Habitual discrimination is just not acceptable anymore

Mar 15, 2014 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
What Mr. Hamilton Green cannot take any more is allegedly “this nonsense about racial balance” in Guyana’s armed forces, as he sees it in the KN of 3-13-14.
Despite the necessity for peaceful coexistence in Guyana, he is yet to comprehend the urgency by which ethnic security becomes reflected within the Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) unit. He did not say so, but is it all more garbage to him?
Well what do you know! For him, it’s not Guyana’s but “Our (?) history (which) demonstrates certain ethics, preferences, and religious attachments from the time we were settled (?) in British Guiana – a tendency by certain racial groups to gravitate (?) to certain areas of activity almost as a natural (!) thing. To make artificial impositions is not right” he seeks to assert.
At his age, and in today’s Guyana, can fellow countrymen afford to wrong others by legitimizing their cultural extinction as done to them?  Whose racial security is always under permanent threat, with everyday onslaught on their cultural values, to become assimilated to someone else’s?
Habitual discrimination which denies due natural and constitutional rights to taxpayer- funded institutions is just not acceptable anymore.
Let’s find out what are the relevant and valid justifications proffered for such counter demands addressed: “To those who seek ethnic balance then let’s start (!) with the allocation of land, the cabinet, licence for businesses or firearms, balance on who we send to be trained as professionals – ethnic balance in the Judiciary. Yes, perhaps balance with who we send to jail or who we accommodate in the Palms or the mad house.  Balance in the media, radio, televisions and newspapers”?
By what criteria is any validity sourced or justifiable which always insists on one race for entitlements but constantly rejects the same for other Guyanese? Even as the favoured natural successors to the departing colonials, can any automatic inheritance or valid licence arise which can support the rigidity to dismiss that what Mr. Green finds “nonsense about racial balance”?
Forever energized to become carbon copy mimics which only motivates counter demands to provide and equalize “benefit” to those whom he champions, ought to be clarified why such contradictions are not piled-up demands, even as he admonishes: “To make artificial impositions is not right”!
Even if our ‘Greens’ still feel justified, wouldn’t it be most appropriate within a Federated Guyana, to finally showcase any lofty dreams in that paradise?
“Note the reluctance of certain groups to take part in National Service, generally regarded as semi-military” by which the PNC Mayor exhibits such out of touch characterization for those  who adamantly reject  the “all in one cook up” to realize the required flavour.
When Mr. Green has become sufficiently sensitive to escape his everyday mental and physical location of Georgetown to a new reality, then, maybe he can attempt to comprehend why no parent will send their daughters to be raped in conformity with a political policy which they detest.
Racial balance in the SWAT unit must become a reality as a start.  Dr Cheddi Jagan’s 1960s governing PPP, even when Guyana was not independent, even when he always claimed he was in office but not in power, achieved the noble establishment of the Special Services Unit (SSU) under the command of Sandhurst (UK) Major Abdul Sattur, with precise racial balance.
The incoming PNC-UF government transformed the SSU into the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), fired Major Sattur, disbanded the predominantly black British Guiana Volunteer Force and poured them into the newly-reorganized GDF, completely altering the racial balance in existence today. Was that gravitation or an artificial mix?
To his credit, British Guiana’s first PPP Home Affairs Minister Mr. Balram Singh Rai also actively promoted the recruitment of Indo Guyanese in the Guyana Police Force.
It is obvious what would have been black American reactions to a white Mr. Green’s carbon copy historic presumptuousness in such bold rejection (now inflicted onto his fellow Indo Guyanese) which told North American black people: “As we mature, this nation (i.e. America) must concentrate on training our youth, developing sound morals and decency, learning to judge a person not by race or belief but by content of character and willingness to work hard and make sacrifices” notwithstanding Dr Martin Luther King.
Mr. Green acts as if he is still both victim – enslaved – and simultaneously master-colonial inheritor – to decide who are most entitled to maintain “winner takes all” by a birthright patent. Was white America’s accommodation of former slave descendants and its Jewish minorities of any significant threat, since they were already conquered officially by institutionalized creolization?
Those experiences cannot be applied carte blanche to the Indian cultural presence in the Caribbean, especially Guyana.
Sultan Mohamed

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