Jillian Sunderland shares her private exploration of the consequences of colonialism on this First Particular person CBC Information column. [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.]
I’ve gone again to the bustling streets of Bridgetown, Barbados many instances, however I nonetheless really feel out of step with the rhythm of life. Regardless of it being my father’s homeland and the truth that I maintain twin Canadian and Barbadian citizenship, Bridgetown has by no means felt like house to me. Rising up in Canada, my father by no means inspired an curiosity in our Bajan roots. We prevented eating on conventional dishes of oxtail and pigs’ ft and didn’t take heed to the syncopated beat of calypso music.
As a substitute, in most of my childhood reminiscences, my father is wearing a three-piece go well with, reserved and quiet. His accent sounds extra British than the gentle rhythmic tones of the Creole dialect, extra colonizer than colonized. Relatively than regaling us with tales of his youth or sharing with us the wealthy cultural heritage of Barbados, he appeared intent on instilling in us the values of steely competitiveness, conformity, and laudation of authority. His affect continues to hang-out my educational work the place I generally fall into inflexible protection of guidelines and the established order regardless of not being a “actual” physician as he had hoped.
I assumed my father had turned his again on his life in Barbados and adopted Canadian customs to succeed as a Black immigrant in Canada, however that’s solely partly true. I now perceive that his assimilationist ambition stemmed from his upbringing when Barbados was nonetheless a loyal colony of the British Empire.
As soon as dubbed “Little England,” Barbados was Britain’s first slave colony and was underneath British rule from 1625 to 1966. Slavery within the Caribbean was distinctive in its brutality as plantation house owners selected to work the enslaved individuals to dying and determined it was extra worthwhile to purchase newly imported slaves than present for his or her survival. Earnings from these sugar plantations helped line the pockets of the English settlers and the monarchy.
Though slavery was abolished within the British Empire in 1834, Britain nonetheless dominated in Barbados till 1966 and endeavoured to “appropriate” the tradition of freed West African slaves. Entitled to attend colleges for the primary time, Black youths like my father wearing crisp college uniforms, had been taught “appropriate” deportment, English customs, and allegiance to the Royal Household. Via his formal training, my father inculcated British values and customs and have become deeply dedicated to the Crown. These had been the values he imparted to my brother and me.
But these distinctly English values didn’t insulate me from the racism I skilled rising up on the Canadian prairies. In my lily-white classroom, schoolmates nonetheless referred to as me “ape.” Lecturers insensitively commented on my tightly-coiled hair, upsetting audible laughter. “Buddies” rejected my occasion invites, claiming their mother and father had labelled me a “dangerous seed.” Regardless of sharing a typical Canadian upbringing, race nonetheless served as an insurmountable impediment to inclusion. This was the end result of British imperialism — and it adopted my household from Barbados to Canada.
Spurred on by a want for belonging, I go to Barbados typically and seek for traces of my household’s lineage. However I’ve been hampered by my father’s secrecy over his previous life and it’s compelled me to attempt to reconstruct my household’s historical past alone.
I managed to hint my lineage again to one in all my enslaved ancestors earlier than hitting one other wall of colonial legacy. Earlier than slavery was abolished, enslaved individuals had been stripped of their household names and compelled to tackle these of their English house owners — as in the event that they had been property to be owned.
In 2021, Barbados severed ties with Britain. It eliminated the Queen as its head of state and have become a republic. My father, being a person of custom, decried this transfer. He seemingly holds no sick emotions in direction of the Crown. In spite of everything, he believes his English-based training enabled him to advance and construct a profitable life as an Afro-Caribbean immigrant in Canada.
But in my thoughts, the brutality inflicted on my enslaved ancestors was too large a value to pay. Even after slavery ended, the imposition of British customs and training on my dad led to his alienation from his roots, customs and practices.
And whereas he might not really feel this loss, I actually do. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.cbc.ca/information/canada/first-person-colonization-my-family-1.6515342
[Shown above: Jillian Sunderland, as a toddler, sits in her dad’s lap in this photo taken in Winnipeg in 1995.]