The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Within days of Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis’ announcement of a forthcoming Vaccination Day for fully vaccinated Bahamians – in which the state will unwittingly carry out discriminatory measures against unvaccinated Bahamians – the United States Congress passed legislation which officially recognises June 19 as a federal holiday. In Congress, 415 lawmakers voted in favour of the holiday, while 14 Republicans voted against the bill. The holiday is named Juneteenth, which was officially signed into law by President Joe Biden on June 17.

Juneteenth is now the 11th federal holiday in the United States, with Martin Luther King, Jr Day, ironically, being the tenth.

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger announced to a group of African American slaves that the Civil War was over that they were now free. Juneteenth came approximately two months after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at the hands of a Confederate sympathiser named John Wilkes Booth. A legend in his own right, Lincoln unfortunately has been excoriated by certain African American historians, such as the late Lerone Bennett, Jr, author of Before the Mayflower. I view Juneteenth as the fulfilment of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.

Jim Crow, named after a condescending stage minstrel play by Thomas Dartmouth Rice, was a system aimed at undermining, not only the Emancipation Proclamation, but also Reconstruction and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

Amazingly, the repressive system of Jim Crow would span a century, from about 1865 to 1968. Its legislative demise was due to the Brown vs the Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

The gist of the court ruling and the three legislations is that discrimination against Black people is unconstitutional.

In the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, who was also a slaveholder, all men are created equal. Jim Crow was aimed at severely restricting the civil liberties of the newly freed slaves, while Confederates worked feverishly in implementing segregation barriers throughout the Deep South.

African Americans who defied Jim Crow faced violence, and in many cases, death via lynching. Jim Crow was state sponsored discrimination carried to its logical conclusion. African Americans were made to feel inferior to White people.

Minnis’ Vaccination Day, while I understand what he’s attempting to accomplish, is an eerie reminder of Jim Crow, albeit a mild form.

I honestly believe that this Free National Movement (FNM) government is under duress from powerful external forces to achieve herd immunity, or else.

While Biden has gone on record in stating that COVID-19 vaccination will not be mandatory, he has declared that June is a month of action to get more Americans vaccinated by Independence Day, July 4, in order to enjoy the so-called summer of freedom. Biden’s inducements sounds similar to what Minnis is proposing.

As I have argued in this space before, The Bahamas, as a developing country with just 400,000 people, is simply not in the position to flex its muscle at Washington.

With Agriculture Minister Michael Pintard’s recent revelation in the House of Assembly that The Bahamas annually imports $1 billion worth of food, that underscores this country’s inability to play geopolitical hardball with the United States, China, Russia and the European Union.

We cannot feed ourselves, nearly half a century after achieving independence. The White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could easily starve us into submission.

The purpose of Vaccination Day, in my opinion, is to encourage unvaccinated Bahamians to take the AstraZeneca vaccine. The Minnis administration seems to believe that unvaccinated Bahamians will be motivated to get the jab, once they see their vaccinated colleagues enjoying privileges that would be illegal for them to enjoy.

What’s more, the FNM’s apparent planned use of the Royal Bahamas Police Force and the Defense Force to police Vaccination Day is another eerie reminder of Confederate police officers and former Civil War veterans utilising the government apparatus to discriminate against tax-paying African American citizens during Jim Crow. Vaccination Day will be a day when the state engages in the prejudicial treatment of tax-paying unvaccinated Bahamians, who have legitimate concerns about vaccines which have yet to be officially approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

The question now is, after Vaccination Day, what next? What other discriminatory means will be used to nudge wavering Bahamians to take the vaccine? For unvaccinated Bahamians, the pressure will continue to mount, as it did for African Americans during the embryonic phase of Jim Crow in 1865.

To me, Vaccination Day is just another manifestation of what I call COVID-19 Jim Crow.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama,

June 17, 2021.