Emancipation is still coming

Thu, Aug 6th 2015, 11:46 AM

Emancipation — what is it? Is it really true that everyone wants to be free? Gladys Manuel once said, “Persons desire only to be free within their chains”. This is right on. Freedom is a bastardized and all-too-often a misused concept.

It appears as though our people seek rather to be controlled, than to steer into chilly teeth of freedom. Let us advance some contemporary supportive facts:

• Almost every Bahamian woman yearns to be tied in wedlock and yet claim they can live without a man.

• Many Bahamian young adults are off age, yet, still find safe haven in the family home and will not dare claim their independence by leaving the nest. Yet they fool themselves in believing they can do what they like, and frustrate everyone as they try operating without a curfew.

• Many teenage girls have short-circuited their freedom but getting “knocked-up” when they ought to be seeking an education so that doors and untold opportunities can be opened up to them.

• God desires both male and female to live as celibates and to dedicate that freedom from family life to him through the many ministries that can be done in his name. Yet, many rebel against the freedom and thus the proliferation of single-parent homes. Consequently children wreak the havoc of not knowing that which God intended from them — mother and father in one home under one roof.

• Education is the greatest door of opportunity through which one can pass from slavery to ignorance to a horizon of enlightenment. If this is true and is being made known, then we have a hard time explaining why we have such a high rate of illiteracy. It is true that many Bahamian children graduate without being able to read and write. It is most frustrating to witness some Bahamians agonizing in certain positions simply because they are unable to enjoy the freedom of literacy. We play with the fact that education receives the lion’s share of the national budget and that returns in this are limited.

• The greatest sense of freedom one can secure is a well-rounded and practical education. Our present approach is too lopsided. Academics and vocational subjects should be welded together to a given stage of one’s development. Vocational should not be seen as a punishment for those who having tried didn’t make it academically. Even from primary school these two should be presented as one and allow each child the opportunity to have some basis on all fronts. We would be better equipping the student for life in the real world of recessions, lay-offs, downsizing, etc. The new Bahamas beckons more skilled workers and those technically inclined.

• Small-mindedness is enslaving. We do not like taking risks or even uncharted seas. Many Bahamians love being secured and poor. Consequently, many wish to work for government or a public corporation as opposed to becoming entrepreneurs or going into private sector and maybe make even more. We don’t want to risk. It is a fallacy for Bahamians to go on thinking that “asue” is an investment, for investments are built out of riskier stuff and can yield greater returns. We find ourselves locked in chains of “Meism”. I do something only for what I can get and without anyone else’s involvement.

In 1834 it is said that slavery was abolished, yet, one form of slavery only founded its abolition. The fight to be free lingers on. In fact it is unending and every generation must come out swinging in this fight and win freedom in some category of human endeavor. We have not gone far enough in the liberation of our people. Independence should have been followed by republic status.

The Privy Council must be replaced by a regional court; the governor general must be replaced by a president; local investors must receive the red carpet of the foreign investor. Biased European history taught to our children must be replaced by Afro-Bahamian history, and so on. The new horizon will come stage by stage whether we welcome it or not. Our contribution should be to be active participators in the ongoing emancipation of our people and society and to hasten deliverance from enslaving shackles even though persons might so seem content with such chains. (To be continued.)

• Reverend Canon S. Sebastian Campbell is the rector at St. Gregory’s Anglican Church.

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