Race has destroyed our morality on Rodney’s assassination

Sep 11, 2014 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
It is time we examine Rodney’s death from a moral and legal standpoint. The discourse is heavy on the actual event but airy on the moral significance of the positions taken by those who accept that Rodney was killed by the PNC government but view the action of the PNC regime as morally, legally, philosophically and logically justified, reasonable, acceptable and non-condemnable for various reasons.
There is a significant segment of the country that holds this view and this group is primarily comprised of PNC supporters along with a minority of PPP supporters. The ‘moral’ position taken by this group is largely rooted in race and racialism. For the larger subset of this group, comprised of PNC supporters, the multiracial appeal of Rodney was a threat to existing African power and his assassination was necessary and justified.
For the smaller subset of PPP supporters who endorsed Rodney’s assassination, it was from the basis that Rodney was a threat to Indian power and his killing was accordingly, morally sanctioned. These individuals have fleshed out this fundamental ‘moral’ position by adding other components such as Rodney the troublemaker tempting fate and reaping what he sowed and the self-defence contention, meaning the PNC was acting in self-defence.
Then there are those who genuinely believe the PNC killed Rodney but feel they cannot voice it or constantly challenge this innate sentiment for fear that it would undermine their own race or for fear they would be ostracized by their own ethnic group.
These positions are immoral, hypocritical, disgusting, dangerous and destructive. They represent the belief that wrongdoing should be condoned, if racially expedient. These positions are inherently against democracy, freedom, justice, fairness, decency, morality and equality, not to mention beyond the pale of logic, truth and honesty.
The problem is that for some, try as they may, they cannot alter this ‘moral’ entrenchment. An ethnic government armed to the teeth, masterminding a police state and incapable of being militarily confronted is morally entitled to the cloak of self-defence when it assassinates, not prosecutes, a political dissident.
A leader of a movement under siege possibly accumulating a few guns, arguably for self-defence, is to be killed, not tried and prosecuted, even by a legal, policing and prosecutorial system dominated and manipulated by the dictatorship. Apartheid South Africa tried Nelson Mandela whose ANC movement killed many in the war of liberation. It did not kill him. Walter Rodney, running for his life and jumping fences to avoid death or injury by PNC thugs, is exactly the kind of threat that required the self-defence of assassination.
If a state is entitled to self-defence and is morally exonerated against political troublemakers by extra-judicial murder and by bypassing due process, then the murders of Rodney, Waddell, the more than 400 African men, the Ballot Box Martyrs and the illegal incarceration and harassment of thousands of citizens of all races by the PPP and PNC must be acceptable by this standard.
Clearly, what is good or bad for one government, and ethnic group, must be good or bad for the other, right? Are African and Indian ethnic governments morally excused in killing their own if they present a threat to ethnic power? By these morally convenient positions, they surely must be justified in liquidating anyone, period, for the sake of maintaining ethnic power, right?
This cheap, racially expedient price on life philosophy engenders the wider disregard for life within society. The moral hypocrisy of these individuals is telling and chilling. It twists and eviscerates the fundamental notion of right and wrong that is critical for any society to achieve a basic dignity.
Without a core morality and with a virulent core immorality guided by race, the nation will forever lack empathy, rationality, decency and the capacity for reconciliation and healing. It shreds and mocks the essence of struggle of the ancestors against oppression, terror and dictatorship. It atones the oppressor and in doing so justifies the brutalization of our ancestors and leaders like Cuffy, Quamina, Damon, the Enmore Martyrs, Ruimveldt protestors and Devonshire Castle resistors.
The hypocritical swindle and moral shamefulness of this kind of reasoning vaunts the oppressor and despot above the freedom fighter when racially suitable. It enables a society of retributive eye-for-an-eye justice, murder, mayhem, criminality and debased vigilantism when ethnically advantageous. The debauchery that masquerades as morality on Rodney’s assassination is a stark reminder that Guyana is likely doomed and beyond the reach of moral advancement.
M. Maxwell

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