The offending Letter by Devanand Bhagwan:

Dear Editor,
Freddie Kissoon’s sensationalist column of 02-02-13, “In physics and dialectics, there is the concept of balance” was typically partial and unbalanced, which has contributed to his bane.
It is unfortunate that the Salem Church on Hadfield Street desecrated its hallowed halls by allowing Mr. Kissoon, an avowed atheist, to use their pulpit to fumigate hate in the country. And I wished I were a fly on the wall in the Bethel Congregational Church in Beterverwagting to hear what gospel Nigel Hughes and others were actualizing in that sacrosanct dwelling; (the word "Bethel" means 'House of God', or 'the place where God dwells').
Mr. Kissoon is peeved that 98% of the faces found in ads were “either light in complexion, very white and are from people outside of the African ethnic mix”. It is farcical and absurd that the columnist was writing about ‘balance’ when his focus has consistently been only on the African side, which make up only 30% of the population. It would have been insightful if the researcher could have given us the percentage of faces (say, over the past 20 years) who were from the Amerindian ethnic mix, considering that they are 10% of the citizenry. And you’d think the now famous statistician would have given us comparative data for Indians, who comprise 43% of the population!
Mr. Kissoon is angry that almost all of the ads have light skinned persons, and has repeatedly expressed his disgust that Indians in India have been partial to those with lighter complexion in the Bollywood arena. (I share this sense of disgust, as it is true not only to actors, for also those in certain employment, for those looking for a spouse, etc.). But does he know that Africans, from Jamaica to South Africa use lightening creams to look lighter and non-black? A University of Cape Town study showed that one in three women in South Africa tries hard to whiten their skin to look white, including Local musician Nomasonto “Mshoza” Mnisi, who is now several shades lighter. The situation in Nigeria is worse, where approximately 77% of the women use skin lighteners. And many African women in the continent and in the diaspora, including Guyana, have used hair straighteners thereby departing from the traditional Bantu appearance.
In Jamaica, the most public proponent of bleaching is singing star Vybz Kartel , whose own complexion has dramatically lightened in recent years. His ‘Look Pon Me’ contains the lines: “Di girl dem love off mi brown cute face, di girl dem love off mi bleach-out face.” And residents of Denham Town, in west Kingston, say the introduction of a ‘new type’ of skin lightening cream has sparked fist fights and a rift among women in a section of their community. The women are reportedly accusing each other of spitefully purchasing too much of the commodity to get the other jealous.
On 13-01-13, the Stabroek News carried an article, “Fly Jamaica inaugural flight delayed”, and showed a photo of the attendant crew. There were eight women shown in the photo; except for one, all of them were light skinned, most with dyed hair! The bottom line is people in many parts of the world like to look lighter, and advertisers hone in on that axiom.
Mr. Kissoon again rouses, “Where is the balance in commerce, import-export trade, financial houses, land ownership, property ownership, investments in business ventures, agricultural projects, engineering firms, the construction industry, the retail trade in downtown Georgetown etc?” Ow bai, Freddie, where were all those things when the PNC held power for 28 years? Have the PPP, PNC, UF, or the colonial powers buckled down those of a particular ethnic background not to flourish in those areas mentioned?
Can you imagine dictating to advertisers or the Private Sector Commission that 10 percent of the ads should fall within the Amerindian “ethnic mix”, 30 percent to the Africans, 43 percent to the Indians, etc.?
The U.S. government interjected in their struggling economy billions of dollars not to help specifically ethnic groups; it did so to make it easier to help the struggling American. You provide grass for the horse to eat, but, as my Aggy used to say, “you can’t force haass to eat grass”!
Mr. Kissoon is petulant about the sizeable financial (Indian) ownership in the country. Why have Indians become more successful in business in Guyana, and elsewhere? Whether it is in Trinidad, Jamaica, the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Kenya or South Africa, the Indians have made their mark, and have done well in business. The eminent and consummate business acumen of Indians is universally known and is respected; their enterprising spirit and diligence (haad wuk) is reason for their success.
While some are asleep from their late night dance, they get up early in the morning and start to wuk haad to feed themselves and their families.
Mr. Kissoon reminds us “ if sections of a society are deprived, sensing gloom and doom, they tend to become desperate”.
“Desperate”, is what Idi Amin, the brutal dictator of Uganda, felt, and kicked out almost all the Indians out of the country in 1972 – about 75,000, as they had controlled 90% of the country’s economy. Now that the economy was in the hands of the Ugandans, what happened?
The economy was collapsing, so when Museveni seized power on January 26, 1986 he realized that perhaps the best way to revive Uganda’s persistent economic weakness was to call back the captains of industry. And these were the Indians. His efforts paid off as many of them returned and helped to give the country new hope.
More than 70% of the top taxpayers in Uganda are businesses owned or managed by Asians, contributing in excess of 65% of the domestic revenue. Approximately a million indigenous Ugandans are employed by Indian owned/managed businesses. Indians, who play a vital role in providing goods and services in the country, own many of the new corner stores and flourishing businesses on Kampala Road.
And what about business ownership and positions of Indians in the U.S.A., who comprise less than two percent of the population? The former lecturer might have belly ache to know that the Indian American median family income is $61,322 as against the national median family income of $41, 994.
The high income clearly reflects the advanced educational levels achieved by the community. Indians account for more than 15% of high-tech startups California’s Silicon Valley. It is mind boggling to think that 38% of doctors in the country are Indians; 36% of NASA scientists, 34% of Microsoft employees, and 28% of IBM staff are Indians.
And guess what, Freddie – approximately 37% of all hotels and motels in the U.S. are owned by Indians! How did/can it happen – because of haad wuk! These figures are staggering, keeping in mind that Indians are less than 2% of the citizenry? What if the U.S. population consisted of 43% as it is in Guyana?!
On an in-transit flight recently, I was struck to see that most of the employees at Heathrow airport seemed to be Indian, including those who were cleaners, the logistic staff, security guards, etc. (These jobs were obviously contracted, and the Indians won these contracts – not because of political or racial bias). So what account for success and ownership of Indians all over the world? Haad wuk – that’s the reason!
Speaking of dialectics, in my next letter, I shall protest lack of balance in Guyana’s national football and track-and-field teams!
Devanand Bhagwan

[KN February 11, 2013]

I am never surprised when you let a fool be a fool they do so to maximum effect. One sees the shallowness of this individual rising like pond scum as soon as he begin to relate his “facts”.  I think it is the only reason why KN give him a forum; so we may see racism and its naked and  intellectually calcified character at its best.

He begins with a glaringly false comparative;  so what he says if there is no diversity in advertisements in the local media?  In Jamaica and South Africa people bleach their skins!  Can you say moron more loudly here?  What does an individual's preferences to bleach their skins, agreeably a truly pretentious act (with a liberal dose of self-loathing)  has to do with the deliberate  discriminatory practices  in the society? Freddie rightfully called this block head out on account of his concretized racist creed.

He goes on to insult his  Aagee by taking her aphorism about not being able to persuade a horse to eat ( rightfully it should be about taking  a horse to the water’s edge but being unable to make him drink)  as he connects it  to the racist  inference  that Africans can  never be able to take advantage of help offered on account of their  inferior genetic heritage.  He hoped to convince us of the Indian native sagacity by providing us with some statistics about  Indian success in the US. The idiot missed completely  that the median Indian in the US society  are the highly educated  and that they were selected to come with  preferential visas  on account of  their competence  to work in a  high paying  industry  in the first place!

 What he ought to tell us is why 300 million Dalits are at the bottom of the food chain in India.  His statistics needs to sound out the disconnect between Indian success elsewhere in th world and their failures at home. Why are their native intelligences not serving them well in their own home world? There, some 90 percent of the society live lives  in hell’ s backyard with no toilets, no running water and this is so much an anomaly that  globally they share a place down in the dumps among the subaltern demographics with respect to poverty in the world?

 Maybe something about the traditional Brahmanism caste based traditions will seep into his knuckle head head and he will grasp the connection to the insidiousness of institutional racism or other preferential treatment at work in a society! But then he missed the comment by the Chinese official to the press last week in defense against the complaints of Chinese business running rough shod over local  Guyanese businesses. Let me paraphrase, he said that the Chinese had a natural affinity for organization,  hard work, and  industry! 

I grew up in Guyana in the 70s and I do not recall most of the print ads being of light skinned people.  Indeed most Guyanese (African AND Indian) are dark skinned, so Indians have as much right to be appalled by this.

Jamaica and South Africa are very different societies from Guyana.  So why is the rationalization of the color complexes of these societies being used to justify a NEW complex about skin color in Guyana.

Any case I have seen pics of FlyJ cabin crews.  NONE can be described as white, and few as especially non negroid light skinned.  Quite a few fit any definition of black, as the pilots certainly did.

AfroGuyanese do NOT want to be white.  Indeed I am sure that an ideal would be that of a mid to darkish toned black person....Trotman through to Forbes Burnham.  From the dismissive remarks made about "potagee" and "red people" I recall in the 70s I am at a loss to believe that AfroGuyanese prefer to look like either group. 

If this is now true in 2013 then it is a product of the deep seated bias that darks skinned blacks have been subjected to since 1992.

He has a point here, weather some like to hear it or not.  Under the PNC, Afros had everything at their disposal, political power, civil power, economic power thru control of all major industries, and military power to bludgeoned the Indian masses into cowering to a quasi-apartheid power structure.

Today, Afros still dominate civil service, the military and have every opportunity to do what the Indian do, work, invest and grow.  There is nothing stopping Afros from excelling in Guyana.

How about a crooked PPP implanting kith and kin on every authoritative positions in the state with no qualms about the practice. This idea that we should look back only as defense with no offense to change the conditions that brings these unfair policies into fruition is to our detriment.

I detest the PPP with an overwhelming venom. I detest them for their corruption of our hopes for a better ethnic neutral society where there is accountable government. I detest their craven crablike grasping to convert every asset of our society that is of worth into the hands of their kin. On that account I would gladly acquiesced to a PNC rule in hope that by now they know better and can be an improvement to the current regime of crooks.

Under this  regime there will be no hope for change. In any event, if the PNC turn out to be exactly like the PPP say they would then they will have learnt their lesson that absolute power will corrupt absolutely. Maybe then they would not embrace dictatorial powers like a junkie clutching at a fix. Maybe then they would then care to fight for change and with fresh eyes for justice. Meanwhile, I say to hell with them.

yesss, the PNC dictatorship (Afros) had all these things "at their disposal," and chose not to steal the country

you seem to think less of them (Afro Guyanese) that they did not "get up and get" like the PPP and transfer the wealth of the country to their kith & kin, especially since the "bludgeon[ing]" military power of the GDF would have made such transfer a cakewalk

deconstructing the ignorant bigot is a fairly simple task . . . unsolicited skin shedding occurs if you are patient enough

My bad, Burnham was the pope and the PNC followers were god-faring decent folks whose aim was justice and fairness to all Guyanese.

like rev al, our sari wearing "N*GGER" screamer, mr "Bhagwan" lost me, and showed his true 'intellectual' colors when he inserted this long debunked urban legend as part of his case for Indo supremacy . . . and Afro indolence.

antimen in high heels . . . reaching

he must be posting on GNI

no one's making that silly argument u donkey . . . your red herring didn't make the cut

i suggest you stop cribbing from the paid posters playbook and deal like a man, not a cowering antiman

I have frequently told you how the PNC destroyed the African population.

1.  It fostered a culture of dependency when in actuality Africans needed to understand risk, and to gain entrepreneurial skills.

2.  It undermined and almost totally destroyed the educational system, the main ladder of upward mobility for Africans.

3.  By promoting incompetents, simply because they were PNC goons, and by harrassing independent thinking Guyanese, regardless of race, they embedded within segments of the African population that education and skills were not important.  Only a party card.

So really how did the PNC help Africans?  And was it really interested in helping grass roots Africans?  If it was, rather then wasting time with coops, When AfroCaribbean people, and other TransAtlantic descendants of the slave trade, are the most individualistic people on this planet, guaranteeing that a culture based on coops was doomed to fail.  They would have developed a class of African businessmen at all levels, small, mid and large.

Indeed to the extent that an African business class exists today, its because the PNC failed and Africans had to find an alternate to civil service jobs.

I find your notion of Africans and the civil service funny.   I assumje that you are going to say that in 1850 Africans and not the British, dominated Guyana, because they accounted for the bulk of the LOW and MID level civil servants.

Check to see who HEADS govt controlled agencies and get back to me.  Its these HIGHLY PAID folks who run Guyana....almost all of them INDIAN and PPP CONNECTED.

Baseman Africans suffered from the legacy of slavery and developed counter productive attitudes based on current comsumption, unwillingness to plan for the future, and a fear of risk, so preferring "safe" occupations.  Indeed the colonial plantocracy was determined and was successful in destroying the early post slavery attempts by Africans to become independent farmers and small business men.  Thus anchoring in the heads of the Africans that they were not suited for such pursuits and also ensuring that Africans would ridicule any African who indeed tried to succeed in those areas.

Now what excuse do you have for Indians.  Allowed to maintain much of their cultures, values and family systems.  Not harrassed to the same degree as were Africans when they attempted to free themselves from the plantation.

Yet alone among the immigrant groups we see  significant levels of poverty among Indians.  Clearly Portuguese and Chinese way out performed their fellow indentures from India.  And indeed one can debate the degree to which the lower 95% of the Indian population is any better off than is the African population.

I suspect that in the not too distant future we will see that the PPP was every bit as destructive of its grass roots support base, as the PNC was of theirs under Burnham rule.  And indeed we are seeing some softening of Indian support for the PPP, as we saw among Africans towards the Burnham regime by the late 70s.