By *Jomo Sanga Thomas
(Plain Talk, May 31, 2019)
We build our worldview by reading, travelling and experiencing new and different places and things. Last week I encountered the following thoughts and believed every word because I know them to be true:
“Who needs fossil fuel when the sun ain’t going nowhere?”
“Who you know seen God, but everyone has seen the devil.”
“Judaism is the African way of life. Judaism was the religion developed in Africa by African people. It was adopted and adapted in a similar fashion to the Yoruba Orisha worship (Vodoun, Santeria, Lacumi, Condomble, etc.) and is still being co-opted and altered by non-Africans today. To speak of an African’s influence on Judaism is like speaking of an African’s influence on Orisha Worship. It is not an African influence. It is still African and represents an African way of life.”
“Racial difference was invoked to justify the forced transportation and enslavement of an estimated thirteen million African people via the transatlantic slave trade. This enduring system not only involved the deployment of racist images regarding what it meant to be black, it also required reflection on what it meant to be white. It is within this context that the valorisation of whiteness went hand in hand with the devaluation of blackness, with gender playing a key role in both sides of the equation. Rational, white masculinity came to symbolise culture and civilisation, while moral virtue, sexual piety, and physical fairness came to define the parameters of white womanhood. This image of a ‘pure’ white womanhood stood in sharp contrast to the supposedly grotesque sexuality, physical ugliness and excessive fertility—a metaphorical trope for Africa itself—of ‘hot constitution’d’ African women.”
“Owning enslaved Africans served as white women’s primary source of wealth. Plus, owning a large number of enslaved people reportedly made women better marriage material.”
“There are a million ways Black people and people of color assimilate to Whiteness simply to survive. It’s a part of our everyday lives, And because of this, we don’t desire to paint our faces White, because being White is a way of life for many of us.”
“Trust me. While being Black is beautiful, being Black is hard as hell. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Never accepted. We never fit in. It’s never our time. We always need a White savior to take us to another level. Always deemed inferior. Always second best. Always the stepping stool for other immigrant groups. Always at-risk. We’re always on edge. It’s hard being Black. Really hard.”
“The key point is that unpaid labour by millions of people of African heritage was a foundation of the social wealth in the Europe and North America. Immigrants with European heritage directly and indirectly benefited from this foundation of social wealth and white supremacy, even if they never had anything to do with slavery.’
‘A major reason for the growing wealth divide, then, isn’t that white people ‘worked harder.’ It’s that the government worked harder for them.”
“The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on, you better speed up. That is the message of today. It could however be useful to remind everyone that our basic needs never change. The need to be seen and appreciated! It is the need to belong. The need for nearness and care, and for a little love! This is given only through slowness in human relations. In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal.”
“Raising children is much more than a lifestyle choice. It is labour-intensive work that demands of parents, and especially women, huge physical, emotional, financial and time commitments. The wider society reaps the benefits of this work.”
“The architecture of the corporate state is designed to disempower women. Most wages are not sufficient for one worker to support a family. This means that both the father and the mother must have income-producing jobs. If a parent takes time off to raise a child, the family income declines, usually by half, and there often is also a loss of health benefits, leaving the parent raising the child dependent on the spouse. This economic dependency makes it harder for a woman to leave an abusive or failed relationship, perpetuating the powerlessness of women that is at the heart of the system.”
“Journalism isn’t espionage. Being a journalistic source isn’t engaging in spying. And publishing information that lays bare government misconduct is not espionage. When journalism is treated as a crime, we are all in danger. The Assange indictment is not the end of the Wiki Leaks saga. It is the beginning of a major assault on freedom of the press.”
“The war on drugs has been extremely costly, not just in terms of government resources, but also human lives, and it has failed to accomplish its objective…Prohibition policies have, by and large, caused more harm to people and communities than the drugs they were intended to eliminate, and they haven’t come anywhere close to eliminating the supply or the demand.”
“Our country is in desperate need of some good magistrates. Ordinary citizens do not get a fair share in these courts at all. Most of our magistrates are pro-prosecution. They rarely bother to apply their minds to the law of the land.”
“If you are right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.”
“Some people are ‘truth terrorists, knowledge gangsters and history of black hit men.’ O’ how I aspire to be one of those.”
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Apart from the fact that this is a pot-pourri of unrelated quotes not worthy of being posted anywhere in cyberspace, there are too many absolutely false quotes mentioned, the sum total of which lead me to question Mr. Thomas’ state of mind. What he drunk or stoned whe he wrote this? Was Kenton Chance similarly debilitated by some intoxicant when he post this crap?
1. It is as preposterous to believe that, “Judaism was the religion developed in Africa by African people” as it is to believe that “The moon is made out of cheeze.”
2. Solar panels are made out of materials that enhance global warming, on the one had, and there is no power when the sun sets or when it is cloudy.
3. Lots of people claim they have seen and heard God. Actually, since both God and Satan are spirits, how can anyone “see” either of them.
I could go on and on but readers will get my point.
Well said! Apparently as Kermit the frog said it ain’t easy being green either…. Lol
Jomos comments are more racist than anything else, they will certainly incite some black people to do the wrong thing. Disgraceful behavior by a man that claims to be learned but has proven to be a gross dunce in parliament.
It takes a lot of free time to be always writing these lengthy comments and a lot of energy to be so often negative. I wish I had that much free time but I have to work for a living. Mr. Ben-David I would humbly encourage you to also look for opportunities to ‘big up’ people and not just simply criticize all the time. It’s tiring .
If it is “tiring,” why do you compulsively read and re-read everything I post? Don’t you have anything better to do?
As for me, I am a retired man collecting a big pension who is still full to the brim with mental energy who loves to write all day and insult nincompoops like you.
Now Jomo is talking: I know he wants CCJ to be part of SVG judiciary system, but the same lawyers he described in his article may make it to that court. That’s why the lower court system should be fixed before going up that ladder. There is a problem in the vetting system and who is selecting these judges. Can these judges be impeached for straying outside the bounds of judicial transparency, integrality and honesty?
If the people select these judges then there may be more control over their judgments handed down to all people (poor and rich). Right now there is no justice for the poor people of the Caribbean, so how will the CCJ address this issue. How will it ensure equal justice for all people irrespective of religion, colour, ethnicity, culture and sexuality?
Is this the ramblings of a lunatic or was the boy on some strong stuff? I an I, have always had questions about dis yah boy yah!
Now me know! Dis yah ah one sure confused boy yah.
Being “confused” is the least of Jomo’s problems.
I think Jomo is actually coding information to us about Ralph Gonsalves and him working Obeah, whatever that actually means.
Some of you may remember when Gonsalves said in parliament “If I work Obeah, I only work Obeah for the Lord” No one has ever worked out what that means.
Peter Binose once said about this utterance by Gonsalves “you cannot work Obeah for the Lord our God, but you can work Obeah for the Lord Satan”
Remember when it comes down to is worshiping any God its forbidden in Marxism, except as a way of fooling the people.
So what all this mumbo jumbo is about coming from Jomo I do not know. He would be better off studying how his job works in parliament and try and honestly get thing right,whilst becoming an asset to the ULP he has become a liability to the Vincentian people.