Letters & Opinion, Sounding Off

Give Up On Reparations, Never!

Image of Rochelle Gonzales

I was all set on sounding off about St. Lucians on high horses when, hold the reins, I watched the UWP Convention on Sunday and my oh my, I think someone must have been on the “high” side before taking to the stage.

Anyone who was either at the convention themselves, watched it on TV or listened to it on the radio, most probably knows exactly what and who I’m talking about and whilst I respect the fact that everyone is entitled to their opinion and personal choices, I think that anyone who found sense in the ramblings of this person is cookoo.

To those of you who didn’t catch the event, I’m referring to the guest speaker of the day, Sir James Mitchell who is the former/longest serving Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

What a train wreck!

Now I’m not going to be a complete mule and say that at no point did he speak truth and sense…there were some “Yessss” moments like when he spoke about the woes of intra-regional travel namely the filling out of forms and the fact that we need to catch up with the rest of the world technologically.

However, one was lucky to hear that message after people were either switched off or dozing off from his lengthy rambling about his childhood, his 40 years plus in government and his complete teardown of the CCJ.

There was also that one moment where he also made sense when he said that we should show more honour and respect to former leaders of our nations but by then, people were heard in the audience making random comments like “We don’t want to hear that”, “Move on” and “Misyékafè blag”

With all that said, I was in the middle of laughing it all off when he moved on to “this business of reparations from slavery”.

So here we have a man whose clinch to “blackness” is his black grandfather so he feels that he has a foot to stand on when he steps on a stage and says “It is a useless and stupid idea in my view” and that we should “drop the word slavery from our vocabulary”.

This supposedly influential man, who is entitled to his opinion, might I just add, will step on a stage and suggest that we join him in thinking that slavery should be forgotten after all. It’s in the past and the people who went through it…the “true” victims are not alive to claim compensation so we the descendants should just let it go.

And not so funnily enough, people in the audience were laughing, clapping and agreeing…I wonder what reaction he would have gotten had he gone on stage with a Jewish audience and tell them that they need to remove the word holocaust from their vocabulary and move on. I can certainly tell you that he wouldn’t get clapping and people who agreed with him.

Why is it that the world applauds the Jewish community and congress for pushing and successfully receiving billions from Germany to cover numerous costs including lost assets and slave labour and there are still ongoing negotiations to receive millions more, yet African slave descendants are constantly being told to let it go?

Why is that even a thing? Are we not worth the same as any other race who has suffered and been compensated as a result of that suffering?

Whilst Mitchell was right about everyone needing to work hard and strive to reach to the top, in the same breath, he made that sentiment redundant with his insulting insinuations that the movement is a means to lazily reach the top as opposed to us, the descendants of slaves who were stolen from their homeland or sold by greedy leaders, murdered, tortured, stripped of human rights, classed as animals and property, separated from family, loved ones and possessions, demanding to be compensated for what our people suffered through…How dare you, “Sir”?

And this is who the UWP saw fit to be their guest speaker? This is who they thought would be one of the best tools to propel the party to victory? They need to think again because they just unwittingly dropped a lit matchstick into an oil well.

I’m not going to dance around the matter…It is clear that the thrice reinstated leader of the party, Allen Chastanet’s race has been an ongoing topic of discussion. Now let me make it clear, on this matter, I think the whole hullabaloo is rubbish and unfair, but at the same time, with half of the nation constantly throwing the man’s race into discussion, did you really think that it would fly well when you brought in another white man to tell the nation that they need to forget about their history as the descendants of black slaves? Really now?

I don’t know what “roro” you people were trying to incite but you got what you were looking for, only, I don’t think it will work out in your favour because I know that it has left a sour taste in the mouths of the masses and if that’s the stance that the opposition is planning on taking, then good luck to you all.

I seriously doubt that scaring the people into backing down from reparations by telling them that no power in the world will compensate them and that in case reparations are indeed paid, it will be at the cost of the Saint Lucians living abroad and that it will also be the demise of our tourism sector will work…think again because I would think, and I’m hoping that these words will place more fire under the butts of those pushing for reparations to push harder and prove naysayers like Mitchell wrong.

“Drop the word slavery from our vocabulary”…Why I Never! No “Sir” I Will never!

Rochelle entered the Media fraternity in May 2011 as a fresh-faced young woman with a passion for the English language, a thirst for worldly knowledge and a longing to inform the world of what was happening around them, whether it was good or bad.

She began as part of a small news team at Choice Television, which falls under the MediaZone umbrella. She was hired as one of the original members of the newly created Choice News Now team...Read full bio...

 

8 Comments

  1. As usual you have presented a constructive bit of information to those of us who read this newspaper. I have no energy left at this time to comment on the sambos of the UWP and the ignoramus Allen Chastanet and the his enabler Michael Chastanet who advocates the “Taking Out” of black Lucian citizens deemed “bad boys”, while leading demonstration marches calling Lucians NIGGERS. I hope to make some more comments just as soon as I have recovered from this state of depression induced by the shameful Negroes like Josie who thought that such insults from Mitchell was deserving of laudations – I feel sick.

  2. Take strength in the fact that all that has been said of this flambeau junta is correct:
    The Puppet meister is emperor of the “hyenas”- if King had read our comments on this forum – he would be well armed to deal with the WITCHCRAFT of Is-a-sack-er or the sorcery of Guy.
    Money talks for the pimp.
    Instead of REPARATIONS capitalism extends the tantalizing YOKE of IMF & the WORLD Bank and it’s partner in crime – the Central Banking system
    The mission of the Puppet Meister is to bring all the wannabe “sambo” capitalists to feed at the troughs of said banking monopolies and like mythical Calypso- turn ’em all into slothy PIGS!!
    Go ahead and puke -feeling sick is an authentic and proper response to Sunday’s deliberations.

  3. F.Y.I.

    Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called “War Relocation Camps,”

    In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.

    The Jews and even the Slave Owners like the current Prime Minster of England David Cameron have received reparations and duly compensated, the only people that have been denied reparations for being enslaved for five-hundred years, mis-educated, their history eradicated, their religion destroyed, their language eradicated, and today walk around still calling themselves Elizabeth, and Richard, while worshiping a naked image of the Caucasian slave owners as God, IS THE BLACK PEOPLE.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oqcG1Ws5FE

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  4. David Cameron
    The family of the current Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron, benefited from the enslavement of African people. According to Dr. Nick Draper of University College London, as many as one-fifth of wealthy Victorian Britons inherited part or all of their fortunes from the slave economy. As a result, there are now wealthy families all around the U.K. still indirectly enjoying the proceeds of slavery they have inherited; Queen Elizabeth-II and the so-called Royals are the highest ranking Pirates .  In addition to benefiting from slavery while it was legal in the British empire, Cameron’s ancestors were given £4,101, equal to more than £3 million today ($4.7 million dollars), for the 202 black people they enslaved on the Grange Sugar Estate in Jamaica.

  5. Samantha Cameron
    The Ballenbouche Estate in St Lucia,  was linked to the prominent businessman,William Jolliffe.He received £4,000 in compensation for 164 slaves, or around £3.25million in today’s money. The Prime Minister of Britain’s wife – Samantha Cameron is a descendant of  William Jolliffe. William Jolliffe was a slave owner who received millions from the British government following abolition, researchers have discovered.
    African slaves were brought to St Lucia in the 1700s and the Ballenbouche Estate, a sugar plantation, was probably established in the 1740s.

    Pictures of Lucian Slaves:

    http://www.damajority.com/the-ballenbouche-estate-in-st-lucia-former-owner-is-an-ancestor-of-britans-1st-lady-history/

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  6. THE CONDITITION OF THE NEGRO-CHRISTIANS.

    “I have come to the conclusion that the majority of Afrikan men and women in the UK — and most certainly in places like the USA and Caribbean, and most probably in Afrika — are ‘functionally mentally ill’. By this I mean that whilst most people in this category can function effectively at a certain level, i.e. Hold down a job, obey the rules and laws of society, maintain social relationships over a prolonged period time, use their cognitive skills to solve various
    problems, there is something fundamentally wrong or missing at the heart of their psyche.

    This affective gap manifests itself in a deep-seated but unrecognized sense of racial inferiority, an inability to admire the Afrikan physiological and cultural aesthetic, a lack of racial self-esteem and confidence and a profound difficulty in working effectively with other Afrikans,
    often induced by the inability to trust one another.

    This functional mental illness is one of the main reasons that most Afrikan-controlled countries are economic and social basket cases. It explains the widespread use of skin bleaching agents by Afrikan women and why Afrikan women who ‘go natural’ with their hair often provoke such enormous and negative emotional reactions from other women who use chemicals to straighten their hair, or who wear wigs, weaves, extensions etc. It explains why Afrikans find it so
    hard to forgive each other and yet can forgive Caucasians in South Afrika (and other places) for their atrocities without any strong demand for justice or reparations.

    It explains why we are in such a mess and yet so many of us think we are ‘doing well’ as individuals. It explains why so many Brothers think that ‘things’ will help them to feel whole and never learn the lessons when they don’t.

    It is time for a rethink. Time to get down beneath the rhetoric and the kente cloth (or Versace) and deal with the pain. Deal with the pain of being rejected by your absent father, the pain of never being hugged by your physically present but emotionally absent father, the pain of belonging to a defeated and oppressed race, the pain of having to go to your oppressor for the means to live, the pain of a lifetime of insults and accusing looks, the pain of being rejected by your women, the pain of somehow feeling less than a man.

    We are a group of men who have been conquered and we have failed in our single most important task, namely the protection and defense of our community. However, no matter that many battles have been lost, the war continues apace. Can we face ourselves in the mirror of our ancestors and those yet to be born and summon the will and self-belief to win? For win we must. You cannot have an honourable defeat at the hands of white supremacy.
    Let’s do some healing and some cleansing and build a nation of men our women and
    children can be proud of.

    BLAME BLACK PEOPLE:

    https://www.facebook.com/717947878333399/videos/775086112619575/

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  7. Most Lucians are backward brainwashed Negroes who see Black people as an inferior Race and Caucasians as their God. These brainwashed Negroes hate themselves, hate their skins, hate their hair, and love the pale Caucasian woman. Josie was promised a pale woman if Michael and Allen Chastanet wins the elections, and promised to replace our beautiful Black African Pearlette Louisy with a Caucasian.

    Language is critical to the expression of culture because it’s a means by which the values, beliefs and customs of a people are communicated. It is fundamental to cultural identity and if people forget their native tongue, they lose an important aspect of their culture and a piece of who they are. For this reason, it is important that people keep their own language alive.

    When Black people were forced to adopt the languages of the English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, in essence they were forced to abandon their own worldview and accept a foreign one that regarded them as servants who supported the interest of whites. Does the mentality that allowed this relationship to happen still exist among us today?

    Look around you and see Negroes like John Wayne and Josie on their knees praying to a naked Caucasian with a cross hanging around their necks, while they proclaim themselves Roman Catholics who have to Kneel in the presence of these misogynistic Caucasian Popes and Bishops.

    IF I HAVE THIS WHITE WOMAN I’LL BE SOMEBODY

    https://www.facebook.com/100010609271467/videos/133396360357339/

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