TURNING THE TIDE

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TURNING THE TIDE

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Title: TURNING THE TIDE

1
TURNING THE TIDE

Peter Scott Blackman
C.E.O. The Afiya Trust
peter.blackman_at_afiya-trust.org
Tel 020 7582 0400

2
Please make note of the following website for
fresh and helpful information concerning
racial/cultural psychology look
upwww.roberttcarterassociates.com For a novel
insight into stereotyping please search on the
internet for Implicit Association Tests

Turning the Tide the report on the 2005
national conference of the BME Mental Health
Network is available from The Afiya Trust for
4.99

Contemporary Black and Minority Ethnic mental
health and criminal justice figures are not just
very worrying, they are atrocious.
Those concerning to the young African, Caribbean
population are particularly unacceptable.
As successive generations come of age, we are
incubating and reiterating the crisis. And black
families, generation after generation, watch as
the lives of our loved ones are destroyed.
This curse is epidemic in our community. Our
parents, our children, our brothers and sisters,
cousins, nephews, nieces, our friends, hardly a
black family is untouched.
If these same statistics concerned white people,
loud alarms would have long ago declared a
national emergency.

Mental health studies in the Caribbean showed the
incidence of acute psychotic diagnoses in
Trinidad and Barbados was lower than within the
UK black African, Caribbean population and no
higher than within the wider, general population
of the UK.
This suggests there is an active and selective
environmental determinant within the UK that can
drive black people mad.

To understand the present it is necessary to know
the past.
Todays unacceptable BME statistics, above all
those for the African, Caribbean population, have
their source in the legacy of centuries of
chattel slavery and imperial colonialism. The
typical socialised European view of black people
is a fiction concocted from the traditions of
slave traders and slaveholders.

The insult of that legacy is the unremitting
psychosocial and economic oppression that, my
people suffer today, in the face of socially
assumed white privilege.
Todays appalling BME mental health and criminal
justice statistics reflect the black mans
struggle to make it in a white world.
This is also my struggle.

The French government recently declared May 10th
as a national day of remembrance for victims of
slavery. The French President, Jacques Chirac
stated
A countys grandeur means it must take
responsibility for all its history, with its
pages of glory as well as its periods of shadow.
Slavery fed racism. When people tried to justify
the unjustifiable, that was when the first racist
theories were elaborated. Racism is a crime of
the heart and the spirit, which is why the memory
of slavery remains a living wound for some of our
fellow citizens.

The Church of England also recently voted to
apologise to the descendants of victims of the
slave trade. They recognised they were at the
heart of it, were directly responsible for
what happened and acknowledged the dehumanising
and shameful consequences.

We need our Prime Minister to apologise to the
world and to the British BME population for the
role Britain played in the chattel slave trade
and for the damage and blight its legacy still
brings to modern day BME families.
This would be a positive step towards healing the
suppurating societal lesions that lead to the
unacceptable figures. It presents an opportunity
for the Prime Minister to do something positive.
By demonstrating genuine humility, an apology
would help to alleviate the current climate of
BME anger and resentment.

People ask, why should we apologise today for
crimes other people committed so long ago? The
slave trade was abolished 200 years ago. This is
the 21st century, so why keep dragging up the
past?
Well, for many of us, even in 2006, that past is
inescapable. My very name Peter Scott Blackman is
a slave label. This is true of the vast majority
of African, Caribbean people with European
surnames. Slaves were property. They were given
the mark of their owners. Our original African
titles were stripped from us.
Scott, my mothers maiden name, denotes that a
plantation owner called Scott owned her African
ancestors enslaved in Jamaica. Likewise, Blackman
denotes that a slave owner called Blackman owned
my fathers ancestors. Scott Blackman is the mark
and brand of chattel ownership.
Thus the legacy of oppression began. It involved
the complete and thorough degradation of the
African and their descendants. That legacy still
thrives today deep within in the collective
subconscious of modern Europe.

How do modern Western European societies value
people of colour?
And how did those values arise?
Where is the psychic toxin of racism rooted?
Lets take a quick look at just one example from
the story of sugar.

The following quotes are from Seeds of Change -
Five plants that transformed mankind by Henry
Hobhouse (1985)

the sugar story how an unnecessary food
became responsible for the Africanisation of the
Caribbean
one ton represented the lifetime sugar
production of one slave who had been captured,
manacled, chained again on board ship, sold on
the island market, and then naturalised to the
conditions of the Caribbean (seasoned).
on average, for (the sugar consumption of)
every 250 English men, women, and children a
black died every year.
Every ton represented a life. Every teaspoonful
represented six days of a slaves life.
It wasthe first time in history that one race
had been uniquely selected for a servile role.

..The novel feature of this particular slave
trade was not only that the slaves were Negroes
and the traders were white, but that a whole new
mythology grew up to justify the industry. The
Negroes were the children of Ham, and therefore
were unworthy of consideration as human beings
free white men could not be expected to work in
the sugar plantations the Negro was discouraged
from becoming a Christian, and forbidden to read
and write, so that he could continue to be
regarded as hardly human. These theories became
accepted within two generations of the first ship
load of slaves arriving in Lisbon in 1443, and
were perhaps necessary to blunt mens minds to
this monstrous aberration in the history of the
western world.

Financial accounts from sugar plantations in
Barbados, the birthplace of my late father, show
clearly that black people were counted in with
the beasts.

The following quote from A True Exact
History of Barbadoes by Richard Ligond
(1657) is an entry from the planters
annual account

17
(No Transcript)
18

As also for the moderate decays of our Negres,
Horses, and Cattle,
notwithstanding all our Recruits by breeding all
those kinds - 500
There were also huge differentials in annual
allowances made for clothing
Annual clothing for 30 white servants
164.40
Annual clothing for 100 black slaves
35.00
That is
For each white servant 5.48
For each black slave 0.35
Thus black African humanity was valued at around
1/16th the value of white
European humanity, i.e. each white servant was
worth 16 black people.

The degradation of African peoples was codified
by academia.
The quotes that follow are sampled from a
lecture delivered by Georg Wilhem Freidrich Hegel
(1770 -1831). They demonstrate the approach of
learned 19th century Europeans to Africa.

Hegel was perhaps the greatest of the German
philosophers.
Hegel thought the role of philosophical science
was to link the development of the rational
powers of the human mind to lived experience.
He taught that reality is absolute mind, reason
or spirit, made manifest in history and human
affairs.
One of my favourite sentences, the whole is far
greater than the sum of its parts had its roots
in Hegels teachings.
Perhaps no thinker since Kant has had a
comparable influence on European philosophy, art,
religion, and literature.

During 1822-83, at the age of 52, just 9 years
before the end of his life, Hegel held the Chair
of Philosophy at the University of Berlin. When
introducing a course on The Philosophy of
History, this is what he taught his students
about the people of Africa.

The Negro exhibits the natural man in his
completely wild and untamed state. We must lay
aside all thought of reverence and morality all
that we call feeling if we would rightly
comprehend him, there is nothing harmonious with
humanity to be found in this type of character.
Cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary
and proper. Among us instinct deters from itBut
with the Negro this is not the case, and the
devouring of human flesh is altogether consonant
with the general principles of the human race to
the sensual Negro, human flesh is but an object
of sense mere flesh.

Among the Negroes moral sentiments are quite
weak, or more strictly speaking, non-existent
Through the pervading influence of slavery all
those bonds of moral regard which we cherish
toward each other disappear, and it does not
occur to the Negro mind to expect from others
what they are enabled to claim.

It is manifest that want of self control
distinguishes the character of the Negroes. This
condition is capable of no development or
culture, and as we see them at this day, such
have they always been .The only essential
connection that has existed and continued between
the Negroes and the Europeans is that of
slaveryWe may conclude slavery to have been the
occasion of the increase of human feeling among
the Negroes.

Africais no historical part of the world, it
has no movement or development to exhibit.
Historical movements in it that is the northern
part belong to the Asiatic or European
worldEgypt does not belong to the African
Spirit. What we properly understand by Africa, is
the unhistorical, undeveloped spirit still
involved in the conditions of mere nature, and
which had to be presented here only as on the
threshold of the worlds history.

In like manner in universities throughout Europe,
the indigenous, African disciplines of communal
and spiritual management, philosophic conviction,
worship and law making were mocked by academia
and misrepresented as so much superstitious
clap-trap.
European distortion globally promoted a
generalised view of traditional black African
cultural life as an object of contempt. It was
depicted as a manifestation to be associated with
fear, fecklessness and bizarre life-threatening
rituals.

For example, common English usage of the term
Mumbo Jumbo is associated with gibberish and
meaningless nonsense.
Mumbo-jumbo /.... n. (pl. -jumbos) 1 meaningless
or ignorant ritual. 2 language or action intended
to mystify or confuse. 3 an object of senseless
veneration. Mumbo Jumbo, a supposed African
idol - (The Concise Oxford Dictionary 9th
Edition, 1995)

Yet, the truth is that Mumbo-Jumbo is a Mandingo
phrase from West Africa. It refers to a spiritual
leader who protects his people from evil.
This relates to the ancient, sophisticated
African spiritual community of stiltdancers, who
practise their art in Africa and the Caribbean to
this day.
In the Caribbean this practice survives largely
as a carnival masquerade called Mocko Jumbi.
Jumbi means spirit in the Caribbean and
Mocko refers to a doctor who cures illness and
who also sees' in the spiritual sense.
In action, the colourful, fourteen feet tall
Mocko Jumbi stilt dancers seem to defy gravity.
Whirling and twirling precariously, they bend
over backwards and stumble as if about to fall
all to the pulsing, hypnotic rhythms of the Mocko
Jumbi drummers.
It is a very spiritual art that represents the
balance between this world and the next

Please bear in mind the profound impact Hegel and
others had on modern European thinking.
Echoes of the academic codification of crass
ignorance and frank racist domination still
resonate today in contemporary mainstream
thinking.
The BME populations bear the oppressive burden of
coercion and suffering that results from this.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the
disproportionate over representation and
treatment of the African, Caribbean population in
our mental health and criminal justice systems.
And the proposed contentious Mental Health Bill
will serve to further reinforce the relentless
racist intimidation.

As young black adults reach puberty and grow away
from the relative shelter and nurturing
protection of school and family, they are
increasingly exposed to more and more explicit
racism and prejudicial treatment.
In my view, and relating to my own personal
experience, this is a significant contributory
factor to the high rate of, apparently sudden
unpredicted onset of crises among BME young
adults.

As they explore their independence in society,
most BME young people become aware that racism in
the wider populace can frustrate their most
fundamental life aspirations.
Experiences of racism, at this point in their
lives, become inescapable, concrete and upfront
personal.
This almost invariably leads to sensations of
dysphoric confusion.

For young BME British who were socialised to
self-identify as English, it is shocking to be
faced suddenly with the fact that you do not
really belong
That you are disinherited of those privileges
that are the naturally assumed inheritance of
the white British social family
That you are denied things the dominant
population takes for granted.

You discover that doors open to your white
friends are politely shut in your face.
That you must now work twice hard and be twice as
good as them to (if then) receive the same level
of recognition.
You learn on all fronts to anticipate
discrimination and rejection.
Thus young BME British people have to come to
terms with the fact that UK society has a
duplicitous morality that really is divided along
black (punishment) and white (reward) lines.

It is well known within black British society
that our young people, when internalising this
reality, often go through a process of critical
and very distressing self-confrontation. This can
lead to the discovery of a strong and resilient
new Black Self. It can also lead to serious,
often life threatening mental health and/or
criminal justice crises.
Few black families in Britain are free of
complications generated through this negative
experience.
It is a stage in black British life that has, to
date, been largely ignored by the establishment
and one that must be taken seriously into account
by both mental health and educational services.

The diversity of British BME social cultures and
their variable levels of access to supportive
social capital will cause such coming of age
crises to present in different forms and levels
of severity.
Thus mental service providers need to take
account of diverse imported and indigenous
cultural, religious, linguistic and social mores,
as well as issues of social class, single parent
families and other social pressures.
Service providers need to reflect on the
importance of such factors and how they might
affect individual experiences (in both service
user and provider), and thus the perception,
presentation and interpretations of such
distress. A system is needed that can interact
with the community.
The Delivering Race Equality programme is a
first significant step in that direction.

It must also be noted that social factors, being
dynamic, constantly evolve over time.
Unfortunately British racism, although it too
evolves with time, is a constant factor
distressing the well being of BME populations.
It is important for white people to recognise
that you too have been observed from a BME
viewpoint.
More than fifty years ago my late father penned
the following words. Unfortunately for us they
still ring true today.

This is a quote from The True Negro written in
1953 by Peter MacFarren Blackman (1908 -1993)
That offensive person, the vain, swashbuckling
arrogant white man, the scourge of our epoch who
struts across the world setting his skin in the
face of the nations and claiming their awed
submissionis a product of bourgeois industrial
technique. His extravagant claims and equally
extravagant cruelties have kept pace with this.
Today he brandishes the atom crying bow down or
burn, his aim the peoples obliteration or
obeisance. Experience teaches he gets neither.

Perhaps you feel this is offensive commentary
that it is too harsh a judgement.
You may say that too was all in the past 21st
century British society has since moved on.
You may think that such views are not appropriate
that they do not reflect modern Europe. I
disagree. More than 50 years have passed, and as
we speak today, its still happening.

The pejorative ideas about BME peoples were
codified and made universal.
Even today they resonate deep within the European
collective subconscious as a powerful subsonic,
subterranean rumble.
They play a significant, active role in the
socialisation and personality development of all
modern Europeans.
As such they contribute to the racial identity
profiles of every white and BME person growing up
in Europe.
Our current racial-cultural psychological and
racial-cultural socio-political difficulties are
embedded in peoples' socialisation and
personality development.
These problems are profound and very pervasive.
They affect each one of us and infiltrate every
aspect of our society.

Thus mental health professionals have a unique
opportunity and power to truly catalyse genuine
social change.
However this can only happen if, and only if,
they learn how to understand and cope with the
racial influences in their own lives and in the
lives of their service users.
Even relatively minor changes can have amplified
and positive outcomes.
In this context, wherever we refer to cultural
issues or cultural competence we need to
expand the term to refer to racial and cultural
issues, or racial/cultural competency.
When we refer to culture only, it negates the
profundity of our predicament.

I quote from Robert T. Carter (The Influence of
Race and Racial Identity in Psychotherapy -
1995)
One might argue that, in part, race has become
less salient because mental health clinicians,
scholars, and researchers are more comfortable
examining presumed cultural and ethnic issues.
Many writers seem to suggest that race is
included within analyses and explanations of
culture and ethnicity. I contend that race is not
understood when culture and ethnicity are assumed
to encompass racial issues. When race is subsumed
in ethnic and cultural phenomena, our
history.our current socio-political climate, and
the operations of our institutions are ignored.
Emphasis on ethnicity and culture, particularly
when it is grounded in broad definitions of
culture, obscures how central race isin the
delivery of mental health services, and in
psychotherapeutic encounters.

It is very important to take this into account.
We are helping to set the future agenda for
progressing mental health outcomes for Britains
BME population.
An apology from the Prime Minister for Britains
role in the slave trade would have significant
influence.
The time is right.
On a universal scale, such a demonstration of
good will would undoubtedly contribute towards an
improved mental health status for Black and
Minority Ethnic Britons.
To achieve this, the Prime Minister could take
advantage of the bicentenary in 2007 of the Slave
Trade Act (1807) that marked the abolition of the
slave trade.
It would mark a significant step towards the
turning of the tide. It would also go a long way
towards reclaiming the Union Jack flag from the
extremely racist British National Party.