Percy Hintzen’s flawed analysis: Distance or manipulation?

Oct 09, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I have known Professor Percy Hintzen since my student days at UG. I regard him as the best sociologist this country has produced. His work on the cultural contempt of the Creole middle class (CMC) for the descendants of the Guyanese indentured community is excellent stuff.
His examination of contemporary Guyanese society in a recent issue of the newspapers here is well written and must have had the claimants of an emerging apartheid system in Guyana running scared. Dr. Hintzen in that piece argued that there is in fact, an African Creole bureaucratic, professional, political and administrative class right here in Guyana that has class contempt for the African proletariat.
There are two flaws in his analysis which compels one to reply to him because of the potency of the defects. One is that he did not discuss the essential difference between the Indian petty bourgeois and the CMC in Guyana with regards to the expression and shape of class mentality.
He is correct in pointing out that both classes are divorced from the masses but the cultural contempt for people based on class and colour runs deeper in the CMC than in the embourgeoisified post 1992 rich Indian community. But that is for another column.
The second omission in Dr. Hintzen’ piece is what I will devote the rest of this article to. My contention is that his adumbration on political and social activism is seriously erroneous because of his long absence from Guyana.
Professor Hintzen has to know that the Guyana that he lived in during the 1970s when he lectured at UG is long gone, transformed by the crystallization of class and race loyalties and the resurgence of the political dreams of the CMC.
It is ironic but Professor Hintzen may be cultivating an association with the CMC that may be using him for propagandistic purposes. I say this without offence and I remain an admirer of Dr. Hintzen’s work.
I am willing to admit that his second misanalysis may be due more to an enduring absence from Guyana rather than manipulation by the CMC. I will warn Dr. Hintzen that the CMC in Guyana since the five-month old election imbroglio in March 2020 has become a hardened, anti-Indian, anti-democratic cabal and their efforts are going to weaken Guyana’s democratic consolidation. He should be careful.
Here now is the second defect that I noted above. I quote from D. Hintzen: “Challenges, replicated in Guyana by groups such as Red Thread, are being mounted against transnational neoliberal capitalism by the global women’s movement. A global environmental movement is posing similar challenges with similar resonances in Guyana.  Collectively, these might become the deus ex machina that ends the tragedy of Guyana.”
I live in Guyana, the professor does not. I am at a loss to understand his understanding of political dynamics in this land. There are no resonances in Guyana and if there are, they are not in the form and shape that Dr. Hintzen puts down on paper.
It is a different resonance. It is an anti-Indian, anti-democratic assault coming from the very people that Dr. Hintzen sees as attempting to transform Guyana. His essay is titled: “National Tragedy and the Politics of Race,” but a bitter irony canopies his essential argument.
Red Tread is not viewed as multi-racial in Guyana. It has remained silent on the five months of attempted rigging and has a symbiotic relationship with an extremely reactionary group in Guyana – the WPA.
I would suggest Dr. Hintzen look at the output of the Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand and what she had to say about this silence on the election rigging by groups that Dr. Hintzen puts too much positive emphasis on. It can be obtained on YouTube under the title – Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show.
Dr. Hintzen wrote: “Once the political energies of the people are freed from the tactics deployed by the political class, they can turn their attention toward systemic transformation of governance.”
This is old, outdated political theorizing. Guyana’s political landscape defies rational comprehension. The political classes that Dr. Hintzen refers to, have their surrogates that collaborate with the very political classes to perpetuate the tragedy and politics of race. I would like to know which organisations the professor puts in the category of political classes.
Irony is saturated all over Dr. Hintzen’s essay. He writes that the collective efforts of some groups may be the dues ex machina to end the tragedy of Guyana. Come home to Guyana, Dr. Hintzen and you will see in kaleidoscopic colours the tragedy you wrote about when I met you at UG has taken on longer tentacles. Those groups are extending the tragedy, Dr. Hintzen.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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