THE MIDDLE WHAT?
I am a citizen of a black nation. A nation whose ancestors are traced back to the shores of West Africa from where over three million black Africans were herded and branded as “chattel” through a thorough and well executed system of enslavement. The Middle Passage was descriptive of a stage of a slave’s physical journey through that system.
I first heard the term “The Middle Passage” at an art gallery at which I was a curatorial assistant. At the time a young artist exhibited an installation that I did not have the ability to fully understand let alone appreciate at the time. The installation was a passageway of hand-picked cotton mounted on walls taller than the visitor that grew closer as you moved deeper into the passageway. Simple, poignant and genius. Now I know this. Some visitors broke down into tears as they experienced it. The installation was entitled “The Middle Passage” and the artist was Jeffery Merris [a].
Photograph by Jackson Petit
I was 27 years old at the time.
Did I mention that I’m a citizen of an Afro-Caribbean nation that was part of plantation America?
27 years old…
CONTEXT OR LACK THERE OF
The Middle Passage was the term given to the Atlantic crossing of slaves and slave traders from the African coast to the disembarkation point in the Americas. It was the “middle” of the Triangular Slave Trade route that, for the British slave traders, would start from a port in Great Britain, stop at the African coast, continue on to the Americas and terminate back in Great Britain. The journey was an arduous experience. Death was imminent, sickness of some degree was guaranteed and an attempt to break the spirit of the Black African was par for the course. Men, women and at times children were tightly packed, shackled and rarely saw the light of day on those slave ships. This was The Middle Passage and the reality of it is that none of us will ever really know the half of it.
That is what I didn’t know.
There is a problem here when a young black woman, like myself, cannot pull the term ‘Middle Passage’ from her catalogue of “things that I know”. There is a problem when only snippets of useless information about the sponge industry of The Bahamas and no mention of the slave industry with any real investigation was ever encouraged within the halls of my high school. It was clear that if my social science teacher didn’t teach it then it probably wasn’t important. I told myself this until I was 27 years old and I had to walk through “The Middle Passage” in an art gallery in The Bahamas. Thank God for art. Better late than never right? Wrong. Better early so that I don’t grow up an ignorant, Western educated, black woman at a loss as to why a sense that there is something wrong with the world isn’t me going crazy but it’s just that there is something very wrong with this world.
I’m not over-reacting when I look around my university class and spot one other black female in an architecture class of over 100 and feel isolated. I’m not being a “mad black woman” when I’m upset by the expectancy for my peers to return home with university degrees and work in the “hospitality industry” for hotel owners instead of becoming hotel owners. “Just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real.” The actor Jesse Wesley Williams said that during his acceptance speech for a humanitarian award at the 2016 BET music awards. The fact that in the 21st century he received backlash for a speech encouraging black people to learn about who they are and stand up for what was right is telling in itself. I dwelled on that quote for a long time because I wrestled with the idea of the world knowing that I’m “magic” and knowing myself that there is something enchanting about me in the best possible way even as I bang my fists against professional walls, relationship walls and academic walls that tell me different. Then I watch my peers push hidden buttons and stroll on through life. I know I’m not alone but the fact is that no one is really talking about what we’re experiencing because “it’s not real” right? The thing is that it is real.
You’re lying if you think this is a “white thing”, this is more so a “black thing”. Some of the biggest road blocks I had in life thus far were from black people. My own people. People trusted with the safe keeping and nurturing of my dreams, but my story is not singular; the present day systematic journey of the black slave. If the knowledge of a grown man remains at the level of a primary school child then he is a slave to the teacher and the system he is forced into. We have failed each other since the time of African slavery [1] and we’re failing each other now. Do we know this though? Are we conscious of the booby traps we throw at each other like a game of Mario Kart? These are more frequent than we realize and it deserves to be discussed in another essay. What we are discussing in this essay reaches beyond the Western shores of our ancestors. It exists within the in-between of a journey that is embedded in the subconscious of our very DNA and helps us to understand our people. So much of the history we learn are about key moments in time. The Middle Passage wasn’t a moment, it could have lasted between four to six weeks and over three million slaves made this passage while millions more perished in the midst of it. Therefore the Middle Passage is six weeks times three million. That is a lot of world history to not know. This is a big deal people and deserving of a conversation. Now here lies the philosophical question of the day; if such a traumatic period in history cannot be described, and at the very least understood on even a visceral level, then how can a black man or woman know if they are going through the same trauma again? Because, news flash, we are.
I’LL TREAT THIS LIKE MY THESIS
The reality of not knowing the meaning and significance of the term “The Middle Passage” is indicative of a modern day stagnancy of Black societal growth, spiritual growth and understanding. Yes I said it, spiritual growth, because to deny that there is a spiritual connection to the historical and present day challenges of Black people is like saying that the European colonization of North America was the shining moment in the historical movie reel of every Native American. The connection I speak of is not some symbiotic tethering to the past but a reliving of it over and over again on a loop. This can be an everyday experience if you’re a human being of African descent. Your Middle Passage can be shifting from primary school to high school, from high school to college, from high school to the work force, from university to your first job interview, from waking up in bed to stepping foot outside. This is real people, because at any point along the timeline of these journeys the knowledge, understanding and wisdom of who “they” were (your ancestors), who you are and who you can be will either break you or strengthen you.
What do we do with this knowledge? We have to begin with acknowledgement that there is a 21st century manifestation of this Middle Passage experience. The present day middle passage is one in which black people are stacked and shackled into neat stereotypes, the view of “chattel” still exists on subliminal levels through societal and familial conditioning, mental death remains imminent and the sickness of ignorance is still guaranteed.
THE MYTH OF THE BLACK STEREOTYPE
I remember the day I told my mother that I wanted to be an architect. She was pleased, the idea of telling friends and family “my daughter is going to be an architect” had to seem delicious. Fast forward to present day; I hated architecture school and suffice to say, I am not an architect and chances are will never become one. When I started architecture school in metropolitan Toronto, Canada I realized that I was seriously a black minority and I didn’t handle it well. On seeing my gradually declining grades an advisor asked me why I was still in the program and suggested I drop out. I was in my third year and an international student paying international fees. He had to be a new kind of crazy. My saving grace was a woman who worked in the administration office of the architecture school. She was an African American and whenever I would come in she would tell me things like “You have to keep on pushing girl, there aren’t a lot of you in this program.” She acknowledged how important it was what I was doing in Canada. I was one of only three black females in my class of over 100 students and she acknowledged its significance and I needed to hear this.
My advisor looked beyond that. He was a white male, architect and perhaps of this “color blind” generation who sees no importance or significance in a black female graduating from a class in which her race made up approximately 5 percent in his self-described “multi-cultural city”. We won’t even mention the percentage of practicing black architects in the world. However, it became evident that at some point during my studies I bought into the stories about what a “black woman” can or cannot do like so many others whether it’s being told by pop culture, our families, our church, our schools or our academic advisors. Someone’s always storytelling but you have to know where you are when these “rules” are being spewed at you, you are in a middle passage. I certainly was. The rules about what “successful black women” look like are a farce in that space and the only way to be black and free is to first acknowledge that you are mentally imprisoned. Now the story can change. Now we can rewrite our character who doesn’t just come up for air when our “mental slavers” allow it but who live and breathe what has to be the very breath of life; that we have a place in every profession, that we have a place in society, that we can and better fight to graduate from every degree possible, that our lives depend on it. It is impossible to chain and stereotype a black woman or man into living a lie when they fully understand their own truth. Truth about black inventors, entrepreneurs, writers, artists and moments of power and communal success. Do you know when I found out that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spent time in my home country in a neighborhood called Bain and Grants Town? When I was in my late-twenties. MLK was working on his legacy and preparing to shake the foundations of civil rights in the western world right in my backyard. This, my friends, is that truth I’m talking about.
MENTAL DEATH
If you don’t believe that black people are dying daily then I dare you to stand on the street corner of New Providence, Bahamas and tell me those aren’t zombies walking to the bus stops in downtown Nassau. In early morning New Providence there is a wary acknowledgement of each other almost as if everyone knows that everyone else is wearing another resort logo to act as yet another “black subservient” employee. Show me someone who loathes their job and I’ll show you a resort worker in New Providence. I’m being facetious but not very much so. I believe that there is a marked difference between entering a profession because of choosing to do so versus having to do so because of having limited to no options. When college isn’t a life goal and if during high school and at home you learn nothing of the trades, nothing of computer science, nothing of practical entrepreneurship and agriculture then what else can a high school graduate pursue but work as a servant? Governments enjoy boasting of the hotel industries the world over and how much revenue they generate but they never boast about how much of that revenue actually remains within the country and its people. We’re hard-wired in my home country to be grateful for jobs in a hotel or bank and to never question why our cousin didn’t get that scholarship to pursue studies in agriculture and fisheries. We never question why our sister never received funding to study fashion design and eventually create clothing manufacturing jobs. We never ask ourselves why many Bahamians are content with their “Gov’ment” job and never desire to add anything more to society beyond a ghost-like presence at their desks from 9am until 4:45pm. We never ask these questions because we as a people are brain dead. Remove “The Bahamas” as the location under discussion and add your own country, is it so different? It’s a scary world that we live in when we are producing generations of zombies. There’s a generation only a few years younger than myself that I cannot have an intelligent conversation with about any topic of substance let alone black Bahamian history.
This is incomprehensible.
When black people do finally gather together it is mostly to talk about how great we are as individuals. Developing our singular goals to fulfill our singular needs we tend to only share incredibly self-serving, one-sided verbiage with not an ounce of wisdom or encouragement for each other. Enlightenment isn’t the goal but instead it’s about boasting. When we get to the top we only tug along people already at the top. It’s rare when someone at the bottom is pulled up in black societies by someone higher up the success ladder. This is the case within families and larger black societies alike. However, pulling each other up to breathe the fresh air is what we should all strive for. Foundations created by black people to support all black initiatives and scholarship. Grants created by black people in the 5 percent of global wealth to globally pull as many black people as possible into the 5 percent with them. Are we waiting on a miracle or some other race to take up our cause? Are we waiting on someone to finally knight us as a people as “wealthy” and “self-sufficient”? When we finally start asking why the government and banks offer the least amount of money toward entrepreneurship to its people we’ll finally know the answer; it’s because there is a fear of innovation and original thought. The idea of an educated and unified society is akin to anarchy and mental enslavement makes a people more “manageable”. You don’t believe me? Go back in time and ask Lord John Murry Dunmore, Governor of The Bahamas from 1787-1796 why he awarded only his family (and select white men with similar interests) land and frankly ignored the French Mulattos and Free Negroes Proclamation Admission in 1793. [2] Don’t be fooled, history has been repeating itself in black societies for centuries because black people have limited to no knowledge about their history.
PLANTATION AFRO-CARIBBEAN, HERE WE GO AGAIN…
Mental death is nurtured, learnt and encouraged through an educational system that forms the mold of the subservient employee. The enslaved black slave was the prototype, the present day black servant with no choice but to become a servant or starve, is a derivative of the prototype. Becoming a servant should be presented as an option among many. However, telling a person in primary school and high school that they will only ever be good enough to serve tourists all their life through a refusal to teach of the new possibilities and opportunities of our time is the same as taking a gun and shooting that person in the head. These are formative years and the chance of us seeing beyond such a lie and searching for truth in adulthood is as rare as finding a pearl. We should be pleased with the few black families all over the world who are encouraging their children, raising them with esteem and supporting their dreams with insurmountable faith and intentional planning to realize those dreams. However, likewise we should be aggressively educating and if needed, “muting” the men and women who are doing the exact opposite by obstructing and doing absolutely nothing to enlighten young people and support their dreams. Master craftsmen, salon stylists, fashion stylists, interior decorators, fisherwomen, policewomen, in every job and in every field there are opportunities for uncommon success, and this list is only exhausted when every Bahamian is living their dream.
There was a time that I blamed the British rule for never learning about the great milestones in black history and great black historical figures and our allies, but I was a fool. The fault is our own. If you choose to live as a zombie then good for you but if you are a black woman, man or youth who actually desires to truly live, then you must resist the factory called our high-school educational system that is spitting out 75% resort workers [3] and acknowledge that the government has no answers to joblessness. The double digits unemployment rate in The Bahamas (as of April 2017) [4] is even more surprising to the government than it is to the unemployed. Now think about the rest of the world. Think about joblessness among black people globally and then tell me that it’s okay for you, your siblings, your parents and your children to have their dreams or even the dreams about their dreams knocked down. Educate yourself. Create your own book clubs in high school and university where you read stories and biographies about your history. Create art about your investigations and discoveries. Ask yourself questions about you. Write books and blogs. Create fashion that reflects on our history instead of diluting it. Become a fountain of knowledge. Support the black members of our communities by doing these things. Be thirsty for knowledge and seek it out yourself because if you wait for someone to bring you their koolaid you’ll drink it until you’re puking it up. Muhammed Ali said “I can’t be beat. I’m too pretty to be beat.” Your dreams are too beautiful to be beaten down because they, like us, are the minority, even within our own minority.
THE EPIDEMIC CALLED BLACK IGNORANCE
Ride the subway in any city during flu and cold season with or without your flu shot and there is a high chance that you will catch a cold. There’s something especially wonderful for a flu virus about human beings packed tightly together in a car, breathing each other’s air, sneezing into each other’s faces and touching the same handlebars for even the shortest subway ride. This is how we need to see our ignorance and the refusal to acknowledge historical inconsistencies and erasure within our evolution as a people and our culture. We must see it as a sickness, a virus. You might not realize it but we are all in this subway car together and we’re tighter than you think. The hope of us being “tight” as a people is within grasp. If you are a colored minority then this is the age of enlightenment and esteem, but not effortlessly so. If this were the Hunger Games then the odds of developing black esteem are definitely not in our favor. This is the age of radical historians who are digging deep, revealing the complexities of yesterday and spreading what they learn like a virus. There is nothing as frustrating as being told as a black and free individual to “relax” and “let go of the past” because “slavery and oppression didn’t happen to you”. The “let it go” response is a disservice to those who lived it. The story has to be retold and catalogued or else it becomes myth, no matter which black people you are discussing along the timeline. Personally, it is important that Bahamian Afro-Caribbean history remain complex and that it’s made as complete as possible so that nothing is forgotten in this rush to live the “Western Dream”. I appreciate that dream as much as the other woman but I would rather realize it with a deeper understanding about what drives me and why my world has been formed the way it has been formed as an Afro-Caribbean woman. Because only then can I help my children and my nieces and nephews grow up to live out their dreams fearlessly and with more esteem, courage and support than I ever had. The esteem of the generation behind us is crucially important and is dependent on this understanding.
Have you ever went a day without food? Now imagine your mind is your stomach and it has gone a full day without food and this food is knowledge. You do not read or ask anyone for knowledge, you simply pay a few dollars to see a movie about North American history told by white North Americans. What do you think your mind is going to do? Eat it all up. Now imagine instead of being hungry you are emaciated. This is not a dramatic analogy of black history and culture but a realistic one. We are so hungry for food that we are at the point of being listless, wondering about this world like nomads and ready to eat anything and call anywhere “home” but our actual home. Many rely passively on pop culture to steer black culture. What would the world look like if occupied by a people who can admit, “I may live here now but my ancestral home is beyond the Atlantic, along the African coast”? How would we be as a people if we simply acknowledged that we were brought to the Americas by European slavers for its settlers to settle the Americas and Caribbean, that we were not meant to stay but we are here now? What if your daughter was raised knowing that she is not only a member of your family but her lineage is of a tribe from the Cradle of Civilization? What if your child knew this from infancy? What if you moved from journey to journey knowing that you are a descendant from the Cradle of Civilization? What if we told the full story? That the precious metals and stones kings and queens adorn themselves with all over the world is from a royal land that could have only been adorned by God? Would this change the way you think and live in this world? Would that be enough food to sustain you? Would it make you hungry for more? Would you be able to sigh in relief? Would you finally understand what that thing is that is so wrong with this world?
IN CONCLUSION, THIS IS NOT THE CONCLUSION
It is amazing what knowledge and conditioning can do to an individual. It molds the person and their psyche. It molds their world both physically and psychologically and determines how they interact with it. It destroys them and saves them. It provides a fountain to draw from when our challenges seem insurmountable. It also creates one of the greatest tools in history for an individual to succeed, precedent. You can’t tell me that I can’t own a media empire, Oprah does. You can’t tell me that I can’t be a leader within my country, Obama was. You can’t tell me that we are not kings and queens of a royal lineage, this is exactly our heritage. You can’t tell me I can’t start a revolution, Toussaint L’ouverture did this in Haiti (1791-1804) [5]. This is our precedent. The broken black spirit was mended a long time ago but we just didn’t know it, but even if we missed the memo there is precedent in our immediate history. We’ve been reliving a past passage in chains through choppy seas over and over again. So now as we emerge on the other end of this essay what do we say of this phenomenon called “blackness”? You can’t fully explain the magic that is me unless you are me. Because I am black, I am magic and I am real. You can’t tell me that I’m not in a middle passage in my life because I am, but I’m not lying quietly in my chains, subservient and scared of getting whipped or thrown overboard, because we’ve died hundreds of times in our lifetimes. I’m raging mad and screaming at the top of my lungs because my truth is the exact same truth that I see in your eyes, that we shouldn’t even be on this damn ship.
Over three million African slaves survived The Middle Passage and it wasn’t so that we can relive it in our minds and souls every day. Choose to be black and free.
If you’re still in a Middle Passage acknowledge it, grab as many as you can and then get off the ship.
Nastassia S. Pratt
Black Aristocrat
REFERENCES:
a. The Middle Passage, 2012, Jeffrey Meris, Cotton on Wood Installation Piece, 200″ x 180. For Transforming Spaces 2012, National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. Image credit, Jackson Petit.
1. Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America. Oxford University Press, 2007, New York, U.S.A.
2. Craton, Michael & Saunders, Gail. Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People. Volume 1: From Aboriginal Times to the End of Slavery. University of Georgia Press, 1992, Georgia, U.S.A.
3. Dames, Candia. Hard Sell: What reason is there to want more of Christie? The Nassau Guardian, March 22, 2017. Web: http://www.thenassauguardian.com/national-review/71991-hard-sell
4. Geggus, David. Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History. Hackett Publishing Company, 2014, IN, U.S.A.
The Black Aristocrats © 2017
The Black Aristocrats 