‘THE CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE’
Our present government, unfairly perhaps,
is often caricatured as self-serving,
racist and incompetent – and yet,
with a rather modest investment
of taxpayers’ money, has published
a report which may revolutionise
our study of history, showing
not just the costs but the benefits
to victims of great crimes: ‘There is a new
story about the Caribbean
experience which speaks to the slave period
not only being about profit
and suffering but how culturally
African people transformed themselves
into a re-modelled African/Britain.’
After ‘THE CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE’
an ambitious revisionist might write of
‘THE BRAZILIAN EXPERIENCE’ – where
half of the ten million were enslaved – then
‘THE REWARDS OF THE U.S. PENAL SYSTEM’,
and ‘APARTHEID: THE BLACK DIVIDEND’.
Next might come three or four new volumes
commissioned under the generic title
‘THE BENEFITS OF GENOCIDE’: as witnessed
in Australasia, the Americas;
by the Armenians; the Uyghurs;
the Roma and the Jews.
H Lillywhite
May 28, 2021It’s taken me 68 years
to settle into the belief
that WAR is our steady
state. Gains and losses pop
up here and there. Then it’s back
to battle and the battles within
battles and the skirmishes
inside those. To expect more
is silly, holy, thus all
of literature and the heightened
anguish of art. Amen.
Ashen
May 28, 2021… ambitious revisionist … yea … ‘THE BENEFITS OF GENOCIDE’ will surely be the next classic text.
And yet, sadly, victims are prone to turn into oppressors, and oppressors are prone to turn into victims. An ongoing merry-go-round.
Mary Clark
May 29, 2021The Black Dividend, lol. Right. As our impostor president Joe says, Malarkey. Yes, war is one way to spread and mix cultures. Perhaps there’s more humane ways? Anyway, some groups are still struggling with the ‘remodeling. Some will never remodel, the Aboriginal people in Australia, the Native Americans in the United States. And is the implication that victims find revenge in changing the oppressors’ culture? There is pushback against that in the U.S., the fear of another culture taking over.
Alan Horne
May 29, 2021This is great, David! Given events over the last few weeks, I fully expect Michael Gove to give a speech explaining how the Hillsborough victims and those of the Bosley explosion have been empowered to win the global race by being variously crushed to death or blown to bits.