Every year on August 1st, many of the nations which were former European colonies observe this day as Emancipation day. It is done to commemorate the emancipation of the enslaved people of African descent from their European colonizers.
And here in Belize, like other former British colonies, slavery was a reality.
To remember the social and cultural ills that come with that heritage, the UBAD Educational Foundation and the Image Factory Art Foundation invited a locally respected historian and UB lecturer to host a community talk on the Zoom online platform. That virtual community talk was called Free Yu Mind, and this historian was able to fully present a Belizean perspective of slavery, and how it has fueled racism that still exists in this country today. The organizers felt that the historian's Belizean take on slavery and racism was such an important lesson, that they produced an E-book version of the Free Yu Mind talk.
That e-book was officially launched today, and we spoke with Yasser Musa, the Director of the Image Factory Art Foundation. Here's how he explained, via videoconference, why he is hoping that Belizeans will take advantage of this publication, which is absolutely free:
Yasser Musa - Image Factory Art Foundation
"We're very excited, the Image Factory Art Foundation, in collaboration with the U-BAD Educational Foundation, to be able to release this e-book called Free Yu Mind. It's a 23-page book that is really a kind of transcript of a community talk that was delivered by Dr. Aondofe Iyo, better known as Aondofe "Joe" Iyo, a former University of Belize lecturer. He gave this presentation as a zoom talk. It was open to the public, and the significance of it is it was done on the 1st of August 2020, exactly a month ago, which, as you know, is the acknowledgment of Emancipation Day across the Caribbean. So, really, we're very excited now that we're able to put together the transcript of his talk and make it available to the public for them to read."
"In an hour or so, or less, Aondofe Iyo did a remarkable thing. He was able to compress a lot of big ideas surrounding the issue of the history of the idea of the black person."
"What Iyo did in this very short presentation, and now in book form, was mapped out. He's a historian, so you would expect that he did a kind of chronological mapping out from the antiquity days, hundreds of days, almost thousands of years ago of how Europeans define blackness and developed this idea that racism and hatred over the years, through economic oppression, through social oppression, right up into modern times."
"For the first time, a person has taken - in this case, Dr. Iyo - his time to map out this same racism development in Belize."
"So, the question now comes, well, who should read it? Well, I think anybody should read it, anybody that is interested in seeing how Belize, as a multi-cultural state, how do we recognize, acknowledge, and learn about our racist past, and not be sentimental, romantic, or try to cover it up and say, oh well, Belize isn't as racist as the States. That is irrelevant. What is relevant is to recognize the prejudices, and racist policies that have been both economic in its origins, and also social in the way people were seen."
"I think it's a huge value to - especially in my context - teachers. People who teach literature, history, and social studies should definitely read this and process it for themselves and have their own thoughts about what Dr. Iyo is presenting."
The E-Book can be downloaded for free at Image Factory's website at www.imagefactorybelize.com.
