Zed posted:I The racism that exists among all groups in Guyana (Carib please note the date so you can remember), including the Indo Guyanese and Afro Guyanese exacerbates the problem of governance, national identity and consciousness, and progress in Guyana.
Get rid of that nonsense about blaming the British and the Americans. I am 60 and can barely remember the 60s. I certainly wasn't old enough to have had a sophisticated analysis of this period.
Your average Guyanese voter is under 35. They don't even know who Burnham is.
That there is still ethnic friction is because of Guyanese, as we have had long enough to grow out of whatever morass the British left us in. There is almost no one alive who coherently knows what life in British Guiana was all about. A mere 5% of the population is above 70.
When the PPP was marginalizing blacks NONE of you wanted to discuss this. Some even disrespected blacks by screaming that they were benefitting from the PPP, when their own lived experienced suggested otherwise. All who commented on this were branded as racists and some even faced death threats and other forms of intimidation.
Now you wail about what APNU might be doing to Indians, conveniently "forgetting" that all they do is indulge in the same pattern of ethnic exclusion which began under Cheddi, especially after 1961, continued under the PNC, then under the PPP and likely now continuing under the Coalition.
The only way to resolve the issue is to discuss it. Africans and mixed Guyanese have a very different attitude towards ethnicity and nationality than do East Indians. THAT is the root of our problem.
If the Indian will always favor another Indian can a black person trust an Indian who is in a leadership position? And yes Indian ethnic loyalty being greater than national loyalty, and their different notion of what being a Guyanese is, will definitely breed behavior that will contribute to a problem, even if unintended.
I have frequently repeated what I was told by a black taxi driver during the Jagdeo era when he stated that a LIAT flight with 40 passengers generated more opportunities for him than a plane arriving from Toronto with over 100 mainly Indians. Do you think that this leads him to trust Indians? When he displays hostility to Indians who he doesn't know why then be surprised?
I was told by a young black woman during the PPP era who was upset that us older blacks were so critical of Burnham. All she knew (growing up after 1992) was being made a foreigner in her own land and so she saw the Burnham era as a period with apparent black "empowerment".
There needs to be open and honest discussion about ethnic identity formation and how this impacts how various ethnic groups in Guyana view their nationhood and how they view other ethnic groups.
Look and see how salient the "Moses says he is not an Indian" was? The reaction of Indians to this fed into the stereotype of the "clannish Indian" as did their boycott of every single national event which is held when the PPP is not in power.
Afro Guyanese have always participated in Guyanese national events without regard to which party is in power. Indians seem unable to unless the PPP is in power.
So I am NOT impressed with your passive acknowledgement of Indian racism because you still haven't demonstrated any interest in discussing how it manifests, how it impacts how Indians are perceived by others, especially blacks, and how this impacts overall ethnic insecurity factors in Guyana.