Vice Chancellor of The University of the West Indies Professor Sir Hilary Beckles.
On a day when millions stood in solidarity with the protesters in
Minneapolis on the backdrop of ‘Blackout Tuesday’, a statement from
Vice Chancellor of The University of the West Indies Professor Sir
Hilary Beckles was made available to local media houses.
Titled ‘Marcus, Martin and Minneapolis’, the academic and public
activist drew attention to the region’s parallels to the current
unrest plaguing the United States of America over the latest series of
injustices against black persons.
Painting a picture which started with Martin Luther King Jr’s visit to
Jamaica for some ‘levity’ during a time when things had reached a
fever pitch in the United States over his Civil Rights Movement,
Beckles named several other influential and inspired individuals such
as Malcolm X and Bob Marley as he made a worldwide call for persons to
stand up and be counted in the fight.
“This Minneapolis fight was Marcus Garvey’s fight; it was Martin’s
fight; it was Malcolm’s fight; it was Marley’s fight. It’s a Caribbean
fight and it’s a global fight,” the statement read.
With several West Indians on the fence about showing support for the
cause, the History professor explained that our people had been a part
of the struggle all along, noting that the majority of the 15 million
persons stolen from Africa came to the Caribbean.
“From that moment, when the British government in 1636, took the first
step to legally classify all blacks in their colonies as non-human,
chattel, property, and real estate and proceeded with their European
partners to build and manage with it a global business model for 400
years, the greatest ‘financial juggernaut’ of world history, humanity
was poisoned with the toxic pandemic of race hatred.”
With the history providing the backdrop for the skewed system in which
these injustices occur, Beckles showed just how the architecture had
been set to allow for the death of George Floyd and other like him.
“It is this culture of centuries upon which the American nation is
built that continues to choke the air from black lungs. The Americans
won their national independence from Britain, and proceeded to retain
slavery as the development model of the nation; the same model in
which the western world defined and treated black people as animals.
It is the legacy of this model, embedded in a national security
institution that took the life of “Big Floyd”,” he said.
With individuals and organisations across the globe being called to
arms, Beckles noted that the University of West Indies could also be
counted among those who had added their voice to the struggle.
“The UWI, too, has heard the call of George. We wish to invoke the
memory of Marcus and Martin to bring to the islands young African
Americans, here to breathe before returning to the mainland fight for
dignity. We owe it to Martin, to Marcus, to Malcolm, and to Marley;
and to all the ruptured minds of Minneapolis. This is our cause. Every
university that stands for freedom, justice, and the celebration of
human dignity must stand up like a gorilla for justice for George.
Minneapolis is just another place where our eyes have detected evil,
beyond hate, that has erupted from the depth of hell,” he said.