of slavery. I’ve decided to come all the way out and speak my peace.

I’ve often spoken boldly about our black sons been shot by trigger happy policemen, about our daughters seen as “angry black women”, often assaulted or killed, just for speaking out. I speak about black husbands and fathers who are killed or jailed to fill up prison cells and about their wives and mothers forced into single motherhood, forced to work far too many jobs to make ends meet so children left at home and neglected, can eat.

I speak up about dilapidated schools and ill-equipped playgrounds, in neighborhood so overrun by despair that violence is the main subject being taught, and about drug trade being the main form of commerce to escape the poverty and misery..

But I also talk about the truth about who I am and who we are as Africans…

You see, as things stand for many of us of African descendants, Mother Africa was once a distant memory barely grasped. Africa was a romantic notion of my homeland, in a forest of jungle lushness and about Tarzan and Jane swinging free on a vine from tree to tree.

I barely know of Africa’s history; her pyramids, her great biblical fame and her immense fortunes. Such things were not taught in schools, church, or at home, because our parents do not know about Africa’s rich history. They were never told about Egypt, or the pyramids, or about the many tribes and fascinating peoples of Africa. In fact, my ancestors were forbidden to read and write because ignorance was the rule of law that governed them.

The teachings that were readily available and much more familiar to me were terrible tales of the ordeal known as African chattel slavery. The little truths I knew about African culture were the stuff I accidentally picked up from forbidden book and my family’s stigmatized African cultural practices.

Mostly such practices involved African drumming and spiritual dances. Festivities without names or religious claims. I learned that it was a lifestyle of poverty and abuses imposed upon my ancestors for more than four hundred years, based on the color of skin.

As a young girl, I instinctively rejected this way of life. Instinctively I refused to accept what was being offered in school and church as societal norms. At a very young age, I was able to see through the lies being taught about my person and my history.

In my early years, all I knew about my ancestry was the notion that I was from a life- stock of slavery; an inferior breed of humans, forged like Frankenstein in the belly of stinking slave ships, conceived in the sugarcane fields and banana plantations of the Caribbean, or raped in the Cotton fields of Europe and America …

The shame and the guilt I felt about my ancestry was perplexing to say the least, and the inferiority complex I felt was the source of much anger. I needed to know more. I wanted royalty to be my linage.

How does a child say I’m sorry to it’s ancestral mothers and fathers? I decided to learn all there was to know. Thankfully as a child I possessed a curious mind. The secrecy surrounding my blackness was great enough to wet my appetite and stimulate my desire to know more. I found solace in reading and observing

When I began learning about the kingdoms of Africa, and about the many kings and queens who ruled Africa for centuries, and about the mighty warriors who protected those kingdoms, I felt like a prodigal daughter finally arriving home. So I learned about extended families in Africa. The pleasures of simple village life all sounded very similar to my own Caribbean life style.

Along my way to adulthood I found out enough truths to make sense out of the nonsense. With this knowledge I was ready to take on the world… I yearned to contact the souls who once graced the shores of Africa.

I learned that Africa is the first mother of all the Earth, not England. I found out that Africans contributed far more to the evolution of humankind than I was led to believe. In fact I learned that Mother Africa’s Contributions were immeasurable and that chattel slavery was nothing but a mere footnote in my history.

Eventually I realized that this unfortunate chapter on slavery should have been classified as Colonial History, more so than the thousands of years my African ancestors ruled the Earth.

I wanted to know more about the brave men and women who populated the villages and about the souls who perished at sea. I wanted to know how many were thrown over board into the Atlantic ocean. Some dead and some still alive.

So here, at this point in time I know who I am, and, I am fully aware, willing and able to share myself with whomever I feel is misinformed about my self-worth and my ancestry. So my question is, ” When will this African elephant in the room be addressed WHEN IT’S QUITE OBVIOUS TO ME that no one is eager to speak about it? When does not talking about something that demands to be addresses ever go away unresolved?Yes I’ve often wondered about this period of history.

But it seems to me, that talking about this unfortunate chapter called “African chattel slavery”; which is more about Africans enslaved by European and America , than African history, per say, makes some people feel very uncomfortable. Yet with every injustice and blatant murder, these same people continue to pinch at the scabs of slavery with acts of racism and violence like it’s an itchy wound that demands to be scratched ever so often.

Why? it’s because this period harbors an awful wrong that demands to be made right. It’s a blatant injustice that needs a confession with heart felt penance and substantial Reparation.

At the moment we are experiencing an unprecedented multicultural movement of change. A reckoning for the unfair practices of racism and undue white privileges. Telling me to stop talking about my history and due Reparation, asking me to hold my tongue, for the comfort of others is as unlikely as an itchy wound that needs to be scratched….
Demanding that I “let it go” is futile, because speaking on this subject is what letting go looks like to me. .. !

You see, finding my voice after four hundred plus years makes me feel alive and as frisky as a new born babe. Once again I am the undefinable indomitable, African spiritual warrior, the prodigal daughter turning homeward. Asking me to hold my tongue, for your comfort, will only render me speechless. I will not be silenced or rendered speechless ever again.

Tag: #EmancipationDay #BlackHistory #CaribbeanHistory #AfricanLove

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Bernadette Charles is a Grenadian performing and visual artist. Ms Charles has been living in Montreal, Canada, since 1980. Contact: Art@kulangabc.com/kulang.charles@gmail.com
http://www.kulangabc.com