http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,104814.html
Khafra Kambon reflects on the struggles of African people
By CAROL MATROO Sunday, August 2 2009
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The
Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ended slavery in the British Empire on
August 1, 1834, and Trinidad and Tobago was the first country in the
world to declare a national holiday to commemorate the abolition of
slavery.
And while positive steps have been
made during the years to erase the stigma of segregation and oppression
against blacks in society, chairman of the Emancipation Support
Committee, Khafra Kambon, believes that there is much left to be done.
A well known national figure in TT since 1970 when he was one of the leaders of the Black Power Movement, which brought positive social and economic changes to the country and stimulated changes throughout the English-speaking Caribbean, Kambon said there was hope for change, but there was also need for education.
“We are trying to get this across against the weight of the school system...against the weight of the media. We don’t, in our own capacity, do a fraction of what needs to be done because you are trying to correct something that is deeply engraved,” he said during an interview at his Carenage home.
“We are up against a serious weight in the way in which information is manipulated in the world. It’s hard and that’s why I think we have done well, given what we are up against; but if you want to ask me about the total picture, there is so much more that has to be done. We have to go deeper into accepting our African heritage and it’s all about what you’re up against,” Kambon said.
Christened Dave Darbeau by his parents, at 25-years-old he legally changed his name to Khafra Kambon which, he said, had to do with his understanding and the need to reverse the things he considered were negative in history. Khafra is an historical name from a pharaoh of Egypt while Kambon means “of the people”.
He said when his fore-parents were forcibly brought to this country, they were not allowed to maintain their given names, a process, he said, that was part of stripping them of their identities.
“It was something conscious and meant to be oppressive... it was meant to destroy people mentally and psychologically. Now that we can think for ourselves we are free to make the decision about whether we want names that identify us as part of history as opposed to something that was imposed by someone else,” Kambon said.
He said the Black Power Movement in TT was not only about the blacks, but also East Indians, adding that it was a different struggle to that in the United States. “In the US it was the African-American community. Then it came into the Caribbean where people adopted it and adapted it and took that as non-white, so black was taken in that political sense. The reason we were talking about black power was because we were struggling against white power,” Kambon explained.
He said his awareness of the struggles of Africans began as a young man while attending the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, where he developed an awareness of what was happening globally.
“I was a very political person and I had a sense of ideology because I read a lot. I knew the conflicts between communism, capitalism...Then I had a strong social conscience and I got involved in groups that had a social purpose,” he said.
Kambon was co-founder of the group PIVOT which brought together various artistes, writers and academics and later became part of the New World Group (NWG) which was made up of mainly university lecturers and professors throughout the Caribbean.
The NWG, Kambon said, felt that they needed to make their own analysis of their society instead of just accepting what was offered by others.
He said the Black Power Movement began under the banner of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), which was formed in 1969.
“NJAC did more than any other organisation to resuscitate a sense of African identity in the society and the Black Power Movement encouraged a revitalisation of Indian culture. You look at the programmes of NJAC in that period and you’d see a number of issues that were taken up, some of them had to predominantly do with Indian communities.
“I remember when an African child brought bake to school they would eat it comfortably, but if an Indian child brought roti they would hide to eat it. They were embarrassed... If you got into a taxi and the driver was playing Indian music, he would switch it off out of deference because he thought I wouldn’t want to listen to Indian music.
“In 1970 the Black Power Movement changed all that because we were saying that blacks do appreciate other cultures and that hindered people from those embarrassments, which were not healthy embarrassments,” Kambon said.
He said during the 1960’s people were becoming more politically conscious, where young
people were becoming conscious of a world based on injustice and oppression and wanted a new world.
Kambon said it was a period of bold thought and action, a time where the dominant ethos was one of possibility.
“It wasn’t just hope, it was a certainty that we were going to change the world,” he said.
He said the Emancipation Support Group, formed in 1992, was not a political group as was NJAC, but a coming together of a number of African-centred organisations which had a specific ethnic base.
“It was formed because one of the common things among these groups is that they had celebrations of emancipation, but it was small and scattered,” he said.
Kambon described as offensive the re-enactment of the landing of Christopher Columbus held in Moruga, a ceremony that took place on what was originally known as Discovery Day, and later changed to Emancipation Day.
“So here it is the person who brought disaster to the region being celebrated. It shows a complete lack of understanding of our history. If you mark that you’d mark it as tragedy, not as something that you celebrate,” he said.
So, do people understand what Emancipation Day really means, and has enough been done to help the people understand more?
“It is a dynamic process and not even a fraction of what needs to be done has been done or quite frankly do we have the capacity to do it. I think we have done a tremendous amount with very limited resources.
“One of the things done against Africans was to make us ‘anti-African history’ because we grew up with a sense that Africa was nothing, a backward place, so people don’t have a sense of African history.
“They know nothing about African history, they know nothing of what Africa was and they don’t learn that in school. Almost everything that you see or hear about Africa sort of confirms that this was a place of backwardness. And then when you see the modern images which are brought to us constantly, they are all negative,” Kambon said.
He said what was being taught in schools today and the knowledge being passed down through generations all told about Africans being inferior people.
“So inferior that we had to be glad for the culture of slavery because we could at least talk a European language, we could go to school and university and all that,” Kambon said.
He noted that African children sometimes, through their parents, are raised being made to feel inferior and therefore grow up denying their African roots.
“Some parents may imply to their children that they were ugly, not as pretty as a white child. They are mentally disfigured from an early age and it’s a very frightening thought. Until you get a whole lot of things working together to change that, you are in an uphill battle,” Kambon said.
However, he said there was still hope for change.
“The fact that you have a Barack Obama becoming president of the United States, you would be surprised how many mental shackles that in itself broke because, let us face it, most of us did not believe he could become president of the United States because of his colour. His brilliance was for everybody to see, his colour was an unsurpassable barrier,” Kambon said.
He said for the children who rarely felt that they would amount to worth, value or prominence in the society, Obama’s success was telling them that they could make it to the top.
“That is more than you could do with words. I am telling you, you’re going to have a round of successes of children who otherwise would have fallen through the cracks just as a result of that.
“Sometimes you under-perform because of what you think about yourself. If you don’t believe in your capacity, you don’t try, you don’t fight against the obstacles, you don’t fight against the difficulties.... Instead of it becoming a challenge to overcome, it becomes a confirmation,” Kambon noted.
A well known national figure in TT since 1970 when he was one of the leaders of the Black Power Movement, which brought positive social and economic changes to the country and stimulated changes throughout the English-speaking Caribbean, Kambon said there was hope for change, but there was also need for education.
“We are trying to get this across against the weight of the school system...against the weight of the media. We don’t, in our own capacity, do a fraction of what needs to be done because you are trying to correct something that is deeply engraved,” he said during an interview at his Carenage home.
“We are up against a serious weight in the way in which information is manipulated in the world. It’s hard and that’s why I think we have done well, given what we are up against; but if you want to ask me about the total picture, there is so much more that has to be done. We have to go deeper into accepting our African heritage and it’s all about what you’re up against,” Kambon said.
Christened Dave Darbeau by his parents, at 25-years-old he legally changed his name to Khafra Kambon which, he said, had to do with his understanding and the need to reverse the things he considered were negative in history. Khafra is an historical name from a pharaoh of Egypt while Kambon means “of the people”.
He said when his fore-parents were forcibly brought to this country, they were not allowed to maintain their given names, a process, he said, that was part of stripping them of their identities.
“It was something conscious and meant to be oppressive... it was meant to destroy people mentally and psychologically. Now that we can think for ourselves we are free to make the decision about whether we want names that identify us as part of history as opposed to something that was imposed by someone else,” Kambon said.
He said the Black Power Movement in TT was not only about the blacks, but also East Indians, adding that it was a different struggle to that in the United States. “In the US it was the African-American community. Then it came into the Caribbean where people adopted it and adapted it and took that as non-white, so black was taken in that political sense. The reason we were talking about black power was because we were struggling against white power,” Kambon explained.
He said his awareness of the struggles of Africans began as a young man while attending the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, where he developed an awareness of what was happening globally.
“I was a very political person and I had a sense of ideology because I read a lot. I knew the conflicts between communism, capitalism...Then I had a strong social conscience and I got involved in groups that had a social purpose,” he said.
Kambon was co-founder of the group PIVOT which brought together various artistes, writers and academics and later became part of the New World Group (NWG) which was made up of mainly university lecturers and professors throughout the Caribbean.
The NWG, Kambon said, felt that they needed to make their own analysis of their society instead of just accepting what was offered by others.
He said the Black Power Movement began under the banner of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), which was formed in 1969.
“NJAC did more than any other organisation to resuscitate a sense of African identity in the society and the Black Power Movement encouraged a revitalisation of Indian culture. You look at the programmes of NJAC in that period and you’d see a number of issues that were taken up, some of them had to predominantly do with Indian communities.
“I remember when an African child brought bake to school they would eat it comfortably, but if an Indian child brought roti they would hide to eat it. They were embarrassed... If you got into a taxi and the driver was playing Indian music, he would switch it off out of deference because he thought I wouldn’t want to listen to Indian music.
“In 1970 the Black Power Movement changed all that because we were saying that blacks do appreciate other cultures and that hindered people from those embarrassments, which were not healthy embarrassments,” Kambon said.
He said during the 1960’s people were becoming more politically conscious, where young
people were becoming conscious of a world based on injustice and oppression and wanted a new world.
Kambon said it was a period of bold thought and action, a time where the dominant ethos was one of possibility.
“It wasn’t just hope, it was a certainty that we were going to change the world,” he said.
He said the Emancipation Support Group, formed in 1992, was not a political group as was NJAC, but a coming together of a number of African-centred organisations which had a specific ethnic base.
“It was formed because one of the common things among these groups is that they had celebrations of emancipation, but it was small and scattered,” he said.
Kambon described as offensive the re-enactment of the landing of Christopher Columbus held in Moruga, a ceremony that took place on what was originally known as Discovery Day, and later changed to Emancipation Day.
“So here it is the person who brought disaster to the region being celebrated. It shows a complete lack of understanding of our history. If you mark that you’d mark it as tragedy, not as something that you celebrate,” he said.
So, do people understand what Emancipation Day really means, and has enough been done to help the people understand more?
“It is a dynamic process and not even a fraction of what needs to be done has been done or quite frankly do we have the capacity to do it. I think we have done a tremendous amount with very limited resources.
“One of the things done against Africans was to make us ‘anti-African history’ because we grew up with a sense that Africa was nothing, a backward place, so people don’t have a sense of African history.
“They know nothing about African history, they know nothing of what Africa was and they don’t learn that in school. Almost everything that you see or hear about Africa sort of confirms that this was a place of backwardness. And then when you see the modern images which are brought to us constantly, they are all negative,” Kambon said.
He said what was being taught in schools today and the knowledge being passed down through generations all told about Africans being inferior people.
“So inferior that we had to be glad for the culture of slavery because we could at least talk a European language, we could go to school and university and all that,” Kambon said.
He noted that African children sometimes, through their parents, are raised being made to feel inferior and therefore grow up denying their African roots.
“Some parents may imply to their children that they were ugly, not as pretty as a white child. They are mentally disfigured from an early age and it’s a very frightening thought. Until you get a whole lot of things working together to change that, you are in an uphill battle,” Kambon said.
However, he said there was still hope for change.
“The fact that you have a Barack Obama becoming president of the United States, you would be surprised how many mental shackles that in itself broke because, let us face it, most of us did not believe he could become president of the United States because of his colour. His brilliance was for everybody to see, his colour was an unsurpassable barrier,” Kambon said.
He said for the children who rarely felt that they would amount to worth, value or prominence in the society, Obama’s success was telling them that they could make it to the top.
“That is more than you could do with words. I am telling you, you’re going to have a round of successes of children who otherwise would have fallen through the cracks just as a result of that.
“Sometimes you under-perform because of what you think about yourself. If you don’t believe in your capacity, you don’t try, you don’t fight against the obstacles, you don’t fight against the difficulties.... Instead of it becoming a challenge to overcome, it becomes a confirmation,” Kambon noted.
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