As a means of dramatizing this issue in a manner where empathy might be forthcoming or summoned up with the position of Mr Hamilton Green, the Mayor of Georgetown, and others left with a bad taste in their mouths over the descriptive ethnic insertion in the CWC brochure, let us rewind the clock back twenty five years or thereabouts. Let’s say it is, maybe 1982, and Guyana is selected to host a leg of the cricket world cup, or some other event where the Commonwealth Caribbean participates as a collective group.
The brochure, pamphlet whatever, constructed to advertise the local leg of the event contains the insertion quote, “when you come to Guyana for this event you will have the opportunity of enjoying our West Indian fare with its distinct African culture, or words with a similar connotation as the ethnic descriptive insertion in the current brochure.
Would the Government in power at the time, or anyone else for that matter, have been capable of explaining away such reference to the satisfaction of Mr Devanand Bhagwan and others who are involved today in doing that which they would have rejected forthright. And that is what I mean when I continue to harp that there is a double standard in the discussions of racial and ethnic issues in Guyana.
There is a hubris in some of the responses to issues like this one which shouts out Orwell’s Pigs civil rights notions that some groups are more equal than others.
When Mr Eric Phillips called for an African Renaissance people jumped out of every fissure in the woodwork demanding that he explain himself. When Clarence Ellis took issue with some of the “renaissance” rumblings involving the Indian Diaspora, the responses included a letter dripping with sarcasm about Africa and what India is doing for Africans. Incidentally while the writer, the scorn in his words fairly leaping out at you from his letter, effused over the wonderful things Indians were doing for Africans, he completely ignored the other side of the coin.
That Africa offers much to India in return such as natural resources that India does not have, a customer base Indian Commercial Businesses can be assured will not discriminate in their spending habits, a home away from home so to speak, so much so that more Indians are emigrating to parts in Africa than Africans are emigrating to India. Mittal Steel which I believe is part owned by Indians recently signed a lucrative deal to exploit the very rich iron ore in Liberia.
Like Mr Ali alluded to in his letter taking issue with the kind of responses that are triggered over any assertive position from Guyanese of African descent, many Indians in the US enjoy civil rights and other benefits won from a struggle, the brunt of which was borne by black Americans. This doing something for each other is never one sided, not unless the prism through which you look out at the world is racial or ethnic specific.
Let us look at this brochure issue objectively and put an end to the silly rationalization once and for all. About the only ethnic group in Guyana that could have been mentioned in that context and defy criticism would have been the indigenous peoples of this land. I could imagine Visitors being welcomed to India with a brochure that highlighted the distinctiveness of indigenousness. I could imagine that happening in any part of the world. I cannot imagine any rational mindset not having a problem with a brochure from a nation with a slew of migratory inhabitants that selectively defines only one migratory group as distinctive.
As long as the debate, the discussion on race and ethnic divisions in our society continue to favor one side over the other we will never resolve anything between us. As long as the opinion leaders from any side continue to lead the way with their missives of literal triumphalisms, there will never be any meeting place.
As long as pandering and childish masturbatory diatribes of “the leaders in the Caribbean don’t start anything without Rickey”, or, “if you see how mesmerized they become when Rickey is talking”, is considered a fitting response to the kind of intellectual outputs of the Clarence Ellises, we just ain’t going nowhere slowly.
The Mayor of Georgetown has the moral pedestal in his challenge to the descriptive ethnic assertion in the CWC brochure. If it remains as is, then we have to conclude that we are indeed living in a nation in which one group is more equal than all the others.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
