A GUY'S VIEW: Facilitating our oppression
“Grant that, and then is death a benefit. So are we Caesar’s friends, that have abridged His time of fearing death. Stoop, Romans, stoop, And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords; Then walk we forth, even to the market-place, And, waving our red weapons o’er our heads, Let’s all cry “peace, freedom and liberty!” – Julius Caesar: Act 3, scene 1.
These were the words of Brutus spoken after he and his cohorts had slain Caesar in a joint enterprise.
Here were members of the Senate who had just murdered their leader and were confident enough to make the next step a corporate march to the city centre, bathed in the blood of the dead. Their confidence was in their certainty that they could convince the people that their deed was in the interest of the people whose leader they had slain, and not from selfish ambition.
This thinking is not confined to Shakespearean pages. Persons outside of America express surprise at the apparent disregard of that country’s leader for decorum and normal sensibilities. But he is confident enough to declare that he would lose no support if he were to shoot someone in broad daylight. And he is right.
The black middle class in Barbados is being ob-literated. Those who are wielding the sword are confident enough to stand before the population and tell them that it is all for their benefit. And people believe them.
Last week a minister of Government stood in broad daylight, at least it looked like daylight, for he did not hide behind a bush, and told poor people who voted for him that he and his Government would shut down the ambitions of used car dealers, people who look like him, apparently because they were interfering with the profits of another class.In many other countries, a car is nothing more than an affordable means of transportation. Top of the line cars are no challenge to the pockets of middle-class citizens of those countries. Not so here. In Barbados, the purchase of a car is a lifetime investment, second only to a mortgage. Most people manage to buy a house, a car, and die.
A vehicle that costs $20,000.00 overseas, sells for over $100,000.00 in Barbados. By the time the Government adds import duties of around 150 per cent and the importers add their huge markup, buying that vehicle is like hanging a millstone around your neck. It is only natural for persons of limited means to run from that arrangement if they can.
Few Barbadians can take up $100,000.00 to purchase a vehicle, so they must seek funding from a lending institution, like a bank or credit union. So the $100,000.00 vehicle ends up costing nearly $200,000.00. That is the price of a house in some places.
Like is usually the case in this country, used car dealers emerged because there was a need to escape the crippling gouging of the population by car dealers. The new cars that are manufactured for this market are substandard in many ways. The manufacturers see us as behind the first world, so they provide us with cars that, in their estimation, would meet the needs of a backward people. It is common to find, therefore, that used cars, a few years old, contain more features than the new model sold in garages here. So why would you buy a new car at an exorbitant price?
But here comes an elected Minister, standing in a new car dealership, and boldly declares that his Government must have a level playing field, and by that he means that his Government will raise taxes on used cars that are likely to destroy that industry, so as to protect the exploiters of poor people. And he, and they, are comfortable. And people tell us to march because black American lives matter. What about black Barbadian lives? Where is the march on behalf of the endangered used car dealers?
Black people cry peace while war is waged against us. Others’ route to peace is by our annihilation. Like Brutus and his gang, they slay us, all the time crying peace, freedom and liberty. Ours is the strangest mind ever found in man, for while the enemy’s knee is on our necks, we cry, peace. “Can’t we all just get along!” according to Rodney King. No other being, spiritual, human or beast, is so poor in spirit. And proud of it.
This truly is a mind which cannot easily be liberated. Our brothers and sisters have joined the ranks of our oppressors. Liberation seems like an exercise in futility. Is the race doomed?