You know Marcus Garvey said, Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden...”
He was a fervent advocate of the word as he felt all people need to know their history in order to develop a sense of self. Not just blacks.
I have learnt this the hard way as moving my family to South Africa ironically presented my son with the question “Then who am I?”. A perplexing and agonising question for my son who in his early teens was finding it impossible to answer as he tried to settle into school in South Africa
You see, we were from the Caribbean, that lush, amorphous combination of sound, colour, land and water, peopled by every nation of the world. Going into a historically-white secondary school meant first of all, trimming your locks as there was no understanding of their religious significance.
Secondly, once in place, you were constantly being asked to choose a group, either Afrikaans, Black or Coloured. Crazy!!
More frightening if you ask me and for a 12 + year old who had never encountered the coloniser-made concept of race with its attendant negation of soul, spirit and humanity, the experience was only resolved by addressing the question who are you.
So ANOUNCING this little reminder of our history “More than black-eyed peas: Blacks Exhibiting Excellence”, zeroing in on more recent well-known personalities. The famous blacks range from inventors to scientists to sportsmen to political revolutionaries.
