The Moore Things Change - Don't whip, innovate

by Carl Moore

FLOGGING AND FOGGING are two Barbadian pursuits of dubious value. With the one, almost daily we meet outstanding citizens who say they have benefited from its therapy; with the other, we are encouraged to open our windows and welcome it to get relief from mosquitoes. Neither works.

Resulting from flogging, many citizens sing fulsome panegryics to what my friend Hal Austin calls "this Neanderthal form of communication"; from fogging, I get nauseous from this olfactory assault while seeing no fewer mosquitoes as I continue to buy insecticide.

There's a committed Barbadian scientist who has been suggesting that we should try innovation. I don't know if Lennox Chandler is one of the many disciples of corporal punishment, but I would like to take liberty with his advice and apply it to our fixation with beating.

Mr Chandler says: "People believe that innovation is only in the area of science or technology, but services can also benefit from innovation."

In-depth analysis

The veneration of pain and punishment demands an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon. Is it the only way forward? What makes such a large portion of a population so easily mistake anger for love and then go forth into the world praising the virtues of violence?

This proclivity is stubbornly ensconced in the inner crevices of our marrow, calcified over a period of 400 years since before the Middle Passage. And just as I started to hope that change was coming, a sample in THE NATION of October 20 made me think again.

Of the eight Barbadians interviewed, five, all under 40, recommended the continuation of corporal punishment following the public flogging of boys who arrived late at St Leonard's. Only one young woman said abolish it.

That brings me to the position frequently broadcast by the Minister of Education. He wants to see corporal punishment abolished. He dished out a fair share of licks when he was a teacher. He doesn't have the stomach for it anymore.

I suspect that the Prime Minister shares his view, but they seem afraid to go ahead and introduce legislation to end this practice.

Leaders must lead. Join the 104 nations who have banned corporal punishment. Change the law and the cultural cleavages will fall away over time.

"It's made me the man (or woman) I am today," grateful Barbadians testify. Like the lady from St Philip, who one night boasted before a Voice of Barbados audience: "I have scars on my skin now from my mother, and they include a hammer, a four-pound weight, a bucket and a Coke bottle."

The lady is now a successful small farmer - thanks to that four-pound weight!

An aspect of the newspaper report which everyone should ponder, especially teachers like Dr Victor Agard, was this: "Some of the guilty students refused to line up for punishment." Keep an eye on that trend.

Predates slavery

Folks don't like to hear you trace this thing all the way back to slavery. In fact, it predates slavery. In Reckoning With Slavery, Herbert Gutman and Richard Sutch write about punishment among slaves on a plantation owned by one Bennet Barrow, who kept a detailed record of his floggings: "The Barrow diary records 175 individual whippings during a 23-month period . . . meaning that, on average, a slave was whipped every four days. Among them, 60 were females. A male was whipped every six days and a female once every 12 days."

The authors conclude: "Since the whippings were publicly administered in the slave quarters on Barrow's plantation, the lash must have been an ever-present threat. Bennet Barrow believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the slave."

An entry in his diary: "November 28 - Whipped all my cotton pickers today." The year was 1844 - 165 years ago this month.

Isn't it time we tried something different. Let's apply some innovation to this backward behaviour.

We're already a decade into the 21st century.

l Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator; email: carlmoore@caribsurf.com