Dear Editor,

There exists a dangerous delusion spreading quietly through many post-colonial societies. It is the belief that because those in power look like us, speak like us, or share our ancestry, liberation has already arrived. This is the black delusion.

For generations, oppressed peoples fought for representation, believing that if only black faces occupied positions of power, justice would naturally follow. Independence movements swept across Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere with promises that once colonial rulers departed, freedom would finally be realised.

Yet decades later, many nations remain trapped, asking a painful question: If we govern ourselves now, why do so many of our institutions still feel foreign? Jamaica offers a fascinating example.

Here is a country whose population is overwhelmingly black, governed almost entirely by black political leadership, yet whose institutions still carry many visible fingerprints of colonial design. Our Parliament mirrors structures inherited from Britain. Our official language remains English despite the overwhelming majority speaking patois in some form daily. and we continue to maintain offices and ceremonial structures that tie us symbolically to our former colonial power.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this contradiction more clearly than recent debates surrounding language in Parliament. How can a nation claim to celebrate its people while simultaneously restricting the language spoken by those people from the very chamber that governs them?

The irony is even deeper. Many who defend English-only traditions are themselves often speaking localised Jamaican speech heavily shaped by patois. What some call “proper speech” frequently exists not as pure imported English but as a Jamaican variation shaped by centuries of local evolution. Somewhere between uptown and downtown, rural and urban, we created our own voice while simultaneously pretending it does not exist.

But this commentary is not about Parliament alone.

The deeper issue is psychological. Colonialism did not merely occupy land, it occupied imagination. It taught generations that advancement required distance from themselves, and it created systems in which proximity to colonial language, colonial institutions, colonial appearance, and colonial approval became associated with legitimacy.

The uncomfortable reality is that oppressed peoples sometimes become custodians of systems originally designed to oppress them. This is why representation alone is insufficient.

A black face occupying power while preserving structures that deny cultural identity does not automatically constitute liberation. Political power without psychological freedom can simply reproduce old hierarchies with new management. This reality extends far beyond Jamaica.

Across the world, communities continue asking why systems appear unchanged despite changes in leadership. The answer may be uncomfortable: Changing who occupies institutions is easier than changing the institutions themselves. Even our relationship with former colonial powers exposes these contradictions.

Many Caribbean societies contributed enormous labour, resources, migration, and sacrifice towards building wealthy empires. Yet descendants of these same populations often face visa, financial, immigration, and bureaucratic hurdles when interacting with the very nations their ancestors helped build.

If representation alone solved everything, these contradictions would not persist. Liberation cannot be outsourced. No politician, party, Parliament, movement, or leader can fully free people who continue waiting for permission to embrace themselves. This is not an argument against progress; it is not an argument against internationalism; it is certainly not an argument against education, mobility, or global participation; it is an argument for honesty.

Perhaps the true measure of freedom is not simply asking who governs us. Perhaps we must also ask: Who defines us? Whose language legitimises us? Whose institutions validate us? Whose approval do we still seek?

The black delusion is believing liberation automatically arrives when leadership changes complexion. Real liberation begins when people stop waiting for others — even those who look like them — to tell them who they are.

Aubyn Richards

clever2g@yahoo.com