…Racism?
Well, another year has passed with the world “observing” the “UN Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination”. And what exactly has happened since the “Day” was created in 1966 – the same year we achieved “independence”? In the estimation of your (observant) Eyewitness, racism has actually INCREASED since then.
Let’s just look at this year’s theme – “Promoting tolerance, inclusion, unity and respect for diversity in the context of combatting racial discrimination”. Are they kidding? Over in good old Blighty – the “Mother Country” that’s still head of our “Commonwealth” of ex-colonies – they’ve just decided they’d rather pull out of the EU than have open immigration from “across the Channel”. This, of course, is exactly 50 years since it cut off “open” immigration from the non-white members of that Commonwealth!!
It did that in the inimitable British style of deflecting from its racist premises by inserting a “grandfather clause” in its immigration regulations. To wit, if your grandfather was British, you could always come “home”!! And this, of course, goes to the root of racism, doesn’t it? Ain’t no black in the Union Jack!! There were always two sets of rules as the Europeans conquered the world and remade it to their liking – one for whites and another for “others”. And it’s also why in the US, with its “internal colonies”, there has to be a “Black lives matter” movement in 2018!
We’ve heard so much about racism arising out of slavery in the colonies, haven’t we?? But have we really grappled with how it’s being replicated even among some who were at its receiving end?? After all, the Empire – which was built of racism was – set free – like us in Guyana – for over half a century. It’s not like we’re in Australia, where the descendants of white European convicts are imposing their racism on new immigrants – and the native Aborigines. If we’ve been independent countries since then, what exactly have we done to eliminate racism right here??
Can anyone say with a straight face that a government of a country where no one group is 40 per cent, yet 90 per cent of Ministers and top Government officials are from one racial group, isn’t racist?? Or why 90 per cent every batch of new Police and Army recruits and school cadets and peoples Militia are from that same racial group? Especially when the Disciplined Forces Commission – on which the President was a member – mandated that an affirmative action programme be implemented to have a more representative Disciplined Forces?
The sad thing is it’s easy to condemn the (racial) mote in the white man’s eye – but somehow we’re comfortable with the plank in our own eye!!
… coalition scuttling
The most senior member and leader of the WPA came down from the mountain and shared his oracular wisdom on the tiff created over the firing of Executive member David Hinds from the Chronicle. Dr Rupert Roopnaraine declared that the WPA’s better off INSIDE the APNU coalition. So there you have it!!
Now, your Eyewitness won’t bother to remind you, dear reader, he’d already predicted the WPA ain’t going nowhere!! Roopnaraine – as revealed by Ogunseye was the Big Enchilada the WPA seconded to APNU as Granger’s running mate in 2011, when there wasn’t an “Indian” in sight to correct the “optics”!! Imagine the sacrifice of Roopnaraine to admit he was running as an “Indian” when he’s always boasted he and the WPA were “above” race!!
But as Ogunseye said, it did work!! APNU reversed the abysmal 2006 PNC performance. And the rest, as they say, is history.
So if a maltreated Roopnaraine can advise “stay”…one doesn’t need to be an Exxon petroleum lawyer to figure out the WPA’s between a rock and a hard place!!
…snow
First Air Jamaica announced it was cancelling a flight to NY because of snow up there. Then there was the news that one of its employees was caught with cocaine strapped to his legs.
Was Air Jamaica using the word “snow” in its colloquial sense?
