![\"\"](\"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/dno\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/chattel.jpg\" "\\"chattel\\"")
The chattel slavery of Africans for over 500 years serves as one of the saddest commentaries on man\u2019s inhumanity to man.\u00a0 The level of cruelty was incomparable to anything recorded in modern history.\u00a0 That protracted and intensive atrocities of slavery have had a lingering effect.<\/p>\n
As cruel and painful as chattel slavery was, only a worse form of slavery could exceed it.\u00a0 The slavery that captures the mind and incarcerates the motivation, perception, aspiration and identity in a web of anti-self images, is crueler than the shackles on the wrists and ankles. Mental slavery generates a personal and collective self-destruction.<\/p>\n
The slavery that feeds on the psychology, invading the soul of man, destroying his loyalties to him and establishing allegiance to forces that destroy him, is an even worse form of capture.<\/p>\n
Slavery constituted a severe psychological and social shock to the minds of Africans.\u00a0 This shock was so destructive to natural life processes that the current generation, though we are five to six generations removed from the actual experiences of slavery, still carry the scars of this experiences in both our social and mental lives.\u00a0 Problems, which persist in our lives, clearly have their roots in slavery.<\/p>\n
It is unbelievable that, in this 21st. century, we are facilitating the invasion of fast food multinationals into the Nature Isle.\u00a0\u00a0 The fast food franchises are totally incompatible with the notion of \u2018eat what we grow and grow what we eat\u2019.\u00a0 Preservatives, saturated fats, salt are the major harmful ingredients in those fast foods, which cause many complications in the human body.\u00a0\u00a0 It includes heart diseases, cancer, diabetes and obesity. Dominicans, especially the youths, are in high risk of getting obese nowadays from eating too much fast \u2018junk\u2019 food.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Increase in eating fast foods cannot be the way to go for healthy living in Dominica.<\/p>\n
High cost of living is taking its toll.\u00a0 People\u2019s standard of living has declined considerably. The chains around the minds have made people more fearful, passive and subdued.\u00a0 Policies of a new economic slavery are readily accepted.<\/p>\n
Failure to inform, to communicate with the masses and involve the population\u2019s participation in identifying and implementing strategies for economic development will spell disaster for the Nature Isle.\u00a0\u00a0 Paulo Freire, renowned Brazilian educator, warned in his book, \u2018Pedagogy of the Oppressed,\u2019 that to substitute monologues, slogans, and communiqu\u00e9s for dialogue is to try to liberate the oppressed with the instruments of domestication.<\/p>\n
The prejudices of some of the dominant class include a lack of confidence in the people\u2019s ability to think, to want and to know.\u00a0 So they run the risk of falling into a type of generosity as harmful as that of the oppressors.<\/p>\n
A powerful propaganda machine still seeks to ensnare the mind, after which the body is a willing zombie.\u00a0 We must not fail to grasp this reality.<\/p>\n
The abominable acts committed during slavery and the slave trade, should remind us to continue resisting all forms of slavery.\u00a0 The need to reject the Crown colony political culture of Massa, authoritarianism and paranoid dismissal of all criticisms is more urgent now.<\/p>\n
The positive lyrical contents of our Cadencelypso and Calypso songs have not meaningfully impacted our thinking and consciences.\u00a0\u00a0 Our good moral and ethical values have been thrown out of the window.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sissy Caudeiron, who sang decades ago, \u2018Pas Kite Yo Pwen Domnik Hord Nou, (Don\u2019t let them take Dominica from us) must be turning in her grave.<\/p>\n
C.L.R. James summed it up succinctly long ago when he pointed out that as Christopher Columbus set foot on West Indian soil for the first time, he first thanked God and then inquired urgently after gold.\u00a0 History accounts that colonialists gave Kalinago and Africans bibles with one hand and grabbed their land with the other. The Columbus mission continues.\u00a0 \u2018EMANCIPATE YOURSELF FROM MENTAL SLAVERY,\u2019 sang Bob Marley.\u00a0 He also prophesised, \u2018They continue to kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chattel slavery of Africans for over 500 years serves as one of the saddest commentaries on man\u2019s inhumanity to man.\u00a0 The level of cruelty was incomparable to anything recorded in modern history.\u00a0 That protracted and intensive atrocities of slavery…","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":20542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n