Dear Editor:
I seem to recall sharing this significant story with your readers before; however – it bears repetition so please grant me the space.
Many years ago…accompanying my husband on a Fulbright Lectureship in Europe – we were invited to spend a weekend at the home of a German Professor who wanted Julian Mayfield to introduce him to academic circles – either New York or Columbia University in the US (can’t remember which).
In the midst of being wined and dined Julian Mayfield (as was his wont) looked that German in the eye and asked a blunt question: “Peter – were you ever a Nazi”? At first the German blushed…demurred – refusing to answer the question; until Julian insisted – “…just answer the damned question man – I don’t give a shit if you were a Nazi or not; I just want to know – didn’t the Jews see the writing on the wall – couldn’t they guess what was coming down?”
Finally – protesting – the man responded – “YES I WAS A NAZI Julian – everyone around me was a Nazi; WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE”? “That’s for you, your God and your conscience Peter; just answer this other question for me man – didn’t the Jews see it coming – wasn’t the writing on the wall”? Then a prompt response – “Of course they knew – BUT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT IT IN WHISPERS”
That conversation – that response, shaped who I am today and informs my perspective re the silence of African Guyanese in response to their predicament on this contemporary governing PPP plantation. I cannot understand this lack of militant response by the African Guyanese.
Those of us…spiritually tuned in to “the natural mystic” have been picking up an unremitting static in it; we recognise the tactics of a covert cyber war utilising stealth weapons honed in this digital age…inflicting an intensive assault on our minds. To effect real change the best response is a creative putsch, a revival of militant consciousness informing revolutionary ideas and action.
In his essay entitled You Touch my Black Aesthetic and I’ll Touch Yours first published in the Book the Black Aesthetic, edited by Addison Gayle, Jr. and reproduced in Race, Politics, and Culture: Critical Essays on the Radicalism of the 1960’s, Edited by Adolph Reed Jr. Julian Mayfield wrote –
For those who must create, there is a Black Aesthetic which cannot be stolen from us, and it rests on something much more substantial than hip talk, African dress, natural hair, and endless fruitless discussions of “soul”. It is our racial memory, and the unshakeable knowledge of who we are, where we have been, and where we are going [that] the Black Aesthetic, if it is anything, is the search for a new program because all the old programs…have failed us. It is the search for a new spiritual quality, or the recapture of an old one, lost and buried deep in our African past.”
When we voted for change in our May 11 2015 General Elections; when we chose the APNU AFC government to bring us some relief from the horrific experience of 23 years of the PPPC travesty, we were hoping the ‘static in the mystic’ would go away but – alas, what we hoped for has not come to pass. The eye-pass has not gone away – we are still marginalised in the worst way by a residue of old minions wielding the overseer’s whip on that governing plantation we recall – our stalking history persists as contemporary attempts to diminish us continue. Those of us with short memories must be continually reminded, lest we perish in the slough of raw, unrestrained banditry, greed and corruption …informed by hegemony – the desire to oppress, dominate and – who knows what else?
Black People should stop “Talking About It in Whispers”.
Dii Strogl Gainaan (A Luta Continua!)
Regards
Joan Cambridge
