QUESTION: Under what conditions does a “search party” metamorphose into a “lynch mob”?
Answer: In a racist, semi-apartheid, post-colonial polity like Barbados.
Despite the idealistic discomfort with such an analytical framework, the discourse which has ensued in Barbados following the temporary disappearance and subsequent safe recovery of a Euro-Barbadian female, and the mobilisation of unprecedented levels of state and private security resources in her search, as well as the reports of white vigilante teams (the disbanded white militia?) harassing newspaper workers and detaining peaceful private citizens can only be understood in terms of the racialised social construct of post-colonial Barbados.
Indeed, denial of this reality through silence is an important part of the ideological superstructure which supports the racist social order.
The events of the weekend of February 28 provide an opportunity to break the silence, to expose and challenge the racial order, and by extension, to contribute to the political development and modernisation of Barbados.
It should be remembered that it is not in moments of “normalcy” that the true nature of a society is revealed, but in moments of conflict.
The pretence at public shock and surprise by how quickly the search for a missing family member unearthed what is normally hidden and ignored therefore revealed the fragile nature of the “social peace” of the racial order.
What normally presents itself as a unified national society for all was exposed as a tentative “plural society” held together by a slight wall of mutual suspicion.
The racial order, however, despite Independence and all that, is built on an edifice of white political, economic and social supremacy.
No wonder a black watchman who, in the context of his job as a guardian on a plantation, was the legitimate authority figure, could be reduced to the status of a suspect and virtual prisoner, by three unidentified Boer-type militiamen, who only had to advertise their social familiarity with the plantation manager as the basis of their self-imposed police authority.
Did the legitimate police authority cede control?
A related, but always hidden and central motivation of racism, is the fear of the white male due to his demographic insecurity, of “social dilution” through white female intercourse with the black male.
He sees himself as the defender of white female chastity (a laughable myth), and in the context of a missing female, innocent black males become potential suspects.
This was the basis of untold lynching in the southern United States which, Dr Frances Cress-Welsing informs us, were often accompanied by the ritual castration of the dead black male. The deep psychological question is why?
Whilst we are grateful for the safe discovery of a valued and cherished citizen, we should not let the opportunity slip to decry the ugly underbelly of the society which was exposed, due largely to racial hysteria and stereotyping.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email tjoe2008@live.com.
