As black men we must take responsibility for our actions

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6: Every now and again Bermuda’s seemingly eternal national conversation on race reaches a point that blasts into my consciousness.

Sparked by reports of comments attributed to Sir John W Swan and the writings of Lynne Winfield, it has just happened again. Again, the issue is Bermuda’s “young black male”.

Seems that Sir John feels `that in the past two decades, Bermuda’s YBM’s have somehow gotten a specially raw deal; and Lynn Winfield feels that a Bermudian YBM needs all sorts of special treatment in order to bring him into some dreamy meadow where, it appears, all the rest of us lot wallow in easy wealth, sublime happiness, all the while feasting on manna that daily falls from heaven.

I was born black. Last time I checked a mirror, I was still black. I do not believe that one day I’m going to wake up a blonde blue-eyed inheritor of the massive wealth and privilege of some long line of white slave owners or country stealers.

Like Mandela, Martin, and Malcolm, I am what I am. I face the world that exists — just as they faced the world that they were born into. They saw obstacles and they made choices. I, too, saw obstacles and I made choices. I could either sit in the corner and cry, or I could fight my individual battles and perhaps join in with others to help fight the wider battle. The first critical issue is that I chose. The second issue is that I acted.

No matter where, and no matter who, every man must make those same decisions. Some decide but don’t act. Some sit in the corner and spend their lives wailing and gnashing their teeth and begging the world to give them something. Some grab guns and rob banks or go shooting and killing their fellow black men. Some try to evade reality by consuming mind-altering drugs.

Born black, I was also born into a deeply and sharply segregated Bermuda. Born black, and still black, I played my small parts in helping to break down some racial barriers and help move Bermuda to an open society.

In the Bermuda Regiment I was the first Bermudian to become the RSM of that unit. In doing that I replaced an 82-year-long line of white Englishmen who had a stranglehold on that position. In achieving that position I was also the first black man to hold that position. I didn’t get there by sitting in the corner and wailing about my colour or my decidedly unfair racial past or the fact that my great-great-great-grandfathers had been slaves.

Between September 1996 and November 1998, working with my cousin Calvin Smith, we ran the political campaign that brought the PLP to power and, for the first time since 1620, Bermuda got a black majority government. Cal is black like me. The two of us didn’t spend those two years sitting in two corners wailing to each other and everybody else about our colour and racial past. We didn’t beg for victory in the election and the UBP certainly didn’t curtsy and hand it to us on a silver platter. We worked for it. We moved on.

In 2011, Bermuda is a land where the 36 seat law-making legislature is 89 per cent black; where the Civil Service is 80 per cent black; where 80 per cent of Bermuda’s judges and magistrates are black; where the CEO of the island’s biggest bank is a black man; where there is now only one ‘token’ white Permanent Secretary; where white men get unceremoniously booted off Government boards.  

In a Bermuda where the real racial barriers began falling in 1959, and where they were all dismantled by 2000; it infuriates me that, in 2011, a 21 year old black male Bermudian will stand before a black magistrate, and, as his excuse for committing some stupid crime for which he has been charged, say to that black magistrate: “I am a young black man...”; and then launch into a tale of how some racial devil out of his very short 21 year racial past made him do something wrong.

The idea that a man — especially a black man — is not responsible for his own actions is an idea that has been aided and abetted by some white people who, I believe, have created a money-making profession out of finding and creating and promulgating excuses that they then peddle, at a profit, to some blacks and that many Bermudian YBM’s seem to gobble up. Most of these enablers seem to be American. These people are enabling and supporting Bermudian YBM’s who have made a personal choice to sit in a  corner and wail. As well, I find that these enablers are acting with unctuous condescension.

The fundamental idea that somehow, something called ‘society’ or the ‘community’ or the ‘government’ is singularly responsible for each individual is the idea that is vigorously peddled by these money-grubbing enablers. To a great extent, Dr Eva Hodgson - whom I love and respect - and a few Bermudian others also create and provide intellectual support that enables just as much as those “it-isn’t-your-fault” American money-grubbers.

A baby is born. That baby takes breath — or it doesn’t. If the baby lives, the baby grows into a child and then a man. A man takes charge of his life — or he does not. A man climbs his mountains, crosses his rivers, and goes where he can — or he does not. A man sits and cries - or he moves on. Mandela, Martin, Malcolm were not criers. They took their blows. They gave blows back. Sometimes they were knocked down, but they got up again. Then they moved on and kept moving on.

Men make choices.  Men move on. Men who sit in corners crying and wailing are men who are denying their own manhood.

The one thing that movers must do is move within the law of the land. But if the established laws are grossly unfair, then like the men in the Progressive Group, Sir John W Swan, Paulu Kamarakafego, Martin, Mandela, Malcolm, and like Cal and I, become gamechangers and change the game and, if need be, change the laws too.

Above all else, men, real men, choose to get up and move forward. They do not sit and cry about events and situations of two hundred years ago.

Choose! Act! Move on!

Question: What is the second fact common to each of these black Bermudian men, all of whom were once YBM’s?

• Frederick (Penny) Bean - Police Commissioner

• Dr Clarence James - Finance Minister

• Sir James Astwood - Supreme Court Judge

• Mr Kenneth Richardson - Cabinet Secretary

• Reverend Ewen Ratteray - Bishop of the Anglican Church in Bermuda

• Clyde Best - Premiership footballer in the UK

• Lt/Col Eugene Raynor - Commanding Officer of the Bermuda Regiment

• Captain Alvin Daniels - ADC to  a Governor of Bermuda

• Arthur Hodgson - Rhodes Scholar

• Gerald D E Simons - Head of a major Bermuda owned business.

Answer: All are still alive and each was a ‘first black Bermudian’.