One of the things that emerged with renewed vigour during the run-up to the recent elections, and continuing since, is the argument that Guyana must address the dilemma of the ethnic divide that is hanging like a millstone around the country’s collective neck. Some of the most listened to voices in the country have been raising this shout. The list includes a number of established pundits (Ruel Johnson, Ian McDonald, Freddie Kissoon, Ralph Ramkarran, Henry Jeffrey, Allan Fenty) but many bloggers and letter writers are making the same point. Significantly, in the early public pronouncement following his election, President Granger referred to both the urgency of the issue and to the difficult resolution road that lay ahead. While I agree that the need is urgent, there is much merit in President Granger’s attendant point of how such positions are difficult to change; throughout history, cultures are very resistant to making important shifts in their centuries-old positions and will even go to war (as the current global behaviours are showing) in the process.
Additionally, however, for any effort to minimize or eliminate ethnic positions themselves in democracies there must be an alternative present for them to turn to as they are being asked to abandon their old stances. In our case, the alternative currently being touted is the notion of Guyana as a place of worth, of successes, of heroes, of singular achievements, but the problem is that, over the years, in colonial times and since, we have been woefully lacking in the processes of establishing that picture. We have done very little to uphold our own, to tell our stories, to celebrate our successes, to emphasize where we are outstanding or attractive. Compared to other countries in the Caribbean I have been, Guyanese know very little about their country and its accomplishments. I was not surprised when a man in Toronto recently said to me, “Go back to Guyana? For what? There is nothing of value there; never has, never will be.”
It would be nice to report that the man in Toronto is an isolated case; in fact, I have heard comments along those lines many times over the years. Compared to other places, most of us in Guyana don’t know much or recognize much about our country and our history; virtually every Caribbean country is ahead of us in that regard. When I was growing up, the only statue in this country was one to Queen Victoria. Our history in school was covered in a small book called, if memory serves, “A Children’s Story of Guyana.” I was living as a young man overseas when I first heard of Ocean Shark. I suspect the picture isn’t much different today. Stop any Guyanese under 35 and ask him/her, “Who was Laddie Lewis and Tarrant Glasgow? How did the Lama Canal come about? What was so special about the Mootto Brothers? Who was Robert Christiani? How did “Sugar, Cent a Pound” happen, and who sang a calypso about it? I bet nine out of ten times, you’ll get blank stares.
In Jamaica, even young people know about the escaped slaves in the rugged hills of Cockpit Country who evaded pursuing British soldiers for months on end. Trinis remember the cyclist Roger Gibbon, and they have recordings of their calypso genius The Mighty Spoiler; fifty years after his passing, Trinidadians know the words to his comical songs; they sing the chorus of Lord Blakey’s “Steelband Clash”. In the tiny Cayman Islands of 60,000, young people can tell you of the lean years when all the able-bodied men were away in the merchant marine, and they know of legendary ship builders in town who also designed and built many of their public buildings.
One can understand the British indifference in Guyana on this issue, but what excuse do we have that 50 years after our independence we haven’t done much to build our self esteem? How many of us are aware of the impact of Philip Moore’s Cuffy in the Square; that it is seen as the finest outdoor sculpture in the Caribbean? Why is there no Cacique Crown award to Stanley Greaves, or to Shiv? In the week when I’m writing this column, there is the world premiere of “Queen Nanny”, a Jamaican film about the legendary Maroon leader in that country, and Haiti is hosting a symposium for that country’s language and culture.
If we want to persuade people to look beyond their narrow ethnic views to the wider picture of nation, we have to educate them on the value of that wider umbrella. We have to tell the Guyana story, in detail, far better than we have to date if we are going to tell people that’s where their focus should be. We have to find ways to remind ourselves how unique is our combination of Indian, African, Amerindian and European cultures, and to tell the stories of our early ancestors on whose backs Guyana was built. We have to make noise about the Guyanese successes –Rudolph Dunbar, Stephen Campbell, Lance Gibbs – in a way that from young, from school days, we grow up immersed in them. As a matter of course, NCN should be presenting TV and radio documentaries about this country; our television stations and radio stations should be involved in projects akin to Allan Fenty’s Cookup Show. Our Ministry of Culture should be spreading “our story” on billboards and publications. The technology exists now to do video quickly and easily; we should be using it. We should have a “Did You Know” on the air with snippets of our history. We should have people such as Eusi Kwayana and Ian McDonald and Ralph Ramkarran talking about their lives, and how they came to be. We have to educate us about us. We have to manipulate and propagate the raw material of pride at every turn, as other nations do. When the immigrants from all over the world go to America, they are inundated with all that is singular and special about that country; they are given the story in great detail. They may be Irish or French or Lebanese underneath, but on the wider horizon they see themselves as part of America. In the end that’s what voices such as Ruel Johnson and Freddie Kissoon and Ralph Ramkarran and Allan Fenty are talking about; they are calling on us to see ourselves, with our various ethnic origins, as part of that wider culture that is Guyana. But for that to happen – and it’s a huge “but” – the machinery of the nation, in whatever government we elect, has to be focused on that critical job of educating us about us; we have to sell Guyanese on Guyana. Until we do, they will be inclined to cling to their ethnic securities.
