Source: Inspired by a conversation with Historian Dr. Alexis, Yveline
Fear is a story people tell themselves, a justification draped in the language of survival but rooted in something older, something uglier. When the enslaver claims to fear the enslaved, it is not the fear of the hunted but the fear of the hunter haunted by his own cruelty. It is the paranoia of a man who has spent his life with his foot on another’s neck and cannot fathom what happens when the script is flipped and now the foot is on his neck.
And so, when we say that white planters feared Makandal, for example, we should say it with the weight of that context, with the deep knowing that their fear was not of some lurking boogeyman but of the specter of their own crimes made flesh. Their fear was not of the so-called poisoner but of the reckoning they knew, deep in their bones, was overdue.
Perhaps then it would be more honest to say that white planters claimed to fear Makandal, that their fear was a story they whispered among themselves to make the weight of their sins seem lighter. Because the truth is this—if fear was to be had, it did not belong to the men who cracked the whip but to those who felt its bite and said–enough is enough!