Part 3: Are we Intellectualizing & Rationalizing Ourselves into Oblivion?

By Ryan Elcock,

In this third and last installment of the series on how blacks intellectualize and rationalize themselves into oblivion, I examine the Caribbean and Africa and assert that their governments and academics have been duped by organizations like the IMF and World Bank. In Part 1, I stated that we are indeed headed towards oblivion and in part 2, I observed that academics and intellectuals have caused more problems for blacks in America rather than worked towards improving their lot.

Nonetheless, is it not ironic that although 25 countries with literacy rates of 80% or higher come from either the Caribbean or Africa? Even more importantly, it is these same countries that are also in economic dire straits and considered Third World nations. As the basic ability to read and write is the foundation for success in life, when coupled with great wisdom, it is perplexing that these countries are left wanting.

However, upon further analysis, it is evident that education, without wisdom, is pure naiveté. These very countries have allowed others to come in and dictate the terms for our own success. Although the Caribbean and Africa both have large numbers of intelligent, university educated citizens, these educated elites – just like happened during the slave trade – have been implementing the very policies that destabilize their local economies and help those who seek to exploit them.

For example, many countries in the Caribbean have placed a heavy emphasis on developing the tourism sector, at the expense of their other industries. This, without being vituperative, reduces them to being nothing more than the recreational zoos that entice visitors from Europe and Asia to visit the islands and see the locals in their natural habitats. Many African countries have been duped into thinking that the only way for them to succeed is to accept foreign aid and borrow continuously from the IMF and World Bank rather than use their intellectual capabilities to develop their own people.

Somewhere along the line, those from Africa and the Caribbean, who have attained a university education, have happily drunk the Kool-Aid of assimilation – provided to them by their European and White North American counterparts. I am sure many among you are familiar with parents boasting to their friends and family about how their child got that big Job working for either a multinational corporation, government agency (i.e. World Bank or UN) or the government, itself. You might even be that very child or have benefitted from someone like this. But we do not come to criticize good fortune or multinationals. We are just saying that these same people view working for such entities as a way to attain great power and wealth due to their past with experience with their colonial masters who actually attained wealth working for such organizations.

Furthermore, as most of Africa and the Caribbean were former British colonies, being a person of color in these aforementioned organizations, was a sign that one arrived and was truly a person of great power and success. However, what most people did not see was that these big jobs were more Faustian Bargains than anything else: As the trappings of success in working for these entities contributed to the continued demise of their homeland and continued the oppression of their very citizenry through unrealistic and unattainable policies and guidelines for governance. But what is more disturbing is that while the educated elites of Africa and the Caribbean feverishly try to emulate their European and White North American counterparts, they failed to see that they were the puppets by design. They were blind to the fact that they contributed to regression and not its progression.

However, there does still seem to be a glimmer of hope after all: Europe and North America are in economic turmoil while Africa is beginning to rise up as a rapidly emerging continental economy. Several countries are leading the way economically and technologically. Furthermore the Caribbean region is beginning to also leverage their people’s overall skills as a way to become more competitive in the future. Interestingly, this future rise is not due to those intellectuals who were too proud to admit that they were swindled, but rather by the seemingly insignificant and ordinary individual who had enough sense to see that not only was the intellectual’s success a pyrrhic one of sorts; and as a result, the citizenry took initiative to do something about it.

Ryan Elcock
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