Dear Editor,

It was recently reported that our Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller said in response to questions about her overseas travels out of the state’s purse to an African nation that: “Fifty years of the African Union and I am touring where my ancestors were born and bred, some of them, and some in Jamaica, and you know something, Mr Speaker, never mind enslavers, because there were times when our own caught us and sell us into slavery.”

I do not pass judgement on the travels or the cost of them, but I do pass judgement on the notion about “our own” selling us into slavery. It needs a reality check. Do the British consider the French their own people? Do the Chinese consider the Japanese their own people? Do we, Jamaicans, consider Bahamians our people? Do Americans consider Canadians their people? Notwithstanding the geographic and racial similarities of the peoples in the comparisons I have just presented, they all consider themselves different peoples with different nations, different cultures, and different languages. Africa is a continent with many nations, many tribes, many cultures, many languages, in short, many different peoples. These distinctions have always been stronger than race and the peoples of Africa

have never considered themselves one people; just as we in the Commonwealth Caribbean do not consider ourselves one people. It is a tactic used by our former slave masters to shift the burden from them to say “Look, your own people enslaved you too!” Not so!

The vast majority of slaves caught or sold by Africans were not those of their own tribe or nation, but from another tribe or nation which was not their own people.

Matt Beckford

beckford.lex@gmail.com