Behold! Who is playing the race card?

Aug 18, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kwame McCoy is lodging a complaint against Freddie Kissoon on the basis of a historical racist behaviour against persons of African descent. Mr. McCoy’s has suddenly become sensitive to actions and attitudes in Guyana that are reminiscent of a historical pattern in the black experience.

If the ERC is interested in becoming a fair and balanced arbiter in issues of prejudice and ethnic intolerance in Guyana, they will indignantly reject Mr. McCoy’s complaint on the basis that it is, so to speak, being “brought before the court with dirty hands”.

Mr. McCoy laments that quote, “The racist connections between black people and primates are of the past, but holds deep and immediately social implications even today because it reinforces the common, demeaning and dehumanizing imagery”. My reaction to that kernel of truth from Mr. McCoy is that so too does the torturing of black suspects to elicit confessions from them, the extra judicial executions of blacks in response to suspicions that they might have committed crimes, and the pattern of collective punishment inflicted on black communities over the infractions of a few.

If Mr. McCoy was to do a little perusing of the black experience with racism he will discover that what I enumerated had a geometrically greater aversive effect upon our historical existence, than his perceptual interpretation of Kissoon’s comments. It is quite obvious that what Mr. McCoy is engaged in here is cherry picking and exploiting a particular facet of the black experience with racism, and levering it into political use against someone with more empathy for the concerns of blacks in his little finger, than Mr. McCoy has in his entire body.

To borrow from the context of Mr. McCoy’s last chapter, as a black father, grandfather, brother and all the other familial connections between human groupings, I am more than utterly concerned over patterns in Guyana that are reflective of experiences of blacks in other geographical theatres.

I would argue further that efforts to promote national unity would be greatly enhanced if our leaders and others in influential advisory positions were to abandon their aversion to inconvenient truths, and set about exemplifying a standard in Guyana for the young to emulate.

Mr. McCoy’s suddenly bruised black consciousness over written comments by Freddie Kissoon has to be the most egregious example of racial exploitation since Clarence Thomas likened his confirmation hearing unto an event of high tech lynching.

Robin Williams