Latest update October 13th, 2026 10:32 AM
Latest News
- Linden man shoots teen girlfriend dead, then kills himself
- US$15B in oil exported in first six months; Guyana received only US$1.9B
- Barima victims still waiting for promised relief
- Saudi capital’s airport to remain shut this week as airlines cancel services
- Diamond declarations plunge 61.7% in first half – Bank of Guyana
What to do first?
Forgive first? Or face racial horrors first? That is a riveting murder case down in Texas. It is very much about Guyana, too. Which one should it be?
Right off the bat, forgiving was arresting. In its grand human reaching. That through pain, there can be forgiving through recruiting towards conversing, listening, addressing, and solving. There is a problem, one from which many terrible injustices did arise and still do.
The first problem is to discern that even the lily lack purity. That there are no quick, easy answers. There are, though, even accusers and healers who come to the table with a stained hand. The table of struggling to corner the monstrosities of racial toxins -the histories of ages, the degradations of body, the restorations of mind, the solvents for the soul. All are present, they flourish richly, vindictively.
The hurt not participating, but condoning. The innocent not speaking but associating. The angry not venturing but supporting. With the rages, the denials, the dodges. There is waiting without going anywhere. In the quest for racial justice, there must be readiness of the willing towards racial reconciling. Forgiving. That might be the better start. Forgive first.
In this way, the sullenness of “who are you to talk…. Of who cast the first stone comes last. Sets back; digging in of heels in endless accusations and recriminations. The circumference is infinite; the passions palpable, the injuries intolerable.
Everyone comes to some meeting place: all are perpetrators, all are victims. All are losers in a tragedy with no winning, no rising; no respite from the hatreds and distrusts; no harbour of contemplation for what is wrong, other than being wronged; no continuation to seek what is right and find the right. Because all are rigidly entombed in the rightness of their hurts and their causes, then there are only wrongs, great wrongs.
Do we not know this? Do we want to go where this can take us in Guyana? Do we cherish preserving the culture of criminalizing each other-whether red blooded or white-collared-and that’s that and that’s all that there is to this now meaningless existence in the richest, most promising of lands? Whether in Texas or across Guyana, there must be willingness to take the first step; to point finger(s) first at self; self only. It cannot be single sectional.
What is there to forgive here? First, it is that we have stumbled terribly and repeatedly into the graves that we dig for one another. Thus, we are fastened at the hip, in the casket, in the stone of the ground, and still with stone in our hearts. We can tick off the evils on the fingers of one hand, then the other. And when this country is done counting, there are still not enough hands when 750,000 pairs of such have been accounted for torturously, monotonously.
Monotonously because it is the same culture and outlook, the same unstirring beliefs and the same unpromising future. Round and round and through and through. The oil lubricates and inflames the embers.
Face the violence first runs the great risk of triggering waterfalls of the overfilling, unforgiving negatives. Gushing. Rushing. Washing away listening. Inundating and reinforcing the harming. Reliving the injuring. By the other, as in the next man and woman-in the sorry and sordid annals of man, it is always someone else-with no space left for creeping towards the uplifting that comes from progressing. Why not start from the other direction?
The cleansing slate and state of willing, bona fide humility: we have wronged each other. From the first days of our nationhood, to the first decades of this so far inglorious, rupturing century. None is untouched. No waiting on the other fellow. No holding back. We cannot be that haughty that that which stares in the face scream this single truth: in our present, divided, destructive state, Guyana is going nowhere. We are not. We may never.
Which is it going to be? Rehashing of all the ills first? Uncovering all the wounds next? Re-experiencing all the agonies last? And then again and again eternally?
Why not the other way first? Come humbly. Speak honestly. Reach gently. Exist differently. Reconcile healingly. Live purposefully.
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