Nov 05
Reggie Dumas shows how in speech after speech, the late Dr Eric Williams returned to the themes of economic and psychological independence and of regional action across the Caribbean space. Fifty years after constitutional independence, his ideals remain relevant. This lecture was delivered at Florida International
I was particularly struck by the following statements that Reggie Dumas made in his address:
“At a conference in Jamaica last August Norman Girvan described the Jamaican situation as one of ‘in – dependence.’ The same can be said about nearly all the countries of CARICOM.”
“What about the discipline, production and tolerance about which Williams spoke to a youth rally on August 30, 1962?…Do we of the Caribbean understand what self-discipline is?”
“And can we truthfully say that we have achieved psychological independence – the capacity and, above all, the willingness to think and act for ourselves? The expatriate British officer is no longer with us, ladies and gentlemen, but would it be incorrect to say that the Caribbean still measures itself by the favour of foreigners, especially North American, and more especially white? Is Massa day really done, as Williams thought, or has Massa merely changed face and nationality?”
“Massa Day, ladies and gentlemen, is not yet done.”
Ali Mazrui, the Kenyan political scientist and 1979 Reith Lecturer, noted the perverse effects, in Africa, of that region’s cultural mimicry of the West and the North. Africa eagerly adopted potentially harmful Northern/Western attitudes and habits and rejected the potentially beneficial ones: “Africa as a whole borrowed the wrong things from the West – even the wrong components of capitalism. We borrowed the profit motive but not the entrepreneurial spirit. We borrowed the acquisitive appetites of capitalism but not the creative risk-taking. We are at home with western gadgets but are bewildered by western workshops. We wear the wrist watch but refuse to watch it for the culture of punctuality. We have learnt to parade in display, but not to drill in discipline. The West’s consumption patterns have arrived but not necessarily the West’s techniques of production” (Cultural Forces in World Politics, 1990).
The stubborn persistence of such adverse tendencies (lack of discipline, inability to assume responsibility for our actions, cultural mimicry of the North and the West, embedded “in-dependence”, unwillingness to think and act for ourselves, the constant need to seek American/Northern Massa’s approval for anything we do), which undermine both our self-confidence and our cultural confidence, is not unique to the Caricom region. Those tendencies are both salient and deep-rooted in many, if not most, post-colonial societies. Consequently, we cannot get rid of them by pursuing traditional approaches. We need to think out of the box, to re-conceptualize our problems, to do some fundamental re-thinking, with a view to identifying innovative, culturally-compatible approaches to solving our very serious societal and development problems – solutions that should be based on, and inspired by, our own cultural circumstances and imperatives, not those of the North.