I have read with great consternation and utter dismay that the Government is giving serious consideration to the abolition of August 1 as Emancipation Day and August 6 as our Independence Day.

It would be a retrograde step and a severe violation of our ancestry. One marks a commemoration and the other a celebration. It would be a betrayal of all our efforts to promote our own identity as a people.

Let me, at the outset, make it clear that mine is not a partisan political position nor an expression of doubt on the accuracy of the Anderson Poll which was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture.

To determine where we are going, we must know from whence we came. Slavery is the most heinous crime against humanity. It is not Queen Victoria who set us free. It is the rebellion of our foreparents and their resolute struggle which, when combined with the drop in economic terms of forced labour, served to abolish the Slave Trade in 1834. That earned £20 million for the slave owners and compelled the slaves to repay them an additional sum, calculated at £27 million, by their “forced apprenticeship” for four more years.

For their freedom on August 1, 1838, our ancestors paid, and taxpayers of succeeding generations paid for a debt which was so huge that payment of a loan amounting to billions in today’s current value was only completed a few years ago.

The decision to restore Emancipation Day on August 1 and Independence on August 6 was not taken lightly. It emanated from a committee chaired by Rex Nettleford to examine “how our national symbols and observances could contribute to sustaining cultural unity and foster national values to renew the soul and uplift the spirit of our people and arrest social alienation”.

The committee recommended the reinstatement of Emancipation Day on August 1 after consultations held in four parishes, in written and oral submissions and press contributions, which they regard as part of their psychic inheritance, which could avert cultural chaos and release their creative potential. Their report revealed the depth for failing by our people.

In the minds of many of our young people there was confusion as to the actual date of our Independence. With the passage of time, the observance of Independence Day had weakened considerably. Designing August 6, rather than the first Monday of the month, as the holiday, was intended to sharpen the focus and reawaken a consciousness of independence as an important national event.

Our Parliament accepted, without a dissenting voice, the recommendation that Independence Day ought to be given its proper date — August 6 — so as to remove any doubt in the minds of our people about the timing and significance of that historic date.

The idea that the present separation from Independence Day is inconvenient to some and causes discomfort must be firmly rejected. Our comfort and convenience cannot be our response to the death and atrocities of the Middle Passage. That equation is untenable, but if ever there was a disaster in enforcing such an inequitable balance, that time is now.

Why is this so? Just in case it may have escaped our notice, we need to remind ourselves that the entire world is now beset with two pandemics — COVID-19 and racism.

An effective and accessible vaccine will undoubtedly assist in the alleviation of the coronavirus, but there is no such remedy to counter racism. That antidote depends entirely on how we as human beings react to the virus of systemic racism.

Our Motto — “Out of Many, One People” — rightly reflects our ethnic diversity, but that should never obscure the peculiar discrimination which people of colour face in the world today and what black people expect in the land of Marcus Garvey.

Especially in the days of globalisation, we must all reject and denounce the institutional exclusion of people of African descent from the economic, cultural and social rights which others of white colour enjoy as normal. The origins of that systemic racism are in slavery and in the systems of exclusion and discrimination that have marked the lives of others.

At this time in human history, we are beginning to witness an admission by enlightened institutions in the academic, financial and NGOs community of the compelling urgency to redress the inequities of slavery and its disastrous impact on people of colour worldwide. This is no time to retreat.

The Nettleford Committee did not overlook the consequences of separate days. We do not change Xmas Day when it falls on a Tuesday with Boxing Day following on a Wednesday. Ash Wednesday falls in the middle of the week, but the date varies according to the Lunar Calendar. We cannot obscure or surrender the historic significance of our freedom from slavery, and the poll reaction is not surprising, because succeeding generations have not been taught in our educational institutions enough, or at all, about our heritage in its entirety. Our purpose cannot be to enjoy a holiday weekend of fun and forget the significance of these two memorable milestones in the life of our nation, a right we secured in charting our destiny as an independent nation.

There are people and media who still equate the “black” in our flag to mean hardships. We changed that in Parliament to have “Black” signifying resilience and strength. This was another important step on the road to self-discovery and smadification.

Our Minister of Culture Hon “Babsy” Grange, has made some commendable moves to reflect our rich history of struggle and survival.

Let me now implore my beloved sister not to be the driver who takes our country in the wrong direction on a one way street. There is too much at stake.

— PJ Patterson served as the sixth Prime Minister of Jamaica from 1992 to 2006