Anti-Blackness is Alive and Well in Barbados

The Case of Clifford Corbin

Hello friends,

Recently a video circulated on social media showing a white Barbadian (or Bajan - pronounced “bay-jun”) inveighing against Black Barbadians. The man was identified as Clifford Corbin, and this is what he was reported as saying:

“Tricks and lies and bull**** every week, wanna f****** n******. Everybody acting the same way, dishonest. This is some way to live in a country…Y’all don’t know how to act and don’t know how to behave. F*** people bring y’all from Africa to do, to act the way y’all acting.”

I’ve said many times before - and I’m not the only one - that Barbadians haven’t even begun to reckon with the history of enslavement and colonialism. In that, they are not unlike certain groups of people we’ve seen in the US, though I don’t think we’re likely to see white Bajans staging any kind of Capitol Coup any time soon. After all, many of them are hardly disenfranchised.

However, despite the fact that a great deal of financial power and social influence still rest in the hands of the white descendants of the colonizers, for many there’s still a deep vein of resentment towards the descendants of the people they enslaved. (For some Black Bajans the feeling is mutual, and arguably more justified, but that’s another story.)

This rant by Clifford Corbin is the latest example of that resentment. (#TidalTammie, we haven’t forgotten about you.)

Business as Usual: Disavowals and Apologists

Predictably there was a flurry of disavowals of his sentiments by the owners of a number of businesses with Corbin in the name (as I’ve said, the descendants of the colonizers own a lot of stuff) and even from a few I didn’t know were related.

There were those who labeled him a “distant cousin” and there were also a few apologists who talked about “stress” causing this “unusual” behavior. My view is that your true feelings can come out under stress, even if the rest of the time you have the sense to keep those feelings quiet.

Only a few white Bajans were honest enough to admit that there are many among them who feel this way, and that this kind of conversation often happens out of the earshot of Black Bajans. Unsurprisingly, those few were also the only white Bajans to say that we need to bring anti-Black racism into the open and deal with it.

Black Bajans, of course, were not surprised at all. We know this attitude exists. The only question is whether it’s open or hidden. For us, the period of enslavement ended in 1838 (yes, I’m including the period of “apprenticeship”). The period of colonization ended (ostensibly) with Independence in 1966. We’re a young country, and we’ve never properly addressed these entrenched, racist, anti-Black attitudes.

Wherever you’re located, this ingrained anti-Blackness is the direct result of white supremacist and colonialist narratives. It may look slightly different in each country, but it’s basically the same thing. That’s why we have to fight it, but to do that, we first have to admit that there’s a problem. That’s where many of us are still falling down.

That includes Black people because, also predictably, there were a few Black people who came forward to attest that Clifford Corbin was basically a good person. They added their voices to the chorus of Bajan whites trying to minimize the incident.