There is something racial about requests for us to stop talking about race

Jan 16, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
One of the constant refrains in Guyanese political discourse is the line that we should not talk about race and we should leave the past alone because when you talk about race in the public sphere you encourage division.
Those who repeat this line obviously think that they are above the fray; that those of us who engage history and race are troublemakers.
We are told to move beyond race and engage class and nation. But I ask how can we engage class and nation in Guyana outside of ethnicity and race?
One engages ethnicity and race to better understand class and nation. What is the Guyanese nation? Is it not in a collective sense a convergence and an aggregate of ethnicity, race, class and sex (gender)?
Having discussions about race is not a negation of class or any other social classification. There needs to be a distinction between advocacy of racism, racial domination and racial superiority on the one hand and discourses on the racial problem on the other hand.
The former sometimes disguises itself as the latter, but that is no reason why we should stop the discourse.
The thing about a heightened ethnic and racial environment is that the social relations it engenders become the point of departure for public engagement at the level of politics, economics, discourse and society. It is not that nothing else matters, but when the collective psyche of a nation is shaped by and responds readily to a particular impulse, it is dangerous to ignore or deny that reality. If Africans, whose representatives are shut out of power by the institutional framework, perceive their collective reality in terms of ethno-racial marginalization, it is the height of absurdity for Indian spokespersons to say race and racism do not exist and tell them their party must work harder to win Indian votes.
Your party is in office because of race, you vote race every five years and then you tell me to talk about class. You vote your racial interests and you tell me to talk about nation. You expound a racial narrative and tell me to reach for Marx and Lenin.
I heard that foolishness from some Africans before 1992; it was nauseating then and is nauseating now.
Many conveniently cite Rodney on multi-ethnicity, but Rodney’s multi-ethnicity was not grounded in a negation of race.
He engaged race to get beyond race. He advocated a “mixed unity” not a “stratified unity” with one race on top. Here is what he once said:
…my belief is that, while, ultimately socialism is an ideology which takes no cognizance of colour and so on, our recent situation is one in which we have to admit to the reality of racial divisions, not just the oppression of the White World over the non-White world, but also of the forms of division within the non-White world, itself, as in our own Guyanese society… What we must try and understand (and this is a point I’m always trying to make very clearly) is that there is no contradiction between saying that, at this particular point in time, a man needs to assert his given identity, so that, at another point in time, he won’t he wouldn’t have to assert it…And I think that within our community of Guyana, different ethnic groups need to assert their identity, need to put themselves together, to pull themselves together, and when they have and when they can operate on the basis of mutual respect, which they are not doing, now, then I think that the way will be clear for building a new society, a society of a mixed unity (Rodney 1970)
I have been accused of moving from a class perspective to an embrace of race, that I see race in everything. Well I still strongly believe in the class analysis of capitalist social formation.
But if a struggle or a conflict manifests itself in ethno-racial terms as it does in Guyana at this point, it is foolish to use class analyses to understand and explain it.
There was a time in Guyana when the Indian and African working classes, separate and together, engaged in active day to day struggle and transferred the conflict into a class-based one. Race did not disappear; it was there. But the masses privileged their class interests or found a way to merge their ethno-racial interests with their class interests.
But the return of free and fair elections in 1992 brought an end to that experience as the two ethnic groups again reached for their ethnic interests in what Moses Bhagwan calls “an act of self betrayal.” If there is one lesson we can learn from that period is the failure of leadership. The leadership of the then opposition failed the people by dismantling the class framework that brought the struggle to the point of triumph and replacing it with the ethnic framework we have since been grappling with.
If the victory over authoritarianism is constructed in ethnic terms by giving the people a choice of one ethnic party and leader of the other, then it’s understandable that they will vote their ethnic interest.
The other big lesson of that period is that once ethnic politics is reintroduced it becomes extremely difficult to turn it back.
Indians understandably relive the ghosts of 1964-92 and Africans exhume the ghosts of 1957-64. This is what forms the basis of the ethnic narratives I have been trying to tease out.
There is a reason why GAWU has not called five percent of the strikes it called during the period of PNC rule or why the PSU is ten times more vocal today than it was before 1992.
Those Indians who have been constantly harassed, beaten and killed since 1992 are not victims of class warfare. Those Africans who can’t get contracts, jobs, and were harassed, beaten and killed by the Phantom and the rogue police were not victims of Marx and Lenin. There is a reason that Indians love Ravi Dev’s race message but vote for the PPP – ROAR offers them confidence but the PPP offers them power.
To those who want us to stop talking about race, I say there is something racial about your request. If we stop talking about race, the PPP government can call itself a national government, and get away with it, while governing with the support of one race. There will be no need to consider power-sharing because there is no race problem. Indians can be beaten and we will call it class beatings. Africans can be marginalized and we will call it class marginalization.
Race is a biological myth but a socio-political reality. Race is an illusion but a powerful illusion. Race is unreal but real. Race is a myth but racial discrimination, marginalization and competition are vivid realities. People do not like the negative meaning of race but they like and embrace the triumphs and glory of the racial collective. People want nation but they do not want a nation in which their race is minimized, diluted, erased, disenfranchised and disrespected.
Those who shout at me to leave race alone do not similarly shout at us, all of us, to tone down or abandon our masculinized discourse. We seldom ask why it was/is all about Mr. Jagan, Mr. Burnham, Mr. Kwayana, Mr. Rodney; why our “settled” political history is all about men. But I leave that for others who are better equipped than me to articulate that abomination.
I dream of a Guyana based on “joint unity’ or Rodney’s “mixed unity.” You loved my race talk when I raised my voice against my race for being unfair or are violent to your race but now you want me to stop talking race when I defend the dignity of my race from your attacks. Let me borrow from Martin Carter—No I will not still my voice!
I do not invent ethnicity and race in Guyana; I loathe ethno-racial discrimination, bullying and domination because I come from a heritage that has been at the receiving end of those ills. I committed all of my youth to the fight against those ills when the directors of the state were predominantly of my race. I have less energy these days but I am not prepared to be silent or silenced now that the directors are of another race. When I see class and nation as the primary collective motivation I will call it that. For now I see race. Even when it’s dressed in class or when it purports to be “we” instead of “us versus them.”
To Annan I do take you at face value—you are my brother— but not your Old year-New Year assault on my collective place in the positive tradition of Guyana. Overcoming us versus them does not mean erasure of my ethno-racial honour. To Joey Jagan, I will always cherish your courage to break with the institution that your parents built on a matter of principle. You have a right to be sensitive about your father’s legacy. I accept your chastisement on that score, but I reject your reasoning – Dr. Jagan was a public person and will always be scrutinized.
David Hinds

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