Black Summit kicks off Friday night
It is a demographic fact that over the last forty years the ethnic mix of Belize has been steadily changing, with the proportion of Afro-Belizeans steadily falling to the point where today people who describe themselves as Creole or Garifuna make up only thirty-one percent of the population. Mestizos weigh in at close to fifty percent. With these numbers in mind, this weekend the UBAD Educational Foundation and the World Garifuna Organization are pooling their resources in an effort to confront the challenges posed by minority status and chart a course for the future. Chairperson of the organising committee, Nzinga Barkley-Waite, says although it is called the Black Summit, the event is open to everyone.
Nzinga Barkley-Waite, Black Summit Organising Committee
“The Black Summit has been put together in order that we may identify, analyse and come up with solutions to the challenges facing our black people in Belize today.”
Patrick Jones
“What is the current state of black people in Belize?”
Nzinga Barkley-Waite
“Very poor I would say. As you know, our population is about thirty-five percent of the total population of the country. Yet we have in the prison population, our people number about ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of the prison population. So, that tells us immediately that something is wrong there. Whatever has been done in the past has been like Band-Aid on open-heart surgery. So we need to find the cause, the root cause, and deal with the causes in order to retrace and to reverse the trend that we are currently experiencing.”
Patrick Jones
“So what will happen for the two days of the summit?”
Nzinga Barkley-Waite
“We will have discussions, deliberations. We will first be having two main addresses by Dr. Asante and by Dr Renoko Rashidi, who will be able to bring the African concept from worldwide, and from the continent of Africa, and tie it in with what we are experiencing what we are going through here in Belize as descendants of African, and to impart knowledge to people of who we are, who we were before slavery. A lot of times we tend to make the African population, our growth, our status from slavery. We were before slavery and we were world travellers before slavery. We were kings, queens, pharaohs, prince and princes. So it is our opinion that once we know who we are who were, it will be easier for us to at least reclaim our status and move forward, rather than think that because you’re black, you got to stick to the back.”
Barkley-Waite says response to the Summit has exceeded expectations. Among the speakers for the two-day event are Doctor Renoko Rashidi and Doctor Molifi Asante. The Black Summit begins Friday evening and ends at midday on Sunday at the Biltmore Plaza in Belize City. Registration begins from five Friday evening with opening ceremonies scheduled for six. There is no registration fee, although donations are welcomed.
