Wynette Alexander, a woman who lived rampant racism

Dec 13, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Last week I read a book like no other ever printed. The writer was an ordinary woman who is now based in Florida. Indeed our paths crossed when I was a young teacher at Bartica. She had gone there to open a branch of the Guyana Marketing Corporation, but I really don’t remember her.
The book, ‘Before I forget’ tells the story of Wynette Alexander-Green. It goes back to the days when her mulatto grandmother left Montserrat with her white husband who was transferred to the colony. On landing, the sugar authorities who knew that he was coming with his wife and children did not know that his wife was black. The upshot was that he was sent to Uitvlugt and she, to Berbice.
The two never met again, because travel was not as convenient. After a period, the grandmother married a black man who was at the time living at Port Mourant.  A whole new family emerged. She talks about her East Indian mother who was abused so badly that she was almost crippled. She spoke of the wedding that was fixed that her father, a black man, had no say.
We blame the rampant racism on Burnham and Jagan. Wynette Alexander said “Not so.” She was the fourth child for her mother. The first was East Indian; she and the others were mixed. Her brothers born to her mother and father were born dumb and Wynette attributed this to the curse her mother got from her grandfather.
She thought that she was East Indian, but she soon found out the hard way from her Indian class mates. She was tossed into a canal. She was strapped to an ants nest and a host of other things that continued until her fraternal grandmother got her to move in with them.
Her problems did not end there. While the blacks were more forgiving they were just as cruel. Then there was her father who beat her so that she peed herself. She was a slave in her father’s house where she had an East Indian stepmother.
I spoke with her last week just before she left for Florida. She is now 72 with children of her own. She wrote about falling in love with a man who worked with the foreign service. The union produced three children. They travelled to Zambia under strange circumstances. The transfer was initiated by Burnham and Fred Wills because the man was a philanderer.
He was also cruel. She spoke of ending their sexual relationship and being made to struggle on her own. That was how she got her first job anyhow.
The book is not big on spelling. I saw ‘straight’ being spelled ‘strait’; Auchlyne is Akline, and things like that. I asked Wynette why she failed to get the book edited. Her answer was simple. “I wanted to tell my story my way.” She was not ashamed to say that she was learning deficient, but she made sure that her children became well-schooled.
She writes about leaving Guyana when the things were rough. Desmond Hoyte made that possible under pressure from Joyce Hoyte. And up to then her husband, a Mr Greene whom I can’t recall, tried to keep her children from her.
What makes the book interesting is how we Guyanese lived and perhaps still do. The move by both blacks and Indians from communities in which they were the minority; selling their homes for little or nothing or watching it go up in flames.
There were days when our politicians tried their utmost to let each other know that there is space in Guyana for all, but the reality is that there is still distrust. The fact that black criminals invade Indian homes has not helped the situation. Indian criminals also enter black homes, but in the company of blacks. At one stage I concluded that the criminal world was the only place where race did not matter.
But Wynette Alexander’s book goes to the root of the racial divide. She spanned both worlds. In the Indian community she was to hear that oil and water do not mix. It is a story of the brutality that some children face and perhaps do to this day.
The wider society has changed; there are inter-racial marriages and the mixed child does not have to worry about rampant discrimination, especially in the big city. And this explains why many Berbicians shun attending university in Berbice and move to the city. They want to escape the race prison.
Wynette’s story also explains why some of us left for a foreign land. They believed that Guyana was cursed and therefore had nowhere to go. It was a land that offered no hope. Many of us remained because we simply could not afford to leave. We remained to cope with racism.
That is why I was incensed when I heard that modern day politicians are still beating the race drum. Through Wynette’s eyes one can see the hopelessness of racism and feel the pain. Her story is 72 years old.
She visits Guyana at least three times each year to be with her dumb brother who is also blind. She is rebuilding the family house. In fact, it is almost finished, and I will travel to Lancaster to see it.  And I hope to meet Wynette. I want to tell her story to a country that is still trying to shed racism.
Wynette has East Indian relatives who now greet her, but there are reservations. The saying goes that the hand that rocks the cradle fashions the child. Wynette feels Indian, but she is not allowed to be one. She is pushed to being a black person, living with a people who are more accommodating.

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