Dear Editor,
Mankind’s exploitation of mankind has existed from the beginning of mankind, whether in one form of slavery, enforced labour and brutish cruelty or another. Black African slavery by European colonizers, the Jewish holocaust by Nazi Germany and Indentured labour are all well documented examples, but are not comparable.
Our own country is the product of Black African slavery, Madeiran, Chinese and Indian (from India) indentureship, as well as Indigenous Indian exploitation perpetrated by our former British colonizers.
Most recently, the matter of reparation has brought the question of enslavement to public attention and into public debate here in Guyana, in the Caribbean and elsewhere, where mankind’s capacity to exploit mankind prevailed and was institutionalized.
The recent visit and hosting at the University of Guyana of the Gladstone family on the matter of reparation has served as a catalyst, as Eric Phillips has recently put it for “multiple egregious comparisons of indentureship equaling slavery”. None of this, in my opinion, is intellectually legitimate, nor is it of practical value to those of us who are the descendants of either one or the other and live as citizens of a country in which we have a common obligation to build and share in together, in peace, under the rule of law and governed as a democracy.
The matter of reparation, to those who are the descendants of Black African slavery and, perhaps, even indentureship, is meritorious in and of its own right, but it should not and must not become a ‘cause célèbre’ for further ethnic division in our country. It would be unfortunate, indeed, if the matter of reparation is used by the “racial entrepreneurs” identified by Eric Phillips to further divide our people. Certainly, the Eric Phillips I know and judging from all that he said at the University of Guyana’s launch of the International Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies and from his recent letter to the Stabroek News (11th September, 2023), is well aware of the real and present danger of this happening.
Yours sincerely,
Kit Nascimento
