Pulling down statues will not fill anyone’s belly.
Instead, according to Minister of Tourism and International Transport Kerrie Symmonds, focus must be placed on empowering working class people.
During Tuesday’s session of Parliament, the MP for St. James Central expressed the view that he was neither for nor against the removal of the controversial Lord Nelson statue as there were more important issues to deal with.
“I am now at an age and stage in life where I am not interested in the optics. You could pull down a thousand statues and it will fill nobody’s belly. I am interested in filling people’s bellies, I am interested in making sure that people have comfort when they sleep at night, that their children have satisfaction that they are going to inherit something in the land of their birth, and until we come to that point we are having an artificial debate.
“So let us come to the point where we are dealing with the substance. Psychologi-cally, it might make things better in terms of the optics, it may make people feel there has been an achievement. That can be debated. I am neither for nor against quite frankly, but my feeling is that we cannot take our eyes off that ball called substance. That substance is how do we economically empower the working class people of Barbados so that they and their sons and daughters can be those people who are the guardians of the commanding heights of this country’s economy,” he added.
Caddle supports removal
In her contribution a few moments later, Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment Marsha Caddle however expressed her belief that the statue should be removed, saying it served to “honour white supremacy”.
“And if your countrymen and women in their overwhelming majority tell you that a statue erected to serve to honour white supremacy disturbs them deeply in their souls, why would you want to hold on to it? If you are an ally of the equality project with respect to race in your country, why would you want to hold on to it?
“This notion that it erases history sir – I wake up with this skin every day in this country and when I go to different parts of the world I see the reaction that it gets. I see the reactions that it sometimes gets right here, I don’t need a statue to remind me that Barbados was the site of the great slave experiment in this region. Here was where they wanted to create the perfect slave society and then the perfect post-colonial society. There is no possibility of forgetting that,” she insisted. (JMB)