Ethnicity rules

In the early 1990s, during the ‘mo fyah’ disturbances, a prominent Guyanese political figure called me in Toronto with the suggestion that I should write a song to help calm tensions. I was reluctant. I do not write songs head-on, and I also firmly believe that song-writers cannot give people positions which they don’t already hold. Bob Dylan didn’t lead Americans to protest the Vietnam war; he was simply articulating what they already felt.

But given the gravity of the situation, I tried to put my hand and I eventually came up with the song ‘Hooper and Chanderpaul’ about an imaginary cricket match. It was an allegorical work about two men in the village of Unity – Ramotar and Joseph Henry – contending that for an upcoming game we needed both ethnic groups, ie, Carl Hooper and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, for Guyana to come out a winner.

We launched the song on tour at a performance at the Pegasus Poolside; sparkling night; people like rice. The song said we should have “curry team up with metagee; yellow plantain and dhal pouri; roast cassava and fried channa; evening gown and shalwar.” The chorus went:

We must play Carl and Shiv

that’s how we have to live

for us to win this game, banna.

Guyana must combine

Hooper and Shivnarine

This match is make or break, banna.

You can tell from up on the bandstand – nobody has to tell you – when a song is getting through, and by the time we got to the second chorus of the song I could sense the crowd wasn’t buying it. Chats with Guyanese over the next few days confirmed that people understood the ethnic solidarity point I was trying to make but were simply not interested. ‘Not a Blade o’ Grass,’ okay. ‘Copycats,’ okay. ‘Hooper and Chanderpaul,’ no thanks.

The context for my bringing this up is our recent general election where, as many of our pundits have noted, ethnic voting again was strongly in play. Going in, I am bemused by the frequent comment that our ethnic divisions were created by politicians.

The Guyana in which I grew up was a place with peaceful coexistence between Blacks, Indians, Portuguese, Douglas, Amerindians, Chinese, etc, but those who say the cultural divisions were not there are either myopic or delusional. Cultural differences, all over the world, constitute the most powerful force affecting human behaviour – as Confucius so sagely remarked, “It is our habits that divide us” – and those differences (food, dress, music, priorities, celebration, etc) existed among the various ethnic strains here. Denying that tells me you weren’t looking.

The politicians may have fanned them into flames, but the embers were there.

Secondly, I am also bemused by the frequent hand-wringing here over this issue and, in particular, recent letters in the press proselytizing for the abolition of “ethnic voting” as if this is some anomaly peculiar to Guyana.

The demonstration of political choice based on ethnic or cultural divisions is in fact virtually a constant in voting patterns around the globe. There are the obvious ones in the Middle East and, for example, in the widely known partition of Pakistan from India, and then Bangladeh from Pakistan, and now apparently even further divisions within Bangladesh.

There is the horrific example of Kosovo, with as many as three ethnic groups seeking dominance, in a rift that burns to this day despite massive international interventions.

Loyalties based on ethnic separations remain entrenched even among migrants. The rise in Latin politicians in the USA, for example, is based simply on South American immigrants coming to that country and voting for their own. Nobody refers to it as “ethnic voting,” but that is precisely what it is.

The USA is often touted as this example of the functioning “melting pot,” but try electing a non-Italian councilman in the Italian neighbourhoods of New York, and see how far you get. Notice the power of Irish-American communities in the Boston area where the John Kennedy political machine ruled. That Irish blood, that ethnic vote, continues to influence choices.

Narrow the lens even further and focus on Guyanese migrant communities in the USA and Canada. In cities such as New York and Toronto, where they are completely free to choose, it is conspicuously clear that the two major ethnic groups from Guyana are carrying out their lives by avidly maintaining their respective cultures.

You can see it in the clubs they form, the social functions they attend, the places of business and entertainment they frequent, and even in the areas they inhabit. Looking through that lens we see people following the behaviour from caveman days of clinging to their own.

Wherever mankind lives, whether Africa, Sri Lanka or Los Angeles, the grip of that cultural glue dominates us, consciously and instinctively, without remission.

Why are we so astonished when an election is called and political choices are decided along those ethnic lines?

Certainly we can find isolated examples of ethnic harmony in our personal lives, but they remain the exceptions establishing the condition of division, as the recent election showed. In general, once you have two major ethnic groups, the die is cast.

Admittedly the problems that stem from it are formidable, and arguably a major obstacle to Guyana’s progress, but we misread mankind when we simply propose to “ban ethnic voting” or appeal to people to choose leaders based on “issues.” Mankind looks for his/her own – that is where the comfort zone is – and on that basis the reaction to my ‘Hooper and Chanderpaul’ suggestion is going to be with us for a long time to come.