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Bisram’s falsely attributed “kaka or looney talk” quote
Dear Editor,
I refer to Mr. Vishnu Bisram’s letter captioned, “Ethnic conflict in other societies does have relevance in Guyana (SN Dec 21st). He wrote, “Theoretical constructs must be evidence based or else they become what Prof. Stanley Aronowitz calls “kaka or looney talk”.
In what context did Prof. Aronowitz use the phrase “kaka or looney talk”? Did he write on ethnic voting? And, why did Mr. Bisram cite this quote to support his argument for strict racial voting in Guyana?
I contacted Prof. Aronowitz and he said he had never used this quote, “kaka or looney talk” in any of his writings.
I next surmised that Mr. Bisram might have taken a course with the Prof. and heard him use the quoted phrase, in which case it would still have been a correctly attributed quote, even though its context and relevance are another matter.
Did Prof. Aronowitz know Mr. Bisram as a student? “Not as far as I remember”, wrote Prof. Aronowitz.
Making up quotes and attributing them to noted professors, as deplorable as this activity is, is not the worst thing Mr. Bisram had been accused of. Paul Sanders of the Daylight weekly had accused him of writing nasty racist letters in Caribbean New Yorker weekly appealing to the baser instincts of Indo-Caribbean people, urging them not to vote for candidate Obama because he is African-American.
Mr. Bisram not only offered a lame excuse (He was out of town, he says, and therefore could not have written those letters, even though in the internet age you can write from anywhere) – but got hostile.
He called Sanders a Gadaha (jackass). He also got hostile with the AFC people calling them a “kaka party” (SN two years ago). Like the made up quotes falsely attributed to Prof. Aronowitz, Mr. Bisram had also been widely accused of making up polls.
Mr.Bisram himself had informed the readers that the late Mr. David de Caires had advised him that in the interest of preserving the integrity of his polls, he should keep it separate from his political activism. Today the real question is: Are the polls driving his activism or must they be invented to support his pre-determined Causes like his “racist ideology”?
In Mr. Bisram’s latest venture, he says the results of a survey told him that if the PPP would only reconcile with Messrs. Nagamootoo and Ramkarran, the PPP would be “guaranteed to win” the upcoming elections. It is not hard for the public to imagine that Mr. Bisram today is actively brokering reconciliation between PPP and the two named ex-members.
(In today’s SN, Mr. Bisram described in loving detail how he worked to broker the presidential candidate for PCD in 1990).
Let us try to define Mr. Bisram’s racist ideology. Mr. Bisram made it plain as daylight that he wants to see every Indian-Guyanese vote strictly race for the Indo-ethnic PPP. This party has been in power for the last 21 years.
It is no secret that the levels of ethnic voting are very high in Guyana and that Indians have a plurality – and these are the main reasons to explain the PPP’s long-lasting tenure. To argue for a strategy of strict ethnic voting, Mr. Bisram opens up himself to the charge that he is wedded to the notion of “Indian Triumphalism” or domination by one race group over another.
To deny the charge that he is a racist ideologue he points to the survey and says the survey drives his Cause. (Which pre-dates which?). So his survey must be made up and together with his vilification of AFC over the years, his end goal is really to work for racial domination.
Mr. Bisram is his own worst enemy. His polls have no credibility. And, his Cause of racial domination or Indian Triumphalism in itself is damnable and revolting in a multi-racial society; and in a post-Obama and post-Mandela world, a world that offers hope for forging non-racial democracies.
Don’t try to debate political ideas or racist ideologies with Mr. Bisram, he will call you a Gadaha or slander you with “kaka” – even to the point of making up kaka quotes and attributing them to distinguished professors.
Mike Persaud
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