Rihanna, the Barbadian singer, became popular with the song ‘Umbrella,’ released in 2008. ‘Umbrella’, along with later songs, are the basis of her status as a megastar and a billionaire entrepreneur of the ‘Fenty’ line of products. ‘Umbrella’ contains the lines: “With you I’ll always share…Know that we’ll still have each other.”
The symbol of the umbrella recently took on a different dimension in Guyana. A photograph of James Bond, a leading PNCR activist, holding an umbrella over the head of an Indian male in the company of other Indian male persons, was widely circulated on Facebook. Mr. Bond attracted abuse as a ‘house slave’ and ‘house negro,’ epithets once reserved for leading PPP members and supporters such as Sam Hinds, Roger Luncheon and Odinga Lumumba, now broadened to include public servants such as Ean McPherson, personal assistant to the Speaker, racially abused by MP Maureen Philadelphia, a nursery school teacher, for protecting the Mace of Parliament during the recent disturbances created by some Opposition members in the Parliament Chamber. Photographs of Indians with umbrellas sheltering Africans and vice versa then emerged with the meme, ‘the umbrella challenge,’ on Facebook.