All God's Chillun by Edward Kamau Braithwaite

All God's Chillun by Edward Kamau Braithwaite is a poem that reflects the period of indian indentureship as labourers on the field. It also emphasizes on the idians, bitter experience of inferiority and racial discrimination whist labouring on the field for the whiteman . 

Apart from the inferiority complex and racial discrimination their labourious service infuses servility among them.they perform all possible deeds to gain acceptability from the Englishman in order to work on the field .

This range from the way they showcase their servile mannerism by daring not to stare directly at the contenance of the Englishman who address them during supervisor employee meeting and the fear of getting fired coerce them from asking the Englishman question, even when the wages are poor or not equally paid for their labour.

The poem, “All God’s Chillun,” is six – numbering parts amidst with the final part containing only two

lines, poetpersona is the representative of the entire Caribbean people.for standing as the

representative, he sums the collective experience of a Caribbean and thus laments it through a solitary

and personal plight . This is noted at the initial lines of the poem:

They call me Uncle

Tom and mock me

The word,”Uncle Tom,”originates from a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel.it refers to a black

man who want to please or serve a white people: the poet's name ,due to an elongated period of

working on plantation and apparently serving the whiteman, has totally ceased. 

In the society, he is now known by the name Uncle Tom,and what trails this duped name is mockery from the whiteman and even is own children:

"These my children mock me."

Apart from the mockery, his children despise” hat in hand “ condition they find their father. Hat in hand

is an idiomatic expression which means asking or begging for things, especially money in way that

makes one less important.

It can be deducted that after the poet has laboured on days and weeks and precisely months, the wages he obtains as his payment is obviously poor, and this has flung him into destitution. Not only do the children hate their father's hat in hand they also abhor “ the one roomed God” he “praise(s).”

The “one _roomed God “signifies displacement.the Caribbean were displaced,and those who counted to

acquire a single room adore it as God for the provision of Shelter it gives. But yet this is the same one

room when winds blow, "it raise (s) the Flat _ /roofed house / each time".

The mockery and hatred display by the children is an explanatory fact themselves ,therefore the need for protest against inferiority complex racial discrimination, poverty, oppression, hybridity homelessness, colour differential and segregation

In lines 25 , the poet grumble over his farm tools which he discribes as” one fuckin plough that only works one way “ and the story of his life is needless in this field / where these cart_ wheels ... destroy the root of love with pain”

When it is time for planting,the Englishman approves who will work and who will not ,he decided

those whose works will be jerking of rope .His rule are Indisputable :

"Boss man makes rules:who works, who jerks the rope ,who rips the patient dirt"

The poet persona visualizes himself as ”a patient mules” who labours tirelessly but only fetches

profit/ gain to the Englishman. His labour, however , becomes the livelihood sustenance of the

Englishman: "Boss man rate gain: I am the living vein of sustenance: his coin ,his meal, his grain."

Reiterating the deplorable condition confronted by the indentured labourers ,the poet persona avers

that “ they laugh at me / from the barrels / of their believes."  

This laughter stems from the name Uncle Tom ,which' the white/ man laugh and dubs him. There is a protest against slavery , inferiority, discrimination and racial inequality 

They have vehement hatred for the name Uncle Tom. They object: “ But to hell with this... Uncle / Tom ,hat in your hand “ the condition they find their father’s labouring to please the Englishman is despicable , therefore ' let get to hell out ,a pharoad' s land “

To get out of the pharoad’s land is equally a liberty to be free from them slavery, amnesia.

Rootlessness and inferiority that chained them powerfully to bow to the “ Boss man “ that “ makes rules

“ and makes them a. Patient mules .