BASED on his response to my recent Commentary<$> (Mid-Ocean News<$>, April 12), it certainly seems the letter writer signing himself Veritas is a man under siege in a fortress that he built himself. It’s too bad that he is determined to force his daughter to share his lonely fate.It tells you something that in his joint response to me and the letter writer Caritas, he no longer talks about his daughter and his confession that he forbade her from attending the recent United Nations Decolonisation Committee meetings held in Bermuda. So in that respect, we do live on different planets. Veritas — yours is of the past and mine is of the future.

Well, I am never going to make any apologies for having read Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, which Veritas claims is a combination Bible-drill book for Bermudian Independence supporters.

As Veritas stated, it is an incendiary anti-colonial book. In fact I had to read it twice to get a clear understanding of the subject matter and the context in which it was written.

Fanon, a Martinique-born psychiatrist who fought in Algeria’s anti-colonial war against France in the 1950s also wrote another book, Black Skin, White Face, <$>which was most germane in me becoming well aware of the politics of race and colonialism in this world.

Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Face before he wrote Wretched of the Earth. Fanon had this to say in its introduction: “This book is concerned with the warping of the black psyche by a superior white culture.”

He believed that it is a senseless undertaking for the black man in today’s world to deny his blackness. That to do so is to pay a high psychological price in terms of affirming the black man’s perceived inferiority in a white-dominated world.

“I believe that the fact of the juxtaposition of the white and black races has created a massive psycho-existential complex,” said Fanon. “I hope by analysing it to destroy it.”

Both of these books were written during the advent of the Black Power revolt in the late 1950s / early 1960s and were indeed seized upon by advocates of the Black Is Beautiful cultural phenomenon that occurred in the late 1970s.

Now Veritas may consider that was then and this is now, that books like Wretched of the Earth <$>have no validity for the world in which we live in today.

Well, I am willing to bet that Veritas has never come across a black person with a free black mind; one who is going to tell him exactly what his point of view is from his racial perspective. Now he has run into me and all I can say is: “Better late than never.”

Why does Wretched of the Earth cause so much concern among people like Veritas? Yes, Fanon does speak of violence in Wretched of the Earth, the justified violence of the oppressed to remove the yoke of the colonial oppressor.

What is ignored by the book’s detractors in Bermuda is the time period in which Wretched of the Earth was written. At the end of World War II, the former European colonial powers attempted to re-impose their rule by military means.

These attempts were met by resistance from the peoples of Asia and Africa and other regions. Many of the leaders of liberation movements were former soldiers who were enlisted by their colonial rulers to fight in the just-concluded Second World War.

There had been much talk among the Allies during that war about the need to preserve freedom and the right of self-determination in the face of Nazi and Japanese aggression.

There’s no question that the liberation movements throughout the world were in part inspired to turn on their colonial rulers precisely because they wanted to extend the very liberties the Allies claimed they were fighting for to their own countries.

One of those conflicts was the armed struggle of the Algerian people for Independence from French colonial rule. Frantz Fanon went to Algeria and worked in a hospital and saw first hand the violence experienced by the Algerian people at the hands of the French colonial power.

There is such a thing as a just war. And a people held down by means of violence have a right to remove that yoke by violence if there are no other means at hand.

This is the historical context in which Frantz Fanon wrote Wretched of the Earth. It was a time period when violence was being employed by former colonial powers to regain control of their colonial possessions. And that is why the book became a world-wide political manifesto for the people who were known at that time as inhabitants of the so-called Third World — hence the term Wretched of the Earth.

Veritas has seized on a poll that appeared in The Economist <$>which claims 63 per cent of Jamaicans would return to British colonial rule if they could so. Clearly some of the proud Jamaicans I know were not polled.

But what Veritas does not tell you is that a similar poll on the same question was undertaken in Britain and guess what? A majority of Britons would emigrate if they had the chance.

What this poll suggests is that the British people, who are so publicly reluctant to integrate fully into the European Community, are privately willing to flee their island home and allow it to become Europe’s overseas territory. I will let Veritas ponder that and while he is about it he can rethink his opinion concerning Jamaica.

People in the West get on high horses when they view the goings-on in some developing countries where there is rampant corruption. But tell me, do the people who lost jobs, investments, pensions and houses as a result of the corporate scandals which recently rocked America’s financial institutions deserve any less sympathy than the people who experience corruption in the countries that Veritas likes to point a finger at?

Veritas accuses me of glossing over the level of crime in Bermuda. Well, answer me this question — was there less crime in Bermuda when we had less in the way of material things? It seems to me that the better off we have become the more criminal-minded we have become. Not only are more violent crimes being committed against innocent people but so-called white-collar crime is also on the rise. Or does Veritas not consider white-collar criminality to in fact be criminal?

Does he view Bermuda in terms of its class and racial divisions and only get aggrieved by crimes of violence?

Now. I have never expressed a preference on how Bermuda decides the question of Independence, whether it be through a General Election or a referendum. I just call a spade a spade and, in my opinion, the anti-Independence element in this country is hiding behind its campaign for a referendum. But that does not upset me.

The battle for Bermudian Independence is being fought for Bermudian minds — it is up to the pro-Independence lobby to convince Bermudians to accept sovereignty.

Yes, this is challenging. But am I frustrated or dispirited? Not on your life. I already see an Independent Bermuda in my mind’s eye. This is my second campaign and, if need be, I will eagerly fight a third or fourth. Whatever it takes.

I will say this about our anti-Independence young people. It is true they are not as politically aware as the generations that came before.

They really have had no struggle in their lives and the question of Independence really exists in a historical and socio-economic vacuum as far as they are concerned. That is the one criticism I have against the Progressive Labour Party Government’s decision to act as a facilitator for the current Independence debate rather than as an advocate for sovereignty. Unless the PLP is prepared to openly fight for Independence, people will not become motivated to see things their way.

Finally, Veritas boasts that he can leave Bermuda tomorrow and that is clearly the extent of his loyalty to the country. So I am going to invoke —and Bermudianise — an old Rhodesian saying: “You take the chicken and run, the rest of us will stay and create a Bermudian nation.”