Government’s Social Cohesion initiatives

MY ATTENTION was drawn to a news item put out by GINA a few days ago, announcing that 700 Guyanese citizens would be trained to become Social Cohesion advocates. At first glance I was elated, but as I read the news story closer, my elation turned to disappointment.

The lead trainer for the project was quoted as saying the following: “For too long, when we talk about diversity, we only look at racial and political factors; and we need to look beyond that to other differences. So these workshops are really to broaden the view of persons and they will also help to bring the biases out to our consciousness, because once we are aware of it, we can do something about it.”

She said that while the importance of diversity is usually recognised, it is the power of the diversity that needs to be explored. “We have to bring the power of diversity into communities; because if we don’t, we are depriving ourselves of something special.”

I have been a strong supporter of the Ministry of Social Cohesion from the time the initiative was taken by President Granger. My support is grounded in the belief that, in our fractured society, there is a major role for Government in facilitating cohesiveness. Governments in the past have paid lip service to reconciliation in Guyana, but this Government has invested in it.

EDUCATION AND ETHNIC RECONCILIATION
I believe there are two aspects of national life in Guyana that are indispensable as far as national development is concerned: education and ethnic reconciliation. If we get education right and we move closer to ethnic reconciliation, we give our country a fighting chance to overcome the challenges of smallness, colonial and neo-colonial domination, and globalization-structural adjustment.

I have said before that my understanding of Social Cohesion is that it is a construct that is geared to target and break down the obstacles to national cohesion. I understand that the term social suggests a construction that is broader than the political, and I fully support that broader construction. But if you were born in Guyana and live here and study the country, you would know that while politics and ethnicity are not all that defines the country, they influence almost every aspect of public life. So I am arguing that that is where the discourse on national cohesion has to begin.

For example, the discourses on social class and gender are muted because of the overpowering nature of ethnicity and race. Serious gender and social class activists have had to learn how to advance those discourses within the context of race and ethnicity. In the same way persons like the lead trainer quoted above have to learn that you are never going to get anywhere with cohesion in Guyana by downplaying the two major obstacles to it —- ethnicity and politics.

I have always been suspicious of a certain strand in Guyanese discourse that believes that Guyana’s problems can be solved outside of politics and ethnicity. While I have sympathy for that formulation, I believe it is useless in a country such as Guyana. That formulation is grounded in Western Liberal Democracy that privileges the individual and downplays the collective. If you start there, then you miss the structural realities in the society.

Ethnic and social divisions are built into the structures and collective culture of our society. Our individual biases arise out of larger ethnic, social and gender narratives. We are going nowhere with Social Cohesion if we do not begin by engaging those narratives.

RED FLAG
That explanation by the lead trainer raises a red flag. It calls into question the seriousness of the Ministry of Social Cohesion in its bid to make a difference. They seem to have started off on the wrong foot. The ministry is yet to provide the nation with its definition of Social Cohesion, and what, as a government department, it hopes to achieve. It also has not said how Social Cohesion fits into the larger vision of the Government. We have heard about these meetings of stakeholders, but I know of many individuals and groups which have not been included in these gatherings.

The political opposition has already dismissed the Ministry as a joke. Many East Indians will take the hint from the PPP and similarly dismiss it. Many African Guyanese leaders and organizations which I am in touch with are either skeptical or dismissive of the very notion of social cohesion. You play into the hands of your detractors when you skirt around the problem rather than confront it.

You do not train people about social cohesion; you educate them about the obstacles to social cohesion, and about how to overcome them. Social cohesion is not a game. I was not at the training sessions, but I ask the following questions. Did the trainees learn about the history of ethnic relations in Guyana and the evolution of ethnic biases in the country? Did they learn about the evolution of social classes and the attendant class biases in Guyana? Did they learn about the role of patriarchy and male domination in the evolution of Guyanese society? Did they learn about the intersections of those three areas of our history?

You have to understand the problem before you can begin to solve it. If you diagnose the problem outside of ethnicity, class, gender and politics, you are bound to dispense the wrong treatment.

There is a tendency in Guyana to rely on civil society bureaucrats to do serious organic work. This has been counter-productive. I know of dozens of serious people in Guyana who know more about social cohesion than all the bureaucrats in the world put together. Most of them are not even invited to the social cohesion gatherings.

Something is deadly wrong with this social cohesion thing. If it is not fixed, another of this Government’s initiative faces a rock road.

More of Dr. Hinds’ writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. Send comments to dhinds6106@aol.com

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