Latest update June 1st, 2026 12:37 AM
A no-win situation
Dear Editor,
I read the recent letter titled ‘Urgent need for PPP and PNC to transform themselves into genuine multi-racial parties’. It was refreshing and reassuring to find that good manners were still around and letter-writers were able to express themselves in courteous terms. And, of course, I felt flattered by some of Mike Persaud’s comments.
I get similar feedback from the UK print and electronic media, with whom I am in regular touch – a good way to fend off dementia. I value frank, well-reasoned exchanges and would not expect 100 per cent agreement, but I do not think it ever necessary to be rude in print, something at present prevalent worldwide in the media, and liable to cause offence to many people. I wish to thank Mike for his observations.
I would like to comment on some of his thoughts. First is advocating certain actions “in the hope of stirring up a national conversation on this topic, and one that could potentially generate enough public pressure on the ethnic parties – PPP and PNC – and force them to change”. I think “forcing them to change” is a bit of a pipe-dream. Fear is the key; each side is afraid that the other would ‘hit back’ if elected, many having regard to (post-Independence) life since 1966. However, I agree that the legacy of ethnic voting is “a cancer that thwarts the development of genuine democracy in a multi-racial society”. In the UK the problem is now one of class, the ruling party being regarded as led by ‘posh boys’, and there is a lot of sniping about ‘them not caring about us’. (I have never had a problem with posh, privately-educated chaps, when I worked alongside them as a secretary in the financial district of the City of London – they were always so polite, we shared a sense of humour and I knew a few Latin words and phrases, which seemed to suggest to them a similar background). As a young woman, straight from school, being the offspring of a black mother and an Indian father, I experienced the great divide in a real way, as a teacher on the Enmore Estate. If a black child complained at home about me, the mother would turn up and scream, ending with the words
“Because she ain’t a coolie like you”.
An Indian mother would scream “Because she ain’t black like you”. A no-win situation. Sometimes I thought “A plague on both your houses” and was glad to move on. The ethnic scenario will run for a long while yet.
Geralda Dennison
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