Dear Editor,
I refer to Mr Vishnu Bisram’s letter titled, ‘Ethnic conflict in other societies does have relevance in Guyana’ (SN, Dec 21).
This is the fourth in a series of letters from Mr. Bisram. Reading his letters, the average reader will easily think we are discussing ethnic voting in America per se. We are not. Mr Bisram writes: “The LA Times, NYT, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek [a long list followed] have carried analyses of ethnic voting in America after every election.” Not satisfied he continues by referencing Jennifer Hochschild, Gunnar Myrdal, Stanley Cox, Marble Manning (and another long list) as authors of published works on ethnic voting in America. He then goes on to reference Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. What specifically these authors and publications say that justifies Mr Bisram’s advocacy of ethnic strategies in Guyana’s and Trinidad’s electoral politics, he does not say.
Mr Bisram’s model runs counter to the one which prevails in America and South Africa, two diverse societies that have avoided racial domination in their electoral politics. Guyana does have a perceived non-ethnic party led by an Indian, but Mr Bisram is on record of vilifying this party. Why? He sees it as an Indian vote-splitter.
What is particularly troubling about Mr Bisram’s letter is that even after perusing all the works of his cited authors and publications, he does not mention a single specific point or concept that supports the voting thesis that he so tirelessly advocates for Guyana. Pure ethnic voting for ethnic parties does not exist in America, period.
Mr Bisram is too immersed in his Indian triumphalism thesis to see how these ideas can lead to ethnic friction. The problem with Mr Bisram is that he is too anxious to misinterpret and corrupt the empirical evidence which supports non-racial voting and which would lead to genuine non-racial democracies. Here is a list of his mistakes and confusion:
(1) He says America has ethnic voting, therefore it is ok for Guyana to have ethnic voting. Is he so badly confused? America has hundreds of nationalities and ethnicities. Guyana has two main ethnic groups which account for about 73 per cent of the electorate. Even if the people in America vote ethnically as Mr Bisram argues (I don’t agree – they vote their class interests), it does not lead to ethnic domination as it does in Guyana.
(2) The baton of power passes to another party every few cycles in America, so what happens to Mr Bisram’s argument of ethnic voting in America? Does it lead to one group dominating another? What does all the “scholarly literature” he is so fond of citing say about this? So is he citing stuff whose meaning or relevance to Guyana he is unsure about?
(3) Mr Bisram references “poor whites” in Appalachian states voting Republican despite the Democrats’ platform of generous social services programmes and says this is evidence of racial voting. Until 2008, both Republicans and Democrats were always led by white men. These poor whites were voting Republican for generations – not since Obama of 2008.
(4) Mr Bisram references Colin Powell as a registered Republican but he endorsed Obama, a Democrat. Is this evidence of racial voting? And, what is the relevance of this to Guyana? Can he take licence from this to support his thesis of racial voting for Guyana?
(5) No party in America is perceived as ethnic. Prior to 2008, they were always led by white men. Perception is everything in politics. Where does Mr Bisram get the idea that we have ethnic parties in America? (This is likely a new invention since Obama became head of the Democratic party.)
(6) Citing a singule article in NYT that does not refer to BJP as a Hindu fundamentalist party does not make it such. But the same paper did so in hundreds of other articles. And why did he drag India and the BJP into this discussion? What is the relevance of BJP and India to his advocacy of “ethnic coalitions” being the way to go in Guyana?
Let us conclude by saying Mr Bisram is willing to deliberately misinterpret and distort the empirical evidence in pursuit of his goal of pure ethnic voting for Guyana and Trinidad. The Caribbean New Yorker published tons of stuff urging Indo-Caribbeans not to vote for Obama in 2008, all because Mr Obama is African-American. Mr Bisram is the Diplomatic Editor for that paper and he is not troubled one bit. He refused to dissociate himself from the paper.
Mr Bisram is an advocate of ethnic strategies in electoral politics, and this in a post-Mandela world. One wonders whether Mr Bisram takes kindly to the fact that so many world leaders pay homage to Mr Mandela who devoted his whole life to fighting racial domination.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
