‘UNINFORMED’

The Global Afrikan Congress (GAC) is demanding an apology from parliamentarian Everald Warmington for his “uninformed assertions” that Black Africans who sold people into the transatlantic slave trade should be held more accountable than Europeans buyers.

In an open letter to Warmington, the GAC – an international Pan-African organisation of people of African descent across 35 countries – also urged the St Catherine South Western member of parliament (MP) to undertake necessary research to correct his “colonial miseducation”.

“Indeed, an apology would not diminish you; on the contrary, Sir, you would potentially recuperate the respect you lost for your historical misrepresentation of the slave trade in Africa. Sir, only intellectually and politically secure men can correct their political misrepresentation of history or anything,” GAC Ambassador General Cikiah Thomas stated.

Warmington declined to comment when contacted by The Gleaner on Sunday.

Warmington has been openly critical of the Government’s push for reparations, including efforts last month to lodge a petition with the King to ask the UK Privy Council to determine three questions regarding reparations for slavery.

Internationalised racism

In Parliament on September 22, he argued that the conversation should instead focus on Black Africans who sold slaves.

“We keep on speaking of the buyers of the slaves, but nobody speaks of the sellers of the slave. That’s what I want to answer,” he said. “The white man didn’t go to Africa and pick up slaves and take them across here. They were caught by Black people who sold them to the white man to come here.”

However, the GAC contended that Warmington’s statement not only presented an incomplete and historically misleading account of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and the system of plantation enslavement, but was also simplistic and infantile.

The GAC argued that Warmington’s representation of the slave trade is not only based on misinformation, but it is also an example of how many have internationalised racism.

The organisation urged Warmington to ask more insightful questions of the system, such as who created the enormous transatlantic demand for enslaved labour and who developed colonial laws depicting Africans and their descendants as property.

It emphasised that European powers established fortified trading centres, commercial networks, and military relationships along the African coast and increasingly penetrated established African political and economic systems.

“The problem is that you have presented an extraordinarily complex historical system of European invasion, military coercion, commercial expansion, warfare, forced transportation, plantation enslavement, colonial law, and racial ideology as though a simple distinction between African sellers and European buyers can adequately explain it,” Thomas noted.

“Further, there was no market for buying and selling free Africans. On the contrary, there was coercion at bayonet point by Europeans to forcibly coerce Africans to round up other Africans not for sale, but for European appeasement and forcible capture for the enslaved person awaiting ships,” he added.

Colonial miseducation

Stressing that participation is not necessarily consent, and coercion is not the same as voluntary responsibility, the GAC said it must also be understood that African societies fought against the capture and enslavement of their peoples.

“Sadly, the colonial miseducation and misconception that you demonstrated as an MP requires clarification for you and other Black folks who may think like you, that the existing African communities did not resist the massive European invasion and encroachment on those communities,” stated GAC.

Further, it said in circumstances in which Africans were compelled, threatened, manipulated, or forced to assist European traders and military forces, such coercion cannot and should not be misconstrued simply as Africans “selling Africans”.

And GAC called for the historical circumstances under which Africans became involved to be carefully examined and understood to “avoid colonial-constructed, ignorant proclamations such as your recent historically inaccurate outbursts in the chamber of the Jamaican Parliament”, as it also recommended a list of books on the subject.

“We, therefore, ask you to correct the parliamentary record, apologise for the historically misleading impression your remarks created, and undertake the reading and research necessary to speak on this subject with the authority expected of a member of parliament,” GAC said, noting that Jamaicans deserve nothing less of their parliamentarians.

“Historical accuracy and the education of the Jamaican people require not only that Jamaican MPs be informed about topics they are blissfully misinformed about but, importantly, that they verify historical facts rather than fictions,” the GAC said.

Historian Verene A. Shepherd is advising Warmington to “make an appointment with Professor Hilary Beckles and get better details of the trafficking in enslaved Africans”.

“He could also share with professional historians at The UWI (University of the West Indies) like Dr Enrike Okenve the books he has read on the issue of the trafficking in enslaved Africans so that alternative or additional sources could be recommended,” she told The Gleaner.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com