I WAS PART of the African History celebrations at a school recently. On my way to the hall I passed two little girls who were walking towards each other. One of them was dressed in African wear. The one in school uniform looked at her friend and said, “You look like an African.” Me with my fast self jook in my mout and said to her playfully, “You too.”
They laughed. My heart smiled. I remember a time when if you told a Barbadian school child that they looked like an African it would have been taken as an insult.
The two little girls seemed not at all offended. This is progress. If I had dropped those two young ladies anywhere in Africa, no one would have assumed that they were anything but African. I look forward to the day when our children can look in the mirror and see Africa no matter how they are dressed.
Why is this important? How does this solve our problems? Does it fix potholes? Will it create jobs? Will it reduce crime? My answer is, Yes, we cannot really address our problems without addressing the problem of self-image.
A while ago, Down To Brass Tacks had an episode focused on education. One of the guests, a prominent businessman lamented that he came across too many Barbadians who were very well educated but for some reason, “did not seem to have access to their education”. My question is: If you own a fast car but not the keys, are you going anywhere?
The fundamentals of education are more than facts, figures and formulas. Educating self-image is also a fundamental. Self-image is the key to unlocking potential.
You can know all the facts, figures and formulas in the world. It is your self-image that determines what you do with them. This why Errol Barrow’s question, “What is your mirror image” was so important. The answer is too important to be left to chance.
I have spent a considerable amount of time visiting in Barbadian schools. More than a few times I’ve chosen to intervene when the second darkest person in a class was berating the darkest person in the class for being too dark while the other dark children cheered and laughed.
If a dark-skinned child is to succeed, at some point she will grapple with the negative associations that are often made to being darker. If you are one of those who think that we are passed this stage you need to get out more. Hopefully you are not like many others who still avoid the sun for fear of getting too dark.
European explorers called Africa the “Dark Continent” because it was unknown and a mystery to them. A wilful ignorance of Africa led philosopher Hegel to declare, “At this point we leave Africa, not to mention it again. For it is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit . . . . What we properly understand by Africa, is the unhistorical, undeveloped spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World’s History.”
This incorrect and destructive image of Africa subtly seeps into the psyche of the African, who is miseducated about his or herself. She seeks to leave Africa once and for all, literally or figuratively, not to mention it again.
There is survival logic at work. Once we decided that there was no escaping the concentration camps called plantations, the next best thing was to escape as much as possible the thing that made life on the plantation difficult. Here began a desperate escape from our blackness, and what we perceived that to be. To be whiter or more European meant better food, better lodgings, better treatment, a better life. The African was moved to try to erase Africa from within and without herself as much as humanly possible.
Whiter skin, straighter hair, lighter skinned children, embracing so-called European “high culture” are classic strategies to aid in the escape. The quest to escape blackness continues today because in many cases we still believe too much evidence of Africa in you is a liability. That is a message that is spread overtly and covertly.
The fortresses on the west coasts of Africa, where captive Africans were held awaiting export to places like Barbados, had narrow doors that the captives would pass through to board the slave ships. They were called “doors of no return”. We were not to mention Africa again.
The teachers in the schools who are spearheading the African History celebrations are creating “doors of return.” This is a great work. To those who question why we should look into the past, we invite them to return to the Ashanti principle of Sankofa which means “looking into the past in order to chart the future”.
A broken mirror image prevents one from truly reaping the benefits of even the best education. Black leadership is limited in what it can achieve to the extent that it is educated to be estranged from its own blackness, its own Africanness. It cannot operationalise Sankofa. It struggles to solve our problems because it is only concerned with escaping them. Deep inside it may still have the sense that the problem is inherent in our blackness.
That deeply internalised miseducation is an invisible brake on progress through a subtly destructive self-image. It may be why the commentator noticed that so many well-educated Barbadians did not have access to their education. There is a missing the key of an empowered self-image.
When that little girl looks at her friend and says admiringly, “You look like an African,” Hegels propaganda and lies are being defeated. She is being educated not to escape her Africanness, but to embrace it. Despite all efforts to the contrary Africans spread across the globe continue to mention Africa and repair its self-image.
Adrian Green is a creative communications specialist. Email: [email protected]
