Celebrating Black History Month

February 22-26, 2016. For the first time since I have been working at Cave Hill Campus, the Faculty of Social Sciences has organized a week dedicated to Africa awareness. For many years I used to go to schools to present Africa to the children. It stopped for reasons I do not know. I am not invited anymore by my fellow activists of Barbados and the Caribbean. Congratulations to my colleagues in Social Sciences! I wish I could be part of all activities, but this was not possible. However I managed to attend the lunch time lectures on Monday and Tuesday, among other commitments. African awareness was a myth some fifteen years when I came to Barbados; it has become a reality through the persuasive efforts of many factors, organisations and individuals.

22 February 2016. The first lecture organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences was held by Dr Rodney Worell on the "Relevance of a Black History Week". The movement started in the US with the impulse of the Black Power. Barbados rejected it because there was a Black Governor General and a Black Prime Minister. Motto: Educate Whites about Africa, African history. The motto was to underline the tremendous contribution of people of African descent to World History. It was also to refute that Blacks were inferior though this justifies why they had to be enslaved. Even after the abolition of slavery, the basic attitude did not really change. Marcus Garvey declared that Negroes have nothing to be ashamed of. They are as good as any body else. Claude McKay is representative of the New Negro after the First World War. Black Panthers - And then the Revolution comes. Socialist and Marxist activists such as George Padmore, Harisson:  system in the 1930s did not teach Panafricanism. "Black powerlessness in Barbados 1968" The Clement Payne Movement insisted that Black be educated to who he is. The speaker insisted that more should be done to inform the youth by introducing a course of history at secondary schools in Barbados.

23 February. Prof. Nlandu Mamingi presented the DR Congo, its boundaries, its history, its heroes.

From the time of ivory first, then rubber exploitation by King Leopold II to the present time, the Congo undergoes a repeated slavery and hardship. Hands of recalcitrants were cut off by Leopold's regime, the same human rights are transgressed 50 years after independence. A right witness is Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness. The Congo of Simon Kimbangu, Lumumba, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, surprises by the incapacity of using its wealth for the good of the people. Slavery, colonisation, exploitation, dictatorship and internal wars characterise the history of this immense country. For an economist such a situation should change absolutely.