GUYANA | To conflate Indentureship with Chattel Slavery is a gross insult to the African slave experience says Eric Phillips

Dear Editor

Anti-Blackness is now operating on steroids in my Dear Land of Guyana.

As I read the multiple egregious comparisons of indentureship equalling slavery, there seems to be a conflux of PhDs and academic felons who are therefore boldly indicating to the Black and Jewish Communities that Indentureship and the Black African and Jewish Holocausts are the same. Globally, the latter would be termed Anti-Semitism with corresponding international repudiation and other consequences.

Pathological liars, racial entrepreneurs, and immoral PhDs are now peddling this grotesque insult to Africa, our Black African ancestors, and all People of Black African descent. They seem to be bolstered by an unhealthy dose of ethnic triumphalism and the generational implantation of superiority over anything that is Black African.

The greatest insult and disregard are on full display by equating indentureship with the Trans-Atlantic Trade of Enslaved Black Africans. How can a 400-year criminal enterprise, now legally defined as “a crime against humanity” by the United Nations, be equated with indentureship?

In Guyana, 473,000 Africans died to build this country during 200-plus years of the criminal enterprise called slavery; this is in addition to the loss of culture, language, names, religion, family, lands, and community. 

Indentured servants, not “the indentured enslaved”, were mostly paid though poorly, able to retain their names, religions, foods, culture, and a sense of original community. Rape and terror were full-time industries during slavery. So was the absolute loss of All Human Rights.

Indentureship has hallmarks of modern-day human trafficking, another awful criminal enterprise, which must be addressed accordingly. Descendants of “a crime against humanity” in Guyana have endured the most inhumane racially charged emotional abuse in the form of normalized name-calling, such as hungry belly dogs, monkeys, thieves, half-humans, beasts, and, more lovingly, black man or nigger.

Additionally, the cultural campaign of racism at the last election exposed a number of ignorant, educated racists who were given carte blanche to flourish in an atmosphere created and nurtured by those of evil dispositions.

Academic immorality and professional dishonesty have taken root in Guyana, reminiscent of Martin Carter’s famous poem, which talks about an academic “carnival of misery” by men of odious and despicable character.

I stand in horror to believe that these odious characters, some paid, others not; some African, others not, would stoop to such a low level to poison young minds in Guyana and their Diasporas. Perhaps they are consumed in a pernicious “circle of self”: self-denial, self-hate, self-importance, self-deception, self-deceit, self-indulgence, self-denial, and self-destruction.

Some questions our Guyanese society should ponder: Why is there this psychological warfare against Black Guyanese? Why this virulent anti-Blackness? Why don’t we actively highlight the significant contributions of our Enslaved Black Africans to our society?

These daily purveyors of hate and anti-Blackness remind me of “Fishhooks” McCarthy, who was a person who lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was right-hand man to Al Smith, the prototypical political person of his time. 

“Fishhooks,” the story goes, was devout. So devout that every morning on his way to Tammany Hall to do his political work, he stopped into St. James Church on Oliver Street in downtown Manhattan, fell on his knees, and whispered every morning the same simple prayer: “O, Lord, give me health and strength. We’ll steal the rest.”

These proponents of the “indentureship equal slavery” and, therefore, is equal to the “Black African and Jewish Holocausts” narratives are individuals who want to create waves of “distrust and mistrust” in Guyana. 

These individuals will fail and will forever be known as characters who create vertically integrated “communal shells” of misinformation and misdirection. These modern-day Fish Hooks make the original Fishhook look like a Saint.

Eric Phillips