Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5. Joining us now on our program is a gentleman who was part, well, he was identified in this story on page 85 of the Guardian newspaper this morning, written by Joshua Simongo Shabaka Kambona, and he's said to be the founder of the Crossroads Freedom Project. Let's say good morning and welcome to our program here this morning.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Yes. Good morning, Freedom 106.5. How are you?
[00:00:40] Speaker A: I'm fine. Nice to have you with us here this morning. It's an interesting morning. It's been interesting yesterday into today with this announcement made by the prime minister about the intention to remove the three ships of Christopher Columbus and replace it with the steel pan. And it's said in the story here that in 2022 Cabinet appointed a committee to look at statues and signage after the Crossroads Freedom Project founder, that's yourself, and other activists called for the removal of the monuments and a change in the way history is taught.
Let's go back a bit before we allow you the opportunity to familiarize the listener with you, some of the things you've been involved in and the Crossroads Freedom project.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yes. Okay. So first of all, let me say that this is a major victory not just for the Crossroads Freedom project and of course, the emancipation Support committee, which joined us in producing what we consider to be a civil society report, which we handed over to the government committee. And we hand it over to Professor Hilary Beckles on Emancipation Day, August 1, which does include a segment on the coat of arms, very specifically, something I've spoken about publicly for a long time. But this is a victory for the black power generation of the Caribbean. That is, those people born in the thirties and forties who advocated for more art, independence. They wanted a more radical transformation at independence. And they sacrificed a great deal, some paying the ultimate price, to see that vision of the Caribbean where it was truly independent. And I could say, I can even go back further and say that what that group did in the seventies, and they were able to make huge inroads, they were able to get many significant changes. In fact, I would say that there was a consensus at independence driven by the division of the black power generation. I just celebrated four of them on Saturday night. I had sister into Springer sitting down next to Ivan Lachlan, sitting down next to my father, Kafra Camborn, my mother, Asha Cambo. And we celebrated them. What that generation was able to do through their advocacy was to create what was almost a consensus across the region that monuments that celebrated colonial violence, that celebrated white supremacy, that celebrated all that violence associated with the genocide of the Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, the indentureship of our indian brothers and sisters, and the apartheid that followed between emancipation and independence, that the people and values celebrated in our public space that were left over, be removed. There was a consensus across the Caribbean. What happened was that from the sixties going to the mid eighties, that consensus, somewhere in the mid, somewhere in the 1980s, that consensus began to wane. That the spirit of the Treaty of Chagaramos, which called for federation, the spirit of independence, the independence movement, the spirit of black power, all those things began to wane in the eighties. And that period in which caribbean governments were removing these symbols, these values, these people who committed atrocities and our ancestors began to. Came to a halt. And we then entered that period from our mid eighties, where we began to pervert the term heritage and to hold on to these values and these people as if they had somehow contributed something positive to our country.
And so when we celebrate today, we are celebrating an entire generation of artists, of activists, of entertainers, singers, poets, of politicians, of leaders in business, and everything who formed, who understood that we needed more from our independence than simply a kind of, let's continue as we had done before. And this signals a victory for all of them, but also signals that this prime minister right now is ready to write his name into the history books on the right side of history. So it's a fantastic confluence of things happening right now. And as I said, I just got this news myself from Melissa. And so we are celebrating in the Camborn family in two homes right now. We have a lot of family in from abroad, and everybody, of course, is part of that celebration.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: It's a development that has generated a lot of discussion.
There are some who are, for, some who are against, some who are impartial, really couldn't care less because they don't think it makes that much of a difference to them.
You said that this represents a victory, and it's the victory that is culminated with decades of work to get us to this point. And you've also said that a report or a document was handed over, and this was just one of the considerations. What are some of the others that you would like to see addressed?
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Well, you would recall that in 2020, the reason that the government set up a committee is that in 2020, we petitioned parliament successfully to have the government remove, or have the government set up a committee to review the people and values that are celebrated in our public spaces, specifically to look at the question of colonial violence and white supremacy. Those were the two things that we felt made that diminished us as a country and a people. They went directly against the values that we proclaim as a nation. And that put us in line to be a laughing stock in the international community. So some of us might be walking around oblivious. And this is. We understood that the majority of people were taught to revere and celebrate the things that are the monuments, the statues, the street names, as if they were our heritage. From the 1980s, we started to hold on to those things. But the truth is that most of them are so far beyond the pale that they make us. They turn us into a laughing stock. Internationally, our people could be brought into ridicule for the continuing veneration of the people who committed the worst crimes against humanity on one level, but specifically here in this space, against our ancestors, specifically and in particular those figures who have become pariahs in their own country. So you take for example, somebody like Thomas Picton, who was the governor, the first british governor of Toronto, Tobago, an absolute monster in historical terms, who his own country, Wales and so on, have removed statues of him. They've removed his portrait from the museum in Wales where they celebrate national heroes. The queen's portrait of.
Of Picton has been modified to reflect the fact that he committed atrocities in Torontobago. And we continue to have over ten monuments in this country named after Thomas Picton.
That makes us look like we do not have the capacity to understand our past. We do not have the moral courage, the courage to confront it, or the moral sensibility, ability to create a better future, to move our country forward. So we become then, in that context, I mean, the people of Wales will say, well, you know, maybe, perhaps those things we said about those people in the Caribbean, about their capacity, maybe there's some merit. Now, we are saying to the world with this, with the prime minister's statement here that we are not going to be anybody's, anybody's. The brunt of anybody's joke. We're a serious people. We do have the capacity to understand our past. And we do have the will and moral character to make a better future. Fantastic development.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: You spoke about creating a better future.
Let's delve a bit into that and ask the question that I'm sure some people might have on their minds. How does removing three ships from the coat of armst foster a better future?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Okay, so there was a. We had a brilliant discussion where this matter came up about two years ago. And we had a brilliant intervention from an activist from New Orleans called Angela Kinlow, she was. She was one of the leaders of the group take him down, Nola, that pioneered the removal of confederate monuments in the United States of America. And she pointed out that if you take these matters, if you point out to your government that they are celebrating criminals, people who, you know, who did their best to try to harden the social barriers in the society to ensure that white supremacy reigned. And it was a white over brown, over black situation, people who actually engaged in the traffic and enslavement of other people, people who promoted it, aided and abetted in it, who created laws to perpetuate it, and so on. If you actually have a government that goes against the wishes of those people who have come into the knowledge of this kind of perverse reality, then believe it or not, be prepared. Understand that that government is governing over a certain degree of violence in the system against those people who are, you know, they're working within the same structure of violence that they were handed by the colonials very comfortably, you know. So she felt that that was a barometer for the terror that we actually experienced. And when you look at the way our society is constructed and you see where the economy, you know, where all the wealth is located and where the vast majority of the poverty and malnourishment and so on is located, you begin to understand, as she said, the degree of terror still within our system. And when I started off, when I brought this issue forward in 2015, the idea was that we would use the monuments. Not. That wasn't the end in itself, but the beginning of confronting the real terror that still exists in our system. All the structural discrimination that would affect non white people, Indians and Africans in particular, up to today.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Okay. It's an interesting discussion. Let me play devil's advocate just to foster the discussion.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: That makes a good fun, my friend. So devil's advocate is a one is a character.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Because we all need the listeners.
Some may have the question, some may not.
We're talking about economic and structural barriers, and these monuments somehow represent an adherence to those structural barriers that are in place. Cultural barriers, whatever kind of barriers you've described.
You just recently spoke to us.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: So just for the point of. Just for the sake of the question, let me just throw one more thing in there for you to understand.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Right?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: How far behind the zero, according to Leroy Clark, we are right. Now, last year, in March, the Vatican. Right? That is. That is, the pope in Rome declared that they had, how they put it, repudiated the doctrine of discovery. Right? And that went. I wrote an article it appeared in one or two places, but, you know, it went below the radar, right? Because we were part of a global coalition of indigenous and african groups that understood the significance of this. Basically, the Vatican, through Columbus, under the bus last year, they repudiated the value system. So you were taught in school that Christopher Columbus, he was this great navigator. He came here, he was very separate from the crimes that were committed. He was just interested in discovering and bringing the world together, blah, blah, blah. The reality is that all the things, all the atrocities that were committed in the Caribbean were preordained in papal bulls. That is statements coming directly from the pope in the most famous of them being about three that are very famous, but it's about nine in all in the. Starting in the early 15th century, that detail. Exactly what he's supposed to do when they meet foreigners, right? So they enter into an age of discovery, and they say, we are going to go out, we are going to steal everybody's land, we're going to rape, pillage, plunder, we're going to reduce people to perpetual slavery. These are actually in the bulls. And for the last decade, I was involved with indigenous people and african groups across the Americas who. There's a group of Trinidadians who used to leave here indigenous people, grassroots indigenous people, and travel to St. Lucia to meet with the people. Nuncio to ask every single year that they would rescind those bulls. And last year, under pressure from the entire indigenous community in particular, and with the support of Africans across the Americas, the Vatican finally repudiated those bulls. Those bulls would. The instructions to Columbus of how to behave and all the things that were done in the Caribbean were a reflection of those bulls. Our coat of arms is a sell. It is a celebration of that seminal violence in the Caribbean. It makes us into a laughingstock, and it tells you that we, if we aren't in line with those values, then certainly we don't have the capacity to understand that we are. And that makes us a laughing stock internationally.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: I don't know if that could make it as clear as possible.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Well, the question I want to ask is along this line, as I said, maybe I'm playing. I don't know. We'll figure it out. You spoke about someone who aligned this to terror, still being represented and exalted in some instances. And now we're speaking of, I don't know if this is the right term, erasing the symbolic nature of the colonial past and what it represented, the atrocities and all those things. By moving some of these things out of the public domain, taking them off the coat of arms. There's a whole discussion that's going to take place later this month about some of the statues with Columbus and all those things. And you spoke about some of the economic challenges, the societal, structural challenges, and all those other things that are in place.
How does.
Oh, let me see if I phrased this right.
How does removing the ships from the coat of arms, pulling down Columbus statue, and everything else address these economic and societal challenges that you speak of?
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Okay. So I noticed, for example, you see, it happens right away once you begin to understand, once you begin to confront the past. So exactly what I wanted from this project is already in chain. The prime minister actually mentioned the removal of the ships from the coat of arms along with the constitutional reform. Right, right. The constitution we inherited from the colonial period has what we call savings clauses. And of course, if I was, if I, if it was that Melissa hadn't just woken me up and we just come from a carnival, we can, I could go into real detail in terms of how these saving clauses work, but I don't want to challenge my brain this morning when I'm celebrating. What I would say is that the colonials locked a number of features of their violence in place in our constitution, not just here in Trinidad, but across. And people like Eric Williams understood that. Funny enough. You know, he actually joked around, I could quote him and so on if, again, if it was the time and so the constitution that they left in place. And there's some really funny stories in that discussion. And when we go out into the public firm, I will bring those things to the fore, because all the information is there. When they were conniving our unsuspecting leadership at the time to maintain these savings clauses, which are responsible for creating some of the, the major problems to us, to be able to address some of the problems that they left in place, that maintain the economic structure, that maintain the structures of exploitation and the hierarchy of race and all that kind of thing, those things were locked into the constitution. And I'm sure based on the connection that the prime minister made of that, he understands that very clearly, based on the fact that we gave the document. Okay, Sir Hillary, they would be aware of those details.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Okay, let's, let's get a little explanation there. What are some of these, these, these challenges that are locked in the constitution that, that put black people at a disadvantage? Give me an example. If you wrote about it to the prime minister, you would have identified one or two.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna give you a number of things that you could take note of right away, because this is. This is a deeper discussion now in terms of how the savings clauses work against us becoming a real coherent, balanced and unfair society. But let's look around us for a second to understand it, right. You know, we. Every couple months, we can expect to see a headline saying, african children sent home suspended, et cetera, for natural hair. We just had to pass laws in Trinidad to protect african children's natural hair. And this is in 21st century, right. You know, we have a discussion that's ongoing that was raised in 1960 by Eric Williams. He tried to remove the barriers to meritocracy in the education system and the placement of children in schools after the so called common entrance, which is now the sea. Right. He was forced to make an agreement called the Concordat. Right. Which perpetuates a kind of affirmative action for the people who need it the least in the society, the wealthy, lighter skinned individuals in our society who already live a certain kind of privilege, you know? You know, and these things are. These discussions are happening. All these are facets of structural discrimination, facets of people, levels of racism that exists, of a caste system that exists in our society. They're all around us. We see it every day.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: It's really a deeper discussion that we need to get. We probably already time to, because it's just about nine minutes before the top and we have news at the top. But let's. Let's go back a bit.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: The prime minister, he mentioned the content of the education system. Okay, imagine up to recently, I'm still having discussions with teachers, right, about how Africans become negroes when they. When they transition across the Atlantic, and how a word that was associated with, you know, enslavement, that was specifically used to describe a slave, a negro enslaved, is synonymous. It's still being, you know, taught to our children. I still have to go. Parents to call me and say, you have to go into school, because my daughter said she will not be called a negro. And a teacher insists, I was in Woodbrook just the other day. And you have. I had an indian brother, an african brother at the table, just kept repeating the word negro. I decided I wasn't going to get involved. And an indian brother got up and told him, partner, you can't keep insulting the other african brothers and sisters on the table like that.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: I understand the nuances. And as I said, that's. That's a whole different discussion. The education system and the indoctrination and all those things.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Contempt between Indians and Africans, all of that is part of the colonial structure. You know, I look, I go to places where my african brothers and sisters are, and I hear these things that they're saying about. About their indian brothers and sisters. I go to my indian brothers and sisters, I hear these things that they're saying about their african brothers and sisters. I see the kinds of policies and practices that they are instituting.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Okay, I just want to ask you. Well, we were running out of time, and there's just one question that I want to ask, because I think we need to have another discussion, a longer one, to get into some of these other issues, to flesh them out. But playing devils advocates again, when you have a nation like ours, when the highest offices of the land have been and are occupied by persons of the african race, where is the evidence that black people are disadvantaged in this country?
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Disadvantage along caste lines or race lines do not require people of another race to function. Right? We have a society, and this would be a nuanced discussion that I'd love to have with you. Where and if you travel the world, like, you know, I don't know, you know, based on your own ethnicity, there would be certain locations that you could go to where you could experience white privilege, and other places where you would experience blackness or second class citizenship. One of the things I said we wanted to do when we started this project was to abolish blackness and whiteness, right, our society.
And you don't need to have people who were traditionally considered white or racialized as white to have white privilege in operation in a society. You could have dark skinned people who access, through economics and other things, a certain kind of white privilege. And they operate in a particular posture, they take a particular posture that maintains the status quo. And therefore the experience of blackness for the vast majority of the people remains in place. And when I say blackness, there, I'm not just talking about the blackness that affects Africans, but all non white people. So the idea that you have dark skinned people in the highest echelons of office, whether they be Indians or Africans, does not mean that you have an end to blackness and whiteness as they were organized by the. By starting with Columbus's entry into the region in the 15 hundreds. That form of that two tier system does not end when those, when we attain higher office. Unfortunately, it does come about through a consciousness, and that consciousness is triggered by these kinds of actions.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: Mister Cameron, that's. We're going to have to leave it because we have a couple messages that take us up to news. But I would love to have another discussion or probably a series of discussions.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: I welcome that. And as I say, you know, we'll be prepared for those discussions, as you know, from tomorrow, of course, after we've gone through the scene and test where we are.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: I'll be honest with you. I'll be honest with you. I was as surprised as you were because probably just as she woke you up, she'd message me and say, listen, the man coming on these shows. So that's where the discussion is. I want to thank you for being with us here last minute and giving us your views on these very important discussions. Thank you once again for being with us.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: One love, brother. Take care.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: And that, of course, ladies and gentlemen, how we end our discussion here this morning. The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
