Dear Editor,
“There are two or three writers who feel they can write whatever they like about Africans.” So remarked Eusi Kwayana in a letter carried in your newspaper on January 3. In it he spotlights the negative racial stereotyping to which some subject others, and to which Africans, by which we understand him to mean “black people” in general, suffer.
Over the years I have expended dozens of letters in responding to the type of calumny to which people are subject. This, in the apparent incapacity or unwillingness of most black people to respond, to defend themselves, to educate their fellows beyond and out of the stereotypes which they are fed.
We, Guyanese, mostly live in a mental universe in which float these massive, virtual, super-dense objects. Colossal nuclei of concentrated untruth, ignorance, spite, contempt, hate, racism ‒ of negative energy and destructive emotions. It is around these enormous, super-dense blocks, floating in their lightless space, that orbit many, including these two or three to which Mr Kwayana refers. Satellites of an inverse of good, drawing their energy from it, and, in emitting their own, nourishing it. In the cosmos which we are drawn this time to inhabit, the battle, as we understand it, is for the souls of men. The role of the satellites floating around the black nuclei, is we know, to programme and format as many as possible in a process of “socialisation/acculturation” to chant again the first words that were utterred, in the history of the universe, in an ungodliness that was beyond insane.
The illusion of superiority for reasons of race, caste, age, class, geographic origin, colour of skin ‒ all the myriad illusions that find themselves captured and amplified in the floating blocks of negative emotion that has ended up, by their mastery of our unconscious, mastering us. It is this, and not “religion” as some pretend, that is the opiate of the masses, the cause of countless wars, the reason that, of the 100 billion they calculate of humans who have ever lived on this earth, most have laboured and expired in the murder of a rapport between class, race, caste, and all the variations (male/female, young/old, foreign/local, bright/’dull’ beautiful/ugly) that break off as variants of the idea that men are not equal, and that some are essentially, inferior to others.
But, contrary to this, no asininity or lie is too glaring for the band to which Mr Kwayana refers. Once it serves their purpose it is quickly appropriated and repeated. And the newspapers are happy to publish these insulting absurdities, providing that the target is not in a group that provides ads, or is in a group perceived as powerless. It has surprised me in the past to note the irresponsibility with which this newspaper, as the others, has allowed itself to be used as a sounding board for ideas, accusations and distortions of the truth that would have earned it a reprimand in a mature society. The underpinnings of the relentless anti-Burnham campaigning has got to be understood for what it is. It is the essential plank of a narrative structure that seeks to demonise someone felt to be the quintessence of Afro-Guyanese. It is opposed to an idealised projection of the collective Indian self, in the form of Dr Jagan. Much of the exchange on history is no more than this.
The newspapers also allow themselves to be used to libel and denigrate. A malicious pleasure ripples through the newsroom when a particular gem drops in the letter box. Or it could be a columnist who, in another paper accused me of wishing “a final solution” for all Indians. The ex-PNC sycophant that permitted this libel refused to print my reponse. Your newspaper, glorying in the nonsensical pretext that the accusation was carried elsewhere, also ungratefully denied me my right to response. The newspapers and media are part of the problem.
But the same goes for press or radio in which Indians are victimised. Trinidad at a certain point in history had FM stations that were overt in their anti-Indian propaganda. In Guyana, a dozen years ago, the same phenomenon was reported.
The government, in allowing the Chronicle to print a scandalous opinion on black socialisation, unwittingly preceded Tarron Khemraj or Sarah Bharrat, Indo-guyanese who have written about the creation of racial bias in the Indo-Guyanese socialisation process.
The government, composed of the PPP, can be seen to have its origins in a political discourse that emerged from and fed into the negative ignorance about which I write.
The letter writers from the Indian community, working the collective persecution complex and the insecurities that contribute to our forms of racism, are generally pathetic figures. And not too bright. But not the less dangerous for it.
Kwayana mentions a letter that was commented on by Jonathan Adams. The letter writer seems to be saying that black people have no business sense.
Most West Indians leave the small town or sugar village and head straight into the poor quarters of Queens or Toronto. They do not know the world. Never having travelled. They do not even know the Caribbean. The letter writer, had he known the Caribbean, would have been aware that the big businessmen and landowners in most islands are black. They own banks and insurance companies as in St Martin, car dealerships and plantations as everywhere else. Small and large family groceries and building companies as in Guadeloupe, Martinique; sixty per cent of the small hotel sector as in Barbados.
In short the letter writer’s case was that of the ignorant addressing the ignorant. Unfortunately, in the narrow universe we occupy, it sells. There are even politicians calling for more of this type of imbecility as a form of electoral campaign address.
Perhaps a press monitor and control body is an idea whose time has come. No. It is in fact an idea whose time has come.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
