Youth panelists support call for aggressive data collection to address issues

Dec 16, 2020 News

ERC‘s discussion on improving race relations…

Panelist: Derwayne Wills

Panelist: Elsie Harry

Kaieteur News – The youth panel which participated in the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC)’s two-day national conversation on improving ethnic relations in Guyana has supported the call for national data collection towards finding realistic solutions to address the race issue.
The speakers on the panel included former University of Guyana valedictorian, Elsie Harry, local youth advocate Derwayne Wills, journalist Vishani Ragobeer , Indigenous youth representative, Kyle Joseph and A New and United Guyana party (ANUG) youth representative, Kiran Jabour.

Panelist: ANUG’s representative, Kiran Jabour

The panelist collectively added their voices to the recommendations of prominent attorney, Nigel Hughes, who in a previous presentation, made strong case for the national data collection towards addressing racial divisions and discrimination.
Hughes explained how such data would help policy makers analyse and add a dollar value to the contributions of various ethnicities to the making of colonial and independent Guyana. This, he suggested will help in leaving no group feeling left out or disenfranchised.
In his contribution to the panel discussion, Wills called on the ERC to take a closer look at perception of race, class and gender in society.
The ERC, he said, has an important role to engage in an aggressive data collection exercise to better understood the issues of inequality, discrimination and racism.
“We can use this data to understand the distribution of political power across ethnic groups, including their access to state boards, representation in elected offices… The recommendations of Mr. Hughes are an excellent example of how to use the data to disaggregate myths or perception from the reality,” Wills said in his presentation.
ANUG’s youth representative made similar suggestions. Jabour noted that if we are to delve into the issues, rather than using the perception that racism is systemic, there must be accurate data that supports this view.
Jabour asserted that: “We need to do a little bit more data analysis on wealth distribution for instance, how contracts were awarded both by the private and public sectors to benefit the various ethnic groups. Unless this data is generated comprehensively, then we can never really understand the extent and the depth of the problem here.”
The ANUG panelist stressed therefore that there needs to be a lot of understanding of the analytics behind race issues before the people can see the clear impact it is having on society and systems can be put in place to fix the flaws.
Harry, who gave an overview of the origins of deep-seated racial issues, explained the colonist ideals implemented by Europeans to drive division between the various groups still exists today.
She emphasized that the “anti-blackness” notion, which was created by the colonist systems does not relate to Africans only… all the other ethnicities suffered some form of indentureship at the hands of the colonists.
“What made matters worse,” she added, “is the fact that our modern day politicians use this same sort of strategy to drive division between ethnic groups and achieve their agenda for power and control.”
“It is therefore our responsibility to have honest conversation about what transpired during the colonial era …Only then can we start to make amends for it. If, we are trying to achieve national unity, then we must take a look at what caused the breach to begin with,” she posited.
Added to this, the youth panelist called on the ERC to be empowered to conduct its mandate.
“Perhaps legislation will have to be revised to empower them to attach sanctions to the acts of racism in Guyana, beyond asking them to apologise plus the persons on the Commission must be held to the same standard because if they breach their own code of conduct then other persons in society will not listen to them, in any case.”
Kyle Joseph who represented the interest of Indigenous people on the panel, spoke of need to remove perception that Indigenous people are far removed from the issues of modern day society. He called for open dialogue with the more efforts to meet the people.
He agreed with the position by Harry, that ERC must do more. “I think as a society as a whole, we can do more to educate, we need more messages on our radio and that confronts the issue of racism and the kind of words, which we use to describe each other because of ethnicity and we need to outrightly condemn it,” he said.

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