GUYANA SOCIETY NO LONGER VICTIM OF RACIO-POLITICAL SYNDROME

Mar 01, 2020 Consumer Concerns, News

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CONSUMER CONCERNS

By PAT DIAL

The Guyana Consumers Association, by its Constitution, does not make pronouncements on politics and does not have persons who are political practitioners holding office in the Association though such persons may be members.
Since race and racial prejudice have become political issues and of public political discourse, we have avoided speaking on this topic since it is inevitable that we would be misunderstood.
Several members of our Committee have however pointed out that the concept of Race is sociological and not political and that we should speak about it to enlighten the public and to let them know the Association’s position.
An article of this size cannot accommodate with adequacy the subject of Race; we will therefore content ourselves with stating some salient points.
Race and racism as we know them today in Guyana were unknown before the 1940’s. The ancestors of the bulk of the population were brought here in bondage to provide labour for the sugar plantations and they all therefore passed through the plantation, which put its indelible stamp on them.
They all became very much alike despite they themselves or their ancestors deriving from different parts of the world. Further, the socialisation process was the same – they all had to speak English, they went to the same schools and they all ate much the same food.
They all recognised themselves as Guianese, belonging to the then British Guiana, whatever may have been their ancestral origin.
After World War II, Britain, the colonial power had decided to withdraw from the West Indian colonies and grant them Independence. The colonial power introduced electoral politics in the late 1940’s and granted advanced Constitutions every few years until it was in a position to withdraw and hand over power and control over the colony to the local politicians who had been groomed for this role.
These politicians formed themselves into political parties, which began to vie for electoral support to win seats in the “Parliaments” and they soon discovered that the easiest way of mobilising support was by appealing to racial affinities.
This syndrome of exploiting race to achieve political office reached its climax in the early 1960s just before Independence was granted in 1966. After Independence, there was rapid economic decline and there were shortages of food and consumer goods.
A great proportion of the population emigrated to North America and other parts of the world. People no longer trusted the promises of politicians; the appeal to race for political support declined.
But the political parties and their cheer-leaders anachronistically continued to speak of race until today, using the same cliches like “discrimination” and “marginalisation”, oblivious to the fact that the population had ceased being excited by race-talk.
The country is now approaching another electoral cycle and the political parties are blaming each other for the woes of the society, oftentimes with racial undertones. Guyanese people are not influenced by the blame-game and there is no racism and racial animosity among them.
In the streets, in the shops and markets and in the public transport, one never hears any racial remarks. Indeed, in their relations with each other, people of all races treat each other with courtesy, kindness and consideration. There is very little or no talk of racial politics.
The political propagandists do not seem to have grasped the fact that Guyanese life and society had changed over the last half-a-century. A completely new generation of voters has appeared with the population being far more integrated and far less trusting of political promises than they once were.
Race and racism as we know them today emerged in the 19th century with the advent of European Imperialism and the Darwinian Theory of ‘Survival of the Fittest’ and from these, it was deduced that the darker skinned colonised peoples were inferior to their colonisers and were treated as such.
Ironically, the colonised peoples themselves adopted these European racist attitudes and the evolution of Guyanese racism from the 1940s was influenced by European racial attitudes.
After World War II, European Empires were dissolved and Imperialism came to an end. Darwinism became less popular and Western Societies, with memories of the Nazi racial policies and the Endlosung were transformed into anti-racists.
Racial discrimination was made a criminal offence and the laws and education content on race were liberalised and persons of colour began to be elevated to the highest offices in Western countries.
Guyana, as a Western Society, has been deeply influenced by these anti-racist Western trends, which have further strengthened the anti-racist forces at work in Guyanese society. Talk of race and racism has survived among some politicians and their supporters and the media, which support them, oblivious to the fact that Guyanese people now objectively adjudge political performance and are no longer taken in by political propagandists.

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