Usain Bolt, his white girl friend, Black Guyana and Freud

Jun 24, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Many of the theories of Sigmund Freud have been under attack as early as the beginning of Freud’s birth of psychoanalysis.
In fact, as early as that time, Freud’s student, Carl Jung, began to question some of the sexual bases for some of Freud’s discoveries (see the recent film “A Dangerous Method” that explains the antagonism between the two great philosophers starring Keira Knightly) but Freud’s explanation of the role of the subconscious (the ID) and its permanent intrusion into our consciousness (the EGO) will remain part of human knowledge. It was a brilliant discovery.
Essentially what Freud is saying is that certain instincts, desires and traits are there in our mind acting on us and we don’t know it because they are in our subconscious.
They are ever present in our minds and show up in forms that are essentially deceptive in appearance.
A person simply dismisses his fascination with the colour purple as just a love for it and nothing more but when he sits with the psychoanalyst and he is evaluated then he gets the hidden meaning of why he is so smitten by purple.
Two months ago, I examined the faces that are in the commercial advertisements in both the print and electronic media in Guyana. My findings were reported in the column, “White days, white nights in white satin with white lace, “April 8, 2012).
I found that almost a hundred percent (call it 98 percent) of the faces in the advertisements were Caucasian (white) people or persons with very light complexion.
Two weeks ago I looked at those advertisements since the April 8 piece. Nothing has changed. I telephoned twenty of the business places for an explanation. Here are their responses.
Not one owner or manager disagreed with my complaint that there should be a quota of darker skinned personalities. No one was rude to me. All agreed that I have a point. But listen to this. All the owners and managers said to me, “Freddie, we never thought of what you are saying. It is just an advertisement and we pulled down the faces from the internet.” One businessman called me from Toronto after his assistant told him I made contact with her.
The guy was very nice to me and advised me that there is a certain software he uses thus the reason for the white faces. Then something went wrong.
This very businessman ran a placement for a vacancy and had two white women in the frame. I couldn’t understand it. Why two white women and not two East Indian or African Guyanese?
Nothing has changed the past two weeks. In four places I have seen repeated appearances of brown or dark-skinned faces – GT&T and Digicel (ironic since both are white foreign owned), Banks DIH (ironic again since the estate of a Guyanese Portuguese has majority shares) and Ashmins. So why the profusion of Caucasian faces? None of the business persons I have spoken to can explain that though they have no objection to Black images in their advertisements there are none in their media placements.
The answer lies in the philosophy of Sigmund Freud. Inside the subconscious is the preference for white complexion but it is not in the conscious part of the mind when they spoke to me.
The answer lies in the study of the psychology of someone like VS Naipaul. If you read the fantastic work of Noam Chomsky on the science of linguistics then there is no way Naipaul, ten years after migration into the UK could have an Oxford accent.
I grew up in this country hearing all kinds of Guyanese talk about how the West Indian islands have people and leaders that are hooked on white people and light complexion. Commentators put Guyana as the only real anti-colonial culture in the West Indian family of nations.
People told me Guyana would never elect a leader as white as Michael Manley or Edward Seaga. We Guyanese were supposed to be more conscious of colour than Bajans who we looked down upon as country that love white people.
Look at the reality today. Usain Bolt’s ex-girlfriend was a former white European beauty queen (from Slovakia) who lived on the island with him. The Jamaican media and bloggers were relentless in their commentaries. Some of the condemnations were harsh. In Guyana, 98 percent of our media ads feature white people and there isn’t a whisper of criticism from any section of the Guyanese society.
Guyanese East Indians see nothing wrong with all Bollywood actors being whiter than snow. Even India sees nothing wrong with that. The actors must be white-skinned in Bollywood. I wonder how the Indian people would take to Wesley Snipes?

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Usain Bolt, his white girl friend, Black Guyana and Freud

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