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The time I spent with my Dutch Surinamese friends in Holland has triggered many feelings, reflections and insights. It was an illusive intuitive feeling in the early 1990’s that led me to pursue the goal of transformation and self-renewal as the way forward. I had no idea what this meant at the time but accepted the call to adventure. John Gardner makes the following observation:
We build our own prisons and serve as our own jail keepers, but I’ve
concluded that our parents and the society at large have a hand in
building our prisons. They create roles for us – and self-images – that
hold us captive for a long time.
Such was the case I had intuitively come to understand with the black
identity in Britain. I was trapped in a prison which was not just of
my own making. Consequently, my conscious and deliberate engagement
with the black experience in order to understand it so that I could
transform it was an inevitable part of the ‘call to adventure’. John
Gardner continues as follows:
The individual who is intent on self-renewal will have to deal with
ghosts of the past – the memory of earlier failures, the remnants of
childhood dramas and rebellions, accumulated grievances and resentments
that have long outlived their cause. Sometimes people cling to the
ghosts with something almost approaching pleasure, but the hampering
effect on growth is inescapable. As Jim Whitaker, who climbed Mount
Everest, said, “You never conquer the mountain. You only conquer
yourself.”
In Holland I was made even more aware of how important it is to be in
touch with one’s own history if we are to understand the present and
create conscious paths to the future. A paper on the colonial legacies
of Dutch migration by Hans van Amersfoort and Mies van Niekerk offered
really important insights into how Dutch immigration policy has
developed over the decades. As a British Caribbean colonial
(previously enslaved) migrant I am able to draw important parallels
between the Dutch immigration experience and that of the British.
Exploring the black experience in Britain was not an easy project,
especially as I had been unconsciously socialised and assimilated into
‘black British culture’, but it was vital to my learning. It is also
vital to descendants of enslaved Africans who wittingly and unwittingly
continue to be socialised into ‘black British culture’. To continue as
‘blacks’ in Britain means British Caribbean migrants are on the path of
not just being the ‘lost generations’ but possibly an extinct social
grouping because we have not worked with the ghosts of our past. As we
work with the ghosts of our past we also help others to work with their
ghosts, including exorcising shared ghosts, ensuring for us all a
better freer world in which to live. Again I quote John Gardner:
There’s a myth that learning is for young people. But as the proverb
says, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” The
middle years are great, great learning years. Even the years past the
middle years. I took on a new job after my 76th birthday and I’m still
learning.
Learn all your life. Learn from your failures. Learn from your
successes. When you hit a spell of trouble ask, “What is it trying to
teach me?” The lessons aren’t always happy ones, but they keep coming.
We learn from our jobs, from our friends and families. We learn by
accepting the commitments of life, by playing the roles that life hands
us (not necessarily the roles we would have chosen). We learn by
growing older, by suffering, by loving, by taking risks, by bearing
with the things we can’t change.
These are important sentiments for all of us to keep in mind as we step into the New Year.
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Dutch African Caribbeans
By: Kweku (Registered) on 11-01-2009 15:34