EDITORIAL: Cultural traditions and racist perceptions

One of the more remarkable phenomena of the year 2017 has been the compulsion of Caribbean people and others to confront symbols and practices of the past that do not comport easily with the concept of a progressive developing society where there is an absence of discrimination on any of the familiarly proscribed grounds and where, to borrow a phrase from the national anthem of Trinidad & Tobago, “every creed and race finds an equal place”.

There is enough difficulty in seeking to refashion one’s own native land. There is even more when one seeks to indicate to others beyond our shores that some of their cultural traditions may be taboo in this brave new world.

Such an instance has arisen in the matter of a professor of history from the Mona Campus University of the West Indies, Dr. Verene Shepherd, who has sought to challenge a Dutch Christmas tradition of Zwarte Piet or Black Peter, who is usually played by a white character in blackface as one of St Nicholas helpers. As reported in last Monday’s edition of the Barbados Advocate under the headline, “UWI professor still receives Dutch hate mail”, Professor Shepherd’s attempts in 2013 to point out to the Dutch that the tradition foments a racist stereotype of black people have been met with such a deluge of racist abuse that it once caused the campus’s mail servers to crash.

Professor Shepherd argues, “Maybe in the onset of the… tradition, people did not realize that people of African descent would have problems with it, but this is the 21st century and people have indicated that they have a problem with it. Then it is time to talk about a change…”

But tradition dies hard. Only on Friday last, Princess Michael of Kent initially saw nothing amiss in wearing a brooch depicting a Blackamoor woman to the Queen’s Christmas lunch, attended by Prince Harry’s fiancée, Ms Meghan Markle , who happens to be of black extraction. Princess Michael subsequently apologized for the gaffe according to a report in the Guardian. In the UK too, there has also been the condemnation of the representation of the golliwog on Robertson’s jam jars.

Is it all to be regarded simply as a historical reality that we cannot change, as some have argued especially with regard to the statue of Lord Nelson and with the statues of soldiers of the Confederate Army in the United States South? Or do we as a people seek to refashion those practices and images to conform to the current reality?

The issue is pervasive. It extends to language – note the pejorativeness attached to the word “black” as in black sheep, blackmail, blacken, and the even more recent “blacklist”. Even the seemingly harmless comic strip has not been immune - the Phantom portrays a white hero with the black natives in subservient roles; Mandrake the Magician is assisted by a muscular black minder.

The issue is not likely to go away soon either. Indeed, all indications are that more instances of this conflict between cultural tradition and current constructions of fairness are likely to proliferate. We may already be witnessing this phenomenon in the almost daily revelations by victims of sexual misconduct by those situated in positions of dominance taking advantage of the ethos of an era when silent submission was expected.

Now, emboldened by the consequences likely to be suffered by the perpetrators, this compact of silence ids being breached and we are observing the dismantling of the old truths in favour of the new dispensation. Professor Shepherd and others similar would wish for the identical result in the context of race relations.