Caribbean Cannot Ignore Erased Histories and Voices in the US

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One Caribbean Nation

Barbados Today , Editorial Friday, September 19th., 2025

Why the Caribbean cannot ignore erased histories and silenced voices in the US

Freedom of speech, civil rights, and the dignity of Black lives are under siege—not only in the United States, but across the diaspora, with ripple effects already reaching the Caribbean.
From freedom of speech to erasing our history, it's all in jeopardy.
The First Amendment, long celebrated as a cornerstone of American democracy, is under strain. The consequences are not abstract. Jimmy Kimmel was suspended this week after remarks about the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, widely seen as an example of political pressure shaping entertainment. Stephen Colbert's late-night show was cancelled after sharp criticism of Donald Trump's political comeback, and CNN parted ways with Don Lemon and Brian Stelter, both outspoken critics of Trump's disinformation.
Since 2021, at least 22 US states have passed laws restricting how race and history are taught in schools. The NAACP warned in a 2023 statement: "The NAACP strongly condemns these attempts to erase Black history and restrict teachers' ability to provide students with a truthful and well-rounded education." The rollback extends to the workplace.
McKinsey & Company's 2021 Race in the Workplace study found that Black employees held just 4.5 per cent of executive roles in major US firms despite representing nearly 12 per cent of the workforce. The Urban Institute reported in 2023 that unemployment among Black women stood at 6.4 per cent compared to 3.2 per cent for white women, underscoring the systemic gap. With DEI programmes being dismantled, these disparities risk growing wider.
For Caribbean families whose relatives and children study and work in the United States, this erasure is not distant - it strikes at our own futures.
The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has documented more than 6 500 racial terror lynchings between 1865 and 1950. Disturbingly, very similar suspicious deaths continue.
On September 15, 2025, 21-year-old Demartravion 'Trey' Reed, of Grenadian heritage, was found hanging from a tree at Delta State University in Mississippi. The Clarion Ledger and NewsOne reported that Reed's body showed injuries, including broken legs, that his family believes made suicide physically impossible.
Reed's death is part of a troubling pattern in which Black people have been found hanging in public places, their deaths often ruled suicides despite community outrage.
Even as we see these struggles from a distance, thinking they do not impact us directly, threats extend right in our waters and continue to mount.
The Caribbean has long insisted on its right to be a zone of peace. CARICOM leaders have reaffirmed that "our region must never become collateral in great power conflicts."
At the UN General Assembly in 2019, our Prime Minister Mia Mottley said: "The Caribbean Sea must be a zone of peace. We cannot afford to be caught in the crossfire of global conflicts".
Yet this month, US President Donald Trump announced that American forces had destroyed a Venezuelan vessel in international waters, claiming it carried narcotics. He asserted that "big bags of cocaine and fentanyl" were visible in the wreckage, though he provided no independent evidence. The strike followed an earlier one that killed 11 people aboard a boat Washington alleged was part of a drug cartel.
Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro denounced the strikes as US "aggression" and vowed to "fully exercise [Venezuela's] legitimate right to defend itself." His government flew fighter jets over a US Navy destroyer in retaliation and accused American forces of seizing a fishing boat "illegally and hostilely" for eight hours. Legal experts told the BBC the US attacks may have violated maritime and human rights law.
For small island nations nearby, the danger is clear.
These are not simply American problems. Caribbean families are tied to the 46 million African Americans whose rights are under attack. Their struggle is our struggle.
Their erasure is our erasure. And if foreign warships appear in our waters, it will be our sovereignty that is at stake (not just Venezuela).
Shrinking press freedom, the dismantling of DEI, the erasure of history, suspicious deaths of young Black people, and foreign militarisation of our seas are not isolated crises. They are connected. The question is not whether we see what is happening. The question is whether we will demand accountability from our governments and stand together across borders. Because if we wait until the noose is in our own backyard, history will not forgive us.
Barbados Today , Editorial Friday, September 19th., 2025

The Mahogany Coconut Group , fully endorses this editorial.

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