Whiteness, Racism & Reparation

On Friday, I shared a post that popped up in my Facebook feed with the one-word comment: “Discuss”.

This was the article: How To Tell If A White Person Is Racist With One Simple Question. The question in question is “Should our nation pay reparations to black people for the enslavement, mistreatment and economic exploitation of them and their ancestors over the past four hundred years?” The article is almost eighteen months old; if it were a human child, it’d be walking. I don’t know why it popped up in my feed on Friday past. One doesn’t ask these questions of Facebook’s algorithms (though perhaps one should). And it’s not a stand-alone. It’s part of a three-part meditation written back when the Trumpworld was still young enough to perhaps seem benign, if you squinted hard enough and had one glass eye. The other entries are these: A Reasonable Reparation and Paying My Reparations, both of which should also be read to inform the discussion. And it’s inspired by a different kind of essay, the kind that gets published in The Atlantic. The author of that one was Ta-Nehisi Coates.

What was interesting to me, and part of why I’m writing this entry (which may be a beginning of something perhaps), is that people took the one word to heart. Discussion was had—and, one hopes, is ongoing.

Photo by Christian Newman on Unsplash

I’ll see if I can attempt to summarize the breadth of the discussion so far. And I’m going to try and contextualize the discussion as far as I can, because context adds an interesting filter.

• There’s the observation that the article is oversimplistic, and that opposition to reparations does not mean that one is racist. This was an observation that was offered, and supported, by a number of people of all backgrounds (which is code, as far as this blog entry is concerned, for “races” as well gender, geographical placement, economic status, etc)

• There’s the complete affirmation and reinforcement of the position offered in the article. This, too, was a position taken by people of most backgrounds (remember the code outlined above), but more so by people of African descent or by women of non-African descent

• There’s the observation that the article is related specifically to the United States of America (which it is, because of course the world begins and ends at the borders of the USA)—with the implication that the argument might be different if it is applied in different post-slave societies with different histories. This was proposed by one or two people only

• There’s the argument that reparations are irrelevant or impossible (not entirely sure which) because slavery is over and modern-day people who did not directly benefit from it should not have to pay for the injustices of their (or, perhaps preferably, other people’s) ancestors. This argument was not so evenly offered by people of all backgrounds; while there was some diversity, this argument tended to be put forth by men of whole or part European ancestry

• There’s the argument that despite adverse circumstances in the past, despite a history of disadvantage, progress has been made either personally or collectively, and that progress eradicates or at least mitigates the damage done in the past. This argument tended to be advanced by men of mixed or non-African backgrounds

• There’s the argument that the lines are not so easily drawn outside the USA, which defined “race” with a mathematical precision that ensured the continued oppression of many people who would not be recognized as “black”—unlike, say, the Caribbean or other parts of the Americas, where society endured and made room for more mixing, resulting in variants of pigmentation rather than monoliths of race. This argument was advanced most commonly by non-American women

• There’s the argument that paying money for past wrongs is not a valid mode of compensation, because money is easily wasted. This was advanced by people of diverse backgrounds, most of them male

• There’s the argument that the discussion does not need to be had, and in fact can be divisive and potentially negative. This was advanced by male individuals of mixed descent

• There’s the argument that reparation is not about money, but about principle; money may be a fitting symbol, but it is not the point. This was advanced mostly by women.

One of the commenters asked me to write an article in a similar vein. Not sure I can do it, or that I haven’t already done it. But what I can do is begin a meditation inspired by the post and the ensuing discussion.

First things first: where I myself stand.

I shared the article because it was provocative, but also because I don’t buy the simple equation of anti-reparations = racist white person. In this regard I stand with those who raised the (obvious) question of what to do with/where to place those people who are not white and who don’t believe in reparations. I do, however, support the idea of reparations. No. That’s putting it mildly. I am utterly convinced that reparations for the institution of slavery must be paid. Moreover, I believe that they will be paid, eventually; if they are not, it is because the institution of democracy has failed, the concept of the human has died, and the ideas of human rights and humanity have become obsolete.

Boom.

At the same time, I would also propose that the argument against reparations is itself racist. But it doesn’t follow that people who make the argument must be racist.

Aha, you say. A contradiction, you say. Absolutely. It is contradictory, but it is nevertheless very possibly true. It’s true because we still inhabit a world that was only made possible by half a millennium of the forced labour of millions of people whose humanity was stripped from them and their offspring in perpetuity, and whose humanity is only being returned to them (us) piece by bitter piece as our voices confront the institution and the world that it made and dismantle it bit by bit. Our entire reality is racist, and that racism shapes us all. It dwells in our deepest unconsciousnesses, no matter what our outward appearance might be. It lurks in the easy associations we all make, again and again, as easily as breathing: associations that link blackness with savagery, sexual appetite, violence, idiocy, brutality, dishonesty, laziness, criminality, shiftlessness, dirt, vagrancy, ugliness and filth, associations that link whiteness with purity, civility, intelligence, justice, law, industry, thrift, cleanliness, beauty and right. It lurks in our complete obliviousness to the brutality on which the institution of slavery depended. It lurks in our inability to recognize the perpetuation of that brutality in the daily life of the twenty-first century, brutality that lives on for all of us in expressions as apparently benign as “good hair” or as destructive as the reference to people who may be young and black as different sorts of animals (heifers, dogs, bitches, bucks, monkeys, cats, etc).

Reparations are necessary to expose these associations. They must be monetary because the crime was, in its origin, monetary. The current issue is barely how that money should be spent; the current issue is that to repair the great wrong done to the entire human race by the institution of chattel slavery (not just one group within it) it must be paid. That is the first level of the discussion. The rest of the discussion—the place where the idea of reparations opens up doors to creativity and innovation—is still to come.

But this is where I stand. As long as we conceive of the discussion as one which highlights racism, we miss the point. The point is that the kidnapping, sale, and enslavement of Africans, together with the entire systematic and ongoing dehumanization of the very idea of Africanness that was necessary to prop up the institution of slavery in an age of enlightenment, is a crime that continues into the present day. Think of James Byrd being dragged behind that truck. Think of the children forced to live in filth and captivity at the US border. Think of all the different mundane acts of violence, great and small, we accept as normal in the Caribbean. Think of the currency of these ideas: that the ripping of people from their homelands and the stripping of their identities from them is something that can be past, buried and done with, or that the robbing of land from the people who inhabited it and their eradication from public consciousness is simply the way the world is.

These are the parameters of that crime, and they continue. They replicate. They are supported. The political and economic elements of that crime may have passed away, perhaps. But the systems of dehumanization remain in place, and remain largely intact.

And. That crime is enacted not only on the descendants of the kidnapped. What we fail to see in the discussion we’ve been having so far is that the crime is perpetuated just as much on the kidnappers as well. In order to dehumanize the “other”, the people who designed and perpetuated the institution of slavery had to dehumanize themselves. They had to transform themselves into torturers, rapists and murderers, and they had to do so systematically and legally. They had to leave no room for the kind of doubt that might cause the system to fail, and so they built societies that legitimized and rationalized those actions.

It is that which must be repaired. This is a reparation that is far larger than the United States of America (which, after all is not the world). It is a reparation that has to happen to begin to rebuild us all.

Democracy, ritual, responsibility, and ... (yep) spoiling the ballot, giddily

We live in a democracy. It's not perfect, but we adhere to certain fundamental principles. Like this one: individuals are entitled, even encouraged, to hold widely divergent views. The vigourous debate of those views extends and enriches democratic life.

Unfortunately, we tend to avoid that kind of debate. Rather than engaging with opposing ideas, fighting our corners and reviewing our positions based on different points of view, many of our discussions about principles and philosophy take on a personal cast. This happens most often when we wish to divert attention from an argument that we find outrageous or unsettling. Instead of engaging with the divergent idea, we prefer very often to cast "shade". Our general response to such an argument is to tear down the arguer, rather than to dive into the discussion at hand.

As someone observed to me recently, "Bahamians love shade".

And so it works.

Here's how it works. Instead of thinking further about the issue, our focus slips to the person talking about the issue, and the more we can think of to discredit that person, the more we imagine the argument has been won.

There's another name for this method of discussion. Rhetoricians call it the ad hominem fallacy, and it's a way of not arguing at all.

Last weekend, Front Porch took me to task for a number of positions I've apparently taken regarding the Bahamian political process. Now I have no problem with being challenged in an intellectual fashion. As anyone who knows me well will tell you that I find good, old-fashioned debate exhilarating. At the same time, though, I find the refusal to debate ideas by choosing to discredit the person putting forward the ideas lazy, disingenuous, and weak.

(Notice what I just did there? I dismissed the ad hominem argument in an ad hominem way. Instead of showing what was wrong with it, I just described it, using a string of adjectives. But I didn't demonstrate why the ad hominem argument is weak or lazy. I just said that it was. At the end of the day, you believed me, or you didn't, but not because of any evidence. You believed me or you didn't probably because you like me, or you don't—or else you just took the adjectives on face value. Which you shouldn't, because adjectives are very slippery, lightweight words which, in an argument, all too often say more about the person using them than about the thing they're used to describe.)

But there's a better way to argue.

Let's have a look at what “Simon” appears to have disliked about my political stances. There were a number of issues that offended. Some of them have some history to them—statements I made before the 2012 election—and some of them have a measure of currency.

Specifically, they were:

• Policy and political rallies;

• The role of minority governments;

• The role of representative governments;

• The spoil the ballot campaign; and

• The election of Bahamian Senators.

I'm going to deal with the first one, the one which stretches all the way back to 2012, in this post. I'll save the other four for another post. One which won't be quite so giddy. It'll probably be insipid instead.

Hyperbolic irresponsibility & woeful uninformation

So. Here's the first dismissal:

Before the last election, Bethel engaged in the sort of hyperbolic irresponsibility that one might expect from someone woefully uninformed. She noted that she heard nothing about policy at political rallies.

She was dead wrong.

Simon, Front Porch, "The Rituals of Democracy", April 13 2017,

emphasis added to highlight adjectival phrases

Let's see what I actually did say.

I have heard absolutely nothing from any party about what the future holds. The PLP has crafted some very general principles for the next few years, but these, when decoded, seem to amount to a reinstatement of what was in the works between 2002 and 2007 when they were in power. The FNM has focussed very much on vague generalities like “proven leadership” and “deliverance”, and what has been done, largely in material, infrastructural terms, in the very recent past ... The DNA speaks in broad terms, pushing the buttons that they feel gain them support, but not showing any real coherent ideology about which their philosophy has been crafted.

("Elections—and beyond", April 11, 2012)

According to “Simon”, both Christie and Ingraham contradicted these statements by offering "policy and programmatic ideas in a variety of areas." Well, OK. I'm going to guess Simon and I have different definitions of policy and programme, and we could agree to disagree—if that was all there was to it.

But that's not the issue at hand. “Simon” went further. Rather than focussing on the idea of political rallies, Simon chose to comment on my professional competence: "It was odd that as an anthropologist she could not, or refused to, understand the brilliance of the political rally as a ritual of democracy."

This extends the fallacy beyond the ad hominem attack into the realm of the strawman argument—because, had I been interested in the anthropological function of political rallies, I would have talked about it. For political rallies are, as “Simon” quite rightly says, an important part of political ritual. But important as rallies are, their function does not make much room for discussions of policy and programme.

Here's what “Simon” doesn't say about the anthropological approach to the ritual function served by the political rally. The ritual of the political rally uses revelry and fun to build bonds among potential supporters. When people allow themselves to be caught up in the euphoria of the moment, they engage in something anthropologists call communitas—a kind of group bonding that doesn't come from any objective similarity among the people involved or any objective coherence to what they are being told in the process, but from the collective activity they're participating in. In this situation, the action is what matters about the ritual, not the content. It engages humans at the level of the body, not the mind, and so what is said matters less than how it is said. Rhythmic speaking, call and response, catch phrases, bombastic delivery—these are what count.

In other words: had I been talking anthropologically, I would have said that the purpose of the political rally is not to offer or discuss policy or programmes. A good rally is like a party or a show; if policy or programmes are mentioned, they have to be offered in such a way that they don't break the mood. So I'll accept that Christie and Ingraham offered policy and programmatic ideas in 2012. I'm not so sure that anyone really heard them. If the rallies were successful (and they were), they were not supposed to.

My criticism was not of the lack of policy at political rallies. It related to the lack of vision anywhere in the 2012 campaign. The Plan and the Manifesto and the DNA's contract looked great to be sure, but that's not the kind of vision I was thinking about. Rather, I was looking for an articulation of the kind of Bahamas we would be living in in twenty or thirty years' time, and could not find it anywhere. I wasn't looking for it at the rallies. But I wanted something else—some online address by a party leader to outline and explain that party's vision of the future, some acknowledgement of where we were in 2012 and how we were going to change direction and move in a different one, even some recognition of the fact that we were now in a 21st century, digital world and analogue solutions were just not going to cut it anymore. And there was nothing. Nada. Except, perhaps, shuffles, sidestepping, and holograms.

As I'm being castigated not only for hyperbole but also for woeful uninformation, it might be worth looking at what else is contained in that same blog post in April 2012 from the perspective of April 2017 (the emphasis is added). If anyone is still doubtful about why, in this election, I am considering spoiling my ballot, here's what I said five years ago, almost to the day.

I’m preparing for five more years of struggle, no matter who wins or doesn’t win this election; for five more years of escalating violence in our society; for five more years of a contracting economy, traffic problems, and decreasing revenues. I’m preparing for five more years of governmental desperation, of prostitution of the country to the biggest donor (China seems to be the crowd favourite right now), of undereducation and of brain drain, no matter who wins.

("Elections—and beyond", April 11, 2012)

emphasis added to highlight the elementsthat maybe weren't quite so woefully uniformed

Five years later, those words seem almost prophetic. (They weren't; they were just the logical outcome of the lack of vision/policy/programmes that plagued the 2012 elections). Check back in a couple of days to find out more about my stellar and breathtaking ignorance. But for now, cheers. 

Seeding the Revolution: Withdrawing Consent

Educated FoolishnessLast Thursday, the Out Da Box movement introduced itself to The Bahamas. Ian Strachan, Alicia Wallace and I began the discussion about spoiling the ballot as an option in the upcoming general election on Guardian Talk Radio, and (to my considerable surprise, but not to the others') the discussion took off. What madness were we suggesting? Spoil the ballot? Why on God's green earth, at this critical juncture in history,  would anyone ever think of doing something so stupid?And the discussion continued far beyond the morning show. It was taken up again at noon by the Revolution, and then at 5 on Freedom March, and it seemed to continue again into Friday, with more radio discussion on the weekend as well. Almost all of the discussion disagreed vehemently with the position that we've taken: that if, like us, you don't feel you have anyone to vote for, register anyway and spoil your ballot.The "stupidity" of the idea centred around two main points:

1. the concept that anyone in their right mind would, or should, go to the polls and stand in line in the hot sun, wasting their time and energy and patience, to go into the voting booth just to choose no candidate at all; and
2. the idea that doing this would change anything about the outcome. If 90% of the electorate spoiled their ballot, the next government would be elected by the 10% who did not, and the politicians would not care one whit about the rest.

The general refrain: this will achieve nothing, so why even suggest it?Method in the MadnessWhat much of the discussion seems to have missed about the movement is that its focus is not on effecting quick, immediate change in political rulership. Rather, it is on building citizen power.For too long, we have accepted the idea that "democracy" consists of going to the polls every five years--or, more recently, whenever a referendum is called--to cast a vote on a pre-selected slate of candidates or a pre-determined set of options. The result has been that we've developed the habit of treating election seasons rather like football playoffs--people have their teams, they wear their paraphernalia, they trash talk about the other guys. Like football playoffs too, we have evolved a binary way of looking at political options: it's an either/or scenario. And it's a spectator sport for the most part. We may study the plays and talk about them, but we do not contribute to them. The game is plotted out in the locker room, behind closed doors, between coaches and players. As with football, we seem to accept that this is the way things are done. All we do is cheer them on when we see how well they work, or groan when they don't.But democracy is not like football. Government FOR the people BY the people means, very simply, that the citizens of any democracy are in fact its governors. At the moment, we operate in a representative democracy, which means that at specific moments in time, citizens vote for the people they will send to represent them in the legislature. That's why the gallery is in the House of Assembly. These representatives are ideally supposed to be the voice of the citizens--the governors--when the time comes to make laws, and also one of the checks to the power of the executive, many of whose decisions should be reported to or ratified by the House of Assembly.The result of treating elections like football playoffs, though, means that we tend to assume that what happens in the House of Assembly is the politicians' business. We often miss the point that the politicians work for us. For a long time, we have given them too little oversight, too little direction, and they have developed a culture of entitlement, a culture of disrespect for the citizenry that is only now beginning to be checked with the advent of social media.The Out Da Box movement seeks, quite simply, to change the thinking of the citizenry. To shift the discussion away from trash talk to what it means to operate in a democracy. To recognize that a citizen's vote is the one bit of direct power that citizen has, albeit very small.We believe that there is power in withholding that vote, because democracy depends on the consent of the ruled. We recognize that withholding our consent will not change the immediate outcome of the election. We know that it may be ignored or discounted by the people who do get elected. We know that the government that is formed after the 2017 election will probably forget that they do not have the mandate to make decisions on behalf of the citizenry that they have come to expect.But showing up to withdraw our consent is the beginning of a new way of being governed. It will take more than engaging in the spectator sport that our democracy has become, but it will be worth it in the end. By showing up to spoil our ballots, to withdraw our consent to be governed, we, the citizens, will be pledging with that one small act that we will show up again and again, collectively. We will do the work it takes, as the true government of our democracy, to contribute to our legislative activity. And we will learn and exercise skills that our representatives seem to lack or to have forgotten: reasoning skills, the skills of dialogue, respect for dissent and dissenters, and the skill of constructive negotiation.Out Da Box believes that the very first step to that collective action can be spoiling the ballot--withdrawing our consent to be inadequately ruled--together. Stupid is as Stupid DoesSo back to the educated foolishness, the stupidity of the act of spoiling the ballot.

1. Why register, go to the polls, stand in the hot sun and waste time, energy and patience, just to spoil the ballot? Because WE are the government. The people we elect work for US. The fact that they hold their allegiance to their parties--their teams--above their responsibility to be the voice of the citizenry is unacceptable to us.
2. What will spoiling the ballot achieve? It is an act that citizens can take together to lay the foundation for a more participatory democracy that we have today.The fact that we take the time to withdraw our consent is a demonstration that we are going to show up for other, more visible exercises that reinforce the citizens' power.

So the foolishness of this movement boils down to one primary idea. Citizens acting together to withdraw their consent to be ruled will lay the foundation for a better, more participatory, future.

Hurricane Matthew: #massivefail (2)

I'm writing this in the cool breeze and dark room of a home in an area which not only has yet to see electricity restored, but even to see any presence of our Power and Light company for blocks around.* Hurricane Matthew blew past us two weeks ago, and we have yet to return to normalcy. I am a citizen, and a patriot, and I am ashamed of the way in which our government has responded to this disaster.

Let me point to the areas of greatest failure.

1. Bahamas Power and Light

I have already criticized this company roundly on social media. Let me be very clear: my criticism does not stem from my personal situation. After the last major hurricanes to affect electricity services in the capital, we invested in the sort of generator that could withstand this kind of power loss -- a workhorse of an engine. Rather, my criticism stems from the fact that the result of BPL's ineptitude in the wake of this storm has compounded rather than alleviated the suffering and trauma experienced by the residents of the Bahamas' capital city, and it did not have to be that way.BPL has worked hard to earn my criticism. I will give props to the company for restoring power to the hospitals, the security agencies, and Paradise Island the day after the hurricane. That part of their strategy made sense, considering that Atlantis was being used by many as a hurricane shelter and a home away from home. But that is where my commendation stops.Thereafter, BPL's response to the hurricane was wrong-footed, revealing that the new managers were clearly out of their depth. In the first instance, the company was wrong to reject hurricane protocols established by its parent company, BEC. This decision left residents of Nassau perplexed and rattled, as we did not see the company mobilize and jump into action until after our first weekend in darkness. Rather than beginning as soon as the storm had passed, it seemed, BPL was wasting time "assessing" the extent of the damage. No doubt it was working feverishly to repair its own plants. But this was accomplished in utter silence, in the absence of any real communication to the customers it served and on whose money -- from our taxes and from our pockets -- it depends for its own survival.In the second instance, the communications in which it engaged after this sluggish first response were not only inadequate, but downright insulting. The tenor of the communications came off as defensive and self-serving, with frequent references to the "unprecedented" nature of this storm and the lack of adequate resources to address the state of emergency.This was insulting because while Hurricane Matthew is widely claimed to have been the strongest storm to directly hit Nassau since 1929, the reality is that the situation is more a matter of degree rather than of quality. In my adult memory, I can count eight storms which have affected New Providence substantially, six of them this century. Further, as we should all be well aware, a decade ago two of those storms devastated Grand Bahama and wiped out its power generation ability altogether, requiring the replacement of all the utility poles from Freeport to West End in 2004-5. Our legacy power company, BEC, has extensive experience in dealing with hurricane recovery within and outside of Nassau and has learned how to do it well. BPL's insistence that the impact of Matthew was somehow extraordinary rang false, and had the effect of discounting everything Bahamians have learned about the restoration of power after major storms.So while I am perfectly willing to agree that Matthew may have affected our power generation plants more than any other in recent times, and that it may have left a different kind of destruction behind, I cannot accept that BEC lacked the experience or the strategies that would allow the capital to be functional more quickly and in a more reasonable amount of time. The fact that the majority of the island of New Providence remained without light until the Sunday after the storm spoke more to the inexperience and hard-headedness of the new management team than to the magnitude of the storm. After all, Matthew sideswiped New Providence as a Category 3 storm, and the eye passed us by. The continual references to its "unprecedented" nature sounded like excuses for ineptitude.Let me support this point with some more comprehensive detail. These are the other significant storms we have weathered in New Providence in the past quarter century: Hurricane Andrew (Cat 5) (1992), Hurricane Floyd (Cat 3-4) (1999), Hurricane Michelle (Cat 1) (2001), Hurricanes Frances (Cat 4) and Jeanne (Cat 3) (2004), Hurricane Irene (Cat 3) (2011), and Hurricane Sandy (Cat 1) (2012). For Bahamians, and for Nassauvians, although the eye of a hurricane has not come this close to us for some fifteen years -- not since Hurricane Michelle, whose eye stayed over the capital for some hours -- the statement that the strike was "unprecedented" has the effect of dismissing our collective experience as irrelevant, unworthy of recognition.Let me be clear on another point, too.  Lest people misunderstand what I expect from our power company and imagine that I am judging the response of BPL to the storm solely by the restoration of power to the capital, let me assure you that I am not talking about full restoration of services here. Hurricanes bring devastation, and I do not expect miracles. I do, however, expect rationality in the wake of a storm; I expect our power company to understand the way New Providence works, and to make decisions that minimize suffering and confusion rather than ones that exacerbate that suffering.I am talking about commitment, confidence, and communication. After those other hurricanes that disrupted the capital's electricity -- primarily Andrew, Floyd, Michelle, Frances and Jeanne -- residents of New Providence were given comprehensive reports of the damage to the electrical grid, a general understanding of the scope of the repairs to be undertaken, and then regular updates about the progress of those repairs. We have come to expect this kind of respect, and we have missed it sorely this time. It is the kind of communication that allows us to understand that while it might take weeks to restore full electricity to the whole island, two weeks after those storms, the capital will function again. Schools without significant damage will re-open. Businesses will return to some level of normalcy. Traffic will move without snarls at traffic lights and many communities will have their power restored.Additionally, in those past storms, after two weeks, we all knew our electricity corporation was working for us. Crews had been visible throughout the island from the moment the storm had passed, at times even before the all-clear was given. It was understood that the restoration of electricity to as many people as possible was of the highest priority. We understood that BEC recognized that the swift resumption of power generation was critical to the recovery of the economy and of the island, and public confidence was boosted by the corporation's clear communication and a sense of commitment to the quickest restoration in the shortest possible time.I cannot say that I have confidence in any of the above this year. On the contrary: BPL has succeeded in convincing me that its primary interest lies in conserving its bottom line, in protecting whatever revenues it expected to earn from this management contract, rather than in restoring power to the people it serves in the shortest possible time. It may well have worked to restore power in the shortest cost-effective possible time, but that is not the same thing at all, and it inspires little confidence in me that I matter to BPL in any way other than the payment of my electricity bill.I resent this deeply. Unlike money which was paid to BEC in the past, this insistence on cost-effectiveness is not, and cannot be, merely to ensure efficiency. It must also be to repatriate some of the revenues earned from Bahamian pockets to the USA, where the parent company of the new management resides. Otherwise what would be the point of accepting the management contract?There may be people who will argue with me, who will take the stand that even in an emergency, money matters more than people. For the sake of neo-liberal argument, I'll give them that point, although every atom in my body screams that it is wrong. Even so, if cost effectiveness is your primary motivation, I expect a level of fiscal efficiency. If your goal is cost-effectiveness, at least achieve it with the minimal possible disruption to normal life. Even here BPL's miscalculation has been great. Its slowness and muddled strategy of restoration has resulted in the following impacts on life in the capital:

• the slow restoration of internet and cable communication, which is dependent in many cases on the restoration of electricity
• the inability of public schools to reopen as scheduled owing the continued lack of power to their surrounding communities, a direct result of the company's decision to leave the northeastern and southern segments of New Providence to the last
• the protracted power outage at the Port of Nassau, the core of New Providence's economic activity
• the continued inability of a considerable proportion of the business community to function at full capacity, as much of the economy of New Providence is still centred in and around the city of Nassau in the neglected north-eastern segment of the island, and also as a result of their remaining without cable and internet
• traffic chaos owing to the scores of traffic lights that remain non-functional in the wake of the hurricane

Even as I write this, these are the traffic lights that impact me personally that remain non-functional, two weeks in: Village and Bay, Village and Shirley, Shirley and Mackey, Mackey and Bay, Mackey and Pyfrom (Bar 20), Mackey and Madeira, Parkgate and Village. The lights at Madeira and Montrose, Madeira and Mount Royal, Madeira (Fifth Terrace) and Collins, Rosetta and Sears, Rosetta and Hawkins, Rosetta (Fourth Terrace) and Collins, Mackey and Wulff, Collins and Wulff, East and Wulff, Market and Wulff, Nassau and Meadow/Boyd, Elizabeth and Shirley, Blue Hill and Cumberland, Blue Hill and Dillet. These are not insignificant junctions. No doubt there are scores of others. These are not rural outposts, and they are not areas that can go without traffic signals for long. But they are testimonies to the way in which BPL's approach to this storm was woefully and tragically off the mark.What is more, it appears as though, contrary to a more established practice of  tackling the most difficult jobs first, BPL has left them to the last. This means that the people who were most impacted by the storm itself -- who suffered the flooding from the storm surge, who lost cars and roofs to falling trees, who lost their vehicles and their furniture and in some cases the stability of their homes -- are also those people who remain the most neglected two weeks after the storm. This has the effect of compounding their trauma and of increasing, rather than alleviating, their suffering. I am not suggesting that the damage to the electrical system that occurred in those areas should, or could, be fixed immediately. But I am saying that there is some comfort to be had simply from knowing that one's area is a priority for officials, from knowing that you are on someone's list, that you are not being forgotten. And that is what has sorely been lacking in this post-Matthew time.In short, BPL's recovery plan has appeared ad hoc, foreign, and woefully unsuited to the realities of life on New Providence. I can only conclude that what has happened at BPL -- as BEC delivered a far better service after hurricanes, even if it did not deliver much in the way of service day-to-day -- is that the new managers have come in with their own way of doing things, and disregarded protocols that have been in place for decades. (I am only speculating here, and my speculation is fuelled both by rumour and by a deep bias against the outsourcing of any essential utility to an external company, so take this part of my criticism with the appropriate dose of salt.) I suspect, however, that the new managers discounted the institutional and local knowledge that allowed BEC to function to this point, given the decrepitude of the plant and the chronic misallocation of funds it has suffered for decades. I suspect that the new managers instituted their own post-hurricane protocols instead of considering the value of those that have been tried and true -- to their detriment. There were babies in that bathwater, as we have all found out.There is very little in the way of mitigation that can be had at this stage, but there are some things that can be done.One of the areas that stands out most glaringly about BPL's non-handling of this crisis is its persistent refusal, apparently, to offer any rebates to its customers in this difficult time. Not only have the press conferences that I have heard mentioned cost at every turn, BPL -- unlike every other public utility company in the nation  -- has insisted clearly that they will continue to bill their customers for their services and that they will continue to disconnect those customers for non-payment of their bills.Come again? Is BPL the only agency in this country to emerge without loss in the wake of this hurricane? Is the right to repatriate profits more important than the ability of Bahamian citizens to recover from the storm? Is BPL oblivious to the ways in which it has compounded the suffering and slowed our recovery? Are we expected to pay for this massive failure?Words massively fail me here. The only thing I can do is to call upon the bosses of BPL, the politicians we have elected to manage our nation, to demand that some other arrangements be made, to demand that BPL recognize its contribution to our suffering and to at least consider offering reduced bills to those who have been without power for longer than seven days. Something concrete, something tangible, must be exchanged for the frustration, confusion and inefficiency that we have experienced from BPL over the past two weeks.What I would also like to see now is some humility in the wake of this disaster. At the very least, I would like to see the new managers learn something from this experience.They should learn something about the Bahamian people -- that we expect better than they have given us after this hurricane. They should learn something about the expertise that they met in the corporation that they were contracted to manage -- that perhaps local expertise is worth listening to, worth making room for, worth promoting. They should learn something about going into another country armed with the assumption that they way that they do things elsewhere may not be the best way, may not even work if transplanted. And they should learn something about basic communication. The provision of electricity should be divorced from spin. Tell the truth, tell it fairly, and gain the confidence of your consumers. Try to confuse us with numbers and percentages and mumbo-jumbo of the American kind, and worse, charge us for it, can only yuck up our vexation (Eng. translation: raise our ire).That is all.------

*Edit: the very night I wrote this post, the trucks came. They appeared in the neighbourhood by threes. One car, three trucks. 14 days after the hurricane. But the restoration of power was not as easy as that. By the time this publishes, it may have been achieved, but for now: we're still in darkness. [Back]

Love, Hate, Democracy and Christianity

Bahamian pastors, I have a question for you. What did you preach about yesterday? It's the first Sunday since the referendum, so I imagine that many congregations were engaged in praise and thanksgiving for the Bahamas' rejection of changes to the status quo that might allow for gay marriage. But it was also the morning of a massacre. Did you preach about that?If you did, was Christ your example? Did you, in your rejoicing, spare a thought for the families of the 50+ dead in Orlando? A prayer? Did you lead your congregations in prayers for the wounded in Pulse nightclub, or did you (God forbid) offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the shooter?These things matter. I'm asking because we are responsible for the stands we take. We're responsible for both the positive outcomes and the negative ones. We can never know how our words will be taken when we utter them, and when they leave us, but that does not make us any less responsible for them. Words are not children; they do not have consciences of their own. But they do have consequences.A choice was made by a significant proportion of the Bahamian Christian community during the lead-up to the Bahamas referendum. It was a choice I did not understand, and a choice that I would not have made myself. As a result, significant portions of the discussion that surrounded the referendum focussed on a "gay agenda" that had to be defeated at whatever cost—even the cost of not affording equal rights under the constitution to Bahamian women. When challenged, many of the people advancing that position insisted that their stand was not against individuals. Christians love homosexuals, they said; it is the homosexual lifestyle they do not love. For the sake of argument, I will accept that position, though I did not see a whole lot of love being shared. I didn't see too many pastors sitting and engaging with Bahamian gay rights activists, or embracing members of the Bahamian transgender community. I heard a lot of aggression and a lot of judgement, though. Plenty wrath. Not so much gentleness.Well, on Saturday night, a real blow was struck against the "gay agenda", and it was struck with bullets and with blood. More than fifty homosexuals were removed from this world by a man who was taking his own personal stand against their "agenda". Now I am in no way linking that shooting directly to any Bahamian Christian. I am well aware that the shooter was an Afghani-American. But his intent seemed all too familiar here in The Bahamas. And some of the responses appearing in Bahamian social media—which rejoiced in his actions, which threatened the same here—sickened me.Hence my question. Pastors, what did you preach about yesterday? Did you remind your congregations that, no matter what your stand in principle about same-sex marriage and homosexual lifestyles, the slaughter of actual human beings was wrong? Did you remind them of Jesus' words about judging others, about turning cheeks, about loving neighbours as yourself? Did you condemn in advance the outpouring of hate that was certainly about to come from people who used your stance against the proposed amendment to justify their personal homophobia? Did you, in short, accept responsibility for your position on the referendum, recognize the links between yesterday morning's shooting and that position, and work to explain the difference between a principle and an action? That your call to righteousness is not a call to murder? That the freedom of speech, of expression, or of opinion, are not the same as the freedom of action? That the shooting of people in a nightclub catering to LGBTI people is certainly not what God is calling His people to do? And beyond that, what have you written about it? Where are the words that you will use to help heal this hate? I am not condemning the position you took on the referendum, though I disagree with it, and was saddened by it. We live in a democratic society, and democracy guarantees you the right to hold and defend your personal convictions. But that right comes with responsibility. You are responsible for the words you used in this fight. I am holding you responsible for the words you will use from now on to spread the love of Christ, as well as judgement. You are our pastors. You can lead us astray, or in the paths of righteousness. I'm waiting.PS: Check this out. 

Junkanoo, Carnival, and Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival

First things first.

Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival is over, and it was a rip-roaring success. As happened in Grand Bahama, in Nassau thousands and thousands of people thronged the festival site, hungry for the new experience, and for the first time ever The Bahamas entered the twenty-first century world of festivals, productions and events. For the first time ever, too, the government of The Bahamas understood and supported the need for real economic investment in bringing something like this off; the committee that was appointed brought local financial and production expertise to the table and ensured that the execution of the event would be top-class; Bahamians and international performers were hosted on the same stage and that stage was beamed to the world; and at long, long last the Fort Charlotte/Arawak Cay arena has been turned into the kind of festival village that has long been dreamed about.

Throughout the world, the twenty-first century has brought with it a hunger for the festival experience, and, together with tourism, the cultural economy is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. To say we have been slow to capitalize on that is to understate the reality. There are many festivals throughout The Bahamas. They have been happening for years, but none of them have been able to  tap into the global economy the way Junkanoo Carnival was able to for many reasons. They are run like petty shops; they are overly politicized; they rely too much on government handouts rather than focussing on economic generation; they are poorly advertised; they are treated like backyard get-togethers rather than businesses. This homecoming culture, as one might call it, has not taken advantage of any of the things that the twenty-first century has to offer with regard to linking culture and tourism and participating wholly in the global cultural economy. Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival has changed that game entirely.

In the months leading up to this event, many people asked me for my opinion of Junkanoo Carnival, and wondered if I would speak publicly and critically about it. I did not. I didn't join the chorus of people criticizing the concept for the simple reason that I fundamentally agree with the need—economically and socially—to shift the government's focus and investment from old, mid-twentieth century economic activity to the cultural industries. I fought for an event like this when I served as Director of Culture. The festival model that was put in place here is in many ways a mirror image the festival model that was put forward by Keith Nurse in 2004 when he was engaged to lead a task force on the transformation of CARIFESTA. It's something you will hear me talk about if you download and listen to the podcasts on CARIFESTA, which were produced back in 2008 when we were hosting and not-hosting the festival. Those of us who fought for the inauguration of a festival culture in The Bahamas have all been vindicated. I could not oppose what I fundamentally support.

But I have always resisted the linking of this transition from homecoming culture to festival culture with the name and form of Carnival. I have always believed, and continue to believe, that we missed a major, major opportunity to put the whole of Bahamian culture squarely on the world stage by choosing to make our mega-festival in the image of the Trinidad carnival rather than studying the ways in which Carnival were monetized and working out how we could do that with Junkanoo.

I am not convinced by many of the reasons spouted to justify spending money to bring in Trinidadian consultants to produce a cookie-cutter event. No one has yet explained to me to my satisfaction why it was necessary to import a Trini-style Carnival (when we could have turned to Brazil, whose Carnaval is even bigger and more lucrative than Trinidad's, and whose production is far closer than to what exists in Junkanoo today) rather than investing in the time and energy required to make Junkanoo the centre of the experience. Now I have worked with Junkanoo for almost all of my adult life, and I know as well as anyone who has done so how unbelieveably difficult it is to work with the Junkanoo community; how obstructive that community can be; how unreasonably protective they are of their vision of Junkanoo; how ignorant many of them are of the history and significance of what they do; how petty their differences; how slow they are to change.  Any one of these arguments would have brought agreement from me; but I still would have demanded that the new festival at least consider ways in which our own aesthetic and traditions could be honoured, rather than supplanted by those of another territory. But the ease with which our leaders were able simply to import a ready-made festival was troubling, to say the least.

The whole process behind this festival revealed, once again, how deeply people who sit in positions of authority in our country distrust what is ours, how ready we are to push aside what is vibrant and indigenous when it is unformed and messy in honour of what is foreign and nicely packaged. What we did with the festival itself is akin to what we do with our houses, our fruit, and, in general, our national development. We build Florida boxes that hug the ground, have no cross-ventilation, and which bake in the heat and flood in the rains, when we have a perfectly good vernacular architecture that developed to handle our environment. We buy mangoes and avocadoes and bananas and oranges with "Dole" and "Sunkist" and other US stickers on them when the same fruit are growing in our back yards and on our islands; and we have come to regard the solution to all of our local issues as being the outsourcing the problem area to the most convenient foreign direct investor.

Countries don't grow by outsourcing. Corporations may do so, but citizens are not commodities. And cultural expressions are not interchangeable. What is most troubling about the whole exercise is the narrative that has emerged, that local expressions of culture cannot be monetized, that Junkanoo cannot be improved, that Junkanoo has "served its purpose" and needs to move over to make room for Carnival. This discussion, this argument, which I have seen flourish on Facebook in too many places to be believed, is part of the reason I am weighing in on this now, after the fact.

Let me be quite clear here. I do not believe for one moment that the reason this weekend was successful was because we were celebrating Carnival and not Junkanoo. The greatest success took place at Da Cultural Village. Even though many people took part in, and enjoyed, the Road Fever, the real achievement lay in the hosting, the production, and the presentation of the concerts on Fort Charlotte and Arawak Cay. The real value of the mega-festival lay in the promotion of Bahamian music, and in the development of our event management skills. It was connected also to the recognition/admission/understanding, at long last, that we exist as part of a wider pan-Caribbean world and that our music has a place alongside it on the global stage. The success that was achieved lay in the marriage of industrial standard production values—and international-style expenditure to achieve those values—rather than in any shift to the celebration of Carnival. Let us keep that in mind as we carry this discussion forward.

But let me be equally clear. The most disturbing thing that has come out of the weekend has been the fact that we have now set the carnival in opposition to what is ours—and that to do so, we have spouted the most arrant nonsense about carnival, Junkanoo, and what they mean to us. I have seen people try to argue that Carnival and Junkanoo are basically the same thing. I have seen people suggest that for us to move on from Junkanoo to Carnival is some sort of inevitable cultural evolution, in complete ignorance of the cultural evolution that has got Junkanoo to where it is today. Rather than incorporating the Carnival as a celebration of our Caribbean connections, which we could have done to the same effect, we have set up an opposition that pits Junkanoo against Carnival.

Finally, here is my deepest concern of all. Much has been made of the fact that a study that I oversaw has found that Junkanoo does not turn a profit. People who have never looked at that study, who have clearly never even heard me explain what that study did and showed, have been all over the airwaves using that study to justify why we should invest in Carnival and not in Junkanoo. We have bought into the idea that Carnival is an economic engine for development and Junkanoo is a drain on the public purse. I will go into far more detail about that study in a later post, but let me just say this: Carnival could not have happened the way it did this year without the participation of the Junkanoo community; their artistic and costuming expertise was hard at work in many of the Carnival companies. Many designers and builders participated in Carnival as a means of making money out of the event, as a means of turning what they do every year for love and the nourishing of their spirits into a means of making a living because they have not been afforded the opportunity to make that living out of Junkanoo. Whether Carnival offered them the economic returns that it promised has yet to be seen. For me, the real value of this event will lie in its ability not only to allow at long last the chance for musicians, dancers and producers to make a living doing what they love, but also to bolster the growth of Junkanoo, a festival that we Bahamians have already developed. And that success still remains to be seen. 

Watching Baltimore Burn

The title says it all.I'm watching the burning on MSNBC right now, having started watching it on CNN, and I'm thinking of all the mistakes we have made over the past ten years, the past twenty years, the past forty years in our nation.For those of you who may be reading from outside the 242, when I say "our nation", I mean The Bahamas, not the USA. I may be resident in the USA for the next 10 weeks, but when I say "our nation" I mean our Bahamas.The first thing that I'm thinking of is our current crime wave in Nassau. As far as I can tell, the violence began to escalate in 2007, and it has been rising steadily ever since. Now I know that this is not a popular thing to say. The popular thing is to blame the Progressive Liberal Party for everything negative in our country, but the fact of this matter is that in 2002, the then PLP administration, led by PM Perry Christie, instituted a revolutionary programme for our inner cities. Urban Renewal as it was then conceived was based on three principles. The first principle was that the people who live in the inner cities are not all criminals. Even if criminality is prevalant in those communities, the majority of the residents, those mostly law-abiding people, who are our poorest residents and those people who are first and most often affected by criminal activity, deserve to be treated as citizens like everyone else. The establishment of Urban Renewal centres in those inner city communities (never mind that the communities themselves were artificially determined according to those absurd lines on paper we call constituency boundaries) recognized this, and those centres were not only inhabited by police; they also brought together various other government services which made it easier for the people in those communities to access government programmes. The idea was that those centres were one-stop shops where people who had limited resources, a shortage of transportation and a shortage of time, could pay their bills, see their social workers, and get the help and guidance they might need to make their lives easier, not harder. The second principle was that when it comes to crime, prevention is better than cure. It may be more exciting and more macho to invade communities with guns blazing and riot gear on, but the decision was taken to turn the police into father figures rather than warriors. The idea was that if you treat citizens as people and give them the chance to experience their own citizenry, by making the police their servants and their mentors and not their enemies, peace will follow. And the third principle was that you can't fix broken communities by breaking people. The Urban Renewal programme of 2002-2007 was an integrated programme based on serious and long-term research into transformative community activity, led by psychiatrists and community activists, a programme that forced a number of different agencies to cooperate and work together, using neighbourhoods as the locus of their action and people as their focus, rather than their far-flung, over-insulated offices and addictions to hierarchy. It provided counselling and mentoring; it provided alternative activities for inner city youth; it provided father figures and the sense that inner city residents mattered.This is what the discussion about Baltimore tells us is missing in that city, what lies behind the riots tonight.I believe that the rolling back of that programme in 2007, citing the "waste" of government resources, the frivolity of marching bands, the softening of the police, and the inefficiency of providing multiple services, is at least on some level responsible for the escalation of violence and criminal activity in the communities from which the programme was removed. Imagine you are a seven year old boy living in one of our urban centres in 2002. All of a sudden you are given the opportunity to meet policemen, to get to know them, to be taught music by them, to be treated by them as a young human being and treat them as mature human beings. Imagine joining a marching band and getting to travel and wear a uniform and have something to invest in and to feel proud of. And then imagine being that same boy in that same urban centre in 2007, only now you are eleven. Your band is disbanded. Your police friends leave the community. And the next time you see any police at all they are storming your neighbourhood with guns and insults. Is it any surprise to anyone that violent crime has been rising since? Like Baltimore, we have abandoned our most vulnerable communities, and strong men, bullies and thugs, are stepping into the space we have left behind.And the new Urban Renewal programme, which seems to be focussed on buildings rather than people, on small connected contractors mostly from outside the community rather than on building up human beings from within does not take us back. I am not sure that the damage done by the dissolution of UR 1.0 can be fixed; when trust is ripped apart by betrayal, it is twice, four times, ten times as difficult to built it up again. What we are calling "Urban Renewal" today, the so-called "Urban Renewal 2.0", is not worthy of the name. It is a cosmetic, hollow shadow of something that had roots and had begun to grow. It is a symbolic gesture, a suggestion that we are interested in our least fortunate citizens, but what it does is unsustainable. People who are built up can continue to build themselves; but when houses are repaired and derelict vehicles towed, it's only a matter of time before repairs and cleean-up are required again.So were are we now? Once again, we are fighting superficially, squabbling along party lines, worrying about the exercise of authority rather than the principles that ought to guide us. We are slipping into the exhiliration and competition that leads up to the election season, ignoring the fundamental problems. I have no problem with the bringing of rigour to the programme; I have no problem with the audit or the report or any of the criticism that has been levelled. This is criticism that, to me, has a place in a democracy; political and civic leaders should be called to account when they spend the public's money. But it seems to me that we're actually missing the point.The rigour and the attention that we are bringing to the spending of the public's money is all well and good, but where was that rigour when the first Urban Renewal programme, the one focussed on people rather than buildings, the one that won international awards for its community policing initiaives, the one that pulled the guns off the streets, the one that built relationships with the law-abiding people in our inner cities and made them feel comfortable in their neighbourhoods, where was that rigour when that programme was being dismantled? I'm left with the uncomfortable feeling that maybe, maybe we care more about money than people. That we are happy to allow our law enforcement officials to exercise their strength rather than demanding their compassion. That we are more comfortable with classifying one another as troublemakers than as fellow human beings. And so I watch Baltimore burning, and I suggest you do too, and listen to their discussions. Because we have made choices, and our choices have not been good. We are told that governments don't make stupid decisions, but we can see the deisions, one after another, that have been made over the past decade or so, and they don't look smart to me. I watch Baltimore burning, and know that there, there, but for the grace of God, go we.