Some uplifting things occurred in the course of the Emancipation Day festivities at the National Park last Thursday; and If ever we arrive at a point where considerations of race and ethnicity cease to be a barrier to the sense of nationhood to which we say we aspire, or at least if we can, somehow, manage to leave the historic toxicity of racial division behind, that may well be the result of the incremental effects of manifestations like those at the National Park on Thursday.
On Emancipation Day, in a small corner of our vast, divided country, the un-orchestrated will of many of those Guyanese who were part of the Emancipation Day festivities trumped the divisive drumbeat of ethnic division that has long been this country’s most disturbing legacy…and it made for a remarkable feeling, it really did.
Out of a sense of pure euphoria it would be easy for those of us who have lived considerable lifetimes in a frustrating quagmire of ethnic division and its often unwholesome consequences, to run away with the idea that the one swallow that soared pleasingly above the National Park on Thursday amounts to a brilliant summer. That notion, misleading though it would be, can perhaps be forgiven. In what is, sometimes, the cesspool of racial division that attends our existence, it would be easy to become carried away by some of the occurrences of last Thursday.
What occurred at the National Park on Thursday was no historic turning point in the trek towards real nationhood. It amounted, nonetheless, to an enormously reassuring step in the right direction. Many Guyanese who were part of the experience would have come away feeling, to a lesser or greater extent, more assured about the future of our country. They may have felt, perhaps for the first time, that the idea that we can slay the ghost of a racially divided country, is not a pipe dream, after all.
If you had gone to the National Park on Thursday you may have been lucky enough to feel something inside that told you that ethnic division and the poison that it spews is not, after all, the enduring inevitability that it sometimes appears to be; that it can be engaged and vanquished after all and that the charge in that direction is being led by the sheer force of will from a generation that refuses to surrender to the notion that racial division and racism are unchanging historical inevitabilities. And if you were at the National Park on Thursday and observing carefully some of what was going on there, you might have become even more aware than you had previously been that what we loosely call racial or ethnic division is a historical contrivance, its partisan underpinning serving the singular purpose of those who have nurtured it over time for their own divisive ends. It is not the differences of race that bedevil us but the callous manipulation of those differences. Those of us who deny that the race issue in Guyana is, for the most part, a mechanism for ordering political behaviour are engaged in absurdly transparent acts of self-delusion.
On Thursday, at the National Park, there were mixed race couples and whole families from across the ‘divide’ that had dressed themselves in clothing made of fabric and created in styles customarily associated with African tradition. People of all races were patronizing the assorted stalls offering brightly coloured necklaces and hand bands and other assorted craft made from an assortment of seeds and beads, again in the African tradition; they were, as well, immersing themselves into the ‘catchy’ beat of the drums of the African band from Suriname that lit up the National Park on Thursday.
At the Carifesta Avenue end of the event’s proceedings there were animated throngs comprising all of the races too, evincing more than a passing interest in the sampling that attended an elaborate Cook-Up-Rice competition.
During that period of focus on simply having a good time, differences of race appeared to have been set aside as though they had never really existed in the first place.
Here again, it is easy to exaggerate the numbers and the profundity of what was unfolding. But exaggeration has no place here, the salient point being that mostly young people, were crossing boundaries far more openly, more unmindfully, than perhaps we had ever witnessed before. It was eye-opening and it sent a strong signal that young people, mostly, are fighting the demon of the racial divide, often fearlessly engaging their intractable elders in the process. They are sending unmistakable signals about the kind of country that they want to live in.
All of what transpired in the National Park on Thursday unfolded in the most casual, most unobtrusive manner, the multi-ethnic throngs of mostly younger Guyanese all collectively claiming the Emancipation Day festivities as their own, just another national event to be marked and enjoyed across the divide. Clad in their festive dispositions it appeared not to dawn on them that they were crossing barriers that their elders had thought to be impregnable. In their festive mood and whether or not they were aware of it, they were energetically doing their part to banish the demon of ethnic division that has haunted us for generations.
What one hopes would have registered with the ‘older heads’ on Thursday was the spontaneity with which the youngsters, far less fettered by prejudice, were going about dismantling the barrier of prejudice. What they were witnessing was no contrivance, no awkward theatre. Rather, it was a knee-jerk response to a desire to free themselves of the inherited burden of racial prejudice. The message here is that fabricated institutions offering contrived formulae for what we loosely describe as racial healing have never worked and in all likelihood, never will. The desired outcome can only derive from the singularity of collective will.
If we are to arrive at a condition where ethnic differences become less of an issue than it has always been, the thing to do is to reach with ever increasing eagerness for the considerable common good that offers the option of being one people. If the task is no proverbial walk in the park last Thursday at the National Park provided a timely reminder that there are pockets of young Guyanese who have already set out on the journey.
