Is the white man smarter than third world people?

Jan 14, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Yesterday, the British Government announced that it will abolish legal retirement. The mandatory age for going home is 65 in the UK (except for the private sector, universities and a few other places where there is no compulsory retirement age).
The new law has an interesting dimension. There is in fact no removal of the 65 year mark. The law on 65 will remain. However, what the amendment will do is to disallow employers, both in the public sector and in the private realm, to send off someone who reaches 65 if that worker wants to stay on and if he meets the requirement of being healthy.
In other words, if an employee is perfectly healthy and wants to continue working, once he/she communicates that decision to his/her employer, the mandatory retirement age cannot be applied. Of course, in any operation, an employer can terminate an employee’s contract but when the new law comes into effect, you cannot be asked to go because of your age.
One of the debates I have had with countless friends after I entered university is why we non-white people in the post-colonial world lag behind the visionary leadership of our former European masters and the Canadians and Americans
I never left the Caribbean until after graduation from UG. I went to Canada. From hereon, my leftist ideology began to undergo serious and profound modifications. I saw in Canada, a capitalist society that was freer than any Third World country and far freer than any socialist state.
I saw a white Prime Minister (Pierre Trudeau) who was far more a friend to the Third World than Third World leader themselves. Canada changed my philosophical underpinnings forever. I was glad I lived in a capitalist country, because it showed me the hypocrisy of Marxist governments. I will never, I repeat, never support someone like Hugo Chavez.
Since the end of WW2, Europe, the US and Canada have gone in fantastic directions to enhance the freedoms of their people. In Holland, no policeman bothers with you if you smoke a marijuana cigarette. In Guyana, an innocent young man can be destroyed forever if found with such an item. Yet the unending post-colonial mantra among Third World people is how the white man exploits us.
I read an appalling piece of nonsense recently from Professor Norman Girvan on the paradise Cuba is. I replied to him once. I will do so again and this time I will try to let my academic head control my emotions.
We took the retirement age of 55 for civil servants from our European colonial masters. They have long got rid of that. Our President, speaking to the media, said that the Ministry of Works cannot secure the services of engineers. Yet we retire public servants at 55.
To date, only two persons from the PPP have seen the stupidity of retaining the restriction of working beyond 55. Mrs. Janet Jagan, before she died, wrote a column in the PPP’s newspaper “Mirror”, advocating the upping of the age to 65.
I ran a response on that position of hers in which I was very cynical and ridiculed her sincerity. Mrs. Jagan made that call in 2009 when she was no longer part of the war-room of Freedom House. Long before she attained the age of 88 (when she made the pronouncement) and long before she exited the corridors of power, she could have single-handedly got the law to make it 65. Then in 2009, Minister Baksh said he was contemplating legislation to move teachers’ retirement from 55 to 60. Looks like he is no longer interested.
If any country needs to change the retirement age, it is Guyana. We have an almost non-existent human resource index. My estimate is that about 20 persons leave this country permanently every day. The World Bank puts the exodus of educated persons at 82 percent of all those with a tertiary education.
The white man has left us far, far behind, and it has so disgusted V.S. Naipaul that many think he hates non-white people. So why doesn’t the PPP Government get modern? It rushed to parliament with legislation to stop the GDF from enlisting 16-year-olds.
There is a Bill at the moment that would lower the age at which a parliamentarian could collect a pension. What is the reason? Before I answer that, let me say that no threat is going to prevent me as an academic from analyzing race relations in Guyana. It lies in the sociology of race and culture.
Just look at which section of the society stands to benefit from upping the retirement age.

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Is the white man smarter than third world people?

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