But not actually the fathers. My father was
born in 1888 and my grandfather in 1846, so it could only be my great-grandfather, born in 1795, who had the opportunity of being a sinner. He seems to have been a fairly successful man and keen on his own image, for he had his
portrait painted in oils by a competent artist and framed in a huge, gilded, oval frame. By two wives he had sixteen children, five of whom grew up, and, do you know, I would not be surprised to discover that, as was then
normal, he had a couple of slaves as well in his home on Barbarees Hill. Since almost all his children were christened in the Cathedral, I suspect that he was probably a regular church-goer. In 1834 when slaves were
freed, Great-Grandad would have been 39, quite old enough to be a slave-owner. Mr. Commissiong, in his wish to liberate my soul from feelings of guilt, thinks that I must be ashamed of my great-grandfather's
slavemasterly sins, and that contributing to a fund to be paid to him (Mr. C.) for these remote sins would alleviate my guilty conscience. I have examined my conscience with all proper care, and although I have committed lots of
sins, about some of which I do detect feelings of shame, the fact that my great-grandfather and some of his forefathers were owners of slaves is not to be found anywhere on my conscience. Nor am I proud of that item of
history.
As we look back among our ancestors, along the female as well as the male lines, we all acquire huge numbers of forefathers and foremothers. It seems likely that the name Leacock comes from the French Lecoq, a common
name in Normandy, and you will remember that France was once a Province of Rome. So it is very probable that Julius Caesar was among my throng of ancient ancestors, a circumstance which I also regard with deep neutrality, in
spite of his military and literary success.
But just for the fun of it, let us imagine that I feel the most acute guilt about my evil, Christian, slave-abusing, hate-filled, hated, horrible great-grandfather, that I am keen to
make full restitution to the descendants of his slaves, but that I want this restitution to be made in a decent and just (as opposed to unjust) manner. How would we proceed?
Mr. Commissiong might advise me simply to give him the
money and he would be willing to do the rest. I am sure Mr. Commissiong is a man of the utmost integrity, but I doubt if I could persuade many of my fellow, pale, modern scapegoat sinners to join me is that enterprise.
Great-grandad's slaves can no longer be identified, so we can't trace their descendants, if any. My few dollars must go to those who are the descendants of slaves in general, and be joined by dollars from other guilty descendants
of horrible slave-owners. How are we to decide what person is which? Especially when a large group of Bajans is clearly descended from both categories, evidence of cross-fertilisation (one way or the other) being apparent to
all eyes.
History also tells us that many pigmented people were themselves financially successful, and owners of both land and slaves. Some had been slaves themselves. Where do their descendants fit in ?
Furthermore, many
(perhaps most) whitish Bajans are not descended from people who owned plantations and slaves, but from men who escaped difficulties in England by agreeing to be indentured servants in Barbados, often leaping from the frying pan
into the fire.
Perhaps we might classify donors and beneficiaries by percentage of keratin, those currently unblessed by plenty of pigment or by very curly hair being deemed to be the descendants of slave-owners. After all, this
classification has historical background in quadroons, octoroons etc. Should we revive those terms? In which group should we place octoroons?
Another little difficulty lies in statistics. If we use the crude terms whitish and
blackish, only some five per cent of the population has in the recent past been classified as whitish. So every hundred dollars contributed by a wicked whitish donor has to be divided among ninety-five innocent blackish recipients.
Hardly a bonanza!
Perhaps the matter could be decided by whether you would sit in the back or the front of a bus in the southern states of the US in the bad old days. Front-sitters pay. Back-sitters receive. But I know people
who could choose. And in the circumstances I describe there would be an ugly rush for the back of the bus.
Many Bajans in moral difficulty refer to the Bible. Let's look up sins of great-grandfathers in the Concordance. Alas,
great-grandfathers is a word which doesn't appear at all in the Concordance. And I was expecting to find in the Bible the source of the well-known phrase about the sins of the fathers. The Concordance didn't help at all. But with
the help of a scholarly Arabian gentleman I learnt that it comes from Euripides (484-406 B.C.) and reads " The Gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children", implying, perhaps, that the matter should best be left
to the Gods.
However, II Chronicles 25, 4 does seem to be relevant: "The fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die for the fathers, but every man shall die for his own sin." Possibly a
little severe, but it makes a good point.
Some Bajans might try to enquire into the physiological and genetic aspects of melanotic pigmentation. A lot of research has been going on into this interesting subject, and it is
becoming more and more complicated (to my satisfaction). Three types of melanin have been discovered, blackish, brownish and red-yellowish. But all melanin comes from the amino acid tyrosine, not only by the action of the enzyme
tyrosinase, but by several other chemical processes, in the cells called melanocytes.
Various genes are involved in making tyrosinase , which can be active, producing lots of melanin, or inactive, producing little. Ultraviolet
light encourages melanocytes to put out lots of microscopic arms (dendrites) containing melanosomes, resulting in the evanescent but fashionable suntan pigmentation so expensively gained by whitish tourists on our beaches.
Christopher Wills, in The Runaway Brain, contends there is very little genetic difference between blackish and whitish populations ( I have to correct him about the genes for playing cricket and basket-ball and for
boxing and running very fast). And Wills also suggests that Homo sapiens
may have changed colour more than once in evolution. The old ideas about Vitamin D and rickets and sunlight seem to be no longer valid. Isn't it a pity that skin didn't fossilise like bone, providing an accurate record of the skin shade and hairiness of our remote ancestors?
Mr. Commissiong, an intelligent man seeking political power, must know well that hatred is a passion much more easily aroused than affection. Look at Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, Israel, Palestine, the fundamentalist Islamic
states, the Koreas. He maintains (at least in public) that all the ills of our fairly happy country are due to its whitish inhabitants and their ancestors. I bet that a man of his intelligence doesn't really believe it, a
circumstance which would never prevent a politician from using a promising ploy.
He and I can surely both rely upon the good sense of our fellow Barbadians that his public incitement of hatred will not arouse a response large
enough to do serious damage to the tourism which is now the basis of our prosperity. I can and do rely upon that good sense to protect me and my family from Mr. Commissiong's possible Blackish Power future extermination camps.
Am I wise? Or, as German Jews were wise to run before World War II and the Holocaust, should I sensibly run away now from the pleasant land of my birth?
