Go back to your own country

Mar 06, 2023 Editorial

Editorial…

Kaieteur News – “Go back to your own country!” Part curse, part insult, part slur, it always seems to boil down to this degrading of coloured men and women in countries where Caucasians are the dominant presence. “Go back to your country” was what was hurled in hateful terms at Nikki Haley, an American political star of Indian extraction, when she dared to announce her run for President of the United States of America. It is the same America where a Black man, a half Black one, did succeed in rising to the top of the American political establishment. In Barack Obama’s time, he attracted the wrath of the bigots, nativists, and diehard racists. Now it is Nikki Haley’s turn, and the ordeals of her higher political journey may be just beginning.

Nimarata Nikki Haley has plenty going for her that makes her an asset to America, so one would think that throwing her hat in the race for president would be responded to with favour, and open arms. She is a college graduate, a former governor of not just any State in the Union, but of South Carolina, the first to lead in the rupture towards secession and the American Civil War. She was an ambassador to the United Nations for just under two years. To top it all off, her spouse is a White American. If anyone should qualify as overachieving, a poster child of first-generation immigrant success, and an All-American woman, it is Nikki Haley.

But the best accolade that she could earn is the scarring slur of “Go back to your country!” It serves as confirmation of the secret fears and hate of many in America (and Europe) that no matter how much, no matter how high, the coloured man or woman scores, the only ingredient that counts is the colour of their skin. It is doubtful that the same would have been pelted at an American of Irish or Italian or German heritage.

We at this paper put the plight of a politically ambitious Nikki Haley in the public domain to make a few simple points. They rise up in overflowing rage to chase out of their country, in pushing to “go back to your country”, but to what? What kind of country they hurry to when they are done with what was once held close as home? In the context of Guyana, the “they” could be English or Canadian or Spanish, and most definitely American. For how quickly they (the shameless nativists) forget how their great wealth and rich lifestyles have been built on the back of poor people of colour the world over. How easily they (the classless bigots) forget the blood and sweat shed by those in nonwhite populations that are robbed and drained of their rich patrimonies. And how conveniently they (the unspeakable racists) in developed countries fail to remember, that their standing in life was erected on the pain and tears and anguish of people who had everything, and were plundered of everything, leaving nothing.

The public faces and the poisoned tongues that speak for the smarter ones in their midst (those who keep their heads low and their silence), should know of their warriors and statesmen and diplomats who travel to rich, but backward, countries and strip them of wealth first, then dignity. This is what they relish sending the Nikki Haleys in their midst back to, after they have pillaged and gouged.

The ExxonMobil(s) and Schlumberger(s) and Tullow(s) of the civilized world have been of what is barbarous to the lives of those who are mainly darker skinned, and unschooled to their savaging subtleties, their sophisticated exploitations. They do not anything of the kind in countries where the people share their own colour, religion, language, culture. Worse still, in the manner of Cortez and Cook, they turn the coloured people against one another with betrayals for beads and bits of their wealth given back to them to keep them quiet. Study our own Guyanese, and from perverted politicians to the traitorous in the local population, it is of what serves the interests of schemers and vagabonds. This is what they send Nikki Haley to; this is to what Guyana is condemned.