A pall of death has shrouded the first half of the year 2020 with COVID-19, racism and social injustice as the principal agents of destruction. I have been mourning deeply since I learned of the death of African-American George Floyd and, earlier, the murder of the unarmed black man Ahmaud Arbery in the State of Georgia, whom his accused killers dispatched with a racial slur. I’m still mourning Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager whose life and possible contributions to humanity were cut short in 2012 murdered by a white bigot for no greater crime than to step out of an evening to pursue a childish yen—buying candy and snacks. I mourn the fact that black people in the United States are sentenced at birth to a greater likelihood than their white fellow citizens of experiencing underemployment, poverty, exclusion from adequate education, housing and health care or any meaningful inclusion in their country’s Bill of Rights. Ironically, their homeland offers African-Americans abundant opportunities to die by violence and well before their prime.

Consider the case of 26-year old Breonna Taylor. Did Louisville, Kentucky police think she had overstayed the expiry date of her marked-for-death contract? It could be the only explanation, however dystopian, for police breaking down the door of her home at midnight and shooting her eight times, although she had committed no crime except for being black. According to the ugly pronouncement of a South Asian beauty queen, we should “relax”—in her view, Breonna chose to be black. That was her destiny; she had a lesson to learn. Really?

I mourn American democracy, which has inspired peoples around the world to seek freedom for themselves. Yet, American freedom is being immolated on a pyre of hatred. The fires have been drawn out of their hiding place, where they have lain blanketed under the thick ash of jingoistic rhetoric for years. They have now been brought into full view and action by scrofulous, self-serving politics.

Incredibly and appallingly, there are Americans who are pouring fuel on the flames, so that they blaze higher and consume more lives. Incomprehensibly, many of these “arsonists” are descendants of immigrants who fled their homelands to escape the very bigotry that their offspring have reconstituted on American soil to assail the rights of others. Kneeling on the neck of another human being until he expired from asphyxiation—just what did that have to do with law and order? Could the policeman who ended Floyd’s life and his fellow officers who stand accused of complicity in the act truly believe they were honouring the motto of the Minneapolis Police Force, which is "To Protect with Courage, To Serve with Compassion!"

Racial prejudice and hatred are always instruments of death and destruction. By their very nature they cannot function otherwise, simply because they deny human rights, even the most fundamental—the right to live. This ugliness is a global phenomenon that crosses all categories of human interaction. Yet, I feel a tenuous breeze of hope arising, fanned by George Floyd’s untimely demise. There are Americans coming out in force to say enough is enough, despite their warmongering compatriots’ teargassing, beating and arresting them to shut down their protests. In concert, a multi-racial and multi-ethnic wave is spreading across the globe—footballers are kneeling Colin Kaepernick-style in the U.K. and New Zealanders are taking to the streets. We are reacting in disgust here in The Bahamas. We have been well-represented in the print and online protest movement.

That is all to the good, but I call on protesters everywhere to recognize that prejudice and discrimination are not restricted to racism, nor are these afflictions the vicious preserve of any one nationality or race. I want Americans of all races and minute colour and ethnic gradations and all people of goodwill to memorialize 19-year old university student Matthew Shepherd of Wyoming who was brutally murdered on a chill October night in 1998. He died from the beating and torture meted out to him for no better reason than his sexual orientation. His whiteness did not save him from fellow white Americans, his self-appointed jury, judge and executioners. I call upon all of us to protest the assaults on the Rohingya of Myanmar before they blossom into race extermination. Let us never forget or deny the historicity or the dreadful legacies of the transatlantic enslavement of millions of Africans. Let us commit to an undying determination to end modern slavery. Let us not deny or brush aside the World War II genocide of six million Jews or the 1994 destruction of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis by their Hutu countrymen. Let’s ask ourselves—When was murder ever a reasonable solution to human problems, even when legally-sanctioned and carried out by the state?

Even more necessary is to recognize that the pathogens that give rise to the killing disease lie dormant and can be activated in all of us when the soil is well-watered by ignorance and insouciance. Hatred and holocaust alliterate for good reason. They reflect the ever-burning human desire to feel a sense of superiority and exercise power over others. Hatred is learned. For this reason, I call on all the “Black Lives Matter” protesters to use this time for self-examination as well. If you truly believe that the twin demons of hatred and discrimination are wrong, learn that they are members of a distressingly large family, with siblings who hold sway the world over. We must recognize and stamp them out, especially the elders of the clan: Xenophobia, Homophobia, Religious Zealotry, Gender Bias, Classism, Jingoism, which segue so easily into riffs of destruction.

The Bahamas is not exempt from the alphabet of discrimination. As a person of colour and a woman, I have experienced racism and gender bias at home and abroad. Fresh out of university and teaching experience in France, I applied for a job at an offshore bank in Nassau. I was interviewed by an English expatriate who had spent long years in my country. As I sat down, he thought it important to declare “I’m married to a Bahamian—a white Bahamian, that is!” This good gentleman also asked me if I would be able to talk to foreigners on the telephone and if I had ever ridden on a train. Years later, at the launch of one of my books, a Caucasian woman wanted to know who “helped me with my writing, because it was so beautiful”. These local experiences and the overt discrimination I experienced in a small town in Southern France and in Montreal during my student days, and more recently the meanness at an art supply store in Miami and most recently at top hotel chain on Miami Beach, I was well able to recognize racism. Subsequently, I coined the phrase “silent apartheid” for the home version.

By all means, Bahamians should celebrate the gains we have made in democracy, we are far better at it than a goodly portion of the world. I congratulate all who have raised your voices in protest against the death of George Floyd. But the work has just begun. I implore you to memorialize Floyd by recognizing and rooting out the forms of bigotry and discrimination in your homeland, in your families, in yourself and in the special groups with which you affiliate—even your church brethren. Weep, raise banners and march against the inequities in our own Bahamas, as you are doing for our callously murdered American brothers and sisters and people who are suffering similarly elsewhere. Decry the incidence of police brutality here.

Cry out against the fact that The Bahamas Constitution has not yet been amended to assure full gender equality in our land. Ask loudly why inmates in our prisons are still using slop buckets as toilets. Dare to ask why homosexuals in our country, however, skilled, contributing, philanthropic are still objects of ridicule and denied opportunities that should be a part of their human and citizen rights. Demand to know you why young people of Haitian descent, who were born in and have spent their entire lives in The Bahamas live in fear of being “repatriated” to a land they have never set foot in?

By the same token, I warn Bahamians to be very careful of calling “racism” where it does not exist and thereby cloaking the true roots of one of our most persistent problems. Is it because we don’t want to acknowledge and take action against the deep-seated causative factors that may not attract as many social media hits as racism? One columnist whose work I admire and read often has spoken of racism in connection with the inordinate and rising numbers of young black Bahamian males languishing in prison.

Please recognize that certain deeply ingrained, ignorant social conditions smother the potential of our young black men and lead them into crime and imprisonment far more than the colour of their skin. Indict inadequate or misguided parenting, demand credible research on why they lag in educational achievement and their being forced to join gangs to escape bullying or worse.

One of the greatest reasons for the failure of young Bahamian males to thrive is the way too many of our people construct manhood, womanhood and parenthood. Why is it that a sad majority of Bahamian men applaud being sexually indiscriminate, sowing their seed profligately, but disappear when they sprout children who need your tending to grow healthy and productive? Why do all too many Bahamian men and women pride themselves on fertility, eschew family planning and thereby produce children they cannot adequately feed, clothe, educate or provide with values that will help them to love and pursue good citizenship? Why has providing for your children become the sole responsibility of the state and philanthropic organizations? Why aren’t more black policemen, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and lawmakers at the forefront of demanding, embodying and embedding in our laws and practice the solid foundation upon which good and sustainable change must rest? Why is every opportunity for social or economic advance subject to the vagaries and extinguishing rain of partisan politics and religious bigotry?

And yes, white Bahamians, continuing white privilege does have a lot to do with the invisible but reinforced glass ceiling that keeps even wonderfully well-qualified, non-white Bahamians from scaling any number of heights. Many of you are adept at practicing a masterful but covert social distancing. Bear this in mind: tsunamis of discontent and unrest observe no boundaries; their waves can scale your ivory towers. It behooves us all to strive for greater equity, whether activated by high moral precepts, love of humanity or no better reason than self-preservation. Righteousness is not gained by an alibi of absence from the physical bloodletting—history demonstrates that more holocausts have been let loose by denial, inaction and self-exoneration.

It has long been time for black lives to matter, for all lives to matter and be safe from persecution and life-sapping want. Let us all take hold of the timeless thought-legacy from the great priest poet John Donne (1573-1631):

…Any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls… It tolls for thee.

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