654 Kincaid, Jamaica
natives a “commodity,” is an ugly human being to
those being commodified.
Poor people, people like the native Antiguans
(the descendants of slaves), distrust capitalism, com-
modification, and the wealth that both can bring,
because the rise of capitalism in the Western world
is a direct result of the slave trade, a fact that is
omitted from history books. As slaves, the natives
of Antigua were not the capitalists, but quite liter-
ally the capital, the commodity that was traded and
made the white capitalists wealthy. Nothing the
author can imagine can ever make up for this centu-
ries-long commerce in human flesh that is her only
heritage. Commerce has robbed her of her country,
her language, and her culture. She can never know
from what part of Africa her ancestors came, what
language they spoke, what customs they had. She
can write only in the capitalist’s language, study the
capitalist’s version of history, and try to express her
great grief and rage that wealthy whites still do not
recognize the magnitude of their crimes and still see
and treat black inhabitants of third-world nations as
intellectual and cultural inferiors.
Barbara Z. Thaden
JuStice in A Small Place
There is no justice in a small place for those who
live there permanently, at least for the vast major-
ity of those who are the descendants of slaves. The
essay begins with the injustice of the natives having
to endure, still, the wealth and arrogance and igno-
rance of their former enslavers and colonizers, whose
descendants are now visiting as “tourists.” For the
white, wealthy tourist Antigua is an island paradise,
while for its natives it is an island prison.
There is injustice in the fact that the former
oppressors still own all the profits of their cruelty
and ruthlessness. The white nations still possess
the wealth created by enslaving Africans and using
their free labor to enrich themselves. There is cer-
tainly no justice in seeing that, even in post-colonial
Antigua, the wealthiest inhabitants are still white
or foreign or both, while the “natives” to whom the
country now supposedly belongs still live in the
most humble poverty. There is no justice in the
main source of legal income being tourism, white
tourism, where the role of the black Antiguan is to
be the perfect servant and where the perfect edu-
cation is being a graduate of the celebrated Hotel
Training School.
Living under a freely elected, inefficient, corrupt
black government and knowing that the former
white rulers are saying, “We told you so,” is a bitter
injustice, as is the fact that the only way to become
rich in Antigua is to be a corrupt government offi-
cial, one whose wealth comes from being bribed by
those who have money. Drug dealers and white for-
eigners buy up the land and build things only tour-
ists and foreigners can enjoy, like condominiums,
gambling casinos, and private clubs.
There is no justice in the descendants of slaves
being robbed of their native language and their
native culture and religion so that they have only
the oppressor’s language in which to complain,
the oppressor’s God to pray to, and the oppressor’s
history (in which they play no discernible part) by
which to understand their place in the world. There
is no justice in being forced to memorize a his-
tory in which all the heroes are really your greatest
enemies—those who discovered lands to conquer,
their Indian populations to eliminate and replace
with African slaves, to create empires and enrich
themselves at the expense of everything you and
your ancestors ever had. And nothing imaginable
can ever make up for this greatest of all injustices,
the enslaving of an entire race and the erasing of
their entire history and culture, creating a com-
modity out of people who once had a language and
a culture of their own but for centuries were not
allowed even to own their children, much less speak
their own language or practice their own religion.
“Even if I really came from people who were living
like monkeys in trees,” writes Kincaid, “it was better
to be that than what happened to me, what I became
after I met you.”
Injustice is apparent everywhere in Antigua—in
the identities of those who own the grand mansions
(corrupt government officials, drug lords, whites)
and in the way the average black Antiguan is forced
to live. Roads are in disrepair, schools are so ill-
kept that they look like a row of latrines covered in
dust, sewage is dumped directly into the Caribbean
because the island has no sewage system, and the
only hospital on the island is in such a state of filth