There’s an affliction that strikes countries whose histories come out of colonialism. It’s one of the legacies that dangles on, like a dying but not-quite-dead jellyfish, wrapping its tentacles over whatever it can reach, spreading its venom to newer and newer generations. It’s the sense that what happens in your space of the world, what takes place in your territory, is not quite real. It isn’t really happening to proper people. What is real, or important, or of anything significance at all, happens Over There — in the Real World, where Real People Live. Where we inhabit are the realms of the shadow people.
This post was prompted by, but is only partly about the closure of Starbucks COB. It’s also about bigger issues: about the way in which we treat ourselves, about our expectations that we citizens have of our country and our development, and the way in which those expectations are exploited by those people who enter the political arena. It’s tangentially about the way in which we behaved like adults when following the US presidential elections one year ago, but how we revert to childishness when we follow our own (although the idiocies presented us by our own politicians are no different from the mass of idiocy force-fed to American citizens, and, in many cases, are less egregious (can anyone say Rod Blagojevich?)). But it’s fundamentally about what lies at the core of this tendency, and it’s this: somehow we think we are only good enough for second-class everything. Somehow, we believe that the good stuff should be saved for our visitors, put on display for the real world. Somehow, we don’t actually think we’re real.
Let me put it another way. We don’t think we deserve stuff that other people consider ordinary. Now this doesn’t simply affect us here in The Bahamas. It occurs throughout the Caribbean and Africa, with notable exceptions. In this, we mirror our colonial pasts, when the good stuff was saved for sending to the motherland (or serving to her representatives) and the dregs were good enough for us.
We see evidence of this situation in many of the homes in which we grew up, where we had one room in which we put all our goodies — the best furniture, the best decor, the good china, the pretty drapes — and which we used only when visitors came by — and only very special visitors at that. Some of us kept the dining table set with our china and silverware, making that space a kind of museum for our good stuff. Many of us kept the plastic on the furniture. In some cases, in houses that were built in the second half of the twentieth century particularly, we even had a separate entrance for different sorts of people: friends and relatives and family would enter through one door (usually the kitchen or side door) and only visitors would walk through the front.
Now as far as that goes, it’s an interesting cultural adaptation to a history of violence and subordination. By itself, it isn’t remarkable. It’s even got many good qualities about it — there’s always a space in one’s home that is ready to entertain visitors, there’s room for hospitality, there’s order, there’s good sense.
But where it becomes dangerous is when we take that practice outside our homes and apply it to the society at large — to our core institutions, to our city, to our nation as a whole, as we do — reserving the new and the shiny for the special visitors (or the people at the top), like having a special conference room for the Minister in many agencies, and another “conference room” for ordinary mortals; or reserving the use of a newly renovated building for special occasions and special people; or deciding, implicitly, that a certain level of comfort or service, a certain quality of experience, is “good enough” for ordinary Bahamians, and that the kindness and warmth and smiles are only turned on for foreign visitors.
(more to come)
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Dear Nico:
I’m often left bewildered why colonialism is still blamed for this stuff after all these years.
Surely we only have ourselves to blame at this stage of the game (42 years of self rule…3 or 4 generations)?
What am I missing?
Rick
Rick, of course you’re right — we are ourselves to blame; when I, or historians, talk about colonialism it is in relation to matters of fact, not blame. But the facts are, to my mind, indisputable; the reason colonialism remains responsible is that it created the institutions that taught, and teach, us to despise ourselves. The colonial enterprise was an awesomely efficient one, and taught the world to view itself in a particular way — with Europe at the top of it, and “civilization” as defined by Europeans in European terms, and with Africa at the very bottom. Even today this model of the world persists in the minds of every one of us, even in the minds of those of us who think we have overcome it; the “white man’s burden” goes on, these days borne by many image-makers. It has moved to the realm of the symbolic and the subconscious now, and is complicated horribly by surface rhetoric that changes very little about the model but that, ironically, reinforces many of its principles.
Our biggest problem here in The Bahamas is that we have never taught our citizens how to respect the nation, its whole history, its place in the world, and have never given Bahamians a good reason to respect themselves. White Bahamians are affected differently in this scenario than black Bahamians, of course; white people everywhere have at least the hierarchy of civilization as imagined by the expansionist Europeans to bolster their self-conceptions. Black Bahamians, on the other hand, have countered that hierarchy with little more than rhetoric. The truth, in my opinion, is that we have created our own reality here in The Bahamas, white and black alike and together (of course I speak as someone who stands in between the two, so my perspective is, in most meanings of the term, coloured by my personal heritage), and it’s a pretty astonishing one. But we have not told our own collective story well enough or with enough respect for it to mean very much at all.
Our self contempt therefore is inherited from the view of the world that made colonialism possible for decent Europeans to support — the idea that the rest of the world “needed” Europe to conquer and civilize it. Most of us are not included in that vision. Where we are most certainly and persistently to blame is that in forty years (in the Bahamas) and in fifty years (in too much of the rest of the postcolonial world) we have not worked as hard on creating our own truer vision of our selves as the imperialists worked on creating the vision that we all secretly still share: that white is right, brown could hang around, and black should still hang back.
Thanks Nico:
In my family our “european” heritage was never discussed.
What held our head up was the family struggle from a grandfather with no shoes until the age of 14 to what we are today – middle class.
In fact, my family was as resentful of the British as many of our people are today.
Yet, when I look at what we were, and what we have become as a people, it seems to me, we have lost something.
Self respect? Maybe. Concern for others? Maybe.
In the final analysis it’s disconcerting.
It’s by no means a conscious thing. As I say, most of the conscious rhetoric recognizes the harm done to us by colonialism. But all the institutions (schools, churches, law enforcement agencies, judiciary, etc) on which we’ve built our society reinforce the hierarchy in all sorts of ways, and until we recognize the unconscious and subconscious messages these things send, all the conscious rhetoric in the world won’t change anything at all.
Sometimes it’s hard to make the change. That’s why revolutions can be effective.
This is why Nico – reformation of the Bahamas constitution to reflect the true plight of our people – nurished and fortified with the basic underpinnings toward self and family and the upliftment of the rule of law.
The bahamian people are statis at best , beleving that govrnment is the solution to all societal ills / sometimes even personal problems …… herein lies the foundation that all preceeding wayward thinking and actions take place – with regard to the attainment self sufficiency, self reliance, mental enlightenment …… hhmm …..”if only gov can solve my problems -why should I seek resolution to my problems elsewhere ?” True liberty starts first with the understanding of oneself!! through self analysis – the latter can only occur absent the view that one is not central of his survival.
The change – you seek , as you probably are aware of can only come about from the death to a new way of processing thoughts in the mind. A new way of thinking must exist and must start with the new generation through the home, school , churches and echoed by government courts and social organizations.
We need constitutional reform – for a new Bahamas in its own character, tone, stance , courage and steadfast progressiveness of and for the people of the nation – with further allegence and loyalty to just cause and rights wherein making each person the center piece of his / her own God given right to survival thereof absent the allegence to a Crown, Governement or Corporation……..Freedom and rights for all through the divine rights and will of our creator.
This should be the preamble of such a reformed / restrategized constitution!!
“But all the institutions (schools, churches, law enforcement agencies, judiciary, etc) on which we’ve built our society reinforce the hierarchy in all sorts of ways”
Are you suggesting we need a Bahamian Magna Carta?
Rick and Hanna (Dawn?) – yes! A Bahamian Magna Carta! Yes!