No one has a right to stop you from writing about your experiences

Mar 03, 2018 Freddie Kissoon

I don’t have a Facebook account. At my age I will not need one. In addition, I am of the opinion that a substantial number of Facebook users do so for the purpose of ego-tripping. Some have it to get their fifteen minutes of fame. It was a friend of mine in the media that drew my attention to a Facebook posting of the editor of the Stabroek News, Anand Persaud. Mr. Persaud called me a liar, among other uncomplimentary descriptions. The reason was because I wrote on my experience at Stabroek News under the editorship of David de Caires.
As is usual on Facebook, others post their views. Except for my friend Malcolm Harripaul, the other posters, a majority of whom once worked with Mr. de Caires, accused me of sloppy journalism and penned insulting adjectives. Not that those expressions bothered me. They never did in all my life and will never ever get to me. I live my existence to please me, my family, friends, and those I care about. One must always remember that a recurring fact of civilization is that fools will write, and they must be allowed to write because it is their right.
My editor, Adam Harris, had a gentle conversation with me on what I got wrong factually when I wrote about de Caires. I told Adam that if I do my memoirs, what I wrote about de Caires will go into the volume, because it is a recording of my life experience. My time as a columnist at the Stabroek News is one that has been a valuable education for me. I think it has deepened my understanding of nature and the world, but particularly my country. The two founders – David de Caires and Miles Fitzpatrick – were not by any means bad humans. They were not. They simply belonged to a country where class and colour were the standards used since the beginning of the 20th century to judge society.
My friend, Dr. Mark Kirton, told me when his father was a journalist at the Guyana Graphic, he went to the home of the owner of Fogarty’s, Percy Wright, to interview him. Wright at that time was a member of the Portuguese elite class. Mark told me Mr. Wright suggested his father enter through the backdoor of the house rather than coming up the front step. The elder Kirton would have none of it.
Anyone whose parents grew up in the fifties and went to the Brickdam Cathedral would tell you that if a dark-skinned parishioner sat on a front bench, the officiating priest would tell them to remove. The front seats were reserved for the light-complexioned elite stratum of Guyanese society. De Caires and Fitzpatrick would let you know in unambiguous terms that you must know your place in the scheme of things; you were an underling and you were expected to behave like that. I left Stabroek News because I was proud of my dark skin, my class background and my education.
There were two short lines on de Caires in that column, Mr. Persaud and the beneficiaries of Mr. de Caires chose to vent their anger on one of them only. I wrote that de Caires celebrated his birthday with special friends at a house on the Essequibo. Adam asked me about that and I told him I picked it up from one of the eulogizers at the funeral service for the father of Cabinet Minister Hughes, Mr. Hugh Cholmondeley. The speaker told the mourners that he enjoyed those special moments with de Caires, Cholmondeley and others in that ambience. The mistake I made was to use birthdays on the river instead of private Christmas “limes on the river”
The other observation of mine was ignored. I wrote that even though at the time, I was a popular columnist based on the reaction I got from the society, the instruction was that I could not speak to de Caires directly; leave messages with his secretary. This instruction meant you could not visit him at his office.
David de Caires remains for me a nice gentleman who I believe treated his staff well, but he belonged to a world that shaped how he dealt with dark-skinned people and their working class background. That does not make you an unlikeable person, and de Caires was a very likeable man.
David de Caires never allowed his elitism to take brash forms. He was always diplomatic. This was unlike the co-founder Miles Fitzpatrick. He had no restraints in telling you that you must know your place at all times. This was my experience at Stabroek News. It is depraved for anyone to tell me I should not write about it.

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