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Jamaican Historical Society Bulletin:

Mental Slavery: The History of an Idea by B. W. Higman:


The article begins by telling us how dangerous it is to attemt to !gure out the
history behind ideas. However" the scienti!c rogression is based on ideas being
re#ected and disroved instead of eole hoing that a certain truth is de!nite
and un$uestionable.
The writer introduced us to the inventor of the concet of %Mental Slavery&. We
are told that Marcus 'arvey !rst said it in ()*+" and years later" the words were
reeated in a song by Bob Marley. The line Marcus 'arvey recited in a seech
was %We are going to emanciate ourselves from mental slavery,& which we
heard later in Bob Marley-s .reedom Song.
Manual Slavery is also introduced to us. Manual slavery was forced" and was the
enslavement of one man by another. Mental slavery was created or allowed by
eole themselves" worsening the situation. Mental Slavery is something which
only the individual can free themselves from/ in the words of Sidney Mo0sy"
writer of an article entitled Manual and Mental Slavery: %none but the individual
himself can alleviate it&.
Mo0sy e0ressed that one could not really be free as they are slaves to their
wants and assions. The %greatest slave master&" he said" is money. 1eole also
do not thin2 indeendently and are sub#ect to following trends. We are all mental
slaves.
W.'. Hinchcli3e asserted that %no race" eole or erson should be discredited
because of lowly origin" neither should they be measured by what their
forefathers were" but by but by the heights they have attained through their
industry" asiration and ambition& . He was hoeful that labour and caital would
eventually wor2 side by side" but he saw hooliganism and derivation creeing
sreading throughout Jamaica. Moral hoes and fears were associated with the
celebration of 4manciation 5ay. Hichcli3e-s ideas were less centred on
sychological asects of slavery than Mo0sy-s.
In ()()" the idea of Mental Slavery was laid out by Mo0sy. His ideas related
slavery to sin 6bondage due to wrongdoing7" and rationalist morality6due to
theories of the mind and behavioural sciences emerging at the time7. Models
created to deict mental slavery seemed more destructive than useful as the
idea of true freedom seemed unattainable. 8ecently it has become oular as it
rovides an e0lanation for social in#ustice and other olitical" global issues. 9eo:
colonialism can be lin2ed to it as can be described as another form of slavery.
This imlies that Jamaican 6Blac27 eole are not truly free.
In ());" <hamber of <ommerce Bruce 8ic2ards commented that there are
%many of us who still carry the mental stigma of slavery li2e a log on =our>
shoulders&. He thought it necessary to sto dwelling on the ast and also
believed that we must %emanciate ourselves from mental slavery&. He
disagreed that freedom could not be fully obtained.
?nwillingness to ma2e Jamaican <reole the !rst language in Jamaica" the failure
of Blac2s to demonstrate ride in their @frican ancestry and to aArm that Blac2
is beautiful caused many debates. The urose of celebrating the abolition of
hysical slavery and the blac2 in the Bag were debated. The article states that
%in these ways" mental slavery has been deloyed&" and is %reresented by the
cororate and institutional globalism&.
The concet of mental slavery has been subtly changing in its content and is
becoming more oular on Jamaica" after its introduction in the twentieth
century. The issues associated with the idea of mental slavery are ever:
remaining $uestions for the modern world. Those who study slavery usually
con!ne their research into manual slavery and the historical events. They also
ta2e interest in %Slave ersonality tyes&" an idea which roots from the study of
the sychological asects of slavery. However the fact that the concet of mental
slavery e0ists" means that there are those who ta2e an interest in it and will
research it in detail" as mentioned by the writer at the beginning of the article.

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