Race relations and development

Apr 22, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Every day there is some commentary in the press or on the internet in and out of Guyana about race relations and the politics of this country.

Race and politics prevent us from the life-giving exercise of breathing. When we cannot breathe easily, then we are labouring, and when we are labouring, we are not at our best to demand the best out of what belongs to us. What is sickening is how race and politics have been used to reduce us to a state of helpless crippling. Our own Guyanese politicians have made the most use of race and politics to weaken, divide, and dominate. Having closely studied the local environment, the foreigners coming to prosper from our many patrimonies make fools out of us by encouraging the pitting of one group of Guyanese against the other. If any Guyanese harbours the belief that their racial and political polarization is all local in strength, and local in momentum, then they feed into what serves the interests of those who divide us, so that they can flourish.

When we are divided, we are distracted. When we allow ourselves to be distracted, then our eyes are focused on the perceived enemy before us. When we are so focused, the real enemies of the Guyanese people are having the best of enriching times in hauling away unstopped wealth and draining our prospects unchallenged. The World Bank is right and wrong when it said in a report last year that ethnic and political polarization stands as the roadblock to the proper degree of national development, considering the great assets in our hands.

The venerable supranational institution is correct to say that Guyana’s development is sabotaged by race and politics, but it went too far too quickly. Guyana cannot be said to have embarked on the kind of development that corresponds with its massive national endowments. The reality is that Guyana has not even gotten off the mark, with Guyanese still on their knees, due to the paralyzing hammer blows that race and politics have delivered on the head of each citizen.

The oil and gold and the other natural resource gifts can all mean so much for national development. But Guyanese have fallen so in love with the raw racial divisions and tensions, with the sharp and brutal political partisanships, that they have little time for anything else. This includes all of what could be most constructive, that which holds out the greatest promise for them. We, the Guyanese people, are not giving ourselves a chance, not caring about any sober listening, not willing to engage and link arms to stand as a unified whole against the devastating exploitations that are leaving us haemorrhaging profusely.

There ought to be not a single Guyanese who needs the World Bank to furnish the enlightenment of how destructive race and politics have been and continue to be, to our national development, and currently our national tranquility. Guyanese may be physically calm on the outside, but the deepest rage, the most savaging bitterness, twists into knots, make the disfiguring out of us, at the mere contemplation of the other.

What development can occur in such circumstances, with the national house so divided, so ramshackled? For every step hailed as progress, Guyana could have and should have, made at least ten times as many. Our racial memories yoke us and weigh us down. We know this but have no desire to do anything about it. Leaders have not manifested any inclination to close the racial gaps, to heal the political divisions. The ugly state of race and political relations serve their interests, which is why Guyanese are kept apart. With a united Guyana, the possibilities are endless. It would be more than the World Bank can compile if we were only to get going to get what is rightly due to us. Guyanese must work first to get past their racial hate and their political poisons. Then, the language, postures, and passions surrounding race and politics must take second place to the priority of our wealth, surrender to what is wise, to lead us to what authentic development is all about.

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divide, dominate, Editorial, Race relations, weaken

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