Anybody who makes an argument using fake facts and slurs proves that they have no argument. It is therefore not surprising that the Caribbean Freedom Project (CFP) and the Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) did both in their statement about why the coat of arms should be changed.
It would be tiresome to refute this tendentious document in full. Three points will suffice: 1. The CFP/ESC writes that the official description of the coat of arms says: ‘Columbus’s three ships ( Santa Maria, La Pinta, and La Niña)’.
In fact, the official description, which can be found on the NALIS website, is: ‘in base three ships of the period of Christopher Columbus also gold the sails set proper’. Risibly, the CFP/ESC then goes on to refute its own falsehood, stating (correctly) that ‘neither the Santa Maria, the Pinta, nor the Niña played any part in Columbus’s third voyage in 1498’.
2. The CFP/ESC says the coat of arms ‘is a symbol of white supremacy and genocide’. White supremacy as a concept was not invented until centuries after Columbus landed in the Americas.
The Europeans considered themselves superior to most of the other peoples they met (not so much China or India), not because of race, but because of their technological superiority and Christian religion. As for ‘genocide’, that requires intentional action to wipe out a race, which was never the colonisers’ intention since disease and forced labour were the main causes of mass deaths among the Amerindians.
3. The CFP/ESC becomes hyperbolic about what it calls the ‘damnable consequences’ of Columbus’s arrival. Yet the descendants of Africans and Indians in the Americas today are better off by most key metrics-infant mortality, GDP per capita, and education levels-than their ancestors who were not taken or did not emigrate.
Finally, it is not surprising that the CFP/ ESC titles its document ‘Time to tell the truth’.
Using the word ‘truth’ is standard strategy for ideologues who do the opposite.
Kevin Baldeosingh Freeport
Responses