Black American experiences do not match Guyana’s uniqueness

Dear Editor,

British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill who suspended Guyana’s 1953 constitution said once, “The farthest backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.” This maxim, of course, recommends knowledge of Guyanese history and its wisdom to enoble and advance federalism as Guyana’s best political resolution.

Currently, Guyana’s “ruminating” race problems are without much long term relief; they are only made worse with no peaceful permanent resolutions under consideration. Eusi Kwayana’s partition agenda is also alive and rolls on as the alternative.

An anchoring mental enslavement, despite emancipation since 1838, has kept all Guyanese enshackled even into the 21st century and is likely to keep spinning into ad infinitum gridlock.

Now that it has been made very clear that “to ignore normal ethnic considerations” will also make for instability, what’s next? With both the British and Portuguese in exodus so far, the Indo Guyanese presence has been the most formidable target to be overcome.

Considered automatically guilty because of their numbers, the stratagem to whittle them down have been in full swing for a long time.

Problems

Already the Indo Guyanese population is being either miscegenated into oblivion, frightened away by targeting crime to stimulate emigration, actively creolized, subjected to religious changeover, facing increased suicides and threatened with massive job loss by a threatening AFC-PNC coalition for sugar industry shutdown.

“Worry” is kept alive among indentured descendants because the other side’s problems and their past have not been adequately resolved. Why it must be done at the expense of Indo Caribbean ethnic annihilation is not acceptable nor will it be conceded.

Slavery’s horrors were not due to any indentureship descendants’ designs, conspiracy or exclusionary policies. Applying the formulas of the Black American experience to Guyana should also not become foregone conclusions, but it is.

Neither of the countries have the same history. There was no civil rights movement in Guyana. Political power was a UK-US gift because of the threatening PPP’s ideology. “In fact, during the American slave era, it was Whites that decided who was Black, in terms of people of mixed heritage.

The notorious ‘one-drop’ rule, passed as US law from 1910 onwards, classified as legally ‘Black’, any individual with as little as one drop of ‘black blood’. It was a legal method of discriminating against all peoples with African ancestry.”(Ben Arogundade.)

Ancestry

President Barack Obama is celebrated worldwide with pride as America’s first Black President. But Guyana’s Presidents Janet Jagan, Sam Hinds and Donald Ramotar do not all become “Indian” by any assertion that the PPP/C government was headed by “Indians” for 23 years.

Since President Ramotar’s ancestry is composed of Amerindian, African and Portuguese ancestry on his mother’s side with his Indian father, he remains the PPP/C’s and Essequibo’s quintessential and exemplary Presidential luminary in Guyanese history.

In the meantime, while united Black problem solving is now riding in confident justified anticipation of reparations billions, all other Guyanese cannot remain static. Time does not wait.

Living for tomorrow’s promises should be no hindrance to todays’ now agenda of continuous progress. But by all that is associated with touted “ethnic honour” double dipping cannot also become “temporarily” honourable.

The departing British colonials did not specifically confer exclusive ownership or entitlement of their Caribbean real estate   possessions, to anyone, by race, or otherwise on leaving. If they did, future reparations for slavery is completely lost as payment was made and accepted as is, at that time.

Since the PPP was not a final party to Guyana’s independence – even though they were the forefront fighters made up of the entire Guyanese race spectrum – from the British, they did not seal or sold anything in finality.

Benefit

What will Caricom’s current quest for reparations achieve should Caribbean real estate be designated as forfeited collateral for slavery? Even by UWI’s Professor Rex Nettleford’s academic staking of entitlement claims of the Caribbean as owed inheritance for slavery’s miseries, there was no mutual settlement.

The taxpayers funded Caricom’s quest for reparations will also overwhelmingly only benefit slave descendants. Reparations justice by Caricom’s similar fairness can therefore only speedily find full and adequate compensation provided for the unprovoked Wismar 1964 massacre of Indians.

All subsequent losses due to rioting, rapes, injuries and property which occurred during Afro Guyanese rioting should also get adequate relief. Mutual excellence in education and desire to excel, allowing all to become completely and economically free within

Federalism is a far better existence. Pushed to the brink, but still in silence, the Indo Guyanese response is no match for the swarming bees.

Love and honour

What love has got to do with it? Indeed, what does “ethnic honour” have to do with it? By what criteria, or who will satisfactorily determine what’s honourable in race polarised Guyana with “ethnic honour” the new seasonal flavour?

What secret guiding literature informs its unknown codes? Prejudged by race, and automatically condemned by some slave descendants (not all) what better acceptable alternatives are in comparative existence, which guarantees Indo Caribbean peaceful coexistence?

Imposing slavery’s unending problems to all Guyanese cannot be fair. Ever. Could playing God by marking demarcation race lines in the sand be due to an empowerment piety possession so far unknown, which is an exception to the usual, so familiar?

All which may be cause for “worry” could so easily collapse when the rug is pulled away if ethnic reassurances are institutionalized. Currently there is no Indian on the other side, like the PPP/C’s own Afro Guyanese leaders who towers above us all.

When Afro Guyanese within the PPP/C Government give reassurances, it is firmly established they are with authority of backup honour in compliance. To set others free, requires all to be free especially the enslaved who must be fully mentally emancipated.

It’s the physicians who must first heal themselves of any afflictions which daily torments them. It must begin soon.

Sultan Mohamed