Dear Editor,
The problems of racism and prejudice are not easy to discuss and even harder to solve. If we want to improve Guyana and stimulate national development, however, we must face our biggest problems head on, learn about them and come up with workable solutions. In this case, the solution may involve changing the way we think.
In a previous letter: ‘We have a duty to reject those trying to manipulate us’ (SN, March 25), I cited historical facts to argue that Guyana’s ethnic division is an artificially maintained tool used by some politicians to gain and hold power. But can this thesis be proven by other means? Does it stand up to scrutiny from a non-historical perspective?
Racism is a complex problem; sociologists do not agree on a definition of the term, let alone a solution. Many thinkers, though, believe that it starts with political interference in our thought processes. In other words, babies are not born with prejudice, and racism does not exist before politics, or outside of the political context. Racial sentiments are not the cause of social and political division. In fact, the reverse is true; political forces define racial lines in accordance with their agendas. They manipulate the masses into identifying with groups which are defined by politicians. Eventually, the cleavage defined by political forces becomes an accepted part of our thinking, it influences our actions and social problems arise as a result of those actions. To understand this, let us consider what happens when divisive politicians are removed from the picture. A good example is what happens in the diaspora.
When Guyanese go abroad and settle into ‘Guyanese’ or ‘West Indian’ communities in New York or elsewhere, racial divisions tend to disappear; there are no more Indian, African or Amerindian peoples; there are only ‘Guyanese.’ In this case, simply changing the geographical context and eliminating divisive influences have a unifying effect resulting in positive developments. We also see unity at sports events; we cheer for our cricket players regardless of their race, or ours. Imagine choosing and supporting our government leaders the way we support our national cricket players: by merit and ability, instead of race.
We also see the breakdown of race divisions when observing from the opposite point of view: the movement of diverse cultures from foreign lands to Guyana – as was the case with Indians and Africans.
India, whence Guyana’s East Indians came, is a country full of cultural and ethnic enclaves, some of which were castes. These castes have engaged in violent conflicts including the 1981 attacks of the Mallah people against the Thakur caste, in retaliation for the rape of a Mallah woman. The divisions exist to this day. Therefore we can conclude, there is no such thing as an East Indian race as some local political forces would have us believe.
Africa may be even more diverse; it is a whole continent of fifty-three countries with people of different cultures which we sometimes refer to as tribes. Each has its own distinct beliefs, language and geographical distribution. We recall the genocidal conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Those tribes certainly did not consider themselves a single, united race.
So we see, as is the case with Indians, there is also no such thing as an African race or indeed with any other similar grouping. Therefore, the idea that ‘Indians’ is a single group, or ‘Africans’ constitute a single race is contrived and has no objective basis. The same can be said of Amerindians in Guyana. Most politicians talk about our indigenous peoples as a single culture, and many Guyanese find themselves believing this. The truth is, the Arawaks are different from the Caribs, who are distinct from the Patamonas and Wapishanas; the other indigenous peoples are similarly distinct. Clearly, all racial divisions are made up by politicians to serve their purposes, and these divisions disappear when political forces are not present to maintain them. At this point in time, it serves their political purposes to tell us that the Amerindians are a race, that Africans are a single ethnic group, and Indians are one people undivided by caste or culture. However, none of those positions can stand up to objective scrutiny. So we see that a “modern” examination of the issue yields the same result as the historical view. Now, what can we do about it?
If we accept that ethnic or racial division stymies national development, and we have established that racial constructs are man-made, we may start a process of improvement by rejecting the racial construct and actively pursuing unity.
The experts say that when divisive political forces are successful in poisoning our minds, the first result is prejudice or preconceptions not based on reason or experience. When we learn prejudice we tend to judge people as groups instead of as individuals; we see persons in stereotypical roles. Prejudice can be based on religion, race, sexual orientation, or any number of other constructs. In Guyana, race dominates. Some politicians want us to believe that ‘other people’ are bad or somehow inferior; they want us to draw a conclusion about persons without getting to know them as people. Of course this makes no sense, but political interests use this method to keep us divided so we will blindly follow, without thinking about the real issues that affect us regardless of race, such as poverty, income inequality, and poor access to health care and education.
Once prejudice is established in the mind, it manifests itself as racism, which is the use of power to act on prejudices that are learned. Therefore, when employers use their power to hire persons based on prejudiced thinking, that is racism. When we use our thinking-power to define others as good or bad based only on their ancestry, that is also racism.
Many of us have been victims of prejudice. We may have been denied a place in a certain school because of our religion or social status; we may have been passed over for jobs because of race, gender or sexual orientation. We would agree that such experiences make us bitter. It is therefore incumbent upon us to be better than that, to avoid such actions, to reject prejudice and eschew all forms of racial discrimination. Unfortunately, many Guyanese have fallen into the trap of racism, and are being controlled by divisive political forces. Such persons have fallen victim to political manipulation, and are blind to the real issues as they see the world through a prism of race.
Guyanese would all agree that slavery as practised by Europeans in the past is evil. Indentureship is equally wrong. How then, can we truthfully criticise European prejudice as was manifested in the racist practices of slavery and indentureship, yet practise the same thing, by maintaining prejudiced thinking against our own countrymen? Is it not hypocritical to condemn the past wrongs committed against us by Europeans, while presently teaching our children that our Guyanese brothers and sisters are inferior or bad? Are we not doing the same thing to our neighbours, that the Europeans did to us?
We know that there is no biological difference among races; criminal behaviour, laziness and mean-spiritedness are not unique to any group. Similarly, intelligence, industry, forgiveness and ambition are not found only in one race. There are good people and bad people of every colour, gender, height, weight and hair-texture. We can only honestly judge individuals, not entire groups.
Once we accept that prejudice is learned and prevents national development, we must conclude that racism is undesirable and must be corrected. Since it is clear that political forces have negatively influenced our thinking, then we must reject further manipulation of our minds. Politicians do not come right out and tell us to hate our fellow Guyanese; they imply things, they use innuendo and manipulative rhetoric; they try to make us afraid of others. If we decide that we will no longer remain in their racial trap, we must reject such messages and remove the politicians who want to keep us fighting among ourselves while they fill their pockets and laugh at us behind our backs.
Divisive, wealthy politicians will continue to spread fear in their efforts to widen the racial divide. They will try to further define their arbitrary, artificial lines in a quest to distract Guyanese from the real problem of the division between the rich elite and the poor masses. The question is: will we let them get away with it, or will we think for ourselves?
Yours faithfully,
Mark DaCosta
