Latest update May 22nd, 2026 12:38 AM
The Identity Conundrum
DEAR EDITOR,
The discussion on the question of identity always seems to heat up during an elections campaign in Guyana. The language of the discussions is often coloured to influence voters around a particular identity as dictated in recent letters to this newspaper. These coloured identities are afraid of being left out of the political process, but fail to see that voting for your own identity results in other identities being left out of the political process which in turn fuels a host of unwanted human behaviour.
The point I make here is that no matter what colour your identity is, the resulting behaviours are human. Nelson Mandela summed it up in one line, “We are fighting for a society where people will cease thinking in terms of colour…. It’s not a question of race; its’ a question of ideas.”
If a government makes decisions on behalf of all human beings all ethnicities will benefit, but when a government is only representative of one ethnicity all humanity does not benefit – but is there such a thing as a human identity?
In all the letters that I have read there is no mention of the human identity, despite the fact that there is enough scientific proof to justify that we all belong to the human race. So the question I would like to leave with our identity writers is: what is your identity? And if it is not human how is it different? Is it superior or inferior to the human being?
I am not an academic or a scholar by any stretch of my own imagination, but as far back as I can see into the past, this ethnic identity that we have accepted is one which was given to us by those who usurped their power over us for their own economic benefits. As long as we continue to hold on to these sub-divisions of our humanity, we will continue exposing ourselves to economic exploitation by selfish human beings. I will close with these thoughts from Nelson Mandela.
“The anchor of all my dreams is the collective wisdom of mankind as a whole. I am influenced more than ever before by the conviction that social equality is the only basis of human happiness… It is around these issues that my thoughts revolve. They are centered on humans, the ideas for which they strive; on the new world that is emerging; the new generation that declares total war against all forms of cruelty, against any social order that upholds economic privilege for a minority and that condemns the mass of the population to poverty and disease, illiteracy and the host of evils that accompany a stratified society.”
Our fight is with Ignorance, not with each other.
Jai Parsram
Toronto
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