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Dear Editor,
In the last millennium, enslaved Africans endured centuries of the Arab slave trade, European slave trade, Jim Crow marginalisation, systemic racism, miseducation, persecution and continuing mental and psychological abuse.
The current demoneytising and demonising of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West and Kyrie Irving is akin to the current economic lynching of African-Guyanese and opposition supporters in Guyana.
Ye and Kyrie are speaking their truths to the establishment and to the elite untouchables, and as a result are now being assaulted by systemic racism, while they are losing tens of millions and even billions of United States Dollars.
What is disappointing is how Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neil, and LeBron James, among others – have castigated the few who dared to speak out; by continuing to kneel for a few dollars more, while shamelessly living in psychological slavery and mental slavery.
Then we have those who remain silent as they accept economic, financial and social handouts. I also speak here to those affluent Guyanese and Americans whose actions could reduce significantly the economic genociding of our brothers and sisters.
In my opinion, the silent benefactors are worse than those who chastise from their well-padded knees. Think here of those Guyanese of wealth and influence who claim to support the opposition political parties and are now silent.
It seems to me that African-Guyanese are fearful of speaking out and taking action against being denied a reasonable share of Guyana’s economic oil pie. This terrible state of affairs is primarily related to the continuing psychological effects of Chronic Trauma Slavery Syndrome.
Putting the foregoing together, I’m simply saying we need to cast aside the fear and embrace courage and bravery always.
What good does it serve mankind to gain the world and lose his soul; what good does it serve anyone to live in material prosperity, while the descendants of his ancestors are treated like slaves.
We desperately need the courage to speak and take action like Frederick Douglass, William Du Bois, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Ivan Van-Sertima, Cheikh Diop, Marcus Garvey, Booker Washington, Frantz Fanon, Tony Martin, Nelson Mandela, Walter Rodney and John Henrik Clarke did; these individuals sacrificed monetary gains and sometimes their lives for the benefit of human rights.
In addition, we must overturn the crab barrel mentality that slavery has bondaged us in to this day.
The total destruction of African culture via loss of ancestral languages, loss of religion, creation of arbitrary borders, forced separation of families and Willie Horton’s savage indoctrination of how to control the enslaved, have so damaged the physical image and mental psyche that invariably Africans are willing to live on their knees rather than live with dignity and decency by standing up for what is virtuous.
I will close by borrowing from Reni Duesbury-Tyler who on Sunday, November 5, 2022, posted the following on Facebook: “Unstoppable and indomitable people will always be feared, held back, discriminated, ill-treated, reckoned, glass ceiling checked, hunted, killed, called derogatory names, derailed, overlooked, doubted, secretly admired, ideas hijacked and plagiarized, but like the phoenix, they will often forgive and continue to rise.”
“We lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
Seneca
Nigel Hinds
