Dear Editor,
I read Senior Counsel Ramson’s rather wordy (I believe that in keeping with the spirit of his letter, the proper word would be verbose) letter on the Guyanese diaspora, that appeared in the January 30th edition of Stabroek News (Émigrés with solutions for Guyana should form a political party for the chance to implement their programmes’). After taking a break, I went back and read it again. And again. As I keep telling my students, it’s not just what you say, but how you say it. And we must always ask ourselves, what is the author really trying to say, or wanting us to know? Sometimes it can be to impress upon us the urgency of a situation. Sometimes it can be to persuade us why a particular position has merit or should be taken seriously. Sometimes it can be to appeal to our emotions. Or sometimes, it can be to try to impress upon us how clever or knowledgeable or important the author is. More important than the readers.
I leave the readers to judge this particular letter by Senior Counsel, and even my own response here, for themselves. But I could not help but be struck by one particular and witty response by a blogger to Senior Counsel Ramson’s letter. He draws on a wonderful calypso by The Mighty Sparrow, ‘Dan is the Man in the Van,’ which was about colonial education and its emphasis on keeping Caribbean people in place. There is another message in there, which is still important today. That is that as much as education offers us, book learning can give us the illusion that we are better and brighter than those who don’t have the fancy words under their belt. And we can therefore do all kinds of things to people in the name of those words and that book knowledge and that belief that we are better and brighter. It’s a lesson for all of us to learn. As the blogger’s response – via Sparrow – to Senior Counsel’s letter noted:
“If me head was bright ah woulda be a dahm fool!”
Yours faithfully,
D Alissa Trotz
