Bolshevism in Barbados
Among the newspapers in Barbados there is a charming old lady by the name of the Barbados Standard. From time to time this faded creature gets worried about the signs of awakening observable in those Negroes who happen to be living in the twentieth century. Then she shakes and shivers, throws a few fits, froths at the mouth, and, spasmodically flapping her arms, yells to all and sundry that there is “Bolshevism among Negroes.”
Recently this stupid old thing and its congeners have discovered evidences of a Bolshevist R–r–r–revolution in Trinidad, and, presumptively, all over the British West Indies. Now the specter which these fools fear is nothing but the shadow cast by the dark body of their own system of stiff-necked pride, stark stupidity and stubborn injustice whenever the sun of civic righteousness rises above the horizon of sloth and ignorance. But, like fools afraid of their own shadows, they point at the thing for which they alone are responsible and shriek for salvation.
We shouldn’t care to suggest to them that to lie down and die would be one good way to avoid these fearful shadows, because we see the possibility of another way. Let them resolve that they will cease making a lie of every promise of liberty, democracy and self-determination that they frantically made from 1914 to 1919. Let the white Englishman learn that justice exists not only for white Englishmen, but for all men. Let him get off the black man’s back, stand out of the black man’s light, play the game as it should be played, and he will find very little need for wasting tons of print paper and thousands of pounds in a crusade against the specter of Bolshevism.