You aren't against intermarriage.  You will just threaten to disown your kids if they do so.  Kids as they are, and especially those raised in North America will do exactly that, just to defy you.

Should they go looking especially for some Indian from Guyana, or Trinidad, in societies where these are small minorities?  Or should they find their love match, regardless as to who that person might be.

If you live in North America you are being very unrealistic.  At the end of the day they have to live with their spouses, not you.  So it is THEY, and not you, who will drive their decision. I suspect arranged marriages will not go over too well, and might even get you arrested if you try to enforce this, in a society where such customs are considered barbaric!  And like it or not, the values possessed by your kids, reflect not only what they learned in your home, but also by their exposure to the outside world.

Are you serious?

Where did I ever once even hint at some "enforcement" mechanism? I don't believe in enforcing any social norm over anyone. I think you really need to quit stereotyping Indos (especially me). We come in myriad flavors with myriad opinions nowadays.

However, I'm not opposed to Indians encouraging (like Jews and some Italians) their kids to marry other Indians.

If I ever used the word "purity" it was surely to mock it. India and Indians much like Latinos are a mixed race to begin with. I don't know any educated Indian who thinks we're a "pure" race.

Bottom line dude, I think you link my opinions with those held by some Indo racists. I think you do us both a great disservice. I just believe in a plural secular Guyana with free and absolute cultural space for everyone where we can be among our own tribe as we wish and freely mix as we wish. Not unlike how it is now outside of our racial and constitutional issues.

And Indians are free to be Indian and blacks are free to be blacks and intermingle in shared spaces on terms of mutual respect.

Intermarriage can easily wipe out a group like Guyanese Indos for the simple reason that there aren't that many of us and our culture is a highly specific subgroup everywhere we live. Try and look at it from a position of sheer numbers. That's all.

With some of the guys going over to hang with APNU (Gerhard, TK) this also shows the "populace" this shit about race voting should be over.

.

You do understand that a multi cultural society is one where many different cultures and identities exist.

Now please point out examples where I scream that Guyana should become monolithic culturally as is Barbados.

Indians in Guyana are the largest group and yet you feel that there extinction is a real threat.  Talk about paranoia.  How come Afro Guyanese, who intermarry for more often, aren't as filled with this panic? 

Indeed its their openness to intermarriage and the mixed race offspring, and the traditional Indian hostility to it is why mixed race Guyanese support the PNC, and not the PPP.  And support it they do as the PNC gets 40% of the votes with few Indian or Amerindian votes, despite the fact that at least 10% of the black population support other parties. So at least 25% of PNC support comes from mixed Guyanese, this pretty accounting for over 70% of that population.

Accepting the fact that some degree of intermarriage will occur in multi cultural communities might well be in the best interest, unless Indians want to chase their kids into the embrace of other races.  There is many an Indian female, disowned by her own family, who has had to turn to her black mother in law for support.  Who do you think her kids will identify with?

TK and Gerhard will be denounced as self hating Indians.

1. Indians since 1966 have been a dwindling population. That's a fact. we are immigrating, dying, or douglarizing in significant numbers. One only has to look at the island realms of Caricom where Indians were once as much as 10% or so of the population and have now essentially disappeared due to douglarization.

2. I don't know why you insist on extrapolations so often. I have not once said nor do I support "hostility" to intermarriage and ostracization. As a matter of fact, I've actually stood up at a major Indian Diaspora conference and argued specifically against this. But you don't know that but insist on living in some fantasy world where you see Indo racism everywhere. I clearly said we should encourage endogamous marriages along the lines of the liberal Jewish community. Encourage it but don't go nuts when it doesn't occur. And by encourage I mean you sensitize Indian children to their culture and hope they develop a desire to wish to preserve it for their kids.

3. I already addressed this. I was not speaking from some ancient Indian Vedic point of view where some rishi decreed "thou shalt not marry non-Indians." Intermarriage will happen. Always has, always will. However, one can still observe that this becomes problematic when it reaches certain numbers as we are a relatively small population that cannot long weather such pressures.

1.  The Indian population GREW between 1966 and 1980. Its most massive reduction occurred under PPP rule.  Even  as late as 1991 Indians were still 49% of the population, and now are a scant 40%.

No one can define exactly who in Guyana is African/Black, and who is mixed. The reality is that the vast majority of mixed people in Guyana have some African ancestry. Yet we aren't running around hysterical screaming that we will be annihilated.

The only Caribbean countries which have had significant Indian populations were Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname.  Indians in the other islands were always in the 1-5% range.  Take an island like St Vincent where there were a few thousand Indians.  You do know that if they only married each other at some point they would become inbred.  Does Indian "purity" matter to you so much that you would prefer to see a weak, diseased, and mentally retarded population?

2.  You are against intermarriage of Indians and others, as you scream that Indians are so "weak" that if they marry others they wouldn't be able to transfer their culture to the kids who emerge from this union.  Now you rant that Indians are a dying breed, even as they remain the largest racial group in Guyana, and the most mobilized, to the point where, despite being only 40% of the population they TOTALLY dominate Guyana.

You have said enough about Indian racism so I need not expand further.  Suffice to say that when people, who display racism, combine that with having political and economic dominance, the group that they display the greatest animosity towards (black people) will encounter barriers to their upward mobility.

3.  In the UK 50% of British born Caribbean men have white partners and 35% of the females do the same.  The population is static while the mixed population of some Caribbean origin has grown by leaps and bounds.  NOTHING can be done about that.  And what can one expect when a group is a scant 1% of the population.  Now that is an ethnic group that faces far greater threats of ethnic extinction than do Indians in Guyana, where they account for 40% of the population.

If any group should be paranoid it should be the African and Amerindian population, which are a good deal more "mixed" than is the Indian population.  Indeed the ethnic boundaries are so weak that some one can wake up in the morning and identify as black or Amerindian, and then decide during the day that they are indeed mixed.  I will not even get into the Portuguese population which has virtually disappeared through migration and intermarriage with other groups.  Ditto Chinese (not the new imports).

So it appears to me that Indo Guyanese have the LEAST probability of suffering from weakening ethnic boundaries, and yet scream the most.

I have to engage in an analysis of the Indo Guyanese male (one doesn't hear this rant as much from Indo females, who indeed more often exclaim why they don't want no "collie man").   I am aware that you guys have masculinity insecurities when you compare yourself with black men, and live in perpetual fear of either being beaten up, or having your women taken from you, or in your case, fearing ethnic eradication.

The way I see it Indo Guyanese have no reason to fear ethnic eradication, and yes their culture will change, as indeed has the culture of India itself. But that is life!

Maybe someone needs to do research into this phenomena of black people who avoid marrying black people like the plague? Is it a sign of an internalized inferiority complex?

I always wondered why blacks prefer asians and/or whites rather than other blacks. Then accuse other races of being "racist" for seeking to preserve themselves.

Is being black not worthy of being preserved?

Back to this silly douglarization controversy. It is simple to understand why douglarization is good for blacks and bad for Indos. For the simple reason that we have all (esp blacks) come to accept the one drop rule. Any kind of significant negro ancestry makes you negro. There is no one drop rule for any other race. Blacks have embraced this rule in contemporary society so that any mixed kid is essentially black. In Guyana, if you're not fully Indian you will not identify as Indian. It doesn't get more complex than this.

dunno where u get your facts from . . . most black people marry or have children with other black people

perhaps u think there is a need for an Indo Caribny on this BB

I was just using carib's reasoning to it's illogical ends. I'm quite aware that most black people marry black people for the same reasons that all people tend to marry internally.

Good God no. This BB has enough Indo racists. An Indo Caribj is simply an Indo racist who speaks English and can articulate his racism slightly better than abbe kneeru and the gold teet brigade.

words are important . . . you're a sharp guy

u know better

Point taken. I withdraw it as it has offended you needlessly so. I can see how that can be easily misread as a closely held belief. I assure you, it is not.

I'm still in shock at the seemingly well thought out racism exhibited by Caribj. Proving that education is no barrier to being an urbane version of dem bais.

I can understand the occasionaly silly racial remark but Caribj puts a lot of thought into his racism. This dude could write a paper on the seemingly malformed dog that is otherise known as the common Indian.

i am not offended; i have no reason to be . . . nothing is out of bounds if framed and argued intelligently

i enjoy 'offensive' satire as much as (perhaps even more than) most folk

the subject of rational/irrational choices along the color line when considering family and future generations is complex and fascinating . . . i actually have some fairly unorthodox opinions on this matter that might surprise some

sometimes though, especially in the Guyana context, it really is not productive to nourish the bottom feeders . . . caribny's issues with Indo-Guyanese notwithstanding

I absolutely enjoy offensive satire myself. I never found the word "offense" to constitute an argument.

I think Caribj is of the opinion that race permeates everything about Indian people. It really doesn't. Aside from yugi and kneeru, I don't know any Indos who spend their days worrying about black people. Caribj is succumbing to what many Indos succumbed to during the PNC dictatorship....a pathological hatred of blacks dressed up as logic. It is a natural consequence of racial rule. Caribj is a symptom of a disease.

Black people like to mind their own business and not tell other people what they ought to do.  In any case within the USA blacks have one of the lowest intermarriage rates (25% of black men, 15% of black women) so I don't know that blacks are running behind others.  When they find the ones who they like they go fcor it, regardless of race.

There is a larger issue of black women graduating college at higher rates than are black men, so have more difficulties in finding mates.  There is another issue that blacks have to contend with racism in the world of work, and in the streets, and often wish to not have to deal with a spouse who doesn't understand the subtleties of modern day racism.  So college educated black women are scrambling behind a smaller pool of college educated black men and so get frustrated when they see whites and others getting some of these men.

It is a fact that college educated black men are no more likely than the others to marry non black women.

Of course this conversation is silly when you consider that Indians OWN AND CONTROL Guyana, while blacks are literally squeezing for a space in their own land which REJECTS them!

Shaitaan is your masculinity so fragile that you seriously equate the condition of Indians in Guyana (40% of the population owning 80% of the assets) with the USA where blacks are 13% of the population with 2% of the assets?

One drop rule does NOT apply in the USA or else why would 20% of the population be considered mixed.

In fact blacks should be screaming against douglarization because without it they would be 50% of the population.

Yet they do NOT!  The LARGEST and WEALTHIEST ethnic group in Guyana wails that they will be eliminated if their daughter (they aren't as worried about the sons) marries a non Indian, and Good LORD, especially if she "a go get married to one black man"!

You do yourself no great service with ad hominen attacks against someone largely sympathetic and by sympathetic I mean a person who actively do things to help people offline. My opinions originate not from my fears of masculinity but the facts available to me and my ability to place said facts in an analytical framework. I pay you the compliment of assuming arguendo the same of you as I do for all my interlocutors since I am not a god who can peer into men's hearts and souls. You apparently are able to peer into my soul and reach into  part of me I'm unaware of. My compliments to your psychic abilities vis a vis the Indian soul.

FYI, a few Indians enjoy political power. A few Indians enjoy economic dominance in Guyana. There is no "Indian privilege" in Guyana. Indians hire their friends and acquaintances I don't dispute.

But the average Indian enjoys no "privilege." My relatives in Guyana are "privileged" in that they plant rice as their ancestors did. Others live off of Merican welfare via Western Union. The overwhelming majority of Indians go about their daily affairs eeking out a living. It just so happens that they have had better practice at being neglected by the state than blacks. That's all.

I challenge you to tell me why the Indian poverty rate is so high. Why our suicide rate is so high? Why we suffer so many other social ills? Esp since we "dominate"?

"Abbe" nah deh pon tap. "Dem bais" deh pon tap.

I love how people invent their own lies.  I am the one who doesn't care who people get married to and suggest that others mind their own business and tend to their own lives.

YOU are the ones who wants to establish a quota for intermarriage and wails if too Indian kids falls in love with a non Indian, and then screams that all is lost for the Indian race as a result.  You want to preserve a RACIAL identity.

YOU wish to ensure RACIAL preservation! You wish to preserve a one drop rule where if some one is only part Indian, they relinquish any connection to the Indian identity or culture. 

It looks to me as if YOU are the one who is advocating and dwelling in identities based on RACE!

I am telling you that if Indians, the largest, richest and most ethnically mobilized group in Guyana, still wail that their very existence is under threat reflects seem deep seated insecurity. And it is noted that this rant almost always comes from Indian MEN.  Now I have offered my opinion as to why this is.

Now as to Indian racism.

80% of all leadership positions in Guyana are headed by Indians. When I ask which black has effective leadership in Guyana I am met with silence, once Luncheon, and Benn are mentioned.   

So either

(a) black people are stupid and unfit to lead as yuji claims

OR

(b) the same Indo male insecurity, which leads them to cry that their future is a people is under threat if one Indo girl marries and black men, also leads them to attempt to reduce blacks to near destitution by excluding them from leadership, and suggesting to them that aspiring to be better is useless in Guyana as they will not get the opportunity.   Like some say "ahbe time now, black man time DONE" 

Shaitaan it is OBVIOUS that this is happening in Guyana, and you CANNOT prove otherwise.  Indeed its so obvious that NON GUYANESE notice it!

It is hard sometimes to wade through nonsensical rants but I shall try.

"Wants to establish a quota"? Where was a quota requested or proposed? I merely said due to our small numbers, we can only sustain so much intermarriage. Buy a book on basic demography. 200k coolies is a small pool to begin with. No demographer would think we can long sustain huge numbers of mixed marriages beyond a certain numerical limit. Determined by the science that is demography.

"Wails if an Indian falls in love with a non-Indian"? I assure you I don't wail at funerals, I doubt this will do it.

I do not wish to preserve the one drop rule. I just stated a fact. It has preserved itself. That's all I said.

Individual high profile Indians may be rich and powerful but that is not the norm for Indians. I think blacks even remain the better more college educated population.

80% of the tops posts belonging to Indos does not equal domination. That's not how domination works. I'm sure they were placed there for reasons of party loyalty and family and friend ties. I don't think there is some vast anti-black conspiracy.

The average Indo is not enriched or enhanced by having 80% of top posts go to Indos.

Do you think Obama and Eric Holder makes this a black dominated government?

Just like there is no "white privilege" in the USA.  You will tell me that whites have the same opportunities in the USA as do blacks.

Indo kid and black kid graduate from UG.  The person hiring is most likely another Indian.  Who do you think has an advantage?

If you were indeed "sympathetic" you would concede that In Guyana blacks have additional barriers when compared to Indians, if those in power are Indians and if almost all aspects of life in Guyana, are defined by race.

I am fully aware of the fact that all Indians aren't rich and that poverty is almost as widespread as it is among blacks.  I am also aware of the fact that when a group sees their own in control it gives them a psychic motivation to succeed, denied to those who don't see this.

Blacks in Guyana have now become like blacks in the USA.  They LACK the self confidence that blacks in the majority black islands have that life will be fair to them if they do what they need to do to succeed.  RACE in Guyana is a factor which enters daily discussion in a way that it NO LONGER does in most other parts of the English speaking Caribbean.

No more than does Luncheon and Benn make Guyana black dominated.

In Obama's circles the vast majority of the positions are staffed by WHITE MEN.  This is a country run by WHITE MEN, and Eric Holder's boldness in discussing race, not a topic which white men want to talk about, is why he is NO LONGER there.

Today Guyana in its leadership is as INDIAN dominated as the USA is white dominated.  Difference that Indians are 40% in Guyana, and non Hispanic whites are 65%.

Even you concede that the armed forces, which are the only area where there is significant black leadership, aren't independent of the Indian power structure.

So pray tell me how can you wail that Indians in Guyana are under some sort of threat? That rant is 40 years too old!

If you claim that the INDIAN power structure treats Guyanese of all races poorly I will happily agree with you, but then they only have power because the Indian GRASS ROOTS vote for them, and enjoy psychic glee of "ahbe pan tap".  In May most Indians will vote PPP, and you know that fully well.

An A.P.N.U/A.F.C ticket is almost impossible to sell to the electorate, especially those for some strange reason once supported the A.F.C.

If the pre-election coalition becomes a reality, the A.F.C would effectively be a "dead-meat" party. 

This is novel. You have a new argument of Indigeneity. You also know well the legal argument is not the ethnic argument and the terms nation, nationality and nationalism do not transfer nicely. Nation in the primal sense is people hood forged in common bloodlines with language religion and culture in synchronicity. Nationality is merely the happenstance of the member of a nation being born into a geographically bounded and legally defined entity termed a state and co-oping the term nation ( modern invention) when it does not bound people of the same culture or kin. Well, nationality is about symbolism and etc. In thes light Indians are indigenous to their Nation, in Bharat Mata ie UT Behar. There they may even have to back further into caste and jat to find the sense of nation!

Don't be so intellectually dishonest as to compare whites in America to Indians in Guyana.

For the record, I know a few major Indian employers in Guyana who practice black preferencial hiring and their staffs seem pretty happy and content.

I will assume arguendo that an Indo UG grad might privileged. I base that on absolutely nothing. I don't deny Indos are racists.

I absolutely concede that blacks have additional barriers than Indians in some limited respects. That's due in no small part to the fact that we have a system of racial government invented by blacks.

Indians actually have higher poverty statistics than blacks do. So where is all this Indian privilege and domination you speak of?

You're just annoyed that you see too many Indian faces at the top. This is not racial domination. This is an elite. Indians do not dominate Guyana. A small number of elite PPP Indians do. There is an important difference there.

I'm not gonna buy this self-confidence nonsense. There have always been and still are many black figures for black people (who need that psychological balm) to feel self-confident about.

I'm not so certain that people look to the Cabinet for self confident. I don't know any Indian aside from our duncest that feel any pride or self-confidence when looking at our Ministerial Indos.

What did coolie kids have to do for self-confidence from 1964 to 1992? You know what? Personal achievement.

I understand. We have in Guyana a collision of all the various theories of nationhood. We have Indians who legally came with their citizenship intact. The left India as British Subjects and arrived as such. Then they are the majority of what is and became the "Guyanese People."

We have Amerindians who have a special claim of nationhood independent of the State inclusive of all the rights the state can possibly afford them as they were in a treaty relationship to the Crown that Guyana inherited.

Then we have everyone's claim of being born in Guyana or being born to Guyanese parents (jus soli and jus sanguinis).

This is the reality. My point is that all of these competing claims are legitimate and should be balanced to the degree possible.

These claims should inform the construction of the Guyanese State. Burnham attempted to "create" a Guyanese identity without really catering to the Guyanese People as they were and are.

We are not the volk. Nor should we aim to be.

And if the bulk of those who are in leadership positions are Indian, and they do this, I really don't know why you deny that there doesn't exist Indian privilege.

Clearly Indians have more access to opportunities in Guyana than do blacks.  Clearly blacks in Barbados and in similar islands do not face many of the problems that blacks in Guyana have.  Clearly you aren't "sympathetic" if you cannot concede that point.

Define Indian privilege for me. If you mean that you get some kinda "privilege" for being Indian in Guyana, I disagree. You mean the average Indo walking about gets some special treatment on account of his being Indo? I think the only privilege in Guyana is money.

If you mean PPP Privilege, then yes that makes sense. That exists.

There was a much better argument for Black Privilege during the PNC. Back then blacks really had a coherent ideology of black supremacy and worked to put it in practice.

I have an uncle who served in the GDF in the 1970s and 1980s and the entrenched black supremacy, not even racism, and Black privilege was extraordinary.

Shaitaan I was a little kid when I heard the black adults complaining about how racist Janet Jagan was against them. While Burnham definitely can be accused of developing a racist governing structure, the people who established this were the colonialists and Janet Jagan happily adapted this to benefit PPP supporters, and as the PPP then, as they do now, tried very hard to squeeze blacks out.

Indeed its the memories of the 61-64 Janet Jagan era (and note I say Janet and not Cheddi) which led the black middle class to support Burnham when they had previously despised him.

Shaitaan EVERY ASPECT OF LEADERSHIP IN GUYANA IS INDIAN DOMINATED NOT JUST THE PPP!   There are now FEWER blacks in leadership than there were even in the last days of British colonial rule.

And yes ambitious blacks LEAVE Guyana and you will see all over the Caribbean.  They just don't see any scope for them in Guyana.  Many cite RACIAL reasons for this, just as Indians did under Burnham rule.

Now unless you are telling me that Indian employers have blacks in management slots I am not impressed.  Of course they will hire blacks at lower levels as they come cheaper because they are just too glad to find a job.

Now run along and scream at all those Indians with non Indian spouses that they threaten the very existence of Indian culture!  Ask yourself why you think that non Indian cultures are strong enough to withstand interracial mixing and not Indian culture.

I am amused why you make a big deal of inter racial marriage and then  pretend as if race isn't a powerful construct for you.  Indeed if there was MORE of this then more people would have diverse networks and therefore there would be less racial preference in hiring!  And race would be LESS important as a social construct!

Black privilege was a factor of life then just as Indian privilege is now. 

In Guyana however it is OK to talk about the racial excesses of the Burnham era, and yet one must pretend as if the same doesn't occur today.

Indeed just as many ambitious Indians left Guyana then for reasons of racial exclusion, so too do blacks today.

Don't think that you are going to get me into a trap by implying that I pretend that anti Indian/Amerindian racism wasn't rampant in the Burnham era. I make no excuses for it.  You however are making excuses for the blatant attempts to exclude blacks.

Who is the PPP.  Its an Indian party so as it excludes others.  Those who will be excluded will be mostly blacks.  It will be easier for an Indian to figure out how to grasp opportunity, as they don't face OVERT exclusion, just as it was easier for blacks in the Burnham era.

Guyana since its beginning was set up on the basis of ethnicity and race, and this continues today. 

All Burnham wanted was power.  He excluded Indians and Amerindians (outside of a few tokens) and made sure that blacks remained dependent on him.

Nothing else concerned him.

The fact remains that creoles (Africans, mixed and Portuguese) have a different notion about what being "Guyanese" than that which Indians (and maybe Amerindians have).  This is the basis of much of the conflict. 

This is also why creoles are not threatened by miscegenation, and indeed often see it as a way of reducing some of the inter ethnic competition.  Indians see this as a threat.  Others then consider Indians to be a clannish people, lacking a vested interest in "Guyanese" nationhood. 

This then spills over into our politics and into perceptions about who has access to what opportunity. When middle class blacks were asked after 1973 as to why they continued to support Burnham, even when it was obvious that by then he was no good, their response was that the alternative was the PPP (Indians) who would "drive them out to the sea".

1992 comes and we see the almost total exclusion of blacks from leadership (and not just of government) and those who had certain paranoia in the 70s feel quite vindicated when they see what Jagdeo and Ramotar, and the Indian elites in general,  have done.

Do you think I stand a good chance of cashing in on my supposed Indian privilege in Guyana with my rabidly anti PPP opinions?

For whatever you can say about Guyana and PPP rule, it is not comparable to PNC rule. It really isn't. Sure, they steal more on account of there being more money to steal. That's about it. The PPP are an illiberal democracy of sorts. The PNC had a state ideology as a key component of dictatorship. I don't really see the PPP drilling it into Indos that they are better by virtue of their blood. I hear no shouts of "Indo Power." Hell, I hear charges of how unmanly we are.

During the PNC era, black was good, coolie was bad. You could feel race in the very air.

I will concede Indian privilege when you can wipe away the hideous statistics of Indian poverty and suicide and migration etc etc.

I concede we have a race problem, a corrupt PPP Indian elite, and casual and soft racism here and there. But there does not exist Indian privilege. Whatever exists in terms of "Indian privilege" affects a few of the chosen ones and that can be easily undone by a single election....Ironically to be fueled by the new demographic realities which have made Indians a minority and will further erode us into a smaller minority.

Any one who advocates multi culturalism, which I certainly do doesn't demand that any one should be deprived of the right to practice their culture, or deprived of the right to adapt their culture by absorbing that of others.

I met a dougla from Trinidad he told me that he goes to the Catholic Church, the Hindu temple or to the Orisha Palais, depending on his mood.  He is drawing from the diverse cultural tapestry of Trinidad and using it as he sees fit.  As some one of mixed ancestry it is indeed easier for him to do so, as he would have been exposed to this within his own family structure.

I submit to you that it will be people like him who become the glue that allow the more entrenched ethnic interests to interact with each other. 

A major reason why Trinidad lacks the extreme ethnic tension than does Guyana, is because it is a society which provides more room for its diverse ethnicities to interact with each other.  Carnival began with the French, and was transformed as the Africans became involved, and is now adapting to the increased involvement of its Indian population.

This is why Guyana, and not Trinidad, is considered to be the test case for analyzing ethnic conflict in the Americas.

Yes your attempts to suggest some soft racism, but that regular blacks and Indians have life little different.  But then you would NEVER make the same assertions of the Burnham era and would CORRECTLY lambaste me if I did so.

Tell you what you are in Indian and obviously lack the ability to empathize with black youths who are daily told that they are lazy criminals, who mean no good for society, and that their lives do not matter. And they could have easily read exactly this in the Chronicle.  This is the justification used by some who refuse to hire them.

And let me ask you.  What do you think would have happened to me in the Burnham era if it was known that I was a WPA? You think that being black would have saved me from a sound beating from the House of Israel?

I don't know why you continue to bring up the Burnham era when I will certainly not dispute the fact that to be black, especially to be black AND middle class brought serious advantages in that era. If one played the game one pretty much got what one wanted.  Harder for an Indian to do so.

In 2015 we see the SAMETHING, except that its the Indian, and the educated Indian in particular who enjoys privilege if he plays the game.  And it is the blacks. INCLUSIVE of the EDUCATED black, who has to fight against exclusion.

Now here is the difference.  You are so trapped in your "Indianness" that you lack the empathy for what blacks in Guyana go through today. I am a cultural creole, with a less fixed ethnic identity than you have, so apparently am better able to empathize, so I saw exactly what Indians went through in the Burnham era.

You will note that I am NOT interested in arguing as to whether the Burnham era was any less racist than is the Jagdeo/Ramotar era is today.  I am simply satisfied that BOTH eras were typified by ethnic exclusion, and by almost total dominance by the elites of which ever ethnic group was dominant. And that there was/is blatant exclusion of those who are deemed to be excludable for no reason aside from their race.

And I guess you will tell me that there wasn't rampant black poverty and destitution in the Burnham era, even as you argue black privilege?  Your point?

This is what some people just can't seem to grasp. There is a difference (VAST) between the PPP Elite Coolies and us Regular Coolies. Us Regular Coolies don't really feel superior to anyone because the PPP Elite Coolies run tings.

You will have to excuse me as I studied political science in college and I tend to adhere to exacting standards that non-poli sci majors may be less dogmatic about. I'm sure you are no less dogmatic about the theories of your chosen field. I was just trying to make a point that there is a substantive difference between PNC rule and PPP rule. Let's not be intellectually dishonest and equate the two. They do share similarities though. But from a theoretical point of view, they are classed differently by the gods of political theory. To do otherwise would be simple academic dishonesty. I did not intend to distinguish for the purpose of suggesting one kind of oppression is somehow better than another.

I do empathize with the plight of Afro-Guyanese as a constituent people of Guyana. I actually support a new constitutional formula, rigorous anti-discrimination laws, and affirmative action laws for the simple fact that all groups should have a stake in Guyana and winners and losers should not be determined by racial categories.

You keep projecting a lot onto me as a person. It's quite immature. Your perceptions of my Indianness are irrelevant to a mature considered discussion unless you think I am being deceitful. I trust you don't think I am actually trying to make PPP misrule seem more pleasant than it actually is.

I am merely trying to draw a line between abbe and dem bais. Dem bais gat privilege. Abbe don't.

Are ordinary Indians treated more leniently by the justice system?

Are there special clubs Indians have that exclude others?

Are there special opportunities for Indians exlusively?

Are the coercive arms of state power less deadly to Indians?

Look at all dis Indian Privilege

1.  

More of these fat cat coolies enjoying "Indian Privilege"

Look at dis chat-3 enjoying so much free time since she is free from the burdens of employment

Poor porr black gyal can barely afford clothes. Forced to only wear she panty due to Indian Privilege

Can't we all chip in and buy dis nice gyal some clothes? And maybe some food. Look how magga she is. Poor ting.

Bai, out of such humble villages, Pradoville was first dreamt up. You see that bridge? The builder of it is now probably hired by the PPP to build even bigger versions of it. It is the pinnacle of Guyanese bridge building engineering.