Mandela’s symbolism comes at a dangerous time for Guyana

Dec 15, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Two years ago, one of Guyana’s leading sports journalists related to me an incident that occurred at the annual motor-racing event. He said that there was a VIP section with a security detail at the entrance. Persons passed through without any intervention by the security personnel. But a young African sports journalist (all journalists were permitted in that section) was about to pass in, when the guard stopped him
This is my third essay on the creeping reintroduction of colour discrimination in Guyana based on light complexion. My most recent piece was dated Sunday, April 8 last year titled; “White days, white nights in white satin with white lace.” In fact a few months back, as part of a column, I pointed to a huge billboard on the façade of the Everest Sports Club with an advertisement by Hand-in-Hand Insurance featuring a white man, all dressed up in suit and tie extolling the virtues of insurance.
Last week, a commercial vehicle pulled up in front of me on Vlissengen Road. The back-door sign had the image of a lily white baby advertising a certain soap powder. The one that was unbearable was during the Premier League Cricket in the Caribbean. This fashionable establishment featured a white boy and a clear-complexioned girl teasing each other as they decide what clothes to wear.
Guyana is a mysteriously horrible place. Ninety percent of the faces in commercial advertisements in both the electronic and print media consist of clear-complexioned individuals, mostly white. Yet in the past fifty years, not one white, foreign entertainer has performed in Guyana. Mick Jagger touched down a few times during one of the English cricket team tours and as a guest of Eddy Grant.
I saw him and our own Eddy Grant leaving the Pegasus without anyone looking in Jagger’s direction. In a few weeks’ time more non-white artistes will entertain Guyanese. If we are so hooked on whiteness, why are we not sending for white European and American stars?
So is the symbolism of the great Mandela, which is sweeping the world right now, about to change Guyana, and will we once again take pride in our culture, colour of skin and texture of hair? It will not happen if there is no organization willing to raise such consciousness. First it was Forbes Burnham who, more than Guyanese in any part of the world, sought to de-emphasize the colonial obsession with whiteness.
In this regard, Burnham remains a giant in Third World history. Credit must also be given to both the PNC and PPP and the trade union movement as anti-colonial organizations that sought to move Guyanese away from European cultural domination with its accompanying focus on light complexion. The organization in post-colonial Guyana that sustained such cultural consciousness was ASCRIA led by the phenomenal Eusi Kwayana.
In today’s Guyana, Burnham and Jagan must be turning in their graves to see how the colonial preoccupation with light complexion has overtaken their country. Eusi Kwayana is still alive and you wonder what goes through his mind when he sees those thousands of advertisements with the radiant white faces beckoning you to join them on a journey that you wouldn’t make because you do not have the type of colour we see in Bollywood movies from India.
You really wonder what goes through the soul of Eusi Kwayana, one of our foremost anti-colonial fighters.
What is reprehensible is that the business owners who place these advertisements are simply shameless. Imagine an import firm puts a placement in the newspapers for popsicles and seven children were featured with broad smiles holding up their little icicle sticks and not one was an African kid.
What is interesting is that when you look at these commercials and then you look out your window, onto the streets, you don’t see many white folks or clear-complexioned people in their cars, riding the minibuses or going to work on their bicycles. Guyana does not have a majority of white folks or clear-complexioned people in its demography. They are in a minority.
How then do you explain the excessive number of lily white faces in the advertisements?
I think I know why. Now you may think that what I am about to write is done out of cynical amusement with what Guyana has become. No! I am dead serious! We don’t put dark faces in the placements because Guyanese people believe dark-skinned people are ugly.
By the way, there was a big fuss on Fox News last week because an African American, feminist writer questioned why Santa Claus must be white. Commentators at MSNBC supported the writer. I suppose Guyanese want their Santa Claus to remain white. Don’t they?

 

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