…on seeing race in Guyana
“Race” is a word that gets a lot of traction in Guyana – and not just nowadays. It was invented hundreds of years ago by Europeans to enslave folks in Africa, who were minding their business, and haul them into the Americas to work for free. The “white” race was deemed “superior” to the other races – black, brown, red and yellow – with the black race placed at the bottom of the totem pole. Since then, in Guyana, rather than fighting the white man for imposing such an iniquitous system on us, some of the oppressed became “whiter than white”. And then tried to oppress the others!
This happened after the abolition of slavery – the most unequal and morally reprehensible social system invented in the history of mankind. Even though the Christian religion had been used to “justify” the white enslavement – claiming Africans were the “cursed children of Ham” – Africans became fervent adherents of that religion!! Indians who were brought in to replace them in the cane fields, and held on to their Hindu and Muslim religions, were ridiculed for doing “slave work” and practising “pagan religions”!! They also adopted European cultural practices like “suit and tie”; or, for women, the voluminous “cage crinolines” – all to presumably deal with the rigours of the tropical winters!! They aspired to be as close as possible to the whites – with the “Coloured” – products of white raping African slave women – getting closest.
Action, fortunately or unfortunately, but inevitably – produces a reaction. And in the case of Guyana, the Indian immigrants reacted to the scorn of the African and Coloured Guyanese with prejudices of their own. And this has defined relations between the groups into the present. But in the meantime, the African and Coloured Guyanese had been rewarded for accepting the white/European order and became the gatekeepers for “moving up” in society. Like being teachers, civil servants, doctors, lawyers, and even clerks in a country where the whites were few in number and only dreamt of returning “home”!
Unlike the US – which is used by some as a model of present Guyanese race relations – in Guyana, Independence was granted by the Brits to an African-Guyanese-controlled Government. It swiftly moved to institutionalise its rule over the rest of society – especially the majority Indian-Guyanese section! African-Guyanese culture became “Guyanese culture”, the economy was nationalised, and the African-Guyanese elite controlled it plus the Police, Army and Civil Service, which were already African-dominated.
For all intents and purposes, Guyana was as African as Tanzania – which Ujaama Socialism co-op model it adopted. It didn’t need to follow Idi Amin and expel the “Indians”.
They left “voluntarily” in droves! Race still rules!
…from an “elder’s” eye
There’s a letter in the press from Burnham’s PM and general strong-man factotum, Hamilton Green, on race relations. He defines himself as “Elder” Green nowadays. If the title is about his age, shouldn’t that be “Old Man Green”? He wants the Ali Administration to do “things that can heal and not peel when it comes to the two major ethnic groups in Guyana, Afro and Indo-Guyanese.”
They say that with age comes wisdom, but it looks like Green proves the exception. Before giving advice to Ali, wouldn’t dissociating himself from the actions of Mingo et al, which he supported after March 2nd, be “healing”? One “healing thing” he wants from Ali is that “retired sugar workers and the public servants must share equally in this bounty of oil money, to avoid the appearance of discrimination.”
“Retired” sugar workers? Is that what the “elder” calls the 7000 workers unilaterally FIRED by the PNC?
And they’re equivalent to Public Servants, who were INCREASED by 7000?
…on those knocking Granger?
In this season of goodwill, let’s wish former President Granger the best as he spends his Christmas in Cuba – for a medical check-up.
They won’t have him to kick around at this Saturday’s Congress.
