In this year, so far, there have been more race riots in the United States of America than there have been for decades. This includes the sporadic shooting in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Apart from being reminiscent of the southern USA in the 1950s and 1960s, it reminds me of the title of a chapter in Michael Manley’s Book Struggle in the periphery. And that chapter is called ‘The periphery fights back’.

One definition of periphery is “the outer limits of an area or object”. Michael Manley used the word periphery in the context of the oppressors’ decision that formerly oppressed persons had too much power, therefore time to retake the dominant position. He was speaking about what happened in Jamaica when the Government of the 1970s decided to trade with Cuba and the former Soviet Union and also what happened after the Government decided to enforce the bauxite levy.

All of this reminds me of recent happenings in the USA with respect to the violent attacks on African-Americans. As far as the white racists are concerned, it was bad enough that an African-American won the presidency in 2008, but to be re-elected in 2012 is more than many of them are prepared to bear. The idea of African-Americans now having a certain confidence in themselves because a man of our own race is the president of the United States is too radical a change for many whites who hold on to their old deep-seated racist tendencies.

There are many Jamaicans who understand this. From the days when Jesse Jackson sought the Democratic Party nomination for US presidency in the 1984 presidential race, there were Jamaicans who were concerned that any black person who was selected president would not live long enough to be sworn in. Fortunately in this respect, Barack Obama has defied the odds twice.

Many Jamaicans who were around, including myself, remember the assassinations of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in November 1963 and his brother Robert Francis Kennedy in June 1968. Many were convinced that JFK was assassinated because he took up the cause of black people. Jamaicans who are old enough also remember the assassinations of Malcolm X in February 1965 and Martin Luther King in April 1968. In other words, these assassinations were seen by many Jamaicans and indeed many others throughout the world as a case of the periphery fighting back.

Whether JFK’s public show of sympathy for the African-American cause was the actual motive for him being murdered is debatable. But many Jamaicans with the common view on the motive for JFK’s assassination being his African-American sympathies feared for Jesse Jackson in 1984. They thought that his life was saved when he did not succeed in getting the Democratic nomination for the US presidency. Many Jamaicans also feared for Obama and perhaps some still do.

In any case, JFK’s sympathy for the African-American cause could have been a secondary factor. Being Roman Catholic could have been a tertiary factor. While Roman Catholics belong to the largest church in the USA, it is only 20 per cent of the whole. There have always been strong anti-Roman Catholic feelings in the USA and, indeed, this was used against JFK in the 1960 presidential campaign. It was certainly reason why Al Smith lost to Herbert Hoover in 1928. Although Al Smith strongly galvanised the Catholic women’s vote, his nomination equally galvanised the strong anti-Catholic vote in the southern United States.

Not just in the southern United States, but all over the USA, where African-Americans had to be subservient in the past, it may no longer be so — at least not since Barack Obama became president. Has this stirred up anger against African-Americans who primarily arrived in the United States as slaves to pick cotton? At that time, African-Americans were not regarded as human beings, but as lower animals. The same was of true slaves in Jamaica, except that slaves came here to plant and reap sugar cane.

Old prejudices die hard. After 75 years of communism in the former Soviet Union the old racism came back with a vengeance in the form of “ethnic cleansing” in some parts of Russia. Clearly, racism in the United States has not come to an end just because an African-American is now president. In Jamaica, we learned the hard way that empowerment of the masses had not arrived permanently with Michael Manley’s announcement in November 1974 that he intended to establish a Democratic Socialist state.

In his book Struggle in the periphery, Michael Manley gave excerpts from a US army manual of psychological warfare (pages 210-211). The strategy outlined on page 211 is:

i) Create discouragement, demoralisation, apathy;

ii) Discredit the ideology of the popular movement;

iii) Promote disorganised and confused behaviour;

iv) Encourage divisiveness and antisocial actions to undermine the political structure of the country;

v) Promote and support movements of resistance against the authorities.”

Many of us who were already adults in the 1970s recall that this seemed very similar to what was then taking place in Jamaica.

Here is a suggestion for the members of the Manley family who inherited rights to Michael Manley’s books. When Sunday Observer columnist Garfield Higgins writes his pro-Seaga/anti-Michael Manley columns, you should advertise Struggle in the periphery for Michael Manley’s side of the story. You surviving Manleys might as well earn some honest money with his gracious help.

Should we have opened trade with Cuba and the USSR in the 1970s despite the displeasure of the USA? Should we have continued with free education after the oil crisis? Should we have imposed the bauxite levy to pay for free education? Was Jamaica sabotaged for imposing the bauxite levy and trading with the communist bloc? In the meantime, the question is whether the racist violence in the USA is a case of the periphery fighting back. I think so.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com