We, non-white people have the temerity to cuss down white countries

Apr 25, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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What Trinidad has done to 40 Venezuelan refuges applicants last week, no other white country has, including Hungary, which has a policy of not accepting refugees, and Australia which takes them in but do not resettle them on the mainland.
I was on a panel discussion with Vincent Alexander and UG lecturer, Charlene Wilkinson, Sunday night on Channel 9 on the race problem in Guyana. Charlene was the only one that made some caustic comments on the White race.
I didn’t reply. I take no interest whatsoever in Black and non-white people cussing down white countries. I just find it too silly to even respond for a fleeting moment. My philosophy in life, which I believe should be the emotional and psychic motto of every human, is that if you dislike a bad human then you have to do so from a position of goodness. You cannot accuse people of stealing sheep when you steal goats.
If dominant, white countries behave terribly to non-white races then why should I see the Caucasian race as the embodiment of prejudice and cruelty when non-white states treat other non-white people with equal brutality? In fact, I have long argued in these columns that the non-white races of the world, the non-white nations, non-white nationalities have no moral superior claims on humane, democratic behaviour over white countries.
Charlene spoke of white supremacy is being maintained in Guyana. I didn’t reply again because I have no interest in such a debate; it is contextually vacuous. If there is white supremacy in Guyana, then show me the white man or white woman that ordered the removal of David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis from the Chronicle.
If there is white supremacy in Guyana, direct me to the white hand that ordered the removal of hundreds of poor vendors from Stabroek Market Square so the government could use the site to have the Golden Jubilee parade.
If there is white supremacy in Guyana, then point me to the white country or white government that tells Guyana to jail teenagers for the possession of a smoking utensil or the mere possession of three grams of marijuana.
Name me the white country that jails young men for three years for possession of four grams of ganja. Is that land the US? The answer is no. Is it some white country in Europe? The answer is no. Or maybe it is Canada. No, possession of small amount of ganja in Canada is now legal. Oh! I found the white country – Australia. No it is not Australia.
No white country in the 21st century imprisons young men for three years for possession of a smoking utensil. And if they do that then with supersonic haste, the country’s human rights body will test the legislation in court.
Any country that puts teenagers in jail for three years for five grams of ganja is a cruel place, whose leaders are obnoxiously unfit to govern a 21st century state. Such leaders are worse than the white leaders we love to criticize.
I have done several pieces in my columnist career that pontificate on the increasing degradation, dehumanization, autocratization and even fascistization of the post-colonial Third World since decolonization began after World War 2. And there is a corresponding dialectical irony in the former western colonial empires themselves in which the white citizenry has demanded the deepening of freedoms, liberty and justice and modernization and they are achieving it.
Don’t tell me about white supremacy in Guyana when white countries that ruled us have dissolved their own anachronistic laws that imprison minds and bodies while we in the Third World gleefully retain them and cling to them. I could cite hundreds of them.
Apart from the ganja vortex, I immediately think of the law on divorce. It came to Guyana in 1933 and is still operable. Under that law, you are compelled to go to a judge and lie to the judge in order to get a dissolution. You must cite one of three reasons only for the divorce. Which white man’s edict orders Guyana to deny entry to women in public places if they are wearing a sleeveless dress? That code is still enforceable in many public institutions. I see the sign every day at Cyril Potter College of Education, which is close to where I live.
But let’s get back to Trinidad. The authorities tore up the refugees’ application papers, detained them, then together with fifty others, forcefully repatriated them to Venezuela. The group included women and children. What Trinidad did was illegal under international law. But my own country would have done the same.
Editor’s note: Trinidad denied deporting the Venezuelans. That story is on Page 21 of the April 24 issue of Kaieteur News.

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