- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 26/Jul 09:08

A long way to true freedom

DARA E HEALY “I know what I going to do. I going and open a place, a holy place, a Shrine. Whey we could come and serve we Orisa without pretending dey is somebody else God. And I going to teach the children the chants, all what we believe, all the sayings we does live by, how to raise we chirren.” – Ma Titi, Freedom Morning Come by Eintou Pearl Springer IN ORDER to survive a brutal system, they hid themselves. They played fool to ketch wise, adopting the cunning of Anansi, dancing while plotting rebellion. What survived of the African sensibility? Was it buried too deeply under centuries of deception and survival? Will the African community ever rediscover the values, culture and belief of which Ma Titi dreamt? For some, emancipation is a time to prepare for the Emancipation Day parade, dress up and celebrate African culture. It is also a time to acknowledge the successes of people of African heritage. In Tobago, the Heritage Festival conceptualised by JD Elder is a space of respect and remembrance. From sport to politics, music, film, fashion and more – there is much of which African descendants can be proud. But for some of us, this is not enough. That is because beneath the many successes lurk the silent echoes of racism, colourism and ongoing attempts at the erasure of African identity started centuries ago. These realities are fuelled by the fact that successive governments have not had the foresight, the will, or both, to properly include people of African heritage into education, public spaces or the religious diversity of our nation. The impact of the lack of attention to people of African heritage manifests in a number of ways. Schools in East Port of Spain that look like prisons or the disproportionate number of African youth involved in crime and incarcerated. There is also an unfortunate absence of sensitivity in the way that enslavement and colonialism are taught. It was not so long ago that my niece was asked to write an essay extolling "the good things about slavery." My stomach still ties in knots at the image of young African men prevented from receiving school certificates because of their hair. Too many of the young people we interact with from schools and universities have never heard of our great Pan-Africanists. They therefore have no frame of reference for their own sense-of-self as young people of African heritage. So, for some of us, emancipation is a time to focus on reclaiming those traditional African values that Ma Titi mentioned. A crucial one is the importance of growing and cooking our own food and healing herbs. The proliferation of foreign fast food is not simply affecting our health and placing undue pressure on the national health system. Our inability to promote healthy eating goes against our claims of wanting to be free of colonial dysfunction. In 1970, Dr Eric Williams wrote that TT and other Caribbean nations had simply substituted one form of foreign importation for another, “the vehicles of import being the educational system, the mass media, the films and the tourists.” In the period before emancipation, Africans protected their traditional beliefs by hiding them inside Christianity. Today, there is less hiding, but the discomfort from the rest of society is still there. Again, the issues stem primarily from a lack of sensitivity to non-Christian forms of religious expression at the highest levels of government leadership and policy-making. A people’s belief is integral to its world-view, to how accepted they feel by society and for their sense of identity. As a nation, we will continue to struggle to attain real freedom unless we create an environment of religious acceptance that includes traditional African beliefs. We do not need to rely on data about femicide, gender-based violence or child neglect to recognise that our communities are in peril. However, what we do need is information about the ordeal faced by African families across all indicators, whether education, housing, income or entrepreneurship. We must recognise that if one sector of our society is in trouble, then no one is free. In 1838, our ancestors were finally released from the most gruesome crime against humanity. Sadly, almost 200 years later, their descendants still have to overcome enormous odds to gain true freedom. I pray that I will be alive to see real change. Ase. Dara E Healy is a performing artist and founder of the Idakeda Group, a cultural organisation dedicated to empowering communities through the arts The post A long way to true freedom appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.