History and the Present The history of St. Vincent is particularly interesting because the Caribs and Garifuna (or Black Caribs) held off being colonized longer than most of the islands. This took not only courage, but a pretty sophisticated world-view because it involved playing the French and British off against one another.
"Savages" aren't supposed to understand civilization well enough to do that. Even before Columbus arrived, the Caribs traded up and down the Antilles, and knew about the more citified Taino society without wanting to be a part of it. No civilized anthropologist thinks of making a choice to remain in an "uncivilized" (i.e., not city-centered) culture. But the Vincentian Caribs evidently did just that until the British came close to exterminating them with mercenaries.
So the history of St. Vincent has this little mystery of how the Caribs were able to live comfortably in a "primitive" lifestyle while beiong able to deal with the citified Taino in the Greater Antilles on their terms and the european invaders on theirs.
We are now in a comparable transition, between the post-neolithic and the post-industrial stages of civilization, it would be nice to get some sense of how the Caribs rode the waves between the paleolithic and neolithic for as long as they did.
St. Vincent and Barbados were also near the center of the controversy at the UN conference on Race and Racism in Durban in 2000. This connects with another aspect of the subject I'm interested in, "Why do we do crazy things like practice racism?".
As I explain in an essay on Race and Racism "Races" evolved to differ physiologically only in those qualities that can be determined by visual inspection of infants. If we were a sane species, "race" would no more be an occasion an international conference than the question of whether blondes have more fun.. Unfortunately, most of us aren't sufficiently sane. at least about race.
But that's another quality that makes St. Vincent almost unique: it is pretty much a refuge from racism. Sally and I are members of a tiny minority (the 1% or so of pale-complected euro-americans) but we experience only one kind of discrimination. a slightly higher price for produce in the market, and we share that with persons with much darker complexions whose accent is distinctively non-caribbean. In other words the discrimination is based on expectations of the relative wealth of someone from Canada or England rather than skin color or the other distinctions which are called "racial" in other cultures.
Why is this? Here are the comments of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves in a speech on October 27, 2001, the anniversary of St. Vincent's regaining its independence.
He said, among other things:
Through it all the people of this country have solved spectacularly an issue which rich and technologically advanced societies have failed to address successfully, that is, how to build relatively integrated, harmonious democratic societies with peoples drawn from diverse lands and cultures. Let us look at the numbers and see from whence we have come and where we are..In 1833, the year before the nominal emancipation of slavery, there were 16,434 African slaves, 1,280 Europeans, and an estimated 1,500 free Caribs. Between 1844 and 1850 they were joined by 2,102 indentured labourers from Portuguese Madeira; between 1846 and 1862, 1,036 Liberated Africans arrived on recruitment; and between 1861 and 1880, 2,429 indentured East Indian labourers from India came to our shores. This callaloo of peoples have, in more recent times, been joined by Arab migrants from the Middle East and a smattering of Chinese. Social stratification based on class or status in our society has not prevented a social harmony of peoples drawn from different lands and cultures. Today, one hundred and ten thousand citizens at home and some three times that number in the scattered diaspora in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, the Caribbean and other lands have triumphantly emerged as one out of many to proclaim, and yes, to claim, our patrimony.
Indeed, the admixture of peoples has been pervasive and has produced, metaphorically-speaking, a magnificent rainbow nation. The tutelage of British colonialism has bequeathed to us the English language and a core of political values centred on the rule of law, liberty, tolerance, and competitive democracy; the ideas, ideals and practices of Christianity have forged a good, decent and ethical people who know instinctively the difference between right and wrong; our music, art and literature have fashioned a soul, spirit and critical sensibility which tap into our multi-ethnic sources, fertilized and irrigated by a strong African heritage and aesthetic; our family life, socialisation and education have moulded us for living and production in a modern age, as real flesh-and-blood beings fit to receive, adapt, and transmit universal culture with a Caribbean and Vincentian particularity; and our cricketing culture has imbued us with a profound sense of fairness in which “the batsman is given the benefit of the doubt”.
I do not tire in asserting that we in this region possess an authentic Caribbean civilization of a unique, distinct and distinctive type. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a component of this noble civilization. The obligation is placed upon us, individually and collectively, to further ennoble this civilization in all its dimensions. In this blessed land we are, metaphorically, the songs of the Caribs; we are the rythym of Africa; we are the melody of Europe; we are the chords of Asia; we are the home-grown lyrics of the Caribbean. We are one, at home and abroad, to meet the challenges, old and new, which confront us. We are a single people, under one God, destined to meet the vicissitudes of life, Together Now and Forever.
Our nation has been founded on the belief in the supremacy of God and the freedom and dignity of man. Our founding-fathers, whom we acknowledge and praise today, held these truths to be eternal and caused them to be the solid rocks upon which our nation’s social and political architecture has been designed and which have been the benchmarks for our conduct.
From our twin beliefs in God’s supremacy and man’s freedom and dignity have flowed other guiding propositions including the following:
1. We do not discriminate against persons on the basis of their sex, race, place of origin, political opinions, colour, creed or political association. We therefore ought to judge, promote or elevate people on the basis of their abilities and the content of their character.
2. We desire that our society be so ordered as to express our recognition of the principles of democracy, free institutions, social justice and equality before the law.
3. We realize that the maintenance of human dignity presupposes safeguarding the rights of privacy, of family life, of property and the fostering of the pursuit of just economic rewards for labour.
4. We promote a civilised political discourse free of bitterness and political violence.
This makes St. Vincent a uniquely comfortable place to investigate the consequences of race and racism.
The divisions at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 were the traditionally racist ones: the "white" [i.e., melanin-deficient] euro-american block against everyone else. This is an early warning signal of a potentially dangerous situation. The follow-up to Durban was an even stronger signal in that the meeting voted to exclude all melanin-deficient people, not only delegates but press, staff and observers as well.
The aftermath of September 11, 2000, appear to be moving in the direction such that the euro-american block is developing into a Golden Ghetto of the kind that Israel represents in the middle-east. If the world divides on this issue the way it divided in Durban the results would be global. One block would have the resources and the people, the other would have the technology and bureaucracy.
Without oil the US economy would collapse, and if the US economy collapses so will the World Economy. Tropical Islands, if they are reasonably well prepared, will be able to sit out the global anarchy without actually starving whereas North America and Europe will be badly off without heat and imported food. It may be that islands like St. Vincent will have the task of preserving culture for the post-industrial era.
So all things considered, St. Vincent is well worth a lot of thought; and longer range thinking than the new government is likely to have the resources for. The new government is having enough difficulty dealing with its legacy from previous administrations: the bad habits of a lengthy stay in power compounded by tropical lethargy. It is going to be difficult enough to respond to the normal day-to-day challenges of a small player in a globally-scaled game without worrying about the fallout from "the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization" even if they seem to inadvertantly hold the key.
All of this offers the opportunity to do some serious thinking about the future of St. Vincent and the world.