As Jesse used to say, keep hope alive for.
Race resistance and fiction.
The social construction of race is one of the threads which has been used to legitimise systems of white supremacy
and invoked to provide justification for the protracted dehumanisation of African and African descended people.
This is well documented in both historical fact and the enduring lived experience of African and African descended people throughout the Diaspora.
Bermuda, like its British colonial counterparts in this respect, is no different.
It is built upon a system that was constructed to establish and preserve white power and privilege,
and has served and continues to serve its masters well.
In fact, race is an inextricable thread that runs through the fabric of the social, cultural and political system in Bermuda.
It is so embedded that it has long been established as normative just the way things are, and for the most part, black and white.
Bermudian both play their respective parts in its maintenance.
The status quo, however, is and has not been without dissenters resisters.
That is to say that The Untold Story of Bermuda is the story of segments of the black community that stand
in an unbroken chain of resistance to this system of white supremacy as early as sixteen fifty six.
With men such as Black Tom, Cuba, Alito and Black Harry to women such as Effie and Sarah Sally Bassett, the poison in the late seventeen twenties,
the October revolution in 1761 that is said to have involved over half of Bermuda's black population at the time.
Now I draw upon these early references only to illustrate that these issues we discuss today are not new.
And in addition to the to point to the fact that systems of power have a resilience of their
own and they to engage in resistance in response to those who would dare to challenge,
confront or threaten their security. Now,
I would like to introduce three definitions and then offer a series of examples
to illustrate in practise the challenges posed by responses to resistance.
First, I take the term race to be a fictional socio cultural construct in a larger system of white supremacy.
I will come back to what I mean by the term fictional momentarily.
I'm not suggesting that race is not real and that it does not, has not, nor continues to function with destructive and dehumanising effects.
What I'm saying is that it must be understood as a construct,
something that was created by people for the purpose of legitimising the superiority of whiteness as a system of power.
Second, I take the term resistance to refer to the conscious decision to reject, to refuse to accept or comply with.
To stand against what is deemed to be unjust.
And here I use the phrase stand against what is deemed to be unjust rather than stand against a system of white supremacy.
Because much of the resistance that we have seen in Bermuda was not against the system of power,
but rather against particular acts deemed to be unjust within the system of power or persons deemed to be representative of it.
I allow the oligarchy or the 40 fees or a particular government of the day.
One of the limitations of resistance and struggle up to this point in Bermuda has been the continued failure to extend
analysis to a critical examination of the prevailing system of power in order to elevate the consciousness of the people.
To understand that standing against the symptoms of a system does not result in actions that are targeted at dismantling or transforming the system.
Hence, the seeming cyclical nature of resistance and struggle in Bermuda.
So not let me return to the term, the third term fiction.
I use the term fiction in its original sense, from Frank Gehry to form to shape, to contrive in this context.
Then it refers to the forming or contriving of beliefs and or statements histories, if you will,
that are false but are held to be true because it is expedient in that it serves the purpose of buttressing or propping up a system of power.
The fiction of narratives surrounding race and resistance in this sense can be used
so that even in standing against or resisting particular practises or acts committed,
those in service against those in service to the system of white supremacy,
people can often in actuality be co-opted into courses of action that perpetuate and preserve the power, privilege and injustice of the system.
This has often led to the creation of vehicles or processes that only serve to change
the location of oppressed people in Bermuda within the system of white supremacy.
This locational change is achieved in part by exploiting the crass or extreme individualism and
self-interest of persons who can be easily appeased by pyrrhic victories of individual advancement that,
in reality, do absolutely nothing to dismantle or overcome the system of power itself.
You're not at in time when they clap,
so resistance refers to acts of standing against particular manifestations of systemic power in the process of resistance.
A critical step is to break the silence by finding one's voice or giving voice to that against which or for which a stand is made.
This has and continues to be a challenge in Bermuda because there is a well-established cultural
predilection wherein it is deemed to be impolite or unseemly to openly speak about issues,
especially issues of race and white power that are viewed as confrontational or challenging to the status quo.
This, combined with fear not completely unfounded, of being targeted for recrimination if one dares to challenge the established system of power.
This is compounded by the fact that Bermuda has a history of silencing dissent those whom it deems to be troublemakers threats to the status quo.
There are numerous historical examples of people being driven from the island, and amongst the most familiar are the Reverends Richard Hilton.
Top it off a gold ring Charles Vinton Mount Kingsley Tweed,
who is exiled in the face of death threats and members of the BlackBerry Kadry to mention but a few.
Each of these examples represents persons or groups that have been prepared to endure the risks that come with breaking
the silence in an effort to advance the cause of justice and promote a common good that may have only been seen by them,
yet spoke to the aspirational hopes of many of the silence in the larger Bermudian community in the face of resistance.
Governments in Bermuda have reverted to the use of persecution tactics, rendering individuals and unemployable,
calling in of mortgages with the bank tactics that have been psychologically embedded and
function as a deterrent to would be resisters from engaging in revolutionary action.
In this recent period, the former obeyed government represents the most flagrant and egregious example of this practise
of silencing resistance in an effort to silence resistance to its privatisation of the airport.
It employed the use of slaps strategic lawsuits against public participation
as a means of intimidating brother Jason Heyward of the People's Campaign.
In addition,
we saw repression in terms of the pressure that was placed upon the Bermuda broadcasting company and radio stations that led to the closing
down and limiting of talk shows to silence the voice of members of our community that were trying to participate in resistance and be heard.
Government efforts to silence resistance also employed both the threat and execution of arrest warrants targeting protest leaders,
the use of chemical weapons in the form of pepper spray,
along with militarised, fully armour clad police, as in the recent now infamous December 2nd, 2016 pepper spray attack against unarmed protesters.
The larger culture of silence that pervades Bermuda in the face of such acts is evident in the
almost universal silence in the face of government actions that violated basic human rights.
This silence included the Human Rights Commission and other groups around these flagrant abuses of government
power to nullify freedom of assembly free speech in an effort to neutralise existence one more sentence.
These examples highlight the fact that resistance always comes at a price,
and those who engage in such action must be committed to the greater cause of freedom and justice and must be prepared
to endure the wrath and consequences that result from challenging systems of white supremacy in power in Bermuda.
In conclusion, I trust that these cursory remarks can contribute to advancing our understanding of the need for engaging
these issues of race and resistance at a systemic and structural level so as to break once and for all.
The vicious cyclical nature of resistance and struggle and put us on a trajectory of freedom and justice.
I look forward to uniting together on this journey and I'll end with a quote from Prophet Monk.
There is a poor blind Simpson in this land, shorn of his strength and bound in bombs of steel.
There is being perpetrated in Bermuda today, one of the most brazen faced pieces of rascality for whatever backward.
Never keep the faith.