Is America Woke to US Foreign Policy in the Caribbean?

African-American vernacular English renders the word, awake’ as ‘woke.’ This term ‘woke’ has been interpreted within America as a call for Americans of all races to be “aware of and be actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),”

The 45 million people of the Caribbean are looking forward to the day when this concept of ‘woke’ will be applied to American foreign policies. There seems to be an ambivalence by Americans, including African Americans to the deleterious impact of US policies overseas. Let’s take the Caribbean for example. 

It may not be on the curricula of America’s middle schools, but since 1800, the United States of America has invaded Cuba (1898,1961), Dominica Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), Haiti (1915-34), Panama (1989) and Puerto Rico (1898). Is it too much to ask that if Black Lives Matter in American cities such as Los Angeles and Detroit, they also should matter in Port-Au-Prince, Havana, and Kingston?

The Caribbean has vigorously supported the international Black Lives Matter movement from Bermuda to Belize. We are deeply concerned about how our brothers and sisters and many of our citizens who reside in the United States of America are treated by its security services. Is it too much to ask that American congresspersons, ministers, and congregants be ‘woke’ to the lack of economic, racial, and social justice in US foreign policies towards the Caribbean region?

How long must the Caribbean accept the economic blockade of Cuba?  How long must Haiti be treated as a pariah state in the region? When will the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) include serious proposals to address small arms trafficking from the USA to the Caribbean? Will the USA not accept that the Caribbean have ideas of their own that deserve serious consideration?  When will we hear a positive word from the USA on the Bridgetown Initiative, a visionary attempt to reform Climate Justice and Development Financing?

That Black Palestinian Jew called Jesus the Christ, in his deeply prophetic style reminded us that we should be ‘woke’ to righteousness and justice by ‘doing unto others as we will have them do to us’.  The Caribbean is holding its breath that a Kamala Harris presidency would bring a change to what America sees as its strategic interest in the Caribbean.