As The UWI settles into its second semester for the current academic year, the public may be anxious to hear from the St Augustine Campus administration what name it has chosen for the university’s oldest hall of residence, having already repudiated Viscount Milner after whom that hall has been identified …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: The truth about Africa, Africans, their diaspora and their depiction in western media
The description of “African countries” and their diaspora in Haiti as “shitholes” goes way beyond the racist vulgarity of a decadent American President. It is merely a kind of sordid culmination of centuries of disparagement of Africans and Africa in the interest of western capitalism and white supremacy. But how …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: Why Britain owes Spiritual Baptists an apology and reparations
In November 2017, the Spiritual Baptists of T&T solemnly commemorated the centenary of “The Shouters’ Prohibition Ordinance,” the second wave of legislation designed to eradicate Afro-Caribbean Christianity. In 1927, Grenada was hit by the third wave, the “Public Meetings (Shakerism) Prohibition Ordinance.” The tidal wave of state persecution of Spiritual …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: Why loud Caribbean silence as Haiti marks 214th anniversary of Independence?
If, as Americans do, Haitians counted the birth of their nation from the launch of the revolutionary war, August 2017 would have marked the 226th anniversary of Independence. Instead, they chose the end of the Revolution, 1 January, 1804. On New Year’s Day 214 years ago, after his decisive defeat …
Read More »Balderdash and intellectual acrobatics; Fergus responds to Baldeosingh on race and Afro-history
“[Kevin] Baldeosingh […] uncritically regurgitates the defunct racist hypothesis that ‘darker-skinned people’ are judged less intelligent and ‘more primitive’ than ‘fairer-skinned people’. “[…] During the first century of this era, Ethiopians were the majority in the town of Barygasa (now Baruch) in western India. By the time of the Mughal …
Read More »Dear Editor: Is the pot calling the kettle black? Baldeosingh knocks Fergus over ‘historical distortions’
“In an article published on Wired868 on 15 December, Dr Claudius Fergus responded to Dool Hanomansingh, rightly accusing him of ‘gross historical distortions’ and asserting that ‘He is obviously not a historian. If not for the danger that his fiction might be taken as historical fact, I would not even dignify …
Read More »White tyrants, black struggles and Indian distortions; Dr Fergus responds to Hanomansingh
“The great Karl Marx, for example, declared the Haitian Revolution ‘the most significant victory toward the advancement of universal freedom’. Without excluding the contribution of every ethnic constituency, the fact remains that, in the 20th century, African peoples maintained that leadership role. “According to [Dool] Hanomansingh and other like-minded activists, to include …
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