Dear Editor,
I agree with some portions of the comments of Parvati Persaud-Edwards in her letter captioned, ‘The word racist should not be so freely used,’ (SN, 28.5.08). What bothers me somewhat though, is that there has always been a blatant pattern of selectivity in the response to such “misuse,” so to speak. For example, the taxpayer funded public print media are the platform for an infinite flow of this kind of mislabelling and worse, specifically targeted at the Oppositon and its traditional constituents. We are yet to see those with unfettered access to its pages express the kind of outrage in their home pages or elsewhere, that they were driven to do in this instance. Giving the proverbial Nelson’s eye to the yelling of ‘Wolf, Wolf’ in one’s backyard while waxing indignantly over it elsewhere, is disingenuously convenient. And please, this chiding is not being targeted specifically to Parvati Persaud-Edwards.
Many lexicons, including Meriam Webster, define racism as, “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities, and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” This represented the mindset of the architects of two of the most tragic events in human history, to wit, (1) the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and (2), the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jews, Gypsies, and any that fell short of being qualified members of the ‘Aryan’ race. Prejudice, on the other hand, involves the irrational and intolerant predisposition to make judgements about a group based on unjust and mythical stereotypes. Basically, if a small minority among them are criminals then they all are criminals.
This prejudice, plus the power and agencies to act it out, is what becomes discrimination and marginalization.
It is utterly delusional for anyone to advance the argument that Guyanese, for the most part, are not influenced in their views of each other as groups, by an educational and indoctrinal system that historically represented one group of people as superior, and all of the others as inferior. It is also utterly disingenuous to dispute the fact that the extreme image of inferiority in this context, was and still is the image of the African, while the extreme image of superiority was and still is the white Caucasian. And what the subliminal but entrenched influence of this has orchestrated in Guyana and the wider world, is to produce human templates of the absolutely perfect and the absolutely imperfect, and to persuade and promote natural and instinctual gravitation towards that end of the continuum where absolutely perfect reigns supreme.
No, none of us are absent some form of prejudice or the other. But the manner in which it informs our thinking and formulations is a product of its strength and influence in our belief systems as individuals or groups.
Really, there is hardly any difference in the power and influence between traditional religious beliefs and traditional cultural beliefs. And in the two examples of human inhumanity to other humankind referenced in the second paragraph of this letter, cultural beliefs and self-serving prejudices completely overwhelmed the influence of the basic tenets enshrined in the religious belief systems of the majorities in those historical theatres.
We in and of Guyana need to cease plunging our heads into the ground like ostriches in order to evade the real and the obvious. It is easy to point fingers and rely on the strength of political and ethnic affinity, rather than truth and reality, to elicit acquiescence to our postulations. It is a lot more difficult to lift up historical and cultural rocks and examine what lies underneath, and how it is affecting our perceptions and opinions.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
