Dear Editor,
Lincoln Lewis claimed that: “The elephant in the room no one wants to talk about but remains the source of most of our conflicts and underdevelopment, is racism” (‘It is the primary responsibility of the people to bring about the change they desire’ SN, May 17). Mr Lewis is correct on one count but wrong on two. Most thinking Guyanese would accept that racism and the ethnic divide have been the fundamental issues facing this country for some decades and are largely responsible for our underdevelopment. Where Mr Lewis is wrong is in diagnosing the essential problem as racism and in claiming that people have not been talking about it.
The media columns are replete with comments about our racial/ethnic dilemma and at a symposium at Freedom House on Tuesday (May 18) I quoted the following from my 1997 parliamentary tribute to the late Cheddi Jagan, to make my point: “For all kinds of reasons, the working people to whom our late president pledged his life are only now tentatively emerging from years of material deprivation. As to the racial and ethnic problems, they still loom large… During his years of struggle he was quite miraculously able to be at the forefront of the fray and still somewhat above it. As a result, Cheddi Jagan’s death and its aftermath can be viewed as providing a catalyst to help us mitigate our social divisions in a sustainable manner. In this period many people are clamouring for stability. In my opinion, what is most required is change: willingness to attempt to create a future which opens new and more exciting vistas.” Furthermore, institutions such as the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) have only been established because the racial/ethnic problem has been recognised for a considerable time.
The trouble is that our difficulty has generally been falsely diagnosed as essentially a racial problem, which it is not. The result is that there have been many misguided beliefs and attempts at solution. In normal conditions, if we are really sincere about dealing with racism, and sufficiently innovative and open, it may be possible to establish arrangements, such as the ERC, which could help to severely limit racial discrimination and antagonisms. However, when the problem is not essentially racism but radical ethnic polarization of our specific type, the momentum and dynamics of the system are quite different. Others and I have commented on this issue before, but it is so important that I believe that if we are to avoid the half measures of the past, it deserves to be restated with the following specific analytical focus.
“An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or assumed. This shared heritage may be based upon putative common ancestry, history, kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance. Members of an ethnic group are conscious of belonging to an ethnic group; moreover ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group’s distinctiveness.” (Wikipedia) When found in a specific geographical area, mono-ethnic group cohesion and solidarity is usually viewed positively, as most conducive to development and national building (Japan is a usually good example). However, when different ethnic groups occupy the same geographical space, various degrees of polarization usually result.
When the groups are relatively small, their political leaders are usually easily co-opted into the extant political process (West Indians, Indians, Arabs and others in the United Kingdom and other Western societies). This is most important to avoid political alienation, conflicts, race riots, etc. However, when the ethnic groups are nearly of similar size, such as in Guyana, they become political parties in and for themselves. They develop their own agendas, have their own politicians seeking office (referred to pejoratively as ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’) and can no longer be contained by co-option.
In such a situation, suspicions and animosities develop, which autocratic regimes (USSR and Yugoslavia) may, for some time, be able to suppress, but as usual, acts of repression only exacerbate the situation. Where competitive politics (the Westminster model) exist, this inevitably gives rise to accusations of discrimination, ethnic conflict and insecurity. Of course, since security can best be found in one’s group, a bunker mentality develops and ethnic discrimination becomes inevitable. Even persons who might not be inclined to discriminate fall in line in the interest of group solidarity and security. Sometimes (as in Guyana) it becomes widely accepted that a certain level of balancing (discrimination) – for example in the security forces – is necessary to provide higher levels of security to one of the groups. But this is of limited use for it usually raises questions as to what precisely should be balanced? When does balancing become overbalancing and negative discrimination against the other side? And most importantly, who does the balancing? In these bi-communal societies, communities do not trust each other to adjudicate such important issues and as a result there are calls from the politically disadvantaged groups for secession, radical devolution, power-sharing, etc.
Unless some such alternative is adopted, national disunity, conflict and violence can become endemic and development is thwarted. These are some of the dynamics of the Guyanese context: not racism as such but radical ethnic polarization. Hence, regardless how well-meaning, arrangements such as the Ethnic Relations Commission are, more or less, useless. It is impossible to live in Guyana and not be concerned with ethnicity and race, and at times both Burnham and Cheddi Jagan held out hope of some kind of unity. However, I believe that, like most of us, their underlying rationale was essentially instrumental. By focusing as we do on the more visible and normal process outcome of racial discrimination, we tend to miss the underlying trajectory and to believe that the dysfunctions of our kind of system can be contained, or at least severely mitigated, in the normal ways. Unless we come to understand that they cannot we will continue to live in a highly volatile and relatively poor condition.
Yours faithfully,
Henry B Jeffrey
