Ryhaan Shah, Melissa Ifill and Guyana’s sempiternal ethnic consciousness

Oct 14, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

Kaieteur News – Ms. Ryhaan Shah has replied to a column of mine (Thursday, October 8) which highlighted her emphasis on her ethnic DNA. Replying to the same article was Sherwood Lowe from UG who debunked my analysis on the African counterpart of Shah, UG’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Dr. Melissa Ifill.
Dr. Ifill wrote, “I am unapologetically black – always was and always will be! I march through this life and world as a black woman.” Shah noted, “I would never negate my Indian self. It is my DNA. It is my history, my legacy, my traditions, my culture. It is my spiritual home.”
Here is what I wrote in response; “It is not that Shah and Dr. Ifill should not be proud of their ethnic DNA. What is worrying is that both say that it is that kind of DNA that determines how they see the world. Nature then determines nurture. It shouldn’t.”
Before I offer my direct responses to the contents of what Shah and Lowe wrote, an assertion of mine needs repeating. I do not think and accept that a person’s ethnic genetics should play a deterministic role in their journey through life. The human is much more complex a person to live a one-dimensional existence. The human that chooses to see nature, the world, people and their journey through life as determined by their genetic make-up is not only flawed but may be incapable of embracing the totality of philosophy within a holistic framework.
The words of Shah in compelling ways describe the sempiternal dilemma that Guyanese in Guyana have lived with all their lives. The five-month election rigging drama has graphically shown how the creation of thoughts like Dr. Ifill’s are dwelling deep within the psyche of the nationality known as Guyanese.
Shah wrote, “I am extremely tired of Guyana….” Most unfortunately Shah cannot see psychologically that she contributed to the Guyana that she is tired of. She went on, “I am very proud of my heritage, my ethnicity, and my culture as Kissoon writes.” I’m glad she acknowledges that I accept people have the right to be proud of their race and culture. But my query is how she and Dr. Ifill have adopted this culture and ethnicity that it underpins their very existence which they admit to in their own words. Shah noted her ethnicity is “her spiritual home.” That is a sad admission that her philosophical lenses are blurred and tainted. I guess her choice of paintings, poetry, arts and music is deterministic.
Lowe’s defense of Dr. Ifill, UG’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, is one of the most ironic reactions in academic literature anywhere in the world in any century. On re-reading his protection of Dr. Ifill, Lowe cannot be that intellectually limited to see that he has in fact, by his pertinently relevant examples, rejected the premise of the statement Dr. Ifill made. For emphasis I repeat it, “I march through this life and world as a black woman.”
Let’s now demonstrate the Freudian underpinnings in Lowe’s mind as he tried to save Dr. Ifill. He wrote, “Kissoon does not know that people are more complex than one or two of their self-identities. We have multiple intersecting identities. A person can identify as Afro-centric and at the same time, say (sic), as a Guyanese nationalist, a socialist, a pacifist or a humanist…outside of our multiple political identities, Blackness does not capture our full moral and social shelves. People’s consciousness is shaped by, apart from their ethnicity and gender, the fact that they also belong or relate to families, social classes, occupations, religions, among others.”
No one can take cultural umbrage to the quotation above. What Lowe wrote that is quoted above is the substance which all human must possess. I don’t know if Lowe realizes it but he is defining the character and personality and psychic make-up of the human which is opposed to what Shah and Dr. Ifill embrace.
If ethnicity is the spiritual home of Shah then ethnicity determines her philosophical outlook because it resides inside the essential part of our psyche the Germans referred as geist. Lowe on the order hand is telling us that there are many other determinants that should fill our spiritual home. Lowe’s description of the psychic make-up of the human is in contradiction with Dr. Ifill’s exclamation. Again for emphasis it is repeated for the third time, “I march through this life and world as a black woman.” The problem with Shah and Dr. Ifill is that even if they are not consciously racist, why is it not possible that their relentless over-emphasis on ethnic consciousness have not found a Freudian home in their minds and it influences them without them being aware of it?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---