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Racist attitudes in the milieu
Not many say so in public view. It is a different time, with mainly careful correctness raging. People and expressions are craftier; the underground is the safest ground from which to operate. But no matter how kindly looked at, racist ingredients are at work and heavily infest this nation’s politics and antics.
No side is exempt; no set of people given a pass. Not church people, not people of sacred texts, or sanctuaries, or standing or sophistication.
This is what is being fought over: one running the other over, in the mind, in the vision, in the anticipation of this or that result. We went from the pent-up, long-delayed satisfaction of “is we turn” to the equivalent celebration of: “is we turn now.”
To do what? Lord it over? Show who is boss? This paper answers in the affirmative to all of those divisive questions; and all the others that percolate but are never uttered in the open by too many, other than among like kind.
The racist tendencies are neither so subtle nor are they undetectable, because they are pulsating and moving and empowering and self-confirming, as to perceived holiness of our own dirty, diabolical sides. From who is hired to who is denied to who is dismissed to who is mocked (privately) to who is patronised (hypocritically).
Guyanese are ever conscious of today’s civilising restraints. Other than tribal fundamentalists, who care not what they say, or how and where it is said, the slickers are familiar with how to play the game. A deceptive game, it is; one of pretense, of hiding behind platitudes, of the many deceits that come from practised omissions. The shelter of silence affords deniability.
Thus, this is a nation of slippery folks dedicated to eluding through paths pursued, and weaving tracks that throw off the scent.
Reality must be faced, this society is as rawer and more boiling today; but there are the muted roars that come from carefully crafted language; very skilled craftsmen and women, we have become. Stereotypes linger and form foundations; revisiting the scene of ugly national racist truths, through conversation, association, refusal either to condemn or to call out or to question our friends and other fellows of like mind, merely fuel the fire and build the temperatures of race fears, race distrusts, and race hatreds.
Or those we avoid, those we disengage from, those we disparage in one setting after another. It could be the office, the park, the car; and, naturally, the home, and places of worship. Those are safe grounds that give the confidence to be unguardedly expressive.
Keeping to ourselves, and comforting one another with false, self-reinforcing truths and circumstances do not address the problem, make no attempt at thinking of, looking for, and working towards any kind of solutions.
Merely load up on the gas, which is so inflammable to this society, and propel it farther down a terrible, devastating road.
We hide behind an enslaving, unsavory constitution that is about supremacy and tyranny of a racist kind. Let’s call it for what it is at its cancerous colon, because that is what it is in outcome and frauds perpetuated.
We think we are so smart, when all that such reliance and insistence and result usher forth is more of the same, more of the old evils of political hegemony, of social division, and of racial trials.
We congratulate ourselves on how sagacious, analytical, and objective we are through spirited criticisms of jurists local everywhere for failing to come out of the woodwork and demanding that we do this or that, which suits our narrow purposes.
Meanwhile, the peoples of this nation–the wise men, the believed profound, the aspiring cerebral-chuckle at how quick on the feet they are for dodging yet another meteor representing the faces of Guyana’s backwardness.
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