Thank you, Father Reid Simon, for allowing me the opportunity of voicing some of my views to this St Paul’s congregation on this Emancipation Sunday, 2015.
I will tell you a secret as my church family: Of all the accolades and degrees that I may have acquired over my life, there is one that I hold dearest and that is “CFL”. It is what I used to plant my feet back on firm ground when I was talking to Presidents and other important people all over the world, especially in Latin America and even today in talking to you. Even though I did very little to earn those letters, it is what I am proud of - CFL.
It was 181 years ago that slavery was abolished in Antigua. For other islands in the Caribbean there was a period of apprenticeship so for them full emancipation came 4 years later. It is said that there was no need for apprenticeship in Antigua because drought had brought about such a dependency between slave owners and slaves that there was no fear of labour shortage, thus Antiguan slaves were fully emancipated on August 1, 1834.
As Father Reid mentioned, I was the Rapporteur for Afro Descendants and Against Racism and Racial Discrimination as a member of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. For 8 years I went to all the countries of Latin American visiting Afro Descendants in their own habitats - in Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Haiti, Costa Rica, USA and Canada pressing the point that Afro descendants should not be treated as second class citizens. And I can tell you that the plight of black people in the Western Hemisphere is still one of discrimination and marginalization. Black people are marginalized and are still virtually invisible in the Western Hemisphere. The press and social media have recently highlighted evidence of raw racism in the United States of America – where the President is treated with open disrespect almost on a daily basis. The best president the USA ever had is treated this way because he is black. And in the United States it seems that the police think black people are fair game; and a young man, bred on racism, having been welcomed in a prayer meeting, turned on and deliberately killed 8 worshippers because they were black.
In Antigua, racism and racial discrimination are more complex. Here we have both racism and what I call “shadism”. We still curse each other about our skin colour. “Move you Black self!”, “She so ugly and black!” Or we talk about “Di black one”.
How did we get to this position? And how do we move forward?
First let me start with a declaration – I love Black people. I am happiest when I am in Kenya, or Senegal or Ghana, or Harlem or Haiti anywhere Black people are. Black is truly beautiful. But we have been conditioned over the period of colonialism, including the period of slavery, to hate ourselves and the colour of our skin. We have been conditioned to believe that we are inferior to other races. I am sure you remember your childhood where you were told of good hair and bad hair and the good hair was the long straight hair and the bad hair was the woolly hair that was attributed to so many in the Bible including God himself – but more of that later.
The bad one in the family was the black sheep; we know the expression, the pot calling the kettle black; the worst day of our lives we call the blackest day of our lives; and I am sure you can think of many other instances where “black” is used with negative connotation. But I was reminded that when you are in the black financially, that is a good thing.
I am sure that you would have seen illustrations in Bibles and usually all the characters in these Bible illustrations are pure white, blue eyed Caucasians, with the exception of Judas who, of course, is portrayed as black. The picture of Jesus on the wall in our living rooms was white with long flowing straight hair.
I want to introduce you to another view. Here is the African Heritage Study Bible – the General Editor is Rev Cain Hope Felder, Phd. (Rev Felder and our own Rev Kortright Davis gave a lecture here in Antigua recently on the Theology of Inclusion). You will notice that in the African Heritage Bible all the illustrations are of black people – Moses, David, Noah, Job are all black and in the New Testament, Jesus and all of his disciples, the prodigal son, the widow of the Widow’s mite are all black. We have to start to expose ourselves and our children to these counter psychological views, if we are to break the chain of mental/psychological slavery.
Hollywood has done its fair share in brainwashing us. The movie, “Cleopatra” starred Elizabeth Taylor, a white woman: when in fact Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt, was a black woman; Moses in the movie “The Ten Commandments”, which I am sure we have all seen, Charleston Heston, a white man, starred as Moses, but Moses, the actual historical person who led the children of Israel out of Egypt, was an Egyptian-Hebrew black man.
Emancipation was freedom from physical bondage but the mental slavery continued and continues to this day. How do we free ourselves from this mental slavery? Marcus Garvey talked about freeing ourselves from mental slavery. Bob Marley popularized Garvey’s Quote in “Redemption Song” when he sang, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds”. Na’im Akbar wrote a book called Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery. In that book he summarized his theory thus,
“Slavery was ‘legally’ ended in excess of 100 years ago, but over 300 years experienced in its brutality and unnaturalness constituted a severe psychological and social shock in the minds of African-Americans. This shock was so destructive to natural life processes that the current generation of African-Americans, although we are five to six generations removed from the actual experience of slavery, still carry the scars of this experience in both our social and mental lives. Psychologists and sociologists have failed to attend to the persistence of problems in our mental and social lives which clearly have roots in slavery. Only the historian has given proper attention to the shattering realities of slavery, and he has dealt with it only as descriptive of past events.
“In order to fully grasp the magnitude of our current problems, we must reopen the books on the events of slavery. Our objective should not be to cry stale tears for the past nor to rekindle old hatreds for past injustices. Instead, we should seek to enlighten our path of today by better understanding where and how the lights were turned out yesterday”.
Incidentally, The idea of using the past to understand the present and to push you forward is represented by a Ghanaian symbol called Sankofa.
Our past does not start with slavery. We as Afro descendants have every cause to be proud of being black. We are not descendants of slaves but rather descendants of Africans who were enslaved. Our history and lineage go back well before the unfortunate era of slavery.
We are “heirs to freedom and unmeasured lands” as the hymn writer puts it in CPWI, Hymn 453.
Reverend Kenneth L Waters, Sr wrote a book called Afrocentric Sermons, where he reproduced his sermons on “The Beauty of Blackness in the Bible”. There, in a scholarly fashion, Reverend Waters showed that there are black people in the Bible. There are in fact more black people in the Bible than any other people. Some of these black people might surprise you – Moses, Solomon and Queen of Sheba (She herself said, “I am black and beautiful), Adam and Eve, the father and mother of all humanity, were black, Ham was black as was Noah; Mary, Jesus’s mother was a black woman, Jesus is said to be black, and I need to mention one of Father Reid Simon’s heroes, Paul was a black man. I leave you to ponder on Acts 21 verses 37-39 for evidence that Paul was black. I also ask that you ponder on Ezekiel 1 verse 27, Daniel 7 verse 9 and Revelation 1:12-16.
My first degree was history at the University of the West Indies. I studied History for 3 years but I was never exposed to the great kingdoms and civilizations of North, West or Central Africa. At no time, either at Cobbs Cross School, St Michael School or Antigua Grammar School, was I taught about the African contribution to world civilizations and culture both ancient and modern. We were not taught about the great scholars, scientists and artists of Africa.
I quote from one of Reverend Waters sermons, “Black people have been the most creative people on the face of the earth, and it was from us - our African forefathers and fore mothers – that the world learned everything that has to do with culture and civilization”.
We were the first civilizations – cities of Thebes and Memphis in ancient Egypt and the West African empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay.
We built the first universities – the mystery schools of ancient Egypt, University of Sankore in Timbuktu and the great West African educational centres at Kumbi-Saleh and Gao.
We were the first scientists: Imhotep who was the father of Medicine centuries before the Greek Hippocrates.
We were the first architects and builders – For example Zoser, pharaoh of Egypt. We built the of pyramids.
We were the first navigators and explorers – like Abubakar II, King of Mali, whose fleet voyaged to the Americas 181 years before Christopher Columbus.
We were the first teachers and poets, like Aesop or Ethiop, the famed teller of fables and proverbs.
“No shame I know of lesser breed or hue but claim my birthright, said the Pongo man” (CPWI Hymn 453.
These facts need to be taught to our youths so that they can raise their self esteem and eradicate their self-hate. Our young people need to be grounded. They need to be taught their roots.
My message this morning on this 181st Emancipation Sunday is that we all should be walking out of church at the end of this service with a chirpier walk – with a sense of self-worth, with our self-esteem at its highest knowing that we are sons and daughters of kings and queens and we are from a line of great black people.
I leave with you that whatever our skin colour, black, brown, red, white or yellow, we are all made in the image of God and we share in the same spiritual colour. So whatever colour Love is, that is the colour of God and we should all strive to be God’s spiritual colour.
Monday, August 3, 2015
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Human Rights For All
I am happy to report that Human Rights for All is now duly registered as an NGO dedicated to promoting and protecting human rights in the region beginning in Antigua and Barbuda, where the organization is based. We will be looking for volunteeers throughout the region to carry out the important work of making all aware of their human rights.
More about this later.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The terms “Afro-Latino” and “Afro-Latina” refer to those Latinos and Latinas in the United States who are of African ancestry and choose to identify with blackness as a racial identity in addition to identifying along ethnic lines with their Latino national origins. (It should also be noted that activists of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean have begun to use the same term to refer to their own persons of African descent.) As the Latino population has grown in the United States, so has the number of Latinos and Latinas of African descent. According to the 2000 U.S. census, the 35.3 million Latinos and Latinas in the United States (the nation's largest pan-ethnic group) account for 12.5 percent of the country's population. About 2 percent of those Latinos and Latinas also identified themselves as “black” on the 2000 census. That compares with close to half who said they were also “white” and the 42.5 percent who described themselves as “some other race.” (The census permits Latinos and Latinas to select a “Hispanic/Latino” ethnic origin category in addition to selecting any number of the racial categories of black, white, Asian, or “some other race.”)
Most Afro-Latinos in the United States can trace their origins to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, though nearly a quarter of a million people of Mexican heritage also defined themselves as black in the 2000 census. As compared to other Latinos, Afro-Latinos are much less likely to be immigrants and are more likely to speak English in their homes. In fact many Afro-Latino families have had a historical presence in the United States for many generations. Some scholars trace the first Afro-Latino in the United States to Estebanico, an explorer from Spain. Estebanico was one of four survivors of the infamous voyage of the Spanish explorer Pánfilo de Narvaez, which shipwrecked along the Florida coast in 1528 and was later immortalized in the memoirs of Cabeza de Vaca.
Other Afro-Latino personages are the writers Junot Díaz, Loida Maritza Pérez, Pedro Pietri, and Piri Thomas; the musicians Mario Bauzá, Frank Grillo “Machito,” Chano Pozo, and Mongo Santamaría; the journalists Jesús Colón, Pablo Guzmán, and Felipe Luciano; the athlete Roberto Clemente; and the esteemed bibliophile Arturo Schomburg (one of the foremost collectors and bibliophiles of the African diasporic experience). In addition a number of celebrities recognized as African Americans were also of Afro-Latino heritage; for instance, Sammy Davis Jr.'s mother, the Harlem vaudeville dancer Elvera “Baby” Sanchez, was Puerto Rican.
The beginnings of a sizable Afro-Latino community in the United States began in the mid-nineteenth century with the migration of Afro-Cubans to southern Florida. The burgeoning cigar industry brought thousands of Afro-Cubans to the cities of Tampa, Key West, and Ybor City as cigar workers. With the decline of the cigar industry, the main locus of Afro-Latino density slowly shifted from Florida to New York City, and its members shifted from Afro-Cuban to Afro–Puerto Rican. With Operation Bootstrap in the 1940s and 1950s bringing hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican migrants to New York, many Puerto Ricans of African descent migrated as well. After 1966 massive immigration from the Dominican Republic accounted for the increase in the U.S. Afro-Latino population. (After 1966 U.S.–influenced changes in the economic development policies of the Dominican Republic encouraged massive emigration from the country.)
Although Latinos and Latinas who explicitly identify themselves as black by using the terms “Afro-Latino” and “Afro-Latina” make up a small percentage of the U.S. Latino and Latina population, they often trace their origins to Latin American and Caribbean countries with significant numbers of people of African descent. Indeed 90 percent of the estimated 10 million African slaves brought to the Americas were transported to Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, whereas only 4.65 percent were transported to the United States. The number of people of African origin in Latin American and the Caribbean varies widely from country to country (See Table 1). Most Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas in the United States come from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, though nearly a quarter of a million people of Mexican heritage also defined themselves as black in the 2000 census.
Table 1. Afro-Descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean Country Total Population Percentage of Afro-Descendants
Dominican Republic 9 million 84%
Cuba 11 million 62%
Brazil 170 million 45%
Colombia 40 million 26%
Panama 3 million 14%
Venezuela 23 million 10%
Ecuador 12 million 10%
Nicaragua 5 million 9%
Peru 27 million 5%
SOURCE: Inter-Agency Consultation on Race in Latin America (IAC), “Inter-American Dialogue Race Report,” January 2003.
But despite the varying numbers of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean, the historical legacy of slavery is pervasive throughout the region, and thus people of African descent are actively discouraged from identifying as Afro-Latinos. In Latin America and the Caribbean, like in the United States, having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, whereas having darker skin and African features severely limits such opportunity and mobility. In general the poorest socioeconomic class is populated primarily by people of African (and indigenous) descent, and the most privileged class is populated by whites. An elastic intermediary class with socioeconomic standing exists for some light-skinned (mixed-race) mulattos and mestizos. Negative stereotypes about blackness abound in a region that simultaneously denies the existence of racism. Instead, residents are encouraged to disassociate from their blackness in favor of national identities mythologized as a harmonious blend of all races in the discourse of mestizaje.
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As a consequence many people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean harbor internalized racist norms and initially may choose not to self-identify as Afro-Latino regardless of how pronounced their African ancestry may be in their features and skin colors. The internalized racism manifests itself in a widespread concern with the degree of darkness in pigmentation, width of nose, thickness of lips, and quality of hair, with straight, European-textured hair denominated literally as “good” hair. This concern with European features and white skin also influences the choice of marriage partners. Marrying someone lighter is called adelantando la raza (improving the race) under the theory of blanqueamiento (whitening), which prizes the mixture of races precisely to help diminish the existence of Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas.
Thus migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean (Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas included) often arrive in the United States with their culture of antiblack racism well intact along with other manifestations of their cultures to transmit to younger generations of Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas in the country. Negative racial stereotypes are then reinforced by the racial hierarchy of Spanish-language programming broadcast throughout the United States. The two dominant Spanish-language television networks, Univision and Telemundo, reserve the newscaster slots for whites and permit Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas to portray only the demeaning roles of maids, gardeners, chauffeurs, or witchcraft practitioners on the soap operas that are the focus of the television programming.
It is thus not so surprising that Afro-Latinos in the United States consistently report receiving racist treatment at the hands of other Latinos in addition to being perceived as outsiders to the construction of Latino entity. For example, Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas are frequently mistaken for African Americans in their own communities and upon identifying themselves as Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas are told, “But you don't look Latino.” Indeed the 2002 National Survey of Latinos sponsored by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation indicated that Latinos and Latinas with more pronounced African ancestry, such as many Dominicans, more readily identify color discrimination as an explanation for the bias they experience from other Latinos and Latinas. In turn such experiences of bias within the U.S. culture of racial consciousness motivate Latinos and Latinas of African descent to begin self-identifying as Afro-Latino and Afro-Latina.
In addition studies suggest that the socioeconomic status of Afro-Latinos in the United States is more akin to that of African Americans than to other Latinos or white Americans. According to “How Race Counts for Hispanic Americans,” a study by the State University of New York at Albany released in July 2004, Latinos who define themselves as “black” have lower incomes, higher unemployment rates, higher rates of poverty, less education, and fewer opportunities and are more likely to reside in segregated neighborhoods than those who identify themselves as “white” or “other.” Based on such data, the study concluded that there are stark differences between the standard of living for Afro-Latinos and that of all other Latinos in the United States. The disparities in living standards among Latinos and Latinas of different races may thus also account for the increased willingness to identify as Afro-Latino and Afro-Latina in the United States. Furthermore the segregated residential patterns of Afro-Latinos in areas of African American settlement provide Afro-Latino youth with an exposure to African American culture and racial consciousness that also influences their choice to identify as Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas. Indeed, one study of Afro-Dominicans found that the longer Afro-Dominicans resided in the United States, the more likely they were to identify with African Americans.
Other forces of increased racial consciousness include the organization of Afro-Latino identity-based social justice organizations and networks in the United States and abroad. For instance, Washington, D.C., is home to the community-based Afro-Latino Institute and the Institute for Afro–Latin American Studies. The premier predominantly black university, Howard University, uses “Cimarrones,” the Spanish term for fugitive black slaves, for its black student union, whose members include Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas. In New York City the Franklin H. Williams Caribbean Cultural Center is a cultural arts organization that represents all of the diverse artistic expressions and traditions of the African diaspora, including those of Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas in the United States.
In addition a number of Latin American and Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries have begun to experience an increase in Afro-Latino activism. This activism garnered public attention when numerous Afro-Latino organizations from abroad organized an agenda of racial issues for the 2001 United Nations World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa. The activism of those Afro-Latino/Afro-Latina organizations continues to get attention in the United States through the cooperative effort in Washington, D.C., called the Inter-Agency Consultation on Race in Latin America, a consortium that includes the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Ford Foundation, formed to address the special problems of Afro-Latino populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Other sources of racial pride empowerment emanate from Internet Web sites. In short, Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas compose a growing community in the United States with an evolving racial consciousness connected to the racial issues in the United States and throughout the African diaspora. The issues of Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas will attract greater attention as they continue to develop their social justice networks and the public continues to seek them out as potential links between Latino and African American communities.
Bibliography and More Information about Afro-Latinos
•Afrolatino Web site. www.afrolatino.com
•Colón, Jesús. A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches. New York: International Publishers, 1982.
•Colón, Jesús. The Way It Was and Other Writings. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1993.
•Dzidzienyo, Anani, and Suzanne Oboler, eds. Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro Latinos. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004.
•Franklin H. Williams Caribbean Cultural Center Web site. caribbean culturalcenter.citysearch.com/
•Glasser, Ruth. My Music Is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York Communities, 1917–1940. Latinos in American Society and Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
•Grillo, Evelio. Black Cuban, Black American: A Memoir. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 2000.
•Inter-Agency Consultation on Race in Latin America (IAC). “Inter-American Dialogue Race Report.” Inter-American Dialogue, 2003. Available at www.iac-race.org.
•Las Culturas Web site. www.lasculturas.com.
•Logan, John R. “How Race Counts for Hispanic Americans.” Lewis Mumford Center, University at Albany, July 14, 2003. Available at mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/BlackLatinoReport/BlackLati noReport.pdf
•Morris, Margaret Lindsay. An Introduction to Selected Afro-Latino Writers. Studies in Comparative Literature, 53. Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, 2003.
•MundoAfroLatino Web site. www.mundoafrolatino.com
•Sinnette, Elinor Des Verney. Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, Black Bibliophile and Collector. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
•Thomas, Piri. Down These Mean Streets. New York: Vintage Press, 1974.
•2002 National Survey of Latinos. Pew Hispanic Center. Available at www.pewhispanic.org
See also Bauzá, Mario; Black-Latino Relations; Blanqueamiento; Census; Clemente, Roberto; Colón, Jesús; Díaz, Junot; Dominicans; Guzmán, Pablo; Internalized Racism; Latino Identities and Ethnicities; Luciano, Felipe; Machito; Mestizaje; Mongo Santamaría; Native Americans/Mexicanos; Operation Bootstrap/Section 936; Pérez, Loida Maritza; Pietri, Pedro; Schomburg, Arturo; Thomas, Piri; and Whiteness.
Tanya Katerí Hernández
Read more: Afro-Latinos - Afro-Descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean, mestizaje, adelantando la raza, blanqueamiento http://www.jrank.org/cultures/pages/3574/Afro-Latinos.html#ixzz1E6jLREEQ
Most Afro-Latinos in the United States can trace their origins to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, though nearly a quarter of a million people of Mexican heritage also defined themselves as black in the 2000 census. As compared to other Latinos, Afro-Latinos are much less likely to be immigrants and are more likely to speak English in their homes. In fact many Afro-Latino families have had a historical presence in the United States for many generations. Some scholars trace the first Afro-Latino in the United States to Estebanico, an explorer from Spain. Estebanico was one of four survivors of the infamous voyage of the Spanish explorer Pánfilo de Narvaez, which shipwrecked along the Florida coast in 1528 and was later immortalized in the memoirs of Cabeza de Vaca.
Other Afro-Latino personages are the writers Junot Díaz, Loida Maritza Pérez, Pedro Pietri, and Piri Thomas; the musicians Mario Bauzá, Frank Grillo “Machito,” Chano Pozo, and Mongo Santamaría; the journalists Jesús Colón, Pablo Guzmán, and Felipe Luciano; the athlete Roberto Clemente; and the esteemed bibliophile Arturo Schomburg (one of the foremost collectors and bibliophiles of the African diasporic experience). In addition a number of celebrities recognized as African Americans were also of Afro-Latino heritage; for instance, Sammy Davis Jr.'s mother, the Harlem vaudeville dancer Elvera “Baby” Sanchez, was Puerto Rican.
The beginnings of a sizable Afro-Latino community in the United States began in the mid-nineteenth century with the migration of Afro-Cubans to southern Florida. The burgeoning cigar industry brought thousands of Afro-Cubans to the cities of Tampa, Key West, and Ybor City as cigar workers. With the decline of the cigar industry, the main locus of Afro-Latino density slowly shifted from Florida to New York City, and its members shifted from Afro-Cuban to Afro–Puerto Rican. With Operation Bootstrap in the 1940s and 1950s bringing hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican migrants to New York, many Puerto Ricans of African descent migrated as well. After 1966 massive immigration from the Dominican Republic accounted for the increase in the U.S. Afro-Latino population. (After 1966 U.S.–influenced changes in the economic development policies of the Dominican Republic encouraged massive emigration from the country.)
Although Latinos and Latinas who explicitly identify themselves as black by using the terms “Afro-Latino” and “Afro-Latina” make up a small percentage of the U.S. Latino and Latina population, they often trace their origins to Latin American and Caribbean countries with significant numbers of people of African descent. Indeed 90 percent of the estimated 10 million African slaves brought to the Americas were transported to Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, whereas only 4.65 percent were transported to the United States. The number of people of African origin in Latin American and the Caribbean varies widely from country to country (See Table 1). Most Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas in the United States come from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, though nearly a quarter of a million people of Mexican heritage also defined themselves as black in the 2000 census.
Table 1. Afro-Descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean Country Total Population Percentage of Afro-Descendants
Dominican Republic 9 million 84%
Cuba 11 million 62%
Brazil 170 million 45%
Colombia 40 million 26%
Panama 3 million 14%
Venezuela 23 million 10%
Ecuador 12 million 10%
Nicaragua 5 million 9%
Peru 27 million 5%
SOURCE: Inter-Agency Consultation on Race in Latin America (IAC), “Inter-American Dialogue Race Report,” January 2003.
But despite the varying numbers of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean, the historical legacy of slavery is pervasive throughout the region, and thus people of African descent are actively discouraged from identifying as Afro-Latinos. In Latin America and the Caribbean, like in the United States, having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, whereas having darker skin and African features severely limits such opportunity and mobility. In general the poorest socioeconomic class is populated primarily by people of African (and indigenous) descent, and the most privileged class is populated by whites. An elastic intermediary class with socioeconomic standing exists for some light-skinned (mixed-race) mulattos and mestizos. Negative stereotypes about blackness abound in a region that simultaneously denies the existence of racism. Instead, residents are encouraged to disassociate from their blackness in favor of national identities mythologized as a harmonious blend of all races in the discourse of mestizaje.
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As a consequence many people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean harbor internalized racist norms and initially may choose not to self-identify as Afro-Latino regardless of how pronounced their African ancestry may be in their features and skin colors. The internalized racism manifests itself in a widespread concern with the degree of darkness in pigmentation, width of nose, thickness of lips, and quality of hair, with straight, European-textured hair denominated literally as “good” hair. This concern with European features and white skin also influences the choice of marriage partners. Marrying someone lighter is called adelantando la raza (improving the race) under the theory of blanqueamiento (whitening), which prizes the mixture of races precisely to help diminish the existence of Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas.
Thus migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean (Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas included) often arrive in the United States with their culture of antiblack racism well intact along with other manifestations of their cultures to transmit to younger generations of Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas in the country. Negative racial stereotypes are then reinforced by the racial hierarchy of Spanish-language programming broadcast throughout the United States. The two dominant Spanish-language television networks, Univision and Telemundo, reserve the newscaster slots for whites and permit Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas to portray only the demeaning roles of maids, gardeners, chauffeurs, or witchcraft practitioners on the soap operas that are the focus of the television programming.
It is thus not so surprising that Afro-Latinos in the United States consistently report receiving racist treatment at the hands of other Latinos in addition to being perceived as outsiders to the construction of Latino entity. For example, Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas are frequently mistaken for African Americans in their own communities and upon identifying themselves as Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas are told, “But you don't look Latino.” Indeed the 2002 National Survey of Latinos sponsored by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation indicated that Latinos and Latinas with more pronounced African ancestry, such as many Dominicans, more readily identify color discrimination as an explanation for the bias they experience from other Latinos and Latinas. In turn such experiences of bias within the U.S. culture of racial consciousness motivate Latinos and Latinas of African descent to begin self-identifying as Afro-Latino and Afro-Latina.
In addition studies suggest that the socioeconomic status of Afro-Latinos in the United States is more akin to that of African Americans than to other Latinos or white Americans. According to “How Race Counts for Hispanic Americans,” a study by the State University of New York at Albany released in July 2004, Latinos who define themselves as “black” have lower incomes, higher unemployment rates, higher rates of poverty, less education, and fewer opportunities and are more likely to reside in segregated neighborhoods than those who identify themselves as “white” or “other.” Based on such data, the study concluded that there are stark differences between the standard of living for Afro-Latinos and that of all other Latinos in the United States. The disparities in living standards among Latinos and Latinas of different races may thus also account for the increased willingness to identify as Afro-Latino and Afro-Latina in the United States. Furthermore the segregated residential patterns of Afro-Latinos in areas of African American settlement provide Afro-Latino youth with an exposure to African American culture and racial consciousness that also influences their choice to identify as Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas. Indeed, one study of Afro-Dominicans found that the longer Afro-Dominicans resided in the United States, the more likely they were to identify with African Americans.
Other forces of increased racial consciousness include the organization of Afro-Latino identity-based social justice organizations and networks in the United States and abroad. For instance, Washington, D.C., is home to the community-based Afro-Latino Institute and the Institute for Afro–Latin American Studies. The premier predominantly black university, Howard University, uses “Cimarrones,” the Spanish term for fugitive black slaves, for its black student union, whose members include Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas. In New York City the Franklin H. Williams Caribbean Cultural Center is a cultural arts organization that represents all of the diverse artistic expressions and traditions of the African diaspora, including those of Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas in the United States.
In addition a number of Latin American and Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries have begun to experience an increase in Afro-Latino activism. This activism garnered public attention when numerous Afro-Latino organizations from abroad organized an agenda of racial issues for the 2001 United Nations World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa. The activism of those Afro-Latino/Afro-Latina organizations continues to get attention in the United States through the cooperative effort in Washington, D.C., called the Inter-Agency Consultation on Race in Latin America, a consortium that includes the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Ford Foundation, formed to address the special problems of Afro-Latino populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Other sources of racial pride empowerment emanate from Internet Web sites. In short, Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas compose a growing community in the United States with an evolving racial consciousness connected to the racial issues in the United States and throughout the African diaspora. The issues of Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latinas will attract greater attention as they continue to develop their social justice networks and the public continues to seek them out as potential links between Latino and African American communities.
Bibliography and More Information about Afro-Latinos
•Afrolatino Web site. www.afrolatino.com
•Colón, Jesús. A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches. New York: International Publishers, 1982.
•Colón, Jesús. The Way It Was and Other Writings. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1993.
•Dzidzienyo, Anani, and Suzanne Oboler, eds. Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro Latinos. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004.
•Franklin H. Williams Caribbean Cultural Center Web site. caribbean culturalcenter.citysearch.com/
•Glasser, Ruth. My Music Is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York Communities, 1917–1940. Latinos in American Society and Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
•Grillo, Evelio. Black Cuban, Black American: A Memoir. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 2000.
•Inter-Agency Consultation on Race in Latin America (IAC). “Inter-American Dialogue Race Report.” Inter-American Dialogue, 2003. Available at www.iac-race.org.
•Las Culturas Web site. www.lasculturas.com.
•Logan, John R. “How Race Counts for Hispanic Americans.” Lewis Mumford Center, University at Albany, July 14, 2003. Available at mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/BlackLatinoReport/BlackLati noReport.pdf
•Morris, Margaret Lindsay. An Introduction to Selected Afro-Latino Writers. Studies in Comparative Literature, 53. Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, 2003.
•MundoAfroLatino Web site. www.mundoafrolatino.com
•Sinnette, Elinor Des Verney. Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, Black Bibliophile and Collector. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
•Thomas, Piri. Down These Mean Streets. New York: Vintage Press, 1974.
•2002 National Survey of Latinos. Pew Hispanic Center. Available at www.pewhispanic.org
See also Bauzá, Mario; Black-Latino Relations; Blanqueamiento; Census; Clemente, Roberto; Colón, Jesús; Díaz, Junot; Dominicans; Guzmán, Pablo; Internalized Racism; Latino Identities and Ethnicities; Luciano, Felipe; Machito; Mestizaje; Mongo Santamaría; Native Americans/Mexicanos; Operation Bootstrap/Section 936; Pérez, Loida Maritza; Pietri, Pedro; Schomburg, Arturo; Thomas, Piri; and Whiteness.
Tanya Katerí Hernández
Read more: Afro-Latinos - Afro-Descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean, mestizaje, adelantando la raza, blanqueamiento http://www.jrank.org/cultures/pages/3574/Afro-Latinos.html#ixzz1E6jLREEQ
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
HUMAN RIGHTS OF AFRO-DESCENDANTS IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: THE REALITIES
THE CARIBBEAN COUNCIL OF LEGAL EDUCATION FIFTH DR THE HONOURABLE LLOYD BARNETT, OJ. DISTINQUISHED LECTURE SERIES
Lecture by Sir Clare K. Roberts, QC
HUMAN RIGHTS OF AFRO-DESCENDANTS IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: THE REALITIES
Introductory
I consider it a signal honour to have been asked to give this lecture in the series of lectures dedicated to Dr the Honourable Lloyd Barnett, OJ. To say that Dr Barnett is a legal luminary or an eminent constitutional lawyer would not do him justice. I have to say that Dr Barnett is a giant among legal luminaries and eminent jurists. He was founding a member of the Council and a former chairman. Dr Barnett has been a member of just about every committee set up by the Council and chaired nearly all of them. He will forever be identified with the Council’s Committee on Legal Training and its Review Committee. Dr Barnett is recognized in his beloved Jamaica, regionally and internationally as a leading human rights lawyer and activist. He leads the Independent Jamaica Council on Human Rights. His sound and wise reasoning has influenced many other areas of law across the region and the Commonwealth. I speak for all of us who have benefited from Lloyd’s dedication to legal education in the region and, if permitted, for the Council and people of the region when I record our heartfelt appreciation for his herculean efforts over so many years.
I congratulate the Council of Legal Education on approaching its 40th anniversary of its founding. The Council can look with pride on the graduates it has produced each year since 1975 when that first batch of us, the guinea pigs were foisted on society. I am happy to report that the graduates of the Council of Legal Education have distinguished themselves and taken their places at the highest levels. We only have to look around this room to have the evidence – there are chief justices, attorneys general and other prominent lawyers all produced by the Caribbean Council of Legal Education. You will forgive me for singling out our own Ms E. Ann Henry, Chairman of Council. I can claim her as a fellow graduate of the CLE and also as a fellow Antiguan but my wife can also claim her as a Virgin Islander, they both having been born in the British Virgin Islands.
I would also like to thank the organizers of this Lecture Series for inviting me to give this Lecture. The arrangements have been excellent. Mrs Kathleen Rochford and her staff are skilled and diplomatic in ensuring that Lady Roberts and I are well accommodated. Incidentally today is the birthday of Lady Roberts. Your invitation on the one hand relieves me of having to think of where to take her for her birthday; on the other hand the pressure on me is increased by having my chief critic listen to me and on her birthday at that!!
About the Lecturer
I think it fitting that you should know a little about me so that you can have some insight as to why I was presumptuous enough to have accepted the invitation to give this lecture today. By way of introduction, I was a member of that first class that started the ball rolling in 1973 although the Council had been in existence since 1971 planning its curriculum, hiring staff, seeing to accommodation and the myriad of things necessary to start to train lawyers. When Hugh Wooding Law School opened its doors I was in that first batch.
In respect of the lecture tonight I was a member of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights from 1st January 2002 until December 31st 2009. I served as a Commissioner for 8 years and I am a former president of that organization. More relevantly, during my stint on the Commission I was the first Rapporteur for the Rights of Afro-Descendants and Against Racial Discrimination and Racism. I will speak more about the rapporteurship later. As Rapporteur, I spearheaded the Inter American Commission on Human Rights’ focus on improving the lot and protecting the human rights of the Afro-descendants in our hemisphere. When I speak of human rights I am not just dealing with civil and political rights but also economic social and cultural rights of black people in this hemisphere. I have spoken in different fora on the topic. I have also visited Afro-descendants in their abodes – in Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, the United States, Canada and the Caribbean including Haiti and I contributed to the recently published report by the Commission on the plight of Afro-Columbians. I have been involved with the post Durban activities in the region against racial discrimination and I participated in the UN World Conference in Geneva to review the implementation of the Durban plan. I write a blog called the simple and direct, “Afro-Descendants Unite”.
The title of my lecture is Human Rights of Afro-Descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean: the Realities.
Afro-descendants in Latin American and the Caribbean
The first reality that struck me very early after I started work as Afro-Descendants Rapporteur on the Commission, was that there was a serious lack of awareness of the existence of Afro descendants in the region. It is estimated that there are some 150 million Afro descendants in Latin America out of a total population of say 590 million. Some say that Afro-descendants account for a third of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean. There are large populations of Afro- descendants in Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean. However there is not the awareness of the existence of each other. So the Afro-Descendants in the Caribbean are surprised to learn that there are large populations of people like themselves in many countries of Latin American and vice versa. Let us take Brazil. Brazil has more people of African descent than any country in Africa except Nigeria, making Afro-Brazilians the second largest population of Africans on the planet. Brazil alone has some 89 million Afro-descendants. The United States of America has the second largest population of Afro-descendants in the Hemisphere but it is quickly followed by Colombia. Cuba and the Dominican Republic also have significant Afro-descendant populations as does Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Venezuela.
The reason why we not aware of the numbers of black people living in Latin America is due to a deliberate attempt on the part of these countries to portray an image that they are white countries and to deny the reality of racial diversity within their borders. For instance, if you watch the television in these countries you would not see black people portrayed. There is a conspicuous absence of colour. There is usually not even a token black in the advertisements. Blacks are neither in front of the camera nor behind the camera. Even Latin TV networks in the United States are guilty of the same conduct.
Problems with the count
Unlike in the United States of America where once you have a drop of black blood in you, you are considered black, in Latin America, if you have a drop of white blood in you, you can choose to be white. So this self-identification causes problems with the numbers. Brazil, for example, is said to be between 45% and as high as 65% Black. In Columbia there is conflicting information on the exact size of the Afro-Colombian population. The Government relies on statistics that suggest that Afro-Colombians comprise 10.5 percent of the population, or just under 4.3 million. However many Afro-Colombian organizations estimate the number at 26 percent or near 11 million. Part of the reason for the difference in the figures has to do with relying on self-identification in areas where “being black” is still strongly stigmatized.
If asked to identify, individuals tend to call themselves white or miztiso or mullato – anything but black. And this makes practical sense. Why declare yourself to be black to face a life of poverty, ignorance, exclusion and discrimination. You would have given yourself a better chance at a decent life just by calling right.
Let me give you an example of how orchestrated the policy of portraying a white image is in Latin America. In Bahia, Brazil, where the largest concentration of Afro-descendants exists, an Afro-descendant father reported to me the difficulty he had in giving his children African names. He informed me that the Brazilian authorities rejected the African names but because he was enlightened and passionate about his race, he insisted. Racial pride – the “I am Black and I am Proud” movement has not reached most of the Latin American countries where Blacks are to be found.
So there is no unified approach in facing the many problems that beset the black population of the region. The old adage that there is strength in unity is true of the situation but lost on the Afro-descendants of region. And that contributes to the invisibility of black people in the region.
In his book Afro-Latin America,George Reid Andrews points out that, “The racial democracy writers of the 1930s and 1940s had assured their fellow citizens that Latin America was racially egalitarian and free of prejudice and discrimination that so deformed life in the United States. For several decades, Latin Americans, including many black and brown Latin Americans, had believed and accepted this message. But as the evidence refuting it mounted and accumulated in the lives of Afro-Latin Americans, they finally demanded that the societies of the region acknowledge that racial democracy was in fact a myth”.
Land Rights
In dealing with the realities of the state of the human rights of Afro-descendants in the region, one cannot overlook the fact that their land rights are being disrespected. The Afro-descendants share this problem with the indigenous peoples of the region. The issues here have been dealt with in two reports which I commend to you. The reports are Unfulfilled Promises and Persistent Obstacles to the Realization of the Rights of Afro-Colombians – by University of Texas Faculty of Law in 2007, dealing with Law 70 of Columbia; and fresh off the press, The Duty To Protect Indigenous Communal Property Rights Over The Land, Territories, And Natural Resources by the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. This last study by the Commission comes with an annex called “Guidelines with regard to the State’s Duty to Consult with respect to Development Projects that May Affect the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”. These guidelines were adopted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Permit me to quote from the Commission’s report –
The relationship between indigenous peoples and their lands, territories, and natural resources is a key factor for the material subsistence and for the preservation of the identities and cultures of these peoples, and the enjoyment of their political, social, economic, and cultural rights in the Americas, and the rest of the world. This special relationship has been widely recognized in international human rights law, including specific instruments on the rights of indigenous peoples such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations Declaration) , and Convention No. 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on indigenous and tribal peoples in independent countries (Convention No. 169).
I submit that the same applies to the Afro-descendants.
Civil Rights Movement Nascent
The United States of America went through its civil rights movement in the 1960’s. Great men and women came forward to lead the movement and drive it. You know the cast well -– Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Angela Davis and I would add Mohamed Ali, to name a few of the civil rights leaders. The civil rights movement in the rest of the Americas is barely nascent. And this is part of the problem. The leadership has not come forward as yet; therefore the movement is barely nascent at this time. There is not then the pride in being black. There is no telling of the story of the proud ancestry of Afro-descendants – that they are not descendants of slaves but rather descendants of Africans who were enslaved. That their history and lineage go back well before the unfortunate era of slavery. Therefore the curricula of the people of African descent do not take into account their African background. For example in Columbia I met with the Columbian education minister and asked her whether the school curricula took any account of the significant African Colombian population and she confessed they had not but indicated that she would look into it. I have to tell you that Columbia has made strides in correcting the situation.
Invisibility
When you are invisible, you are neglected. If you are invisible, it means that you do not exist, you are then denied your share of the wealth of the nation, you are denied proper health care, proper education and housing, and your land rights are trampled upon.
I will give you an example of what I mean. I visited Brazil in 2005 and 2006 and was appalled at the condition of the Afro- descendants and Indigenous people in the Quilombo regions. I asked the leadership how could it be that a country as wealthy as Brazil could have some of its citizens living in that condition. The conditions were as bad as those suffered by the people of Haiti. Ironically at the same time there was an art exhibition in Bahia entitled Brazil/Haiti. From the paintings it was impossible to detect which sceneries of sheer poverty were of Haiti and which were of Brazil. These conditions of degradation and neglect among Afro-descendants can be found in all parts of Latin America.
The Caribbean
Cuba
The prevailing view of race in Cuba follows the official propaganda in assuming that racial discrimination in the island is practically non-existent. However the reports coming to the Commission paint a different picture. In a book called The Open Wound –The Scourge of Racism in Cuba from Colonialism to Communism - Ivan-Cesar Martinez, analyses what he calls “the ideology of White supremacy”. He states that his work “is intended to serve as a tool to eradicate this terrible scourge by demystifying the so-called color blindness of Cuban society by showing clearly the existence of a hierarchical color-structure of power that has never changed and that keeps the majority of the population – Cubans that have been sentenced for the crime of having been born with a darker skin color- at the bottom of the society, permanently excluded and reined in” . Martinez points to a study by the Havana Center of Anthropology, a governmental agency, that found that “white Cubans continue to believe in black intellectual inferiority, inferior values , inferior culture, inferior decency and they are opposed to racial intermarriage much more than in the United States. White Cubans are more racist today, after five decades of socialism, than white Americans who were the world champions of racism four decades ago” Racism is alive and well in Cuba today.
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic like Venezuela and other Latin America countries are engaged in whitening their society. In Reversing Sail (A History of the African Diaspora), Michael A. Gomez states, “Race in the Dominican Republic highlights the extent to which it is an arbitrary and politicized concept, and it is significantly conditioned by Haiti; the fear of being labelled a Haitian led many to undervalue their African heritage. Sixty percent of the country is of mixed ancestry, but those of the upper class are classified as white, illustrating the principle that class ”whitens” throughout and 12 percent of the “purer” African ancestry are invariably poor” .
The English Speaking Caribbean
There is a notion among Afro-descendants of the English Speaking Caribbean that there are no serious issues of racial discrimination in their countries. This is far from the truth. There is in all of the islands what I call “shadism” where the lighter your skin, the higher up the economic ladder you will be. Racial profiling is also prevalent in the islands where, for example, unequal treatment is meted out to black tourists by black hospitality workers. In a recent incident that was brought to my attention a group of offshore medical students went to a night club to celebrate the birthday of one of them. Seven white students were allowed to pass without incident but there was a marked difference in the treatment of the eighth student who happened to have been a black Bahamian and the one whose birthday was being celebrated. He was pulled aside by a female black woman who declared that she was a police officer and began to push and pull the black student, tearing his shirt in the process. He was denied entry although he had paid and had his band on his wrist as evidence and he was cursed and embarrassed for committing the crime of being of a dark skin-colour. I am convinced that the thesis of Na’im Akbar that he expresses in his essay, Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery accounts for phenomenon of shadism in the English speaking Caribbean. Deep psychological damage of slavery still influences our conduct towards other blacks.
WHY
As I asked of Brazil so must I ask of the rest of Latin America, why do we still have a particular set of our citizens living in conditions of squalor? How is it that in all of the Latin American countries where Afro-descendants exist, they find themselves at the bottom rung of the economic ladder and excluded from participation in government? Why is it that as declared by the participants at the Conference of Black Parliamentarians in Costa Rica (which I attended) that “millions of Afro-descendant children born today are more likely to go to jail than to a university, to be in the streets instead of in school, to work in the informal economy rather than to develop their talents, and to be excluded from exercising their rights as first-class citizens.” Why do African descendants in Latin America live in impoverished conditions while having unequal access to education, employment, healthcare, and housing?
I can find only one answer: discrimination.
What Can and Should Be Done
I use Brazil as an example of what can and should be done to change this picture to bring about a new reality for the Afro-descendants of the region. Under President Lula, Brazil started with the admission that it had a problem. It moved from what was called “racial democracy” - from the idyll that there was perfect racial harmony in Brazil to a realization that there was racial injustice caused by racial discrimination. It came to the realization that Brazil was not a white country but a racially diverse country. The President held a series of consultations on race in the provinces culminating in a national conference on race relations. He invited me to attend that conference and I did. It was a wonderful convergence of people of all races in Brazil. It was a catharsis for the nation. President Lula himself made trips to Africa and re-established the African origins of the majority of Brazil’s population. Most notably, Brazil was the first country to have established a government agency to work on social inclusion and racial equality, called SEPPIR (Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality). Furthermore, under the President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, four Afro-Brazilians were appointed to cabinet-level positions in the government and one to the Supreme Court.
The other positive was the effect of the preparation for the United Nations World Conference on Racism held at Durban, South Africa in 2001, the conference itself and the post conference activities. The Conference adopted the Durban Plan of Action.
the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Afro-Descendants and Against Racial Discrimination and Racism
One of the products of the Durban Conference was that the Inter American Commission on Human Rights established the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Afro-Descendants and Against Racial Discrimination and Racism early in 2005. Brazil could be said to have been the midwife of Rapporteurship through its advocacy in the OAS and by providing the operational funds. I was given the duties of the first Special Rapporteur. The Rapporteurship was charged with stimulating, systematizing, reinforcing and consolidating the actions of the Inter-American Commission in support of the rights of people of African descent and against racial discrimination. The core objectives of the Special Rapporteurship included working with OAS member States to generate awareness of the States’ duty to respect the human rights of Afro-descendants and on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination; to analyze the challenges that confronted countries of the region in this area; to formulate recommendations designed to overcome those obstacles; to identify and share best practices in the region with respect to this matter, and to provide the technical assistance requested by member States in the implementation of the recommendations in national law and practice.
The Rapporteurship undertook an advisory role and carried out its activities in the area of promotion and protection of the rights of Afro-descendants. I draw your attention to the Annual Reports of the Commission since 2006 for a report on the activities of the Rapporteurship since its inception. . In December 2008 and following on a visit I made to Columbia in May 2007, the Rapporteurship approved a report entitled, “Observations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the Rights of Afro-descendants and Racial Discrimination in Colombia.” This report was the first thematic report prepared by the Rapporteurship on the problem of racial discrimination with respect to the Afro-descendant population in Colombia. I however must say that I found that the Commission and the OAS itself needed the services of the Rapporteurship as much as the States. The situation with respect to Afro-descendants within the Commission and the OAS reflected the situation in the Member States. The same lack of inclusion was present. The Commission and the OAS are what one author calls “White territories”. In a word there is a startling absence of people of colour in the institutions. For example, in the Commission there was one Black lawyer of the 36 lawyers working for the Commission and the present Commission is now all white with my departure. There is a need for a conscious effort to bring about more racial balance in the Commission, that is, among commissioners, lawyers and support staff and indeed in the OAS generally. You will not find this in the Commission’s reports.
Regional Convention Against Racism
The Rapporteurship also provided technical support the Working Group of the Committee for Juridical and Political Affairs of the permanent Council of the OAS that is charged with drafting a new regional instrument , the Inter-American Convention against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination. I ask you to pay special attention to the drafting of this new instrument. The instrument is of particular significance as I feel that the process of drafting the instrument provides an opportunity to bring the issue of discrimination in the region to the front burner. It seems to me that the drafting committee is moving in the direction of widening the scope of the Convention to deal with all forms of discrimination and intolerance to such an extent that the original focus is being lost. The emphasis on racism has been diluted to such an extent that it will be necessary to begin the process again to take care of one of the region’s most pernicious problems – racism.
Affirmative Action
In looking at what should be done to redress the dire situation of Afro-descendants in the region we have to give serious consideration to affirmative action. In an article entitiled “Affirmative Action in Brazil: Challenges and Prospects” Flávia Piovesan gives an overview of the theory and practice of affirmative action in Brazil. She points out that …” the right to redistribution of wealth requires measures to change social and economic structures combined with redistribution policies to fight economic injustice, marginalization and economic inequity.” In response to her question, How should we handle the problem of discrimination? She stated
Within the scope of International Human Rights Law, two strategies stand out: a) the repressive-punitive strategy, which aims at punishing, banning, and eliminating discrimination; and b) the promotional strategy, which aims at promoting, fostering, and advancing equality.
The repressive-punitive approach seeks to speedily eradicate all forms of discrimination. Fighting discrimination is fundamental in the process of guaranteeing full exercise of civil and political rights, as well as social, economic, and cultural rights”.
But Pievesan continues, “The ban on discrimination must be coupled with compensatory policies that can promote quicker achievement of equality… It is essential that promotional strategies be adopted to help socially vulnerable groups to join and participate fully in social spheres…...
In that regard, affirmative action stands out as a powerful tool for social inclusion. Affirmative action consists of special and temporary measures that are designed to redress a history of discrimination by accelerating the process of promoting equality. It reaches the substantive equality of vulnerable groups such as, for instance, ethnic and racial minorities and women.
Affirmative actions, as compensatory policies aiming at relieving and redressing the results of a past of discrimination, fulfill a decisive public purpose in the democratic process: they ensure social diversity and plurality. They should be understood both from the retrospective viewpoint – as they alleviate the burden of discriminatory past – and also from the prospective viewpoint – as they foster social change and bring forth new circumstances. They are concrete measures that turn the right to equality into something feasible, based on the notion that equality should take the shape of respect for difference and diversity. Affirmative action converts formal equality into material and substantive equality. I could not have put it any better.
Haiti
I could not at this time talk about Afro-descendants in the region and not address Haiti. I was the country rapporteur for Haiti for the past 8 years and on my many trips there I stayed at the Montana Hotel that was flattened by the earthquake 7 months ago. Haiti has been a Chapter 4 country for many years. A Chapter 4 country is one where the human rights situation is so bad that the country is placed in Chapter 4 of the annual report of the Commission for special attention. The current chapter 4 countries are Haiti, Columbia, Venezuela and Cuba. Most first-time visitors to Haiti declare that it is a life-changing experience. It has been said that Haiti is a country trying to move from misery to poverty. The earthquake tragedy would have set Haiti back to misery again. The Commission saw its role before the earthquake as being to keep the International Community interested in assisting Haiti. I urge support and a commitment to rebuild Haiti so that it can take its rightful place among the nations of the hemisphere.
END
I end by urging the Council of Legal Education to continue its work of producing lawyers with conscience. Lawyers who would see their role as not just accumulating wealth but ensuring that there is justice for all and particularly the discriminated in the Caribbean and the region. In a word, to follow the example of Dr the Honourable Lloyd George Barnett, OJ. It is a good work but dare I suggest that the Council redoubles its efforts in this regard over the next 40 years.
Thank you.
Sir Clare Kamau Roberts, QC
2010 –09 -02
Lecture by Sir Clare K. Roberts, QC
HUMAN RIGHTS OF AFRO-DESCENDANTS IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: THE REALITIES
Introductory
I consider it a signal honour to have been asked to give this lecture in the series of lectures dedicated to Dr the Honourable Lloyd Barnett, OJ. To say that Dr Barnett is a legal luminary or an eminent constitutional lawyer would not do him justice. I have to say that Dr Barnett is a giant among legal luminaries and eminent jurists. He was founding a member of the Council and a former chairman. Dr Barnett has been a member of just about every committee set up by the Council and chaired nearly all of them. He will forever be identified with the Council’s Committee on Legal Training and its Review Committee. Dr Barnett is recognized in his beloved Jamaica, regionally and internationally as a leading human rights lawyer and activist. He leads the Independent Jamaica Council on Human Rights. His sound and wise reasoning has influenced many other areas of law across the region and the Commonwealth. I speak for all of us who have benefited from Lloyd’s dedication to legal education in the region and, if permitted, for the Council and people of the region when I record our heartfelt appreciation for his herculean efforts over so many years.
I congratulate the Council of Legal Education on approaching its 40th anniversary of its founding. The Council can look with pride on the graduates it has produced each year since 1975 when that first batch of us, the guinea pigs were foisted on society. I am happy to report that the graduates of the Council of Legal Education have distinguished themselves and taken their places at the highest levels. We only have to look around this room to have the evidence – there are chief justices, attorneys general and other prominent lawyers all produced by the Caribbean Council of Legal Education. You will forgive me for singling out our own Ms E. Ann Henry, Chairman of Council. I can claim her as a fellow graduate of the CLE and also as a fellow Antiguan but my wife can also claim her as a Virgin Islander, they both having been born in the British Virgin Islands.
I would also like to thank the organizers of this Lecture Series for inviting me to give this Lecture. The arrangements have been excellent. Mrs Kathleen Rochford and her staff are skilled and diplomatic in ensuring that Lady Roberts and I are well accommodated. Incidentally today is the birthday of Lady Roberts. Your invitation on the one hand relieves me of having to think of where to take her for her birthday; on the other hand the pressure on me is increased by having my chief critic listen to me and on her birthday at that!!
About the Lecturer
I think it fitting that you should know a little about me so that you can have some insight as to why I was presumptuous enough to have accepted the invitation to give this lecture today. By way of introduction, I was a member of that first class that started the ball rolling in 1973 although the Council had been in existence since 1971 planning its curriculum, hiring staff, seeing to accommodation and the myriad of things necessary to start to train lawyers. When Hugh Wooding Law School opened its doors I was in that first batch.
In respect of the lecture tonight I was a member of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights from 1st January 2002 until December 31st 2009. I served as a Commissioner for 8 years and I am a former president of that organization. More relevantly, during my stint on the Commission I was the first Rapporteur for the Rights of Afro-Descendants and Against Racial Discrimination and Racism. I will speak more about the rapporteurship later. As Rapporteur, I spearheaded the Inter American Commission on Human Rights’ focus on improving the lot and protecting the human rights of the Afro-descendants in our hemisphere. When I speak of human rights I am not just dealing with civil and political rights but also economic social and cultural rights of black people in this hemisphere. I have spoken in different fora on the topic. I have also visited Afro-descendants in their abodes – in Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, the United States, Canada and the Caribbean including Haiti and I contributed to the recently published report by the Commission on the plight of Afro-Columbians. I have been involved with the post Durban activities in the region against racial discrimination and I participated in the UN World Conference in Geneva to review the implementation of the Durban plan. I write a blog called the simple and direct, “Afro-Descendants Unite”.
The title of my lecture is Human Rights of Afro-Descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean: the Realities.
Afro-descendants in Latin American and the Caribbean
The first reality that struck me very early after I started work as Afro-Descendants Rapporteur on the Commission, was that there was a serious lack of awareness of the existence of Afro descendants in the region. It is estimated that there are some 150 million Afro descendants in Latin America out of a total population of say 590 million. Some say that Afro-descendants account for a third of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean. There are large populations of Afro- descendants in Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean. However there is not the awareness of the existence of each other. So the Afro-Descendants in the Caribbean are surprised to learn that there are large populations of people like themselves in many countries of Latin American and vice versa. Let us take Brazil. Brazil has more people of African descent than any country in Africa except Nigeria, making Afro-Brazilians the second largest population of Africans on the planet. Brazil alone has some 89 million Afro-descendants. The United States of America has the second largest population of Afro-descendants in the Hemisphere but it is quickly followed by Colombia. Cuba and the Dominican Republic also have significant Afro-descendant populations as does Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Venezuela.
The reason why we not aware of the numbers of black people living in Latin America is due to a deliberate attempt on the part of these countries to portray an image that they are white countries and to deny the reality of racial diversity within their borders. For instance, if you watch the television in these countries you would not see black people portrayed. There is a conspicuous absence of colour. There is usually not even a token black in the advertisements. Blacks are neither in front of the camera nor behind the camera. Even Latin TV networks in the United States are guilty of the same conduct.
Problems with the count
Unlike in the United States of America where once you have a drop of black blood in you, you are considered black, in Latin America, if you have a drop of white blood in you, you can choose to be white. So this self-identification causes problems with the numbers. Brazil, for example, is said to be between 45% and as high as 65% Black. In Columbia there is conflicting information on the exact size of the Afro-Colombian population. The Government relies on statistics that suggest that Afro-Colombians comprise 10.5 percent of the population, or just under 4.3 million. However many Afro-Colombian organizations estimate the number at 26 percent or near 11 million. Part of the reason for the difference in the figures has to do with relying on self-identification in areas where “being black” is still strongly stigmatized.
If asked to identify, individuals tend to call themselves white or miztiso or mullato – anything but black. And this makes practical sense. Why declare yourself to be black to face a life of poverty, ignorance, exclusion and discrimination. You would have given yourself a better chance at a decent life just by calling right.
Let me give you an example of how orchestrated the policy of portraying a white image is in Latin America. In Bahia, Brazil, where the largest concentration of Afro-descendants exists, an Afro-descendant father reported to me the difficulty he had in giving his children African names. He informed me that the Brazilian authorities rejected the African names but because he was enlightened and passionate about his race, he insisted. Racial pride – the “I am Black and I am Proud” movement has not reached most of the Latin American countries where Blacks are to be found.
So there is no unified approach in facing the many problems that beset the black population of the region. The old adage that there is strength in unity is true of the situation but lost on the Afro-descendants of region. And that contributes to the invisibility of black people in the region.
In his book Afro-Latin America,George Reid Andrews points out that, “The racial democracy writers of the 1930s and 1940s had assured their fellow citizens that Latin America was racially egalitarian and free of prejudice and discrimination that so deformed life in the United States. For several decades, Latin Americans, including many black and brown Latin Americans, had believed and accepted this message. But as the evidence refuting it mounted and accumulated in the lives of Afro-Latin Americans, they finally demanded that the societies of the region acknowledge that racial democracy was in fact a myth”.
Land Rights
In dealing with the realities of the state of the human rights of Afro-descendants in the region, one cannot overlook the fact that their land rights are being disrespected. The Afro-descendants share this problem with the indigenous peoples of the region. The issues here have been dealt with in two reports which I commend to you. The reports are Unfulfilled Promises and Persistent Obstacles to the Realization of the Rights of Afro-Colombians – by University of Texas Faculty of Law in 2007, dealing with Law 70 of Columbia; and fresh off the press, The Duty To Protect Indigenous Communal Property Rights Over The Land, Territories, And Natural Resources by the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. This last study by the Commission comes with an annex called “Guidelines with regard to the State’s Duty to Consult with respect to Development Projects that May Affect the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”. These guidelines were adopted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Permit me to quote from the Commission’s report –
The relationship between indigenous peoples and their lands, territories, and natural resources is a key factor for the material subsistence and for the preservation of the identities and cultures of these peoples, and the enjoyment of their political, social, economic, and cultural rights in the Americas, and the rest of the world. This special relationship has been widely recognized in international human rights law, including specific instruments on the rights of indigenous peoples such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations Declaration) , and Convention No. 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on indigenous and tribal peoples in independent countries (Convention No. 169).
I submit that the same applies to the Afro-descendants.
Civil Rights Movement Nascent
The United States of America went through its civil rights movement in the 1960’s. Great men and women came forward to lead the movement and drive it. You know the cast well -– Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Angela Davis and I would add Mohamed Ali, to name a few of the civil rights leaders. The civil rights movement in the rest of the Americas is barely nascent. And this is part of the problem. The leadership has not come forward as yet; therefore the movement is barely nascent at this time. There is not then the pride in being black. There is no telling of the story of the proud ancestry of Afro-descendants – that they are not descendants of slaves but rather descendants of Africans who were enslaved. That their history and lineage go back well before the unfortunate era of slavery. Therefore the curricula of the people of African descent do not take into account their African background. For example in Columbia I met with the Columbian education minister and asked her whether the school curricula took any account of the significant African Colombian population and she confessed they had not but indicated that she would look into it. I have to tell you that Columbia has made strides in correcting the situation.
Invisibility
When you are invisible, you are neglected. If you are invisible, it means that you do not exist, you are then denied your share of the wealth of the nation, you are denied proper health care, proper education and housing, and your land rights are trampled upon.
I will give you an example of what I mean. I visited Brazil in 2005 and 2006 and was appalled at the condition of the Afro- descendants and Indigenous people in the Quilombo regions. I asked the leadership how could it be that a country as wealthy as Brazil could have some of its citizens living in that condition. The conditions were as bad as those suffered by the people of Haiti. Ironically at the same time there was an art exhibition in Bahia entitled Brazil/Haiti. From the paintings it was impossible to detect which sceneries of sheer poverty were of Haiti and which were of Brazil. These conditions of degradation and neglect among Afro-descendants can be found in all parts of Latin America.
The Caribbean
Cuba
The prevailing view of race in Cuba follows the official propaganda in assuming that racial discrimination in the island is practically non-existent. However the reports coming to the Commission paint a different picture. In a book called The Open Wound –The Scourge of Racism in Cuba from Colonialism to Communism - Ivan-Cesar Martinez, analyses what he calls “the ideology of White supremacy”. He states that his work “is intended to serve as a tool to eradicate this terrible scourge by demystifying the so-called color blindness of Cuban society by showing clearly the existence of a hierarchical color-structure of power that has never changed and that keeps the majority of the population – Cubans that have been sentenced for the crime of having been born with a darker skin color- at the bottom of the society, permanently excluded and reined in” . Martinez points to a study by the Havana Center of Anthropology, a governmental agency, that found that “white Cubans continue to believe in black intellectual inferiority, inferior values , inferior culture, inferior decency and they are opposed to racial intermarriage much more than in the United States. White Cubans are more racist today, after five decades of socialism, than white Americans who were the world champions of racism four decades ago” Racism is alive and well in Cuba today.
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic like Venezuela and other Latin America countries are engaged in whitening their society. In Reversing Sail (A History of the African Diaspora), Michael A. Gomez states, “Race in the Dominican Republic highlights the extent to which it is an arbitrary and politicized concept, and it is significantly conditioned by Haiti; the fear of being labelled a Haitian led many to undervalue their African heritage. Sixty percent of the country is of mixed ancestry, but those of the upper class are classified as white, illustrating the principle that class ”whitens” throughout and 12 percent of the “purer” African ancestry are invariably poor” .
The English Speaking Caribbean
There is a notion among Afro-descendants of the English Speaking Caribbean that there are no serious issues of racial discrimination in their countries. This is far from the truth. There is in all of the islands what I call “shadism” where the lighter your skin, the higher up the economic ladder you will be. Racial profiling is also prevalent in the islands where, for example, unequal treatment is meted out to black tourists by black hospitality workers. In a recent incident that was brought to my attention a group of offshore medical students went to a night club to celebrate the birthday of one of them. Seven white students were allowed to pass without incident but there was a marked difference in the treatment of the eighth student who happened to have been a black Bahamian and the one whose birthday was being celebrated. He was pulled aside by a female black woman who declared that she was a police officer and began to push and pull the black student, tearing his shirt in the process. He was denied entry although he had paid and had his band on his wrist as evidence and he was cursed and embarrassed for committing the crime of being of a dark skin-colour. I am convinced that the thesis of Na’im Akbar that he expresses in his essay, Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery accounts for phenomenon of shadism in the English speaking Caribbean. Deep psychological damage of slavery still influences our conduct towards other blacks.
WHY
As I asked of Brazil so must I ask of the rest of Latin America, why do we still have a particular set of our citizens living in conditions of squalor? How is it that in all of the Latin American countries where Afro-descendants exist, they find themselves at the bottom rung of the economic ladder and excluded from participation in government? Why is it that as declared by the participants at the Conference of Black Parliamentarians in Costa Rica (which I attended) that “millions of Afro-descendant children born today are more likely to go to jail than to a university, to be in the streets instead of in school, to work in the informal economy rather than to develop their talents, and to be excluded from exercising their rights as first-class citizens.” Why do African descendants in Latin America live in impoverished conditions while having unequal access to education, employment, healthcare, and housing?
I can find only one answer: discrimination.
What Can and Should Be Done
I use Brazil as an example of what can and should be done to change this picture to bring about a new reality for the Afro-descendants of the region. Under President Lula, Brazil started with the admission that it had a problem. It moved from what was called “racial democracy” - from the idyll that there was perfect racial harmony in Brazil to a realization that there was racial injustice caused by racial discrimination. It came to the realization that Brazil was not a white country but a racially diverse country. The President held a series of consultations on race in the provinces culminating in a national conference on race relations. He invited me to attend that conference and I did. It was a wonderful convergence of people of all races in Brazil. It was a catharsis for the nation. President Lula himself made trips to Africa and re-established the African origins of the majority of Brazil’s population. Most notably, Brazil was the first country to have established a government agency to work on social inclusion and racial equality, called SEPPIR (Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality). Furthermore, under the President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, four Afro-Brazilians were appointed to cabinet-level positions in the government and one to the Supreme Court.
The other positive was the effect of the preparation for the United Nations World Conference on Racism held at Durban, South Africa in 2001, the conference itself and the post conference activities. The Conference adopted the Durban Plan of Action.
the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Afro-Descendants and Against Racial Discrimination and Racism
One of the products of the Durban Conference was that the Inter American Commission on Human Rights established the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Afro-Descendants and Against Racial Discrimination and Racism early in 2005. Brazil could be said to have been the midwife of Rapporteurship through its advocacy in the OAS and by providing the operational funds. I was given the duties of the first Special Rapporteur. The Rapporteurship was charged with stimulating, systematizing, reinforcing and consolidating the actions of the Inter-American Commission in support of the rights of people of African descent and against racial discrimination. The core objectives of the Special Rapporteurship included working with OAS member States to generate awareness of the States’ duty to respect the human rights of Afro-descendants and on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination; to analyze the challenges that confronted countries of the region in this area; to formulate recommendations designed to overcome those obstacles; to identify and share best practices in the region with respect to this matter, and to provide the technical assistance requested by member States in the implementation of the recommendations in national law and practice.
The Rapporteurship undertook an advisory role and carried out its activities in the area of promotion and protection of the rights of Afro-descendants. I draw your attention to the Annual Reports of the Commission since 2006 for a report on the activities of the Rapporteurship since its inception. . In December 2008 and following on a visit I made to Columbia in May 2007, the Rapporteurship approved a report entitled, “Observations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the Rights of Afro-descendants and Racial Discrimination in Colombia.” This report was the first thematic report prepared by the Rapporteurship on the problem of racial discrimination with respect to the Afro-descendant population in Colombia. I however must say that I found that the Commission and the OAS itself needed the services of the Rapporteurship as much as the States. The situation with respect to Afro-descendants within the Commission and the OAS reflected the situation in the Member States. The same lack of inclusion was present. The Commission and the OAS are what one author calls “White territories”. In a word there is a startling absence of people of colour in the institutions. For example, in the Commission there was one Black lawyer of the 36 lawyers working for the Commission and the present Commission is now all white with my departure. There is a need for a conscious effort to bring about more racial balance in the Commission, that is, among commissioners, lawyers and support staff and indeed in the OAS generally. You will not find this in the Commission’s reports.
Regional Convention Against Racism
The Rapporteurship also provided technical support the Working Group of the Committee for Juridical and Political Affairs of the permanent Council of the OAS that is charged with drafting a new regional instrument , the Inter-American Convention against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination. I ask you to pay special attention to the drafting of this new instrument. The instrument is of particular significance as I feel that the process of drafting the instrument provides an opportunity to bring the issue of discrimination in the region to the front burner. It seems to me that the drafting committee is moving in the direction of widening the scope of the Convention to deal with all forms of discrimination and intolerance to such an extent that the original focus is being lost. The emphasis on racism has been diluted to such an extent that it will be necessary to begin the process again to take care of one of the region’s most pernicious problems – racism.
Affirmative Action
In looking at what should be done to redress the dire situation of Afro-descendants in the region we have to give serious consideration to affirmative action. In an article entitiled “Affirmative Action in Brazil: Challenges and Prospects” Flávia Piovesan gives an overview of the theory and practice of affirmative action in Brazil. She points out that …” the right to redistribution of wealth requires measures to change social and economic structures combined with redistribution policies to fight economic injustice, marginalization and economic inequity.” In response to her question, How should we handle the problem of discrimination? She stated
Within the scope of International Human Rights Law, two strategies stand out: a) the repressive-punitive strategy, which aims at punishing, banning, and eliminating discrimination; and b) the promotional strategy, which aims at promoting, fostering, and advancing equality.
The repressive-punitive approach seeks to speedily eradicate all forms of discrimination. Fighting discrimination is fundamental in the process of guaranteeing full exercise of civil and political rights, as well as social, economic, and cultural rights”.
But Pievesan continues, “The ban on discrimination must be coupled with compensatory policies that can promote quicker achievement of equality… It is essential that promotional strategies be adopted to help socially vulnerable groups to join and participate fully in social spheres…...
In that regard, affirmative action stands out as a powerful tool for social inclusion. Affirmative action consists of special and temporary measures that are designed to redress a history of discrimination by accelerating the process of promoting equality. It reaches the substantive equality of vulnerable groups such as, for instance, ethnic and racial minorities and women.
Affirmative actions, as compensatory policies aiming at relieving and redressing the results of a past of discrimination, fulfill a decisive public purpose in the democratic process: they ensure social diversity and plurality. They should be understood both from the retrospective viewpoint – as they alleviate the burden of discriminatory past – and also from the prospective viewpoint – as they foster social change and bring forth new circumstances. They are concrete measures that turn the right to equality into something feasible, based on the notion that equality should take the shape of respect for difference and diversity. Affirmative action converts formal equality into material and substantive equality. I could not have put it any better.
Haiti
I could not at this time talk about Afro-descendants in the region and not address Haiti. I was the country rapporteur for Haiti for the past 8 years and on my many trips there I stayed at the Montana Hotel that was flattened by the earthquake 7 months ago. Haiti has been a Chapter 4 country for many years. A Chapter 4 country is one where the human rights situation is so bad that the country is placed in Chapter 4 of the annual report of the Commission for special attention. The current chapter 4 countries are Haiti, Columbia, Venezuela and Cuba. Most first-time visitors to Haiti declare that it is a life-changing experience. It has been said that Haiti is a country trying to move from misery to poverty. The earthquake tragedy would have set Haiti back to misery again. The Commission saw its role before the earthquake as being to keep the International Community interested in assisting Haiti. I urge support and a commitment to rebuild Haiti so that it can take its rightful place among the nations of the hemisphere.
END
I end by urging the Council of Legal Education to continue its work of producing lawyers with conscience. Lawyers who would see their role as not just accumulating wealth but ensuring that there is justice for all and particularly the discriminated in the Caribbean and the region. In a word, to follow the example of Dr the Honourable Lloyd George Barnett, OJ. It is a good work but dare I suggest that the Council redoubles its efforts in this regard over the next 40 years.
Thank you.
Sir Clare Kamau Roberts, QC
2010 –09 -02
Friday, April 10, 2009
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