Dear Editor,
While our attention is usually primarily fixed on the nation’s racial passions and emotional seductions nurtured by those, I think there is a still worse divide. I think so, because the other now increasingly pronounced divide does not get as much attention as our barbed electrified racial fence; and I believe that it is worse, because the racial divide has too many features that makes it a quick, soft, and convenient target that intensifies our hatreds and associated chasms. The class divide is more subtle, since it is in the competitive in-the-face variety of struggling communities seeking toeholds anywhere they can get them, and with anyone who will give a helping hand out of where such communities and their people are condemned: rural, remote, usually racially concentrated this way or the other. It exists in the urban and middle-class sections, too; but it is not as raw and wretched, but better managed, with more nuanced strains, compliments of education, practice, clever hypocrisies.
The class divide is so small as to be almost unnoticed. It is there, everybody agrees; but it is as if it is some alien presence, somebody else’s problem. It is of the haves and have nots. And the acuteness of the problem of this divide is that it is so overwhelmingly powerful and influential, that it even obtains the deferential from hard political leaders. Guyana’s political leaders line up (both sides) to bow to whims; members say what the law is, call the shots. Different schools of thought settle for a broad 1% of the population. It is a reasonable start, but not even close to the small inner circle at the finish line. The class divide is way less than a thousand Guyanese, less than a hundred, when the coastline is examined. I believe it is about 20 (on the low side), arguably not more than 30 at the highest.
The membership of the class divide is visible. There are physical assets and vast holdings that bend the mind, could break any calculator, besides those that total the United States debt. This visibility is in both town and country, on land and gathering more and more around the feasts from under the seabed. Ruling politicians ensure that members get the deeds, the projects, the contracts, the clearances. Little is left after such quid pro quo arrangements. Even worse still, in the visibility of the class divide, the thick racial coloring of it is most obvious. It is almost exclusively one demographic, with lighter shades of pale here and there. Thus, this class divide reinforces convictions and conclusions that those not of that group are doomed to economic extinction, and are forced to the margins to await the charity of political convenience. Last, the haves have more than they could ever want or grab or be awarded; the have nots do not even a dream, only the scream conveying what could have been. Citizens grow restless, problems fester.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
