Tell Me Again Why I Should Line Up Teeth Gleaming Arms Waving To Greet You?

Images of throngs of black bod­ies, gleam­ing white teeth (some not-so-white), arms wav­ing in greet­ing to Lilly-white for­eign­ers still set my teeth on edge, still man­age to get me nauseous.
And so it is in 2022 Trench Town Jamaica as William and Kate decid­ed it was in their inter­est to min­gle with the com­mon folk in the slums to show that they are cool and not liv­ing in a bubble.
Jamaica, a for­mer colony of the old British Empire, has always been a play­ground for the British Royals when­ev­er they need­ed to cool their heels, soak up some sun, or escape a scandal.
If it means being adored and held up as deities, free food, and the best accom­mo­da­tions, why would those free­load­ers not take advan­tage of the stu­pid colonists who con­tin­ue to idol­ize them?

It is impos­si­ble to sum­ma­rize or explain what Britain did to our ances­tors; no arti­cle or book can do that. It requires a life­time of study and research even to begin to under­stand the rav­ages of slav­ery on our ances­tors and the ensu­ing con­se­quences to us their descen­dants today.
Over four hun­dred years of geno­cide from which they prof­it­ed and grew fat. Demonic mur­ders, lust­ful rapes, bar­bar­ic sodomy, griev­ous assaults, venge­ful gen­i­tal muti­la­tions, sadis­tic feed­ing of black babies to alli­ga­tors are only a small part of the genocide.
From a psy­cho­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, they robbed us of our free­doms, dig­ni­ty, his­to­ry, wealth, auton­o­my, agency, and every­thing else they could take. They tram­pled us, poi­soned us, chopped off our heads, and did every­thing in their pow­er to ren­der us extinct.
But as queen Maya Angelo said so elo­quent­ly,’ we sur­vived, and still, we rise”.
Tell me again why I should line up teeth gleam­ing arms wav­ing to greet you? Who are you that I should be mind­ful of you?

A bat­tered and broke Great Britain jet­ti­soned Jamaica in 1962; pre­vi­ous colonies were dumped before and oth­ers after us under the guise of inde­pen­dence. From as far back as grade school, this hum­ble writer thought it odd that we had gained inde­pen­dence, yet we con­tin­ued to pledge alle­giance to a for­eign power.
After high school, I took the oath of a police offi­cer. I was again humil­i­at­ed that as I recit­ed that oath, I was pledg­ing my alle­giance to a for­eign hussy who sits around in a gild­ed cage in sin­ful opu­lence from the blood and tears of my ancestors.
I looked around my coun­try and saw pover­ty and des­per­a­tion; I say hope­less­ness, and that was only on the peo­ple’s faces.
There were no real roads across the coun­try; most peo­ple lived in abject pover­ty as I did. Hospitals were lit­tle more than clin­ics; schools were tiny cramped build­ings in which up to 12 class­es crammed into a sin­gle open space, where stu­dents com­pet­ed to learn amidst the din with­in that space.
Police sta­tions were rick­ety old roach and rat-infest­ed build­ings, from which offi­cers were expect­ed to offer secu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion to an impov­er­ished nation.
I looked around fur­ther, and I saw noth­ing pos­i­tive that I could take away from our asso­ci­a­tion with England so tell me again, why should my peo­ple stand in line to greet you?

England has nev­er hon­ored any real agree­ment com­mit­ment with Jamaica. Just as the United States has bro­ken every treaty, it entered into with Native and African-American peo­ple. Jamaicans went to England to help rebuild their coun­try after Hitler dec­i­mat­ed it with his blitzkrieg bomb­ing cam­paigns after the sec­ond world war. As so-called sub­jects of the crown, those Jamaicans had every right to believe the liars when they told them they were free to stay in that damp god-for­sak­en hole as cit­i­zens. As soon as the work was done and the num­ber of blacks start­ed to seem too high, we saw their inher­ent evil. They devised new laws and poli­cies that pulled the rug out from those hard-work­ing peo­ple and their descendants.
‘You are not a British cit­i­zen, and nei­ther are your chil­dren and grand­chil­dren born here.’
They emp­tied their jails and sent young black men back to Jamaica, a place they had nev­er seen before, a place they did not know. Old and young were put on a one-way flight back to Jamaica; get out; we have no use for you here.” Tell me again why I should wel­come you?

As for me, I have long called for our coun­try to untan­gle itself from the skirt tails of the British monar­chy. We were nev­er peo­ple they cared about except for exploita­tion pur­pos­es. I nev­er under­stood the Stockholm syn­drome; that kept black peo­ple lov­ing and ador­ing white peo­ple who con­tin­ue to cause them pain.
But for my con­cerns which are well known about los­ing access to the privy coun­cil in London, we are much bet­ter off going our own way.
Ending our annex­a­tion to Britain is long over­due; we have seen no ben­e­fits, and they refuse to pay repa­ra­tion to us, let them go their way, and we will go our own way.
We don’t want you here; if you wish to vis­it, do so as pay­ing tourists.
So says all of us.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.