Orville W. Taylor, Contributor
WHO ARE they fooling? They give us the shortest month of the year.
Maybe I should be grateful since they did not give any to the Indians, Chinese, or Arabs. No! There is no need for white history month since all of history is essentially white. By the way, did you know that we really don't know which year this is because the Italians (Romans) Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar added a month each to the year in their own honour?
Thus, with the addition of July and August, the original seventh to 10th months became the ninth to the 12th. Check it! 'Sept' means seven, 'Oct' means eight, 'Nov' means nine and 'Dec' means ten. So since the year has two 'brawta' months they can afford to give us February, the month of fever.
Still, a month is a hell of a long time for black people. We have found a way of squeezing in 100 murders and seem hell bent on exterminating the race. Imagine three 'pickney' slaughtered! Do you know that black people in Africa have killed far more black Africans in the last decade than were killed by whites in the previous one?
DISMAL PICTURE
The international picture is dismal. Violent crime rates among blacks in the United States and United Kingdom are more than twice their white counterparts. Blacks comprise more than half the homicides in Los Angeles, even though they are less than 20 per cent of the population.
In New York City, more than 50 per cent of murder victims are blacks despite their being less than a fifth of the population. By the way, it is black men mostly killing black men, most of them being young men in their prime. Remember Tupac Shakur, The Notorious BIG, Pan Head, Dirtsman, Tenor Saw, Louis Lepke, and now Bogle?
But why are we mostly killing ourselves? Maybe we were the serpent that gave Eve the apple, or "we tief the angel dem white fowl." Some feel that we are an inferior race and can't do anything good.
Early social theorists such as Ceasare Lombroso (yeh, another Roman) and Herbert Spencer, felt that some races of people were more predisposed to maladaptive behaviour than others.
In 1994 Herrnstein and Murray, who wrote The Bell Curve, argued that according to their research, the average white person was more intelligent than 84 per cent of blacks, while only 16 per cent of whites were less intelligent than blacks.
Therefore our low socio-economic status and negative social indicators are caused by our race. In other words, 'some a wi born wutliss an' caan change'. 'What a libaty!'
Yet, truthfully, as a race, black people are the poorest, most uneducated, most violent prone and least inclined to save and plan for the future. To make matters worse, the average life expectancy of blacks has declined by ten years in the last decade due to AIDS in Africa and other life style diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
These are not just ideas from the colonial period. Back in the1360s, the North African Abdel Rahman Ibn Khaldun described black people (including the Egyptians) as lacking seriousness and "so merry and light-headed and heedless of consequences that they do not store enough food."
'Bwoy!' this sounds just like my dance hall-loving, hip-hop chasing friends who think about the next dance, stage show, outfit, or sexual encounter. Thizzle mi nizzle! Wooo oo ooo! 'Nuh sey nuttn!' 'Keeping it Jiggy!'
Is it really because we are so black that 'wi corners so dark?' Have we never done anything good? Well contrary to the accounts of his-story there are a whole range of things black people can be proud of.
First of all, 95 per cent of scientists agree that homo sapiens (make sure you get this right) seem to have emerged in Ethiopia. Thus, the first man was African. It would therefore mean that Eve was the first woman. Does that explain why black men are afraid of eating from women?
The pyramids in Egypt were made by black Egyptians. They became lighter-skinned due to the Roman, Persian and Greeks who emerged later but returned millennia afterwards to conquer. Writers such as Van Sertima, George James and Cheikh Anta Diop, have shown that Greek philosophy and mathematics came from black Egyptians. Oh! Moses, Joseph with the coat of many colours and Jesus were also black, even if your only source of history is the Bible.
MANAGED A LOT
The original people in India, the Bonda, who still live in the mountains there, are black. They have features like many of us who came from Africa later. The people in Melanesia, Papua New Guinea, Northern Australia, (not just the Aborigines,) all look like 'Bredda Shorty' or 'Miss Gyatta'. This means that black Africans travelled across the oceans long before Europeans could even spell boat.
Well, if dark-skinned people did so many great things why and how did we reach where we are today? How come we got conquered? Well, it appears that for all of our abilities we did not invent the gun. Maybe that is why we are so fascinated by it. On top of that we never understood the need to unite. After all it was Africans who first put us on the first 'cruise ship.' Yes Bob Marley, the 'Old Pirates' were black.
Nonetheless, even after slavery, the plantation, segregation, apartheid and globalisation we still managed to do a lot. For example, Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers, was black. Alexander Mills invented the elevator; Joseph Gammel invented the engine supercharger; Charles Brooks, the street sweeper; Joseph Smith, the lawn sprinkler; John Burr, the lawnmower; Frederick Jones, the air conditioner; George Salmon, the clothes dryer; John Standard, the fridge and Garrett Morgan, the traffic lights.
We did it before 'let's do it again'. Black (his) our story
Dr. Orville Taylor is lecturer in the department of sociology, psychology and social work at UWI, Mona.
