Over the years, I have listened intently and sympathetically as you have discoursed on the plight of the black West Indian man. You have asked, ‘How am I supposed to rise when I am caught up in this wicked and brutal system, a system that has been designed to oppress the black West Indian man? Do you really expect me to know or do better when it has been the white man’s aim to keep me uneducated, when he has put me in chains, when he has destroyed and denigrated our families, when he has raped our mothers, sisters, aunts, when he has stolen our women then turn them into chattels? How am I supposed to hold my head high when he has stripped me of my manhood? How do you think I felt when he reduced you my Black Queen into nothing? They took you as their concubines, made you mother their children then left you to starve, while my brethren and I could do nothing but watch because we were powerless. We were enslaved. Do you know how that has angered us?” You continue, “It is not that the black West Indian man wants to remain the same or be the way that he is today, it is just that he is a product this treacherous system that was designed to oppress him. He simply can’t help himself. I am telling you my Queen that should you need to blame someone for his behaviour or for the way in which he treats you, don’t blame him. Would you please blame, slavery, the white man and the system? They are the true culprits…Two hundreds years after slavery, the black West Indian man’s behaviour is understandable …He has been conditioned…He knows no better…therefore he isn’t culpable…”
Forgive me if I am no longer as sympathetic to your pleas, that the black man has been oppressed and that the black man is still oppressed. I ask, oppressed by whom? Is he still oppressed by the white man? Is he still in chains? Is he oppressed by the system? Please forgive my ignorance! What system is this? I always say that West Indians, as we are today, have no ‘real, real excuse,’ because unlike our American counterparts, we are not the minority, we are the majority. Unlike our American counterparts our rulers are almost always the same complexion as ourselves… so who are we oppressed by? How long do we intend to blame this system? I am listening, these are questions that I am asking, just questions my dear, because after 200 years, I would think that the moratorium has ended.
Darling, let me tell you something, I know that slavery has done a number on you; don’t you think that it has done a number on women too? Do you hear us complaining? We were the ones who were beaten, raped, had our children dragged from our arms, torn apart from our husbands and forced to lay with strange men. We suffered these indignities. Do you hear us whining or complaining and saying, “Oh the system has done this or that to us and that is why we black women behave this way.” We have empowered ourselves. We have managed to hold our heads up high. We have persevered, made leaps and bounds and it is a travesty, that you our men, instead of helping us regain our dignity, instead of lifting us up, instead of TRULY honouring us, you have done and are continuing to deal us a worse fate than ‘Massa’ have done to us 200 hundred years ago. Now, I ask isn’t this a travesty? You beat us upside the head, licks for breakfast lunch and dinner. You haul us and drag us up like nobody’s business. You seek to enslave us all over again. Because you want to feel like you are men, you deride us and strip us of the little dignity that we have gained for ourselves as women. You impregnate us, with child after child and like ‘Massa’; you leave us to fend for ourselves and our children without a care in the world. You are digging us deeper and deeper in poverty Any little stride we make in advancing ourselves because you are too afraid to advance yourselves you chop us down limb by limb. I ask, why are you doing this to us? When will we get our glory day? When will you stop making your sorry and sordid excuses? Because we are just sick and tired of hearing it. I say stop complaining and MAN UP and when I say this I mean real MAN UP….Don’t MAN UP the easy way…Don’t MAN UP and put an extra $100.00 on the table this weekend and feel that all is well…Don’t MAN UP and box out me teeth…Don’t MAN UP and give me another child because you think I getting too big for my britches and I need cooling down…or because you just don’t want any other man to watch me…MAN UP and treat me like the True African Queen and Princess that you have been saying for generations that I am. MAN UP and put that crown back on my head! MAN UP! Respect me! MAN UP! Walk side by side with me, not in front of me…MAN Up want what’s best for me…MAN UP put me on a pedestal so that all of the world can see. Don’t MAN UP and deprive us of our childhood… because that is not being a man…Don’t MAN UP and chat our business by the side road…because that is not being a man…MAN UP and give us back our place! This is all that we ask. We ask to be treated with equity. We ask for your respect. We ask that you see things from our vantage point and that you realize that we suffered just as much and more than you did, and although as women, women that you deem the fairer sex, emotional, we don’t wear these scars on our sleeves. We don’t complain. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean that we have not suffered and are still not suffering the remnants of slavery…Just look at what you are doing to us…We are being made to pay the price more than twice… We were done a grave injustice 200 yrs ago and my dear brothers you are doing us a grave injustice now….so for the last time…I am saying can your excuses and MAN UP!
Why are you doing these things to us I ask? Why? Why? Why? Making us chattels once again and we prayed to God and said, “Dear Lord, make us chattels no more!” What are you doing to us, I ask, what? You are making us feel undeserving, as if we are not good enough. Making us feel and treating us like animals… I hope you are proud of yourselves. Isn’t this grand? Why should we put up with your drinking, womanizing, lewd and abominable behaviour? Why grin with you while you blame it all on the atrocities of slavery? Aren’t your faculties in tact? These are questions that I am asking. You say that the system has destroyed your family structure. Why not build it up? Wouldn’t this be empowering you rather than leaving you in what I consider the unfortunate rut that you are in? You may ask unfortunate for whom? I say unfortunate for your women and your children…because we get the brunt of it. Stop making all these sorry excuses, prove the system and the man wrong and MAN UP! West Indian men, Man Up!
The atrocities of slavery are not a mere figment of our imaginations. Slavery happened. This is a fact; however what I am having a hard time digesting, is why after 200 years of slavery, we are still using what was done to us, as a crutch or a way of excusing our behaviour, especially as justification for the treatment of our women. 200 years is a verrrrrrrrrrrryyyy longtime, West Indian men shirk those chains of slavery and MAN UP!
I hold fast to my conviction that ‘NOT ALL MAN BAD…” I know some really good ones and I can say that without bias my dear older brother Ashworth Charles with whom I had a lengthy discourse on this issue is a really good man… but there are some…Oh my goodness…whose behavior leaves a lot to be desired for…and to these men I say MAN UP!”
