Dear Editor,
The A.A. Fenty column of May 28th in SN presented a pearl that made me revisit something shared before. The columnist noted that for some, the foremost consideration is that they think of themselves as African first. In these politically correct, ultra-sensitive times, he hastened to add that there was nothing wrong with that, which is as valid as far as it lasts. Without going into sociology, history, colonialism, imperialism, or any rarified academic heights, I offer thoughts, as driven by Guyana’s realities.
The Black man (pardon me) sees himself as an African first. The Indian man sees himself as an Indian uppermost. In both instances, and most circumstances, that has relevance, significance, and ready acceptance. But my struggle is with the uncertainty that comes from denseness and difficulty, which I freely admit. For I am unable to envision how such an identical mindset helps us in a tight, tense plural society. I cannot visualize in this torn and tormented society, how it knits us, how we even could say that we are interested, and that we are ready to make a start, with those two thorns that stick in our craw. Those would be truth and reconciliation, the beginnings of long yearned-for national unity.
Editor, when an approximate total of some 80% (not a combined 20% or 30%) of our population is made of those not too numerically far apart ethnicities, then how do we begin to think of an entity that is of ‘One People, One Nation, One Destiny?’ When each holds most unalterably with and inseparably from his own, and what is best for his own? What authentic traveling is there on roads leading to national unity? How when the great bulk of our population is of me and mine first? Maybe even me and mine only? The result can only be at the expense of the other, especially the contender? I don’t think it can be any other way. And if that is not supremacist and triumphalist, then nothing is. I think that anyone who says otherwise is, as I shall say, less than wholly sincere. I don’t care how idealistic the thinking, how convincing the arguments for and against, I just don’t comprehend how we can embark on the transformations demanded that pave the way for getting from where we are (societally) to where we should (and must) go as a people.
From my perspective, such settled ethnic identification and outlook means that some group will have to be content with coming in second, and in accepting the defeatist status of underdog. I think that such ethnic fundamentalism undermines against genuine bridge-building, ones that are sustainable and enduring. It is my position that the me and mine first (not necessary only) mentality, at its core, has divisiveness, lesser presences, and lower claimants, when power, governance, and sharing the national patrimony are on the table. In Guyana, this is unworkable and unsatisfying; and, however examined, contributory to racial insolubility. I am finished.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
