The Tribune

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

CLASS and gender are always caught up in a myriad of power imbalances. We tend though to look at these in very simplistic ways.

We assume that because we are a self-governing country, we are free from most forms of control.

Well, the last few weeks have served to illustrate just how truly bound up in the old colonial, patriarchal masculinist dynamics of power and control we actually are.

Our ministers seem to see themselves as the embodiment of the master come back in a new skin to show how much power and control he still has.

The colonial master, much like the slave owner, saw fit and understood that he was empowered to rape and pillage as he wished. He owned bodies and they were expendable.

Such was the commodification of black bodies. Black bodies were used because they were seen as less valuable, worth nothing but a few dollars and could be bought and sold.

Black youth were owned and also seen as commodities that had no intrinsic value, but could be bartered according to the value placed on them by owners. Colour may say that we should all be equal, however, class and privilege and the need to use both to flex one’s muscles to demonstrate one’s power over, one’s position as overlord, means that many new masters have been created in black bodies.

Privilege affords many people the opportunity to abuse their position of relative power; this is patriarchal and often justifies one’s control over another.

Bell Hooks and Toni Morrison talk about these power dynamics, which resonate with Fanon and Camus, but also are shared with newer American writers like Cornel West, Angela Davis and a very recent writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his “Between the World and Me”.

One would think that such power imbalances would not occur in the Bahamas, however, they have become unchecked and blatantly celebrated by men behaving badly and throwing their privilege and the power it conveys around.

They destroy people in the name of being large and in charge. They care little for the damage their words and actions cause and celebrate their ability to be as thuggish as any gangster. This is their way of commanding respect. They use bullying as a tool of control.

In colonial days, men of a certain class could behave as badly as they wished without fearing repercussions. They were allowed to destroy black bodies because they held positions of relative wealth that endowed them with some power. This was often also given them by deed of gift of large parcels of a colonial backwater.

People seem to think that when July 10, 1973, came we suddenly threw off all the chains and shackles of colonialism and the history of slavery and indenture and external rule and with those, patriarchal masculinist and racists systems of oppression and control.

Sadly, we seem to have walked into the 21st century hauling these with us. It matters little that the masters of power are now a different colour, a different race or ethnicity; it matters little that they were once freedom fighters, liberation seekers and self-proclaimed empowerers of the masses. What matters is their grasp on power. When colonialism ended and the new majority rule government came to inhabit the house, they held on to the same vestiges of power and control employed by their predecessors. Each group of liberators has become progressively more control orientated and power hungry.

When we speak of masculine entitlement, we also seem to think that all men have the same access to that entitlement. This is far from the truth. We see that many young males see it as their right, their entitlement to have whatever consumerist ad tell them makes them a better man. If they have a flash car, they are a stronger, more masculine man. They will rob, rape, kill to be perceived as the top man. That only lasts for a very short time as the next strongest cock will risk limb and life to throw them off as soon as the tables are turned.

This is the law of nature in the ghettos, where there is little possibility to advance given the huge controls imposed from outside. The obvious glamour of cash richness and material prosperity are as attractive as the last Kalik in the desert. That is all that matters.

These young people who are denied an adequate education because of their class are usually fighters except in the ways that really matter. They will not fight for real empowerment that can be derived through education and knowledge, as well as the achievement of position outside of the ghetto, but rather for bling.

This desire for and view of success is engineered by mass media and advertising; this way they have control over populations as they sell them a lifestyle that is really empty but holds all the trappings of success and offers a life of endless debt and pleasure seeking.

It is especially geared towards the lower socio-economic groups who define themselves and are often defined by what they wear and have. While it was manufactured for a United States market, its appeal has become international and has been a big part of the globalisation movement. There is this emphasis on living in the now and dying young because that is what it is.

New Riot and MIA have songs that seem to fit the ethos of our time, “Live free, live fast, die young”.

This is practically an anthem that encapsulates what we are doing, especially the young men and women in Nassau’s lower-socioeconomic sectors. It is a romantic depiction of “thug life or no life”; war is cool, violence reigns and youth is the beginning and the end of life.

Ironically, national leaders now carry this same puffed-up swag with them. The youth see no promise in old age, so they act as they wish, no care for the consequences of their actions; those actions may be detrimental to themselves and destructive to those around, but live fast, die young is all that matters.

This attitude of “thug life or no life” has pervaded all levels of society. The upper classes that have locked many of the youth out of the possibility of power and influence unless through illicit avenues, have also apparently adopted this hard-boiled, John Wayne, gangster kind of ethos.

This is how we define masculinity, and we attach privilege to such behaviour, be it in men or in women.

The woman who posed with an automatic assault weapon and posted the picture on social media recently was acting this out. Her behaviour is not dissimilar to that of many politicians and leaders who use laws, policies and regulations (all of which are different, all of which need renewing and all of which are discriminatory), to disempower young black working-class males in particular, but females as well. When leaders get up in public and spew inflammatory statements they demonstrate contempt for their position and the public they are meant to be leading.

Thug life is not meant to be their life, they are supposed to have a certain amount of deportment and education that separates them and commands respect. Of late, their behaviour has commanded nothing but derision. They have used their masculine privilege within the local context to create examples of bad behaviour that are being followed by all levels of society.

How different is this entitlement that has caused such massive negative fallout as seen when a man decided to divert a plane filled with bodies we claim to wish to have lying on our beaches, paying our salaries. His entitlement and privilege allowed him to act in destructive ways that will have long-term repercussions on an entire nation, but our patriarchal leaders who believe in thuggery and bullying by virtue of their position have set the tone and are paving the road to hell with their “good” intentions.

When will we disavow ourselves of those old colonial, patriarchal, masculinist tools that control a hugely unequal society?