Leona Bryant's afternoon talk show is often interesting; Friday it was down right illuminating.
Bryant's guests were members of the Radio Club who chose to dedicate the program to finding a solution for school violence.
For 45 minutes I listened to mature Virgin Islanders call in to suggest we need God, Godliness, Christianity, etc. in our community, our schools and, especially, our homes. These well-meaning responders did not fine acceptance or encouragement from the hosts.
Finally, I called to add my two cents. I attempted to point out the panelists epitomized the problem by asking for solutions, then refusing to listen to the answers.
One person after another was calling for an ethical standard, a community standard for behavior. I related the fact that when I was in elementary school during the 1940's we opened the school day with a pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. In this pledge was the specific reminder "one nation, under God, indivisible…"
I was chided for my beliefs and reminded this was the "country, which held thousands of slaves…" At that point, I was cut off the air. Although I repeatedly attempted to dial back in, no one would pick up the phone for over five minutes, and when someone finally did, I was told the children were leaving.
While I was cut off the air, a rude child remarked I had terminated my call because I could not refute the slavery issue. Apparently these children are so involved demanding their right to be heard, they lack the ability to listen. Further, they expose a lack of true knowledge and a dependence upon self-serving myth.
According to the anthropologists, man first stood erect on the African Continent. Slavery is as old as written history. The Dead Sea scrolls relate the travails of the Jews in slavery to the Egyptians before the Americas were even known to exist.
Colin Palmer, the William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has written a most comprehensive, concise, and understandable article on the subject of slavery in the Atlantic. His article is available for all to read in the September 1992 copy of the National Geographic Magazine and should be required reading for all VI students. He is also the author of "Passageways: A History of Black America" Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993. Oh yes, Professor Palmer is a black Jamaican American whose ancestors came from Senegal.
According to Dr. Palmer's research, "Scholarly estimates today range from 10 to 12 million (Africans who arrived in the Americas as slaves). … Only about 500,000 were delivered to the mainland north of Spanish Florida." In the United States, at no time did a majority of states even allow slavery. Even in the "Slave States" the majority of people could not afford slaves and did not keep them. Furthermore, a slave was an economic good; those people who did keep slaves paid hard money for them. One simply does not go about systematically destroying economic goods. Largely because of this attitude, the United States slave population grew from the initial 500,000 to some 4 million in 1860, most of who were American born.
In South America rule seemed to be to work the slaves to death and replace them, and the Caribbean where the work was so strenuous that reproduction was sparse. The books "The Kamina Folk: Slavery and Slave Life in the Danish West Indies, Tyson & Highfield, VI Humanities Council; and "Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present," Beckles & Shepherd, Ian Randle, Jamaica have a great deal of information concerning slave life in the Caribbean and South America.
Finally, the majority of the current population of the United States has sprung from immigrants who came to American after Emancipation. Is the Radio Club the Black Mafia of St. Thomas? What right do these children have inditing anyone for the actions of a few. Statistically, checking back through the genealogy of a West Indian and a North American, one will find a West Indian ancestor buying, selling, keeping slaves first.
Dr. Palmer's article goes on to describe the average slave as a male taken in battle. The alternative to being sold off the continent was often death. Women and children taken for what ever by Africans could be used as slaves on the continent. They were seen as good workers and unlikely to overthrow their owners. Other candidates to be sold off the continent "…included debtors and those convicted of such crimes as homicide, treason, and theft" according to Dr. Palmer's research. This is; of course, most similar to the backgrounds of many of the first whites sent to the Virginias.
It is truly a shame so many of our teachers spread popular myths concerning the "Diaspora" rather than subject their students to honest research, and take the time to prepare honest history lessons. Basil Davidson's "The African Slave Trade" is available to anyone willing to check it out of the library or purchase it at the bookstore. Surely someone willing to spend $25 to listen to a couple hours of music can spend $12 to research his or her roots.
In the '50s I was at Duke when our white students joined the Walgreen's sit-ins and kept the Durham cops from overreacting. While in graduate school at Georgia State I found myself in the Ebenezer Baptist Church helping the Martin Luther King funeral, and later supporting Ralph Abernathy's Poor People's March. Although I was never one of those many whites who put their lives on the line to end the atrocious waste of human potential and the most insulting degradation of human spirit which had become the way of life in some of the South, I did a lot more than our rude children who cut me off the air and made insulting remarks when I could not respond.
Quite wallowing in self-deprecation. Get a life. Get on with it. Move ahead. And for God's sake kids; begin to listen instead of simply mouthing purulent garbage, which you have never put to the test of inspection.
The vast majority of the radio call-in show found West Indians calling for a return to Christian values. In Wednesday's William Raspberry column, he talks about his friend Bob Woodson, head of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in Washington, DC who "thought the young killers "and the frightening scores of others like them) must be lacking in religious faith – without a belief in anything that could take them outside themselves." Raspberry himself thought, "perhaps the mistake came when, directed by the courts to remove religious specificity from our public schools, we removed moral and ethical values as well."
We have become a rudderless community where money and mouth rule. We need moral values. If a woman is going to make a baby, she better make very sure she will be living with the father who will help her raise that child for the next 18 to 24 years. We need standards for the treatment of children so they are loved, nurtured, educated, and protected from senseless adults who would use them to release anger or for sexual gratification.
Yes, I agree with those proselyters who called in. They were willing to bare their souls and give their answer to the question. I agree with the witnesses who spoke for their faith. While there are those who don't want to accept a God interacting from a heaven on high; nor a Jesus who walks on water, multiplies bread and fishes, and raises from the dead; it is most apparent we all need to adopt a credo for OUR society.
Which of the following excites such disagreement? What is so unjust?
1. There should be one set of rules for everyone; regardless of color or place of birth.
2. Don't waste time and energy worshiping pictures, statues, movie stars, singers, etc.
3. Swearing, cursing, and dirty words are out of place and cheapen all concerned.
4. Take at least one day a week to rest your spirit, consider the riches of your life a
nd rededicate your life to making the world a better place.
5. Honor the mother who bore you, your father who protects you, and all those senior to you for they have been there and can share their wisdom with you.
6. Don't kill.
7. Don't fool around with some else's mate, as you will be destroying at least three lives as well as the lives of any of their children and the lives of any of your children.
8. Don't steal.
9. Don't lie, gossip or spread malicious rumors.
10. Don't waste your time wishing you had someone else's house, car, spouse, money, job, etc. Gets busy and work for your own.
Those who would disparage Christianity and its teachings, demean themselves. Study any major religion in the world and you will find they are gorged with common tenets. We have every right to adopt one and require all people living in our country to adhere to our basic rules. The vast majority of immigrants to the United States and the Virgin Islands are Christian. If someone does not agree with our basic laws, they are free to find someplace more to their liking. We should not be expected to destroy our culture to accommodate their peculiarities.
If you can come up with a better set of rules, maybe people will begin to follow you. Until then, the Judo/ Christian ethic is the most common denominator. The question is how far gone is our community with drugs, child rape, lying, cheating, featherbedding, racism, stealing, adultery, covetness, and so on. Radio Club: listen, read. Have you noticed how many of your peers have made the same connection as your callers? The majority of Americans believe in goodness. It is OK. You can too. Don't let the bad guys rule by default.
Get your feet wet. Take a stand.
