After Fanon, Said and James, do we still accept this theoretical idiocy?

SEPTEMBER 19, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

A volcano of denunciation erupted last month, and rightfully so over the composition of state boards which had razor-thin representation from women. It is socially beautiful to see a society where women representation is strong. We are into the 21st century where women should have long taken their justified place in society. The controversy over the next Commonwealth Secretary-General rages on, but I have not detected any support by our women groups for Baroness Patricia Scotland. If she makes it, then that would be the first time a woman made it in that position. Let us speculate that our women are not interested, there is another argument about Baroness Scotland that needs polemical engagement. I will preface my polemical entry by saying whether it is a man or a woman, a Dominican or a Trinidadian or an Antiguan, Caricom leadership should select the most qualified and eligible person. I may add the footnote that there is no theory that is valid about consensus in integration movements. In June last year, EU leaders disagreed on the choice of Jean-Claude Juncker for the EU Presidency with Britain voicing intense vexation at his candidacy. There haven’t been many examples of consensus in integration blocs in foreign policy. The EU has been riveted with dissention among its leaders on consensus in foreign affairs, the latest being the Syrian refugee crisis. A huge row has broken out between Austria and Hungary. President Burnham of Guyana was the maverick in the Caricom leadership. He chose to go it alone in many foreign policy crises. Burnham broke with his Caricom counterparts over the American invasion of Grenada and Cuban military intervention in Angola. If there is disagreement within Caricom over a Caribbean choice to fill the vacancy of Commonwealth Secretary-General, it is nothing unusual in integration systems. In this column I am not going to offer my choice. My argument here is a rejection of a discourse that I think has become totally discredited from the early sixties onwards. Some of the learned minds that have demolished this thinking were fantastic non-white scholars from the Third World itself. I can think of Franz Fanon and CLR James from this region. There is the superb work of the Palestinian scholar, Edward Said. What these men have done for Third World epistemology and philosophical reclamation is simply phenomenal. On reading them you become learned in an understanding of how the colonial mind of the conquered subject worked in those times and how it still works. In the Third World today, a scholar runs the risk of being derogated if he or she argues that a non-white leader can better be trusted to run the affairs of the world, because Third World people have been the subject of brutal colonialism so we are always on guard to confront the white-man’s conspiracies. What Fanon told us is that the non-white leader might very well deliver us into the prison of the white man. What we in the Third World need to do, is be aware at all times that dark-skin may not translate into freedom for dark-skinned people; that dark skin may very well be accompanied by dark mind. I have read several times that Baroness Scotland is not the right choice because she is too distant from the Caribbean and may be biased in favour of the UK. I cannot seriously denounce that perception because I haven’t done the research on the Baroness. It may or may not be true. But my contention is that there may be people right here in the Caribbean that are just like the Baroness only that we may be deluded into thinking they are not like the Baroness because they live and work among us, while the Baroness hobnobs with the British establishment. If Caricom is going to choose a consensus candidate, then choose the person based on qualifications and experience, and let the best candidate win but leave out the use of a theory in judging the candidates that has long been discredited not only among scholars but by people the world over. In my life I have seen white Americans, white Britons, white Canadians fight equally hard for the dignity of non-white people. I have seen my own Third World people, East Indians, Africans, Arabs, Chinese with colonial minds so saturated with colonial values that even the white colonizer may be more anti-white than these people. There is no theory in the social sciences that validates the argument that non-white leaders in the Third World have a more liberating psychology. I have never seen it since the end of colonialism.