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Reply to "What about a Black Guyanese entrepreneurial class?"

Originally Posted by baseman:
 

Why are Indians less represented in the GPF/GDF/Civil Service.  Because Blacks have a preference,

I find you amusing.

 

1. Africans aren't involved in business ownership, to the extent that they are even in Jamaica and Barbados, because of their innate inferiority.

 

2.  Indians how ever are under represented in the armed forces because of African racism.

 

 

Well explain why then were Africans dominant in the armed forces as early as the late 19th C?  The commanders were white English men, who had distinct memories of slave insurrections, and would have resented the fact that by that period Africans had began to see British Guiana as belonging to them, and saw the Englishman as a foreigner.

 

And please don't perpetrate the fraud that some one starts a business because they aren't allowed to be a soldier.  So is a non corrupt cop as affluent as some one who owns his business?  You are so simple!

 

 

The reasons for both phenomenon is rooted in Guyanese colonial history, and how it differs with Jamaica. 

 

The first employment avenues which former slaves sought out were as small business people, and as peasant farmers.  The colonial authorities had no interest the development of an independent African business class, so set out to destroy these ventures. Africans then were allowed upward mobility through roles as low and mid level civil servants.

 

Jamaica and Barbados had a labor surplus, and in fact the colonial authorities sometimes encouraged the former slaves to migrate to places like Panama and Cuba.  Not so in labor short British Guiana (and Trinidad), where labor was in short supply, so the colonials wanted two impoverished groups, both battling each other. A prosperous African peasant and business class would have reduced the need for blacks to be used as scab labor.

 

In the colonial era Indians did not enter the police force in large numbers.  Indians also did not enter on large numbers between 1992 and 2015.  Africans and Indians find themselves placed differently because of their respective histories in Guyana.

 

And if APNU/AFC were to engage in preferential treatment of African ventures to allow a much larger black business class to develop, what would you do?  You would squeal about Indo genocide and appeal to Maduro to send ships to rescue Indians from the "Final Solution".

 

At the end of the day people make their own choices. Afro Guyanese are risk averse, even when compared to their fellow creole black Jamaicans, Grenadians and Barbadians.

 

Indians don't see the armed forces and offering the type of work that they wish to do.

 

Should more large ventures be owned by Africans, or should more Indians enter the armed forces?  Yes, but you cannot force people to do what they don't want to do. All you can focus on is ensuring that there are no barriers of institutional racism which prevent people from achieving their goals.

 

 

BTW the vast majority of Indians are employees, or engaged in petty hustling,  just as are the vast majority of Africans.  You get twisted by the fact that a 5% (or less) of the Indian population pretty much owns Guyana.  Other than a psychic "ahbe pan tap" emotion, I am not sure how much this benefits the average Indian.

FM
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