Robert Buddan, Contributor
Michael Manley has been inducted into the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame. His footprints stand alongside those of former American presidents, civic, religious, political and cultural leaders of the civil rights movement.
Because Manley was so many things - internationalist, humanist, socialist, labour leader, author, and sportsman - he, inevitably, came face to face with discrimination in all of these areas and depictions of life, and because Manley was such an empathic and passionate person he always felt moved to do something about what he saw.
Others could make excuses and distance themselves. He could not.
Some people did not want Jamaica to be dragged into international controversies, fearing biting the hands that fed them, or would not accept that other people were victims of their actions.
Linked in struggle
Manley made people's rights a central part of his and Jamaica's struggle.
Manley and Jamaica were inextricably linked in struggle. Jamaica's history was formed by struggle against European genocide, slavery and colonialism.
Jamaica's location next to Haiti and that country's revolutionary tradition, and between Cuba and the United States, exposed it to traditions of Latin American liberation and revolution and the anti-slavery and civil rights/black power traditions of the United States.
Furthermore, Jamaicans themselves came from the exploited parts of the world, Africa and Asia in particular, and they continued to identify with the anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles of their home countries. Manley met some of their leaders while studying in England. It is no accident that Jamaica produced the most rebellious tradition of the English-speaking countries, caught as it was in the cross-currents of the historical and geographical traditions of its time and place.
Manley was a part of modern Jamaica's discovery of itself. Born shortly after the League of Nations' declaration of the right of people to self-determination and growing up under the United Nations' International Declaration of Human Rights, he belonged to a young family and a rising political movement pursuing the two big struggles of the 20th century - the rights of people and the rights of states.
Maturing in the age of Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro, Manley became part of a special generation of leaders that fought colonialism and racism in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.
The civil rights movement has moved from the margins in the 1950s to the mainstream today.
The achievements of the movement are once again being celebrated on the occasion of Martin Luther King's birthday in January (now a national holiday in the United States) and Black History Month (an upgrade of Negro History Week) coming up in February.
Manley has been given recognition for his role in this struggle. The movement to the mainstream is also indicated by the fact that candidates in both U.S. parties are talking civil rights language as the elections head down to the U.S. South where the legacy of slavery and segregation is strongest.
Bill Clinton is popular among African Americans. The Clinton camp cites Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison's description of Bill Clinton as "the first black president".
She meant that Clinton was socially black, reflecting the social experiences of African Americans - growing up in a single-parent household, born poor and working class, saxophone-playing and junk food-loving, and whose sexual life was subject to the stereotyping and double standards to which blacks are usual victims.
Black-white relations
If the white president was socially black, the black presidential aspirant, the African American Barack Obama, is being described as socially white - born of a white mother, and who his critics say is not angry enough about the plight of blacks in America.
Obama is no less caring about black people than any other candidate, and probably cares more, but he is different from the old-style civil rights radical of the 1960s and his message transcends race.
In moving to the mainstream civil rights issues have changed. Immigration is one of the big civil rights issues of the present and it is a big issue in American politics.
Anti-terrorism laws and practices and their impact on civil liberties constitute another. This has broadened the civil rights issue beyond black-white race relations to include Hispanics, Muslims, Asians, West Indians, and others.
Black-white race relations have their own special history and legacy. However, civil rights today also cuts across or stand outside of black-white relations and include a whole set of claims made by social movements, sometimes under the rubric of identity politics.
They include women's rights, gay rights, rights of the disabled, minority rights, prisoners' rights, workers' rights, rights of indigenous people, and so on. Each of these has its own history, but they are all about discrimination and, therefore, remind us of the fundamental principle of equality, the principle that if we believe in human rights then we must believe that all people are equal as human beings and entitled to the same rights.
Economic Justice
Manley would have remained relevant to the civil rights struggles of today as he was to those of the past because he believed in equality.
Manley's raft of social legislation in Jamaica and international position against apartheid, Zionism, and imperialism made him well known around the world over his call for a new international economic order, South-South cooperation, non-alignment, and international justice.
Economic justice demanded peace and equality between states and fair and equitable trade. Manley, therefore, came to practise a diplomatic strategy that the region still benefits immensely from.
While showing interest in America's Free Trade Area of the Americas, he engaged his Venezuelan counterpart, Carlos Andres Perez, in a Latin American-Caribbean arrangement to counter-balance the American scheme.
It is out of this that the PetroCaribe idea sprung, which is bringing great benefit in this age of historically high oil prices. Justice brings real benefits to poor people and poor states.
Legacy of Manley
Manley's interest in international economic reform was motivated by the search for economic justice between states, specifically for states' rights and human rights. The present era's emphasis on market rights has made issues of civil rights even more relevant.
Corporations under globalisation are gaining more rights relative to the civil rights of workers, women and children who work for them in developing countries. International treaties are being made that bypass domestic laws that were created or are needed to protect labour, health and environmental standards and the civil rights of people. Many aspects of these trade agreements bypass governance structures and erode democracy, which exist to promote and protect civil rights.
This is part of the concern over the recent Economic Partnership Agreement between the Caribbean and the European Union.
It is part of the debate over free trade agreements between the United States and other countries.
The legacy of Manley and the civil rights movement is to keep us asking: how are the rights of people being violated, and how can they get justice?
It is a good time to revitalise movements at home and abroad for the rights of women, children, workers, the disabled and the disadvantaged, a struggle far from complete.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
