Dear Editor,
I thank Mr Alex Graham for his details on the scope of the public awareness campaign for the National Census printed in Stabroek News on Monday October 1, 2012. This was in response to my reaction to the three debut advertisements in the print media which appeared in three of the four Sunday newspapers on September 23, 2012 that featured (1) An Indian family, (2) An Indian couple, (3) An Indian man. However it is a pity that Mr Graham chose to limit my quest for diversity which appeals to the widest cross-section of the people of Guyana to ethnicity and geographic dispersion while presuming that I may “have preferred to see a group of persons made up of the six peoples of Guyana” – a choice which in itself is his perceptual evaluation.
I reiterate and maintain that in the usage of photographic images of people the campaign limits itself to the perceptional evaluation/s of the population in this polarized time.
These evaluations include along with the ones mentioned in Mr Graham’s letter, perceptions of class, religion, family structure, sexual orientation, socio-economic status among a myriad of the other nuances.
Further, I trust that it was a slippage of the moment and not an omission in the campaign plan that no mention was made of the usage of any Indigenous language.
I take this opportunity to wish Mr Graham & Tagman Media the best of luck in their public awareness campaign, especially in the usage of photographic representation of the permutations and combinations of the derivates of the six races of Guyana as well as that of the two targeted immigrant communities.
Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Deane-Hughes
