Should you /shatter the door /and walk in the morning /fully aware /of the future/ to come? – The Arrivants by Kamau BrathwaiteHaving lived for as long as I have in our Barbadian society, I am aware that many have no interest in connecting with what we may call the new community evolving in our midst. Such individuals have acquired a “peaceful” way of life and would prefer not to have it disturbed. Others seem committed to erasing any vestige whatsoever of the village life from which they came. Immersed in a kind of pseudo-sophisticated lifestyle, they entertain no thought that they may become alienated even from themselves.Yet another group comprises the “solid” middle and upper classes of perhaps three generations. I fear this wall is impenetrable. Nothing must be admitted into this group that is not proper: somewhere out there something is not quite right but please do not taint us with the ugly details.It is not my place to judge any of the above. I am more concerned with those who have accompanied me on this journey and who feel as I do that there is need for intervention in this nation we deeply love. The question is, how? What do we do? Simply walk into an area and begin dialogue with those we meet? Moreover, we must be aware that the most well-meaning efforts may be regarded with suspicion or thought to be condescending. How to connect in more direct ways will require ongoing strategy and may be the subject of future articles. For now, however, I will put forward some suggestions.While I do not support B.C.’s irreligious views, he may be making a significant point when he suggests a link between the Common Entrance Examination and later deviant social behaviour. By all means, excellence should be rewarded. But from my years of teaching, I know that long after the examination is over, a number of young people remain plagued by feelings of inferiority, resentment and alienation. Several of these youngsters who end up in the schools “at the bottom of the hierarchy,” according to Nation columnist Peter Laurie, succumb to those forces that promise them power and a sense of belonging. We must add our voices to those who insist that the present system be seriously reevaluated. Feelings of dispossession at age 11-plus on an already uncertain foundation will ripen into a national catastrophe.I would also seriously ask that the sexually explicit BET music videos and similar fare from other stations be erased from our local television. There is no justification, in my opinion, for filling the minds of the young with lascivious images of individuals especially of their own ethnicity or gender.Admittedly, it is increasingly difficult to beat the purveyors of such merchandise at their game; the technology is everywhere. But one way to counteract its effect is to place much greater emphasis on the development of analytical skills in the educational system. From primary school, students watching the screen, listening to music or even reading must be trained to ask the following questions: what message is being sent to me and by whom? What is their agenda? If I respond in a particular manner, whose puppet am I? The manufacturers’? The drug lords’? Can I use my own common sense and intelligence to make the right decision for myself? Community theatre is another powerful tool, particularly when the actors are drawn from their own environment and can incorporate their experiences into the drama. One such group has already started its outreach in at least one parish and should be given full support from community councils and other concerned bodies. In conclusion, I have made use of the word “shattering” advisedly. I know that in most cases it is easier to break through a three-foot solid mahogany door with a table fork than dislodge mental barriers. It is particularly difficult if we perceive that behind that door lies all we deem valuable to us as individuals. But you may remember that my very first choice of metaphor was water, and what is more powerful than moving water to dislodge, uproot and demolish all obstacles in its path? The tide of the heart is no less powerful when we reach out with sincerity and commitment to help the potentially deviant, the marginalised. This Barbados is where we live. The future to come will find us here. This is home.
l Esther Phillips is an educator, poet, and editor of BIM: Arts For The 21st Century.

“If a white man called me a nigger, I first look to see if he meant it and if I thought he did, I’d smile at the idiot in pity.” – Gladstone HolderIn AugusT 2003, Barbados bade farewell to one of its icons. Unlettered though he was, Gladstone Holder merited more letters than most by the quality of the immense contribution he made to the culture of thought and thinking. Though his pen is no longer disturbing the ink that illuminated our thought processes for close to five decades, it writes on in our lives in ways that transcend the mundane to which he gave new and unbridled meaning. By the time of his demise, Gladstone Holder had not only become Chief Information Officer, educator and journalist par excellence but, as Timothy Rush puts it, he had emerged as “a citizen of the world with a passion for classical culture”.For over half of a century as teacher, civil servant and journalist, Gladstone Holder fought like the proverbial colossus to impress on us the importance of preserving our dignity and freedom as human beings. In his first compilation of articles published in 1978 under the title In More Than A Word, his deep-seated concern for both national and personal independence is noted. “Independence for us will be real and lasting when the majority of us think, see and feel like the old man from St Lucy.” As he put it, “the kingdom of self-respect” is within us.Of Americans, he writes: “The great privilege of the American does not consist in being more enlightened than other nations, but in being able to repair the faults they commit.” He was concerned with justice, human dignity and freedom. In one of his articles under the caption The Silencers, Mr Holder wrote: “Every victory in the battle for human dignity and freedom is a temporary victory. It has to be won over and over again, every century, every decade . . . those who think that once the ink dries on any new agreement they can live in happy tranquility ever after, are innocent of history.”
Guardian of human conditionsIn many ways Gladstone Holder can best be described as a monumental guardian of those elements of the human condition and a master of understanding their nuances. In 1990, he gave us another collection In Freedom’s Cause. In this compilation, the editor notes that his concern for freedom and justice pervades. “Freedom is more than an absence of unjust restrictions, it is also the presence of crusaders like Gladstone Holder.”
The editorial note suggests that Holder “encourages our continuation of the clinical watchfulness which would ensure our proper survival in modern civilisation”.Former Governor General the late Sir Hugh Springer who wrote the foreword to the collection, in commenting on his style, noted that if Gladstone Holder had to “crush corns from time to time, he was never afraid to do so” but stressed “he does not give just cause for personal resentment and never descended to personal abuse”. As Sir Hugh put it: “He was driven by a sense of justice . . . [was] an alert and passionate defender of the liberty of the individual.”In his own note, Mr Holder describes his articles as “timeless and as dealing with man in society, the never-ending tension between the formal protestations about democratic freedoms, and the sometimes subtle, sometimes naked attempts by successive governments to undermine freedom in a bid for greater power over men’s lives.” The assault, he says, “comes in different forms: in legislation, in education, in language . . . even in the context of entertainment”.Others whose lives he touched spoke glowingly of his contribution. Dr Patricia Saul believes that though “dead, yet he lives on”. Another educator, Ralph Jemmott, describes him as “an example of an engaged intellectual” and “a thinker who does not reside within the secluded walls of academia but aimed at enlightening the society as a whole”. Though he no longer writes from the “masthead” or “from the eye of the storm”, Gladstone Holder’s influence like his dipped ink will flow on and on. For there is a sense in which icons never die.

We are often reminded that we are living in a global village with the consequence that what happens in other countries affects us in our neck of the woods, and that we should draw lessons from these events in order not to make the same mistakes.   It is in this context that recent events in Britain and the United States command our attention, if only because of related developments on the local scene.The Saville enquiry in Britain and the firing of General McChrystal by President Obama make the same point. The military power of the army is subject at all times to the overriding authority of the civilian power. The right to bear arms as a member of a defence force or an army does not give the military, however powerfully armed it may be, the right to disobey the civil laws of that country. So the British soldiers who shot unarmed protesting civilians are answerable in the first place to the ordinary law of the land.By parity of reasoning and principle, President Obama is commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, as a matter of law and constitution; and as such, is the superior of any general in the United States. That is the impact of civil law of the United States, and it is an immutable principle on which all democracies are based. It is therefore the paramountcy of the rule of law and not the rule of weapon that principally guarantees our freedom. Disrespect, expressed or demonstrated, for the commander-in-chief therefore is the ultimate threat to the rule of law and is met with the severe penalty of requested resignation.It is just as well that all members of our disciplined forces, such as police officers, continue like their brothers in the other forces, to remember that they operate under the overarching principles of the rule of law. The strictures delivered by a High Court judge recently in a case where an accused walked free after an alleged beating at the hands of police officers, is, thankfully, a relatively rare event, but it is a careful illustration of the superiority of the law and legal rules, particularly during investigation of breaches of the law itself.The death of United States Senator Bird at the ripe old age of 92, until his death still a sitting member, should be a lesson to us about change and healing in human society. The senator who started out as a youthful member of the feared Klu Klux Klan, an organisation devoted to the hatred of Blacks, vehemently opposed the Civil Rights legislation in 1964, but ended up as a friend, supporter, and admirer of Senator Obama as Obama fought his way into the White House.Similarly, in the past three weeks, articles in NATION publications have been tracing the evolution of certain districts such as Belleville and Strathclyde from “apartheid Whites-only enclaves” into integrated areas where people of all kinds of ethnic backgrounds now live together under the protective umbrella of equality of law guaranteed by our Constitution.Clearly the law helps to change people’s attitudes, but it is now obvious that just as societies in Britain and the United States change and become more multicultural and multiethnic, our small island is undergoing similar changes in smaller and tighter living space.In order to maintain peace and good order as our society changes, we will have, like Senator Bird, to exercise greater tolerance towards our neighbours and pay more than lip service to the meaning of “loving one’s neighbour as one’s self.”The late senator came to see the light and to respect the laws which established and respected the rights of others. Each one of us, whether in or out of uniform, would do well to remember that. It makes for a better society.