Go Lean…Caribbean

Slavery was clearly an oppression, suppression and repression of the African race on American soil. This was true in the Year 1619 … and unfortunately; there is still some truth to this assessment in 2019, 400 years later. See this case-in-point:

Title: What New Research Says About Race and Police Shootings
By: Brentin Mock

In the U.S., African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. For black women, the rate is 1.4 times more likely.

That’s according to a new study conducted by Frank Edwards, of Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice, Hedwig Lee, of Washington University in St. Louis’s Department of Sociology, and Michael Esposito, of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The researchers used verified data on police killings from 2013 to 2018 compiled by the website Fatal Encounters, created by Nevada-based journalist D. Brian Burghart. Under their models, they found that roughly 1-in-1,000 black boys and men will be killed by police in their lifetime. For white boys and men, the rate is 39 out of 100,000.

In fact, people of color in general were found more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts. …

Source: Posted August 6, 2019; retrieved August 29, 2019 from: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/

This is the final submission in this series of blog-commentaries from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean for August 2019. This final entry, 5-of-5 in this series, focuses on the lingering effects of racial oppression-suppression-repression of the African race in America. Clearly, the American scales of justice are not balanced. This acknowledgement aligns and complements the entire series as it was composed to remember, reflect and reconcile the history of 400 Years of Slavery in the American experience – 1619 until … today. The full series of these blogs-commentaries this month is cataloged as follows:

1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

Assuredly, there is no slavery in America today; yet there is still some racial oppression-suppression-and-repression, especially evident in the dynamic of Cop-on-Black Shootings. This sober subject matter had been thoroughly dissected in a previous Go Lean commentary from April 9, 2018.

It is only apropos to Encore that previous blog-commentary here-now:

———————-

Go Lean Commentary – Nature or Nurture: Cop-on-Black Shootings – Embedded in America’s DNA

It happens so often, it rarely gets attention anymore; Police-on-Black shootings that is!

It seems to be a constant feature of American life. See the latest high profile one – Stephon Clark – in the Appendix below.

What’s worse, when it happens, the White people in America, just yawns. Sad, but true!

Is this phenomenon the Nature of the United States of America, or is it Nurture?

The answer is complicated; the answer is both!

This commentary continues the 4-part series on Nature or Nurture for community ethos. This entry is 2 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of root causes of some societal defects – specific examples in the US and UK – and how to overcome them. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

1. Nature or Nurture: Black Marchers see gun violence differently
2. Nature or Nurture: Cop-on-Black Shootings – Embedded in America’s DNA; Whites Yawn
3. Nature or Nurture: UK City of Bristol still paying off Slavery Debt
4. Nature or Nurture: Nurturing comes from women; “they” impacted the Abolition of Slavery

In the first submission to this series, the history of Psychology was introduced, which quoted:

One of the oldest arguments in the history of psychology is the Nature vs Nurture debate. Each of these sides have good points that it’s really hard to decide whether a person’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or a majority of it is influenced by this life experiences and his environment. – https://explorable.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate

All of these commentaries relate to “why” the New World – including the US and the Caribbean – has the societal defects that are so prominent – and so illogical – and  “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage these defects and the resultant failing dispositions among Caribbean society. Though the traits may be consistent in the hemisphere, our efforts to reform and transform is limited to the Caribbean.

The subject of Police-On-Black shootings is a familiar theme for this commentary, from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free. The book asserts that there is a consistent lack of respect for those in America fitting a “Poor Black” attribute. In fact these prior blog-commentaries doubled-down on this assertion:

Say it ain’t so … it is a dangerous proposition to be Black in America. In fact one Caribbean member-states – The Bahamas, a majority Black population – had urged their young men traveling to the US to exercise extreme caution when dealing with police authorities. This advice is Spot-on!

The Nature of the US is that Black people – especially men and boys – have always had to contend with an unjust society in terms of justice and the security apparatus. Since the subject of Nature assumes that racism is predisposed in a society’s DNA, despite the fact that formal slavery ended 150 years ago, it is no surprise that Blacks in America have seen a continuous suppression, repression and oppression of any justice requirements.

After all, this is the population that suffered so much of the indignity of lynching.

Yes, we are going there …

Despite the fact that African slaves were taken to all New World territories, the country with this acute practice was only the United States of America. Surely, this had a lingering effect on the culture and society. This effect was not only on the victims, but on society in general, and the law enforcement establishment.

Imagine people gathering in their Sunday Best Clothes to watch the lynching (murder) of a Black man with no trial or due process. Imagine the effect that would instill on that community? Would that forge concern and consideration for the targeted population?

Now imagine that drama repeated again and again … 4733 times.

According to a previous Go Lean commentary, 4,733 people were documented as being lynched. That’s a huge number. To think there would be no impact on the Nature of a society is inconceivable. This theme was also conveyed in the TV news magazine 60 Minutes. See the full story here:

VIDEO – Inside the memorial to victims of lynching – https://www.cbsnews.com/video/inside-the-memorial-to-victims-of-lynching/

Posted April 8, 2018 – Oprah Winfrey reports on the Alabama memorial dedicated to thousands of African-American men, women and children lynched over a 70-year period following the Civil War.

Surely this country – the America of Old – would have been no place for Caribbean people to seek refuge. The Nuturing of American society continued to develop a nonchalance to injustice for the Black people of the US. This is where the Nature has been supplanted by the Nurture. This is why stories like Stephon Clark continue to emerge and why White America “continue to yawn”. Surely this society – modern America – is no place for Black-and-Brown Caribbean people to seek refuge.

Yet, the region – all 30 member-states – continue to suffer from an abominable brain drain rate in which so many Caribbean citizens have emigrated to the US, and other countries. (One reported has rated the brain drain rate of 70 percent).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that it is easier for the Black-and-Brown populations in the Caribbean to prosper where planted in the Caribbean, rather than emigrating to foreign countries, like the United States. If only we can reform and transform our own society so as to dissuade our people from leaving to seek refuge in the US. This is the quest of the Go Lean book, to serve as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The book presents 370 pages of instructions for how to reform and transform our Caribbean member-states. It stresses the key community ethos that needs to be adopted, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to optimize the societal engines in a community.

The CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives for optimizing our societal engines:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines,.

As related in this blog series on Nature or Nurture, the Caribbean has the same Nature as our American counterparts, but not the same Nurture. Our majority Black-and-Brown populations have forged different societies than the baseline US. And we are not wanting to be like America …

… we want to be better.

This is not just a dream; this is a roadmap that is conceivable, believable and achievable. Yes, we can … reform and transform our society. We can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix – Shooting of Stephon Clark

Stephon Clark was shot and killed on the evening of March 18, 2018, by two officers of the Sacramento Police Department in Sacramento, California, United States. The officers were looking for a suspect who was breaking windows in the Meadowview neighborhood, and confronted Clark, an unarmed 22-year-old African-American man whom they found in the yard of his grandmother’s house, where he resided. Clark ran from the police in an encounter that was filmed by police video cameras. The officers stated that they shot Clark, firing 20 rounds, believing that he had pointed a gun at them. After the shooting, police reported that he was carrying only a cell phone. According to an independent autopsy, Clark was shot eight times including six times in the back.

The shooting caused large protests in Sacramento, and Clark’s family members have rejected the initial police description of the events leading to Clark’s death. The Sacramento Police Department placed the officers on paid administrative leave and opened a use of force investigation. Police have stated they are confident that Clark was the person responsible for breaking windows in the area prior to the encounter.

…

Shooting

The Sacramento Police Department stated that on Sunday, March 18 at 9:18 p.m., two officers were responding to a call that someone was breaking car windows.^[3] In a media release after the shooting, police stated that they had been looking for a suspect hiding in a backyard. They said the suspect was a thin black man, 6 feet 1 inch (185 cm) in height, wearing darkly colored pants and a black hooded sweatshirt.^[3] A sheriff’s helicopter spotted a man at 9:25 p.m. in a nearby backyard and told officers on the ground that he had shattered a window using a tool bar, run to the front of that house, and then looked in an adjacent car.^[3]

Officers on the ground entered the front yard of Clark’s grandmother’s home, and saw Clark next to the home.^[10][3] Vance Chandler, the Sacramento Police Department spokesman, said that Clark was the same man who had been breaking windows, and was tracked by police in helicopters.^[3] Chandler said that when Clark was confronted and ordered to stop and show his hands, Clark fled to the back of the property.^[3]

Police body camera footage from both of the officers who shot Clark recorded the incident, though the footage is dark and shaky.^[10][11] In the videos, officers spot Clark in his grandmother’s driveway and shout “Hey, show me your hands. Stop. Stop.”^[10] The video shows that the officers chased Clark into the backyard and an officer yells, “Show me your hands! Gun!” About three seconds elapse and then the officer yells, “Show me your hands! Gun, gun, gun”, before shooting Clark.^[10][11]

According to the police, before being shot Clark turned and held an object that he “extended in front of him” while he moved towards the officers.^[3] The officers said they believed that Clark was pointing a gun at them.^[6] The police stated that the officers feared for their safety, and at 9:26 p.m., fired 20 rounds, hitting Clark multiple times.^[6][3] According to an independent autopsy, Clark was shot eight times, including six times in the back.^[1] The report found that one of the bullets to strike Clark from the front was likely fired while he was already on the ground.^[1]

Body-cam footage shows that after shooting him, the officers continued to yell at him as one shined a flashlight at him and they kept their guns aimed at him. One officer stated in one of the body-cam videos, “He had something in hands, looked like a gun from our perspective.” Three minutes after the shooting, a female officer called to him and said “We need to know if you’re OK. We need to get you medics, so we can’t go over and get you help until we know you don’t have a weapon.”^[12] They waited five minutes after shooting Clark before approaching and then handcuffing him.^[13] Clark was found to have a white iPhone, and was unarmed.^[6][4] Clark’s girlfriend later said the phone belonged to her.^[14]

After more officers arrived, one officer said “Hey, mute”, and audio recording from the body camera was turned off.^[10]

The Police Department stated on March 19, one day after the shooting, that Clark had been seen with a “tool bar”. On the evening of that day, police revised their statement to say that Clark was carrying a cell phone, and not a tool bar, when he was shot.^[3] Police added that Clark might have used either a concrete block or an aluminum gutter railing to break a sliding glass door at the house next door to where he was shot, and that they believed Clark had broken windows from at least three vehicles in the area.^[3]

…

Responses

Elected officials and political activists

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, initially said he would not second-guess decisions made by officers on the ground. After a backlash, he said the videos of Clark’s shooting made him feel “really sick” and that the shooting was “wrong” but declined to comment whether the officers should be charged.^[30] House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi stated that Clark “should be alive today”.^[31] [Civil Rights Activist] Reverend Al Sharpton stated that he was alarmed by the story, which he said had not received enough media attention.^[32]

On March 26, White House spokesman Raj Shah stated that he was unaware of any comments from President Donald Trump regarding the incident.^[31] Two days later, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that Trump is “very supportive of law enforcement” and that the incident was a “local matter” that should be dealt with by the local authorities.^[33]

Clark family

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents the Clark family, stated that the autopsy finding was inconsistent with the official narrative that Clark was charging toward the police officers when they fired.^[1] Clark’s family expressed skepticism of the police version of events. Clark’s brother, Stevante Clark, said of police statements: “They said he had a gun. Then they said he had a crowbar. Then they said he had a toolbar … If you lie to me once, I know you’ll lie to me again.”^[10] Clark’s aunt Saquoia Durham said that police gave Clark no time to respond to their commands before shooting him.^[34] According to Crump the officers did not identify themselves as police when they encountered Clark.^[22] The police have stated that the officers who confronted Clark were wearing their uniforms at that time.^[35]

Policing experts

University of South Carolina criminology professor Geoffrey Alpert stated that it might be hard for officers to justify their conclusion that Clark was armed, since they had been told he was carrying a toolbar.^[36] Peter Moskos, assistant professor of Law and Police Science at John Jay College, said that the officers appeared to think they had been fired upon following the shooting.^[37] Alpert, Clark’s family, and protesters questioned officers’ decisions to mute their microphones.^[10][38] Police Chief Daniel Hahn said he was unable to explain the muting. Cedric Alexander, former police chief in Rochester, New York, and former president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said that the muting did not appear to violate any policy, but looks bad. He also stated that it is not unusual for police to mute their body cams and that attorneys advise the police to mute conversations to prevent recording any comments that could be used in administrative or criminal proceedings. Many body cams are made with a mute button on them.^[38]

Source: Wikipedia; retrieved April 9, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Stephon_Clark

Go Lean Commentary

“Free At Last, Free At Last; Thank God Almighty, We Are Free At Last”
– Dr. Martin Luther King; “I Have a Dream” Speech; March on Washington, 1963

Considering that the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, it would have been expected that those powerful words from Dr. King may have been a reality long before 1963.

Regrettably, No!

This was the point of Dr. King’s theme:

…
Five score years ago, a great American [President Abraham Lincoln], in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. …

See the Appendix VIDEO below of the actual speech in 1963.

America was forged on the blatant hypocrisy of a legal premise that “All men are created equal”, and yet the African-American population was never treated equally, fairly or justly. In fact, by some analysis, America is still not equal-fair-just for African-Americans. In fact, just naming a street after Martin Luther King creates friction in American communities even today, 56 years after that iconic speech.

How about other communities (nations in the New World)? Did they emancipate their slaves sooner or later? See the full list here of all the territories in the Caribbean region including the mainland coastal lands rimming the Caribbean Sea:

Chronology of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean

	First abolition	Final abolition of slavery	Date of independence
Haiti		1793	1804
Dominican Republic	1801	1822	1844
Costa Rica		1824	1821
El Salvador		1824	1821
Guatemala		1824	1821
Honduras		1824	1821
Mexico		1829	1810
British West Indies Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Bahamas Barbados Belize Cayman Islands Dominica Grenada Guyana Virgin Islands Jamaica Montserrat Turks and Caicos Islands Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia St. Vincent and Grenadines Trinidad and Tobago		1833-1838 1833-1834 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1838 1833-1834 1833-1838	1981 1973 1966 19811978 1974 196619621983 1979 1979 1962
Nicaragua		1838	1821
Danish Virgin Islands Saint John Saint Thomas Saint Croix		1846-1848 1846-1848 1846-1848
Swedish Antilles Saint Barthelemy		1847
French Antilles Guaealoupe Guiana Martinique Saint Martín (French zone)	1794	1848 1848 1848 1848
Colombia	1814	1851	1810
Panama		1851	1903
Venezuela	1816	1854	1811
Netherlands Antilles Aruba Curacao Bonaire Saba Saint Eustatius Suriname St. Martin (Netherlands zone)		1863 1863 1863 1863 1863 1863 1863	1975
United States		1863-1865	1776
Puerto Rico		1873
Cuba		1880-1886	1898

Source: Retrieved August 28, 2019 from: http://atlas-caraibe.certic.unicaen.fr/en/page-117.html

———–

In summary, the dates of Final abolition of slavery in the New World territories started in 1801 and ended in 1886. (The difference between the First year and the Final year reflect the attempts of Empire stakeholders to re-introduce slavery – this is best exemplified by the experience in Haiti). The above chart reflect one issue, the abolition of slavery; what about full Civil Rights for these former enslaved populations? That’s another discussion of historic timelines.

(See the previous blog-commentary here from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean that details the American Civil Rights journey)

This is the focus of this series of blog-commentaries from the movement behind the Go Lean book for August 2019. This is the season to remember, reflect and reconcile the 400 Years of Slavery History in the American experience – 1619 until … today. It is also the time to review the Emancipation practices in the hemisphere and ascertain when the “Free At Last” declaration was sounded in the region – if it was ever sounded at all. The full series of these blogs-commentaries this month is cataloged as follows:

1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

Perhaps, “emancipation” is just a hollow word. It seems as if the people – African descended people there of – were never really free nor equal in American society. Finally in 2008, with the election of Barack Obama – the first African-American president, could the manifestation of freedom and equality “for all” finally be realized?

Not quite!

There are many examples of racial oppression, suppression and repression in the US. These experiences may be indicative that something deeper than equality is at stake; there is a Bad Community Ethos – fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society – tied to religious mis-information.

Yes, this commentary went there! This theme – reconciling the bad track record of the Moral Leaders: the Church – have been exhaustingly studied in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

There are many lessons for stakeholders of Caribbean society to learn in considering the history of 400 Years of Slavery in America. Considering that formal emancipation did not complete until the end of the 19^th Century, we have a lot of derived lessons that we can further benefit from by considering these historic details:

• The abolition of slavery was a long journey everywhere; slave-owners never wanted to give up their property – they wanted to continue to benefit from their previous investments. They were forced to give up the practice by a superior authority – The “State”.  This parallel’s the actuality of bullying … everywhere, everytime.
• Underlying to slavery was the false precept of Natural Law. Adherents believed that they were somehow created better than other classes of people – think White Supremacy. While this is blatantly false, many people still hold on to these false precepts – religion and faith is involved. When religious dogma is involved, the appeal to logic rings hollow.
• Admitting when you are wrong – don’t hold your breath – helps reconciliation. It is a human tendency to excuse, rationalize previous wrong courses of action of a people or society. Thusly, racism and anti-Semitism lingers to our day.
• Religious institution did good! The Abolition and Civil Rights movements were energized by zealous religious groups; i.e. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was a Baptist Minister.
• Religious institutions did bad! The teachings that Christian conversions – for Amerindians and imported slaves – were necessary for their Godly salvation was flawed, anti-Christian (Apostate) and imperiled society in the New World.

While we empathize, we are not America – Yippee!!!

… for our 30 Caribbean member-states, 29 of them feature a majority population of Black-and-Brown people. While this majority does not always equal political or economic power, universal suffrage (one man/woman, one vote) has been transformational in correcting social ills. Universal suffrage equals universal respect, so this should always be at the start of change in society. This teaches us that societal stewards should work to ensure voting rights and protections of the balloting process.

Reflecting on the 400 History of Slavery in America, reminds us that this bad institution affected the economic, security and governing engines of society. So too did emancipation! Changing the societal engines in any community requires brains (Art & Science) and brawn. So the study of Best Practices and the applications of Lessons Learned should always be prioritized for community leaders. This is the purpose of the Go Lean movement. We urge every Caribbean stakeholder to lean-in to our roadmap to bring change to this Caribbean region.

Free At Last? Hardly!

But, we can make our Caribbean homeland Free At Last and even a better place to live, work and play. Let’s get busy! 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix VIDEO – I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King .Jr HD (subtitled) (Remastered) – https://youtu.be/vP4iY1TtS3s

 RARE FACTS 
Published on Nov 7, 2017 – I Have a Dream” is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.

• Edited by: Binod Pandey
• Caption author (Spanish): ALEJANDRA GONZALEZ
• Caption author (Spanish (Latin America)): Adrian Roldan
• Category: Nonprofits & Activism

Go Lean Commentary

That’s America for you; they think they are the only one that has had this problem – slavery that it.

Today, is a Red Letter Day in the History of the American Experience; it is believed that on this day – August 23, 1619 – the first African slaves touched down on the American mainland – see Appendices A & B below. This is an important milestone to commemorate and commiserate, as the eco-system of slavery dictated every “ying-and-yang” of the American experience, from 1619 until … today.

(Don’t get it twisted – the reason for the American Revolution in 1776 was so that the 13 Colonies could maintain autonomy of the slavery eco-system, rather than submitting to the ever-increasing liberalism of the British Parliament).

Why should we bother to look back at this history?

The 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean answers this question. It looks at that hard-wrought history and declares that lessons can be learned today that will allow us to reform and transform our society tomorrow. The book states at Page 26:

Ways to Impact the Future – If Not Now, Then …
History is a Great Teacher. The African Diaspora experience in the New World is one of “future” gratification. The generations that sought freedom from slavery knew that their children, not them, would be the beneficiaries of liberty. The ethos or guiding beliefs is that “children should be more successful in the future than the parents maybe here and now”.

So America wants to take note of this day – August 23 – and remember, reconcile (and maybe even repent for) the stain of this bad history of this country’s record.

If so, have at it!

But let’s start with the truth! August 23, 1619 was not the start of slavery in the Americas. No, the practice had started earlier in the New World, including these same Caribbean islands. Consider the VIDEO in Appendix C below plus these documented examples here:

Slavery in the America’s – An Early Timeline

New Spain – In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.^[156]

Hispaniola – The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola [(today’s Haiti & Dominican Republic)] in 1501.^[157]

Brazil – During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.^[174] … Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650.

Jamaica – The Caribbean island of Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. [The Spaniards treated the Tainos so harshly that in about fifty years all of them were dead. They had numbered fully sixty thousand. The Spaniards got slaves from Africa to take their place.] ^[190]

Mexico – In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area.^[194] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs. A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died due to disease. This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox.

Puerto Rico – When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly due to smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511.^[195] The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained the courts that they needed manpower to work in the mines, build forts, and work sugar cane plantations. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.^[196]
Source: Retrieved August 22, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Modern_history

The foundation of slavery was embedded deep in the societal engines of the New World.

Can’t we all just get along … now?

Slavery was an ugly institution. No victim deserved such treatment; no perpetrator’s can be justified, rationalized or excused. Today, due to the analysis of the acts and events of slavery, we have the definition and classification of Human Rights violations. There is no normalizing this villainy; and this is an apropos and contemporary discussion as slavery is not just ancient history:

Saudi Arabia didn’t abolish slavery until 1962.^[118]

But indeed we can still “get along“! But only after reconciliation, and that reconciliation must come with the desire to set things straight and correct the wrongs. In fact reconciliation is the motive of this August 2019 series of blog-commentaries from the movement behind the Go Lean book. Our focus is on all the dimensions of this 400 Year History of Slavery; the past, present and future.  The full series is cataloged as follows:

1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

In this series, reference is made to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines of the 30 Caribbean member-states. We are not trying to reform or transform America – that is outside our scope. But we want to learn from the American experience. Truth be told, there are many American institutions that have still not reconciled their ugly history; no reconciliation; no reform. The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the implementation for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). We want to do better here. Considering that 29 out of the 30 Caribbean states are majority Black – descendants of slaves – we must do better.

We can succeed too; we can be Better than America.

This theme – learning from the history of Bad Race Relations – have been exhaustingly studied in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was on a committee within the Continental Congress of the 13 British Colonies; he was appointed to write the Declaration of Independence. He penned:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As this Declaration went back to England, the home country laughed and scoffed at the blatant hypocrisy of these words, as America was believed to be holding (a little less than) 694,200 African-descended-people in the bonds of slavery at that time – out of a full population of 3,893,635. In England, there was a movement towards liberalism and libertarianism at this time. One of the respondents to the US Declaration of Independence was the philosopher and statesman Jeremy Bentham.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalizing of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children, and animal rights. Though strongly in favor of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural laws/natural rights [as flawed moral basis for slavery and oppression of women and minorities], calling them “nonsense upon stilts”. – Go Lean book Page 37.

Jeremy Bentham advocated for the Greater Good as the preferred community ethos; this is ‘the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. So he urged America to be better and do better towards its slave population. They did not! After winning the war for Independence against Britain, the new United States of America doubled-down in the practice and pursuit of slavery, especially in the southern States:

1790 Census Slave Population: 694,200 | Total Population: 3,893,635 | 17.8% | Slavery in 100% of Country

1860 Census Slave Population: 3,950,200 | Total Population: 31,443,321 | 12.6% | Slavery in only 25% of Country

So there are many lessons for the Caribbean to learn in considering the history of 400 Years of Slavery in America. We can take these lessons to heart in our region and be a better society as a result:

• Where as, there was a Slave Trade then, we have human trafficking today. Have we learned to protect the Weak in our society from being abused by the Strong?
• Where as, there was White Supremacy then – a byproduct of Natural Law, have we now corrected that defect in society and promulgate policies that project that All Men Are Created Equal?
• Where as, the Slave Trade was urged-on as an economic solution for cheap labor, do we now ensure that all labor is conducted with dignity and due consideration for all stakeholders?

A consideration of 400 Years of Slavery in America does not have to be dead history, it energizes our current society to ensure liberty, fairness and egalitarianism. These are great ideals to pursue. America needs to do better in this pursuit; and so does the Caribbean.

Slavery affected economic, security and governing engines of Caribbean society. These same 3 societal engines are in focus to reboot so as to elevate the member-states today. So slavery is more than just academic; it is our foundation. We must not ignore it, nor forget; we must recognize the pain, sacrifice and purchase-price our ancestors paid for us to occupy these lands. As the old Calypso song says:

“Oh island in the sun, willed to me by my father’s hand“.

Let’s remember and reconcile. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments … like … the old American West and tenants of the US Constitution.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix A – History of Slavery in Virginia

Slavery in Virginia dates to 1619,^[1] soon after the founding of Virginia as an English colony by the London Virginia Company. The company established a headright system to encourage colonists to transport indentured servants to the colony for labor; they received a certain amount of land for people whose passage they paid to Virginia.^[2]

Africans first appeared in Virginia in 1619, brought by English privateers from a Spanish slave ship they had intercepted. …
Source: Retrieved August 22, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

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Appendix B – Virginia’s First Africans
Contributed by Martha McCartney
Virginia’s first Africans arrived at Point Comfort, on the James River, late in August 1619. There, “20. and odd Negroes” from the English ship White Lion were sold in exchange for food and some were transported to Jamestown, where they were sold again, likely into slavery. Historians have long believed these Africans to have come to Virginia from the Caribbean, but Spanish records suggest they had been captured in a Spanish-controlled area of West Central Africa. They probably were Kimbundu-speaking people, and many of them may have had at least some knowledge of Catholicism. While aboard the São João Bautista bound for Mexico, they were stolen by the White Lion and another English ship, the Treasurer. Once in Virginia, they were dispersed throughout the colony. …
Source: “Virginia’s First Africans”. www.encyclopediavirginia.org. Retrieved 2015-11-04.

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Appendix C VIDEO –  ! Slave Ship… International Slavery Remembrance Day August 23,2018 – https://youtu.be/aCM4RoV5MSI

• Category: People & Blogs
• Music in this Video: Listen ad-free with YouTube Premium
• Song: Slave Ship
• Artist: Mighty Diamond
• Album: Dancehall Attack & Fat Eyes Dee-Lite
• Licensed to YouTube by: IODA, The Orchard Music (on behalf of Fat Eyes Productions); Downtown Music Publishing, Sony ATV Publishing, and 2 Music Rights Societies