The Dirty Dozen

This month folks in these United States of America, namely historian and pundits will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown. Historians have often misrepresented Jamestown as some type of quest for Democracy while at the same time acknowledging the exploitation of Africans and the indigenous folks who were already home trained and living on these shores that welcomed, what would become their enemy with opened arms.

I am thinking of this as I wait to give a talk on health disparities. It is strange when you think about it, that many of the problems and issues our community have with disease and limited economic empowerment started here and that I am asked to remember this even in celebration

Jamestown lead Shakespeare to pen his play the Tempest in 1611, which as one of the main characters was Calibain, who was described as a swarthy and fearsome and evil aboriginal.

I wonder what would have happened if the newcomers, the settlers, the colonizers, the Europeans had actually succumbed to the insects and diseases they had never witnessed before. I wonder what would have happened if this lazy group of trespassers had never learned to dig wells (from the inhabitants) and drank river water as opposed to learn to dig wells for spring water and succumbed to more disease and pestilence?

I just wanted to say for the record, I will not be celebrating anything related to the settlement of Jamestown for I am not a descendant of Jamestown, for it was only 12 years, a dozen years after its establishment that the first lot of 20 Africans from present day Angola landed at the colony.

Truth be told the current roots of family instability, economic inheritance and land accumulation all began with Jamestown. Maybe that is why it will always leave a sordid taste in my mouth, and I wish to spit on its inheritance with my word, deed and venom - for all we got from this act was the The Virginia House of Burgesses which only enacted laws establishing and perpetuating the institution of slavery.