The Voice Newspaper : Article submitted about RACIAL AND ETHNIC DISCLOSURE IN AFRICAN AND CARIBBEAN COUNTRIES

Dear Editor of the Voice Newspaper ,

I would like to submit an article for your consideration . The article regards the recent public outburst against the firing of a TV news presenter after he compared a man to an ape.

Contrary to Dr. Sewell I agree to his sacking . I am an historian who knows the weight of the comparison mentioned above and also what our recent history tells us about the name.

Kindly considering publishing the article online or in print as opinion , as letter or in your editorial. I also would like to receive a copy by post to my children . 

Hope to hear from you soon,

Best regards,

Ariane Brito

Historian and Writer

RACIAL AND ETHNIC DISCLOSURE IN AFRICAN AND CARIBBEAN COUNTRIES

 

African and Afro Caribbean countries like Kenya, Guiana, South Africa, Jamaica etc have 100 years plus problems of thousands of people originally from India using British names but having arrived at the lands in question with an Indian or Indian Chinese name. I am baffled today, as I am reading the newspapers and what we call Kik (Indian man passing out as a Black Caribbean man with a British name) is discussing what offends or not African Caribbean people.

Understandably, I would not be able to speak on behalf of African and African Caribbean people, nor would Afrikaans or Arabs from Africa like Libyans and Moroccans so I am wondering why people presupposing to be what they are not would state as a 'Caribbean man' that the word monkey or ape is not offensive to black people and the war culture is at one time low.

Now this is how the people who migrated from India to the countries mentioned above look in the majority,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figures: Pictures from Daily Mail on India Holy people

I am not disputing their right to say why an African or Caribbean person shouldn't feel offended for being called Ape or Monkey ( when this concept was what mostly convinced and legitimized Blacks Transatlantic slave trade), I am just wondering if they have not shared nor experienced the African History of Slavery on behalf of being deemed a monkey or an ape, why would they -people like this ! - opinionate as to what might or not offend Afro Caribbean people?

I would not opinionate in what would offend, or not, a Muslim person or a Chinese person because I do not have experienced the pride and pain , historically and culturally of being Muslim or Chinese ,so why would I say what offends them or not or speak like one of them on behalf of them?

For example, what do you make of this story and it's protagonists and how hypocritical can one be in relation to the word ' monkey' , and again should we be allowed to racially and ethnically disclose people today assuming as Afro Caribbean or African when two generations up they were Indian with Indian names? In Africa Afrikaans, Arabs and other Africans likewise Caribbean can well distinguish kiks because of their voices and their caricature acting out as 'blacks' however we cannot ignore the privilege and oppressive force kiks had in South African Army when killing Mozambicans and in the role of South African Army fighting with rebels in the destruction of what was once Zaire and is now DRC and Congo and prior to that of South African troops viciously killing Angolans and Cubans which assisted Angolans during the Colonial War against Portugal. 

While White Cubans like Che Guevara were being killed fighting for Africans freedom, Indians were being placed in South Africa colored housing and bringing drugs from Afghanistan into South Africa. While White Arabs like Gadhafi were working for the African Union, Indians were exporting children from Uganda and Nigeria and putting them for sale on streets of Italy, Portugal and Britain. My mom told me that she something that still hunts her are the Nigerian and Ugandan girls she sees on the road every time she must visit Cruz de Pau in Portugal.  

We can't forget the violence Africans were exposed at the hands of Indians before Idi Amin took matter in his hands and the violence they are still exposed to by having people who never shared their History of Slavery to talk as them on their behalf about the impact or being likened to a monkey, an ape or a parrot. 

The historical violence they were victims on behalf of this concept is 100 times worse than an Arab person being called Ben Laden or terrorist because that concept meant for Africans, rape, theft and abduction from their parents and communities, forced labor, forced inter racial rape and procreation, and centuries of exclusion and discrimination.

There is nothing less cruel, less hypocritical than to minimize the value and meaning of being likened to little monkey, a monkey, an ape or a parrot. Would he have likened an Arab to a terrorist or a German to a Nazi? Would he have likened a Jewish to an Auschwitz prisoner? Would he? Would he have likened a German to a pig?

So why can't people who are directly related to Africa or the Caribbean like African-Arabs like Libyans, Afrikaans, Africans and Afro Caribbean demand that families who originate from other places who have for decades hated their hosts, personified their hosts and minimized their history be subject to public ethnic and racial disclosure to ensure the rights of people who are directly affected by certain words - because they were victims of certain situations because of certain words as monkey, ape and parrot?

I mean would this be the same as naming a Jewish Iranian, with a Muslim name, as Jewish just because two generations up his family migrated to Iran to escape European Nazism? In the latter case that would be obviously anti-Semitic because of the nature of hate towards Jewish and their need to protect themselves when societies over and over again failed to protect them on time from Evil as Nazis, but what about these persons who other people like me would like to say.... 'You know what, ok you look like African Caribbean , but do you really know what it is if you don't share the History which marked and conditioned these people from the start of the Transatlantic slave until today'?

What's your thought on the matter?

Best wishes,

Ariane

  

CORONAVIRUS IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE CAUSED BY LACK OF HYGIENE AND MEAT PRESERVATION OR A SIGN OF TIMES AND OF WHAT LIES AHEAD OF US?

 

I  suffered gravely in the past of food poisoning caused by sea food originated from Thailand and China on sale in Iceland and Tesco, so I am not surprised that there is now a major outbreak of such a deadly virus as Coronavirus lurking around and causing so much suffering and loss to Chinese families.

What I am surprised is that we haven’t taken notice of Netflix sci-fi popular series revolving around the lives of humans trying to survive a massive outbreak of a virus decimating and mutating humanity into a Zombie nation.

These series coupled with an increase of popularity of war games – with equal rise of prices – really show the nature of social anxiety closure we are eager for and how populist parties will secure their place in elected Governments : By exploring the social anxiety we all live compartmented within each of us but robotized at the general and common level through the bombardment of information conditioning us to believe that the world lacks in resources , jobs and place for all of us to succeed in achieving happiness and prosperity.

While in continents as Africa and Asia this social anxiety has led to a high rise in conversions to Muslim Religion, the US and Europe are disenchanted with Globalism and embracing Nationalism and the sad reality that opening immigration from third world countries was not so much about filling jobs but as to importing aggressive tribalist behaviors from minorities behaving in uncivilized manner to each other and disturbing their neighbors with their dirt and lack of social or neighboring contribution – as so well I know from my downstairs neighbor refusal to clean his entrance or do his garden because of a lack of empathy or care for other people’s feeling and emotions.

The lack of empathy and social responsibility reflected in unawareness of the value of society, instead living in function of the value of tribal and ethnic identity, are signs we see everyday in public transport. The hate and verbal abuse I witnessed today by Indians in a public transport with my boys on the way back from my youngest rugby club , with this very dark Indian family making gruesome caricatures of racial hate towards me and my children, a Latino  looking woman with children with mixed race features, gave me a quick and brief taste of what must be like to be in their country of origin and be tribalist , hateful and capable of being so shamefully inappropriate with their social glances and a like-physics pull of gravitational force of their victims to their level of hate , tribalistic and uncivilized behavior.

As someone who comes from a colonialist family with a landowners African family tree root, where the majority of the country is mixed race and brought up in a sunny beautiful Mediterranean country called Portugal, I can only feel sad and alarmed for what people like that are really carrying and spreading around, a very deadly virus called Tribal Hate which , according to me, is really the cause of most problems their societies face as a whole.

Eating or being exposed to contaminated animal flesh in China was a major cause of quick spread of the incubated virus from animals to humans and likewise , consuming or being exposed to contaminated social hate imported by people’s hateful lifestyles are set to mean more than just social conflict and potentially mean destruction of democratic values and of the Western civilization.

Coronavirus is now an International Public Health issue but hate for other person who you do not know anything about is something dreadful and should be considered a serious issue of Public Mental Health because I do not see any benefit in letting this issue be left untargeted by Public health authorities because I can well report my neighbor to the Environmental Health and report this Indian family to the Police but my children and I gain nothing in not having an answer to the problem, because the general problem per se does not go away.

People feel entitled to celebrate their different cultures, import their eating habits and hate light skinned  Muslims, Chinese , Africans, Whites and whoever is in their way , people feel entitled to claim western civilizations as theirs and bring ‘values of pretending to be civilized’ rather than being civilized and respect everyone they are sharing their buses or trains with irrespectively or their Ethnicity, Religion, Sexuality or Disability but then all they want to do is pretend to be capable of being functional with western values or relating to others – sharing common spaces- without making gruesome faces of despise and superiority towards someone else’s differences; and what they all want to do – to pretend to be capable of - is not  positive for societies as a whole because sharing and accepting are values that took centuries to perfect through civil rights movements like Women equality movements, - and these centuries of trial and error have not been perfect so far  as women in our societies still  die every day at the hands of their husbands or someone close to them,- .

Muslim societies like Syria, Iraq and Somalia had a massive outflux of refugees and asylum seekers into Europe and Canada after violent and pervasive ethnic and religious conflicts which in nothing did favor to their future generations. In Greece, Italy and France what were prior-conflict children from well off families, walk now the streets at night looking for where to sleep and far away from their once Paradises in Syria, Iraq and Somalia.

Hate and practical refusal to live in a democratic society originated that, not Religious extremism as people tend to believe, because all Religions kill by discrimination against each other but in no Holy Book or Scripture we see mention to Genocide , Chemical Weapons and Doctors prescribing powerful pain killers that for the patient , future better version will only be available in the  street opiate.

The power of Medicine has destroyed communities in Western societies alike as women have seen in the 18^th century with the prescribed opiates and prostitution and the Caribbean community in the Britain in this last century with the racist local community centers managed by other minorities ( mainly Indian ) diagnosing young black males with anxiety , prescribing them medicines that led to schizophrenia and then labelling them as such , institutionalizing them through the health and criminal justice system while excluding them from the Educational and Religious Education.

The problems brought by minority on minority access to each other in nothing benefited Britain in the last century , likewise in nothing benefited Somalis and Eritreans forced to move to Kenya as refugees and submit to the Indian affluent families when a century earlier their descendants – and followers of Emperor Selassie teachings and philosophical principles were powerful in Jamaica and were not welcome to Indians who moved to Guyana and other Caribbean places to manage colonial plantations who later started privately exporting to Europe instead of exporting as part of the Colonial Empire.

The solutions and power of Medicine failures are again failing us by laying on Public Health policies and priorities which are not in encounter with the social health of economically developed  societies and like civilizations come and go  throughout History and the greatest of all like the Maya and Greek civilizations are now mostly forgotten , we are all succumbing quickly and swiftly to the greatest virus that afflicted us all in Humanity : Hate for One Another.

 

Ariane Brito

26^th of January 2020

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