COMMENTARY: Will blacks ‘overcome’ before Christ returns?

Alred Frett

Prison should never be the mantra of our history

For centuries Christians have been saying ‘Christ soon come’ and descendants of slaves have been saying ‘We shall overcome’. However, we are now in the last days of black history month 2017 and in desperation, persons are crying out for these fulfillments more and more only to find them less likely as reality dawns and leaders still glorify slavery in dress, songs, and customs.

As these times become increasingly dangerous, it’s easy for persons to become hopeless as they wonder whether Christ is travelling by snail and it seems impossible for them to overcome when their leaders are forcing them to go under. Some are realizing that Jesus was created for Jews – not us – and by clinging to the clothes, songs and customs of slavery we remain forever slaves.

Furthermore, none of this will improve until and unless we become enlightened enough to change the narrative to ensure a future. Clearly this is not easy and we see this difficulty as we travel between West End and East End. We see huge numbers of young men – our future – just passing the time away and not seeming to care about yesterday, today or tomorrow.

However, rather than understand the importance of helping them, we are quicker to condemn and simply turn our backs. Often society’s answer is to send them into the military to kill and be killed or build more and more prisons to lock them up and waste their lives at the expense of society. Our refusal to oppose this slave mentality means that black history will accept prison as a natural end.

Losing what we have by claiming what we don’t

We may call this unacceptable but when I warn that we are moving backwards was and is still ignored because we are low on vision but high on slogans that claimed ‘we can see clearly now’ or ‘forward ever; backwards never’. One of these are true but we accepted empty promises and substitute agendas that continue to place the health and education of our people in jeopardy.

Even the progress that we made is again under threat – once our children – descendants of slaves – were blocked from becoming doctors but thanks to civil rights fighters and education that obstacle was overcome and today, we have our own doctors capable of staging industrial action or ‘sick-out’ as a way of making their point in what they regard as being important.

There is no need for me to get involved – they can fend for themselves. Besides, my greater concern is for the patients’ well-being in a climate plagued by corrupt and unfair labour practices. As Caribbean slave descendants, these concerns are longstanding because we are conditioned to accept Massa’s unfairness in silence with the hope that somehow this wickedness will change.

Deep down we know such change will never happen since they see our compliance as acceptance of their might is right philosophy and good reason to devise additional methods of oppression. Their addiction to public funds is always seeking a fix so immigrant workers have become soft targets they can attack from every angle without considering the self-damage being done.

First pick the plank out of your own eye before…

Ironically, it is easy for us to see and condemn Trump’s back to slavery and bad Immigration polices without reasoning we are no better than he. Our governments have created discriminatory visa and work permit obstacles without justification and have Labour and Immigration departments collude to charge innocent persons for their own department’s failures as a means of collecting revenue.

At the same time, governmental agencies seek to cripple private businesses by stealing away recruited employees under their umbrella of not having to pay for work permits or having to face the same crippling obstacles imposed by the same agencies. They know their actions are wrong and will even admit that as they keep right on doing wrong simply because they have the power to.

Those targeted range from basic labourers to professionals whom our education system failed to cultivate and continue to push backward for petty reasons. Consequently, our children – great grandchildren of slaves – are kept back when monies that should have been use to further their education was squandered on personal projects and building walls and parking spaces for boats.

Just like black history month, time is running and no matter how powerful and important we think we are, none of us are destined to live forever. However, we create our own destinies and the value is directly linked to our efforts to help others prepare for their futures. Jesus’ coming is no help to us but failure to overcome today’s challenges will certainly mean the destruction of our children.

A pressing need for ‘Truth for the Youth’

It has started. All across the world we are gripped by hopelessness, fear and uncertainty to such a degree that even the news media are under threat from those in power. This attempt to keep us in ignorance is not accidental. They know that if they can’t fool you, they can’t rule you and once truth becomes a casualty of the wicked, step next is the end of freedom as we now know it.

Some Media outlets are already aware of this trend so they have decided to avoid hosting known political figures who constantly and knowingly lie and mislead listeners. Not all media may have the ability to do this so it becomes the responsibility of each of us to recognize and separate truth from fiction for it is imperative that we as adults make a firm commitment to bring truth to the youth.

This may seem hard to do but failing to do so is failing all these children and even ourselves. Can we really afford that? Is this the real value of our Black History Month?

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