I go back and forth trying to understand why Guyanese at home and abroad find it so easy to latch onto movements like Black Lives Matter, which originate in North America and the West with so much zeal and passion but find it difficult to draw similar comparisons to and act the same when incidents that bear similarities happen right here at home.
Orin Boston of Dartmouth, Essequibo was fatally shot by agents of the state, in his home while asleep next to his wife on September 15. As reported by this publication, the autopsy performed by government pathologist Dr Nehaul Singh revealed that Boston died as a result of haemorrhage and shock due to gunshot injuries to the chest. A warhead was said to have been retrieved from Boston’s body. Warheads are meant to kill and destroy, not injure.
I thought of two things immediately after I had read the reports. One was the horror of my husband being killed by the state agents in our own home while I lay next to him consumed by terror. As I aggressively tried to imagine the extreme anguish and pain the family is reeling from, I thought of Breonna Taylor, an American whose demise was similar. As the days went by, more memories popped up and I remembered Shaka Blair of Buxton. His extrajudicial killing happened when I was really young, but my late godmother always spoke of it and him. She had shared the same last name.
All of these killings have several things in common, injustice, callousness and pure evil. Boston, Blair and Taylor were all killed in their homes, the most sacred place for anyone, by agents of their respective states. They were all stripped of their dignity in the most inhumane way and slaughtered like pigs. Taylor was not Guyanese but the majority of Guyanese know of her (the middle class, especially) particularly more than they do Blair or Boston. While this infuriates me and while I understand that American news tends to dominate our screen time and is bound to take up most of our head space, I still can’t understand our calmness and numbness to such a grave injustice. Why don’t we feel the same pain and anger for our own countrymen? Why are we less reluctant to voice that pain in the spaces where our navel strings are buried? Why are we so scared of being sad and angry ? Why is it easier when we are abroad?
Is it because in foreign countries we acknowledge our minority status whereas in Guyana, we don’t have to because we fall into some privileged group where some of us can put our heads on blocks when it comes to knowing with certainty that certain horrors won’t knock on our doors and if they do we understand how to manipulate the system?
Is it because we group all Blacks as criminals and treat them with suspicion? Is it because we associate them with a political entity that we deem to be unscrupulous and as such they are automatically deemed unworthy and side-lined from being treated with dignity thus resulting in our reactions to their pain?
Is it because we are afraid of being seen as on the other side if we disagree with state actions? Is it because brutality against Black people is more or less normalized, taking away from humanizing them as people worthy of love and care as recently seen with American Border Patrol agents who were ruthless with their whips against Haitian migrants, many of whom were carrying children?
Is it because we see Brown and Black people in positions of power like US Vice President Kamala Harris not batting an eyelid?
Whatever our motivations, we must never forget we are interlinked whether we like it or not and it will eventually affect us all in some way. For us to sink to a place of numbness means we have reached an all-time low and there is nothing good that could rise from such a disgusting immoral depth.
I offer my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Orin Boston and to the people of Dartmouth. May you find some sense of comfort to help cushion the unimaginable pain that you feel.
