Dear Editor,
I refer to the name-withheld letter captioned “If born here you are seen as Guyanese” (SN 20/12/06) where the writer is putting forward the view that Africans who support ACDA or Indians who support the equivalent Indian organizations think of themselves as natives of Africa or India. This is not so and to claim that such people do not wish to be Guyanese is quite wrong and unfair. Most of the supporters of such organizations are aggressively Guyanese and are far more so than those who pay lip-service to their Guyanese nationality and then slyly emigrate to foreign lands. And when they go to Europe and North America, they become more European and American than the natives.
People who support those organizations do so because they acutely understand that these various groups suffered cultural deprivation by colonialism and loss of roots. They understand that in Guyana and the Caribbean the colonial monolithic culture, especially in its local guise of “creole culture” was intent on destroying any non-European culture or giving it very little space. And the culture which was most subject to this depredation by the so-called “creole culture” was the African culture and roots.
It is a laudable thing for these groups to re-discover roots and culture for it would help their morale, self-respect and indeed economic drive. Such groups should not be feared as causing disunity. Those who propound this kind of “unity” are the inheritors of the colonial monolithic attitude to culture. Those groups like ACDA which are calling for a more plural society should be complimented.
Yours faithfully,
V Redman
