– Deceitful, treacherous, incapable of gratitude and pretentious
ONE of the most pronounced elements of racism is the arrogant effort to tell the story of another without consulting him about himself, to define his world in the context as Edna .G. Bay outlinedd in her book ‘Wives of the Leopard’ about writers defining by speculation, what they don’t understand or have not explored through the council of the other: “to explore the ways in which their apparent observations are moulded by the cultures of their birth and their life experiences. Like Joseph Conrad’s Marlowe, we have learned in such analyses the truism that the horrors we perceive tend to be the reflections of our own inner darkness, and that human beings can rarely transcend [their own-my insertion] culture and history”.
In Guyana rarely are engagements employed to fix into narratives opinions and castigations made, through enquiry, bigotry is the impetus to conclude definitions about areas where complete cluelessness prevails. Stabroek News on December 9, 2019 carried an article about the removal of the plaque previously placed at the entrance of the National Archives stating ‘The Walter Rodney Archives’. The two gentlemen requested to voice their opinions were opposition Lawyers Anil Nandlall and Kamal Ramkarran. The article began with the argument about the legality of gazetting the said name but was then consumed by the usual malice tirade of political castigations, all having nothing to do with the preservation of Walter Rodney’s memory. The fact is, I doubt any of the two gentlemen ever read any of Walter Rodney’s works, or are interested in his legacy. During that time, I had written a letter about the advice a UNESCO presenter at a Culture Policy three-day workshop had advised concerning the sudden name changing of buildings. Following that, I saw Walter’s brother and had a discussion on the subject with him, because I had some suggestions and I wanted his take on them. The suggestions were as follows, Walter Rodney’s works revolve around the working class, Afro-New world and African social and historical experience.
There needs to be a WALTER RODNEY ARCHIVES of the fundamentalbBeginnings of the shaping of Guyana. The suggested Archive would be a reservoir of related works by other such writers like, Brian Moore, Eusi Kwayana, Free Press Book publications and Emancipation Magazines, UG’s History Gazette, authors like Mary Noel Menzes, Clem Seecharan, Kean Gibson, Jai Narine Singh, Tyrone Ferguson, Winston Mc Gowan, Kimani Nehusi and numerous others across topic fields and genres that encompass and reflect the Guyanese evolution, including Foreign writers like Michael Swan , Emilia V. da Costa and those biographers from further back as well as cultural magazines.
A public entity like this does not now exist, never has, especially supported with visuals across any particular Timeline of the Guyanese experience, and in that conversation, his brother agreed. This is the nature of the discourse that should have been encouraged to develop a real and sincere platform as a memorial for Walter Rodney, not a baited opportunistic political ‘stock’ rhetoric diatribe.
Racism can be practised against a people like Afro and Amerindian Guyanese whose cultural mythologies and dogmas do not have inherent racist religious, mythical and learned customary narratives repeated as references as a regular mantra towards everything disagreed with, a fixed stereotype of hate. There have been no people on this planet over the past five hundred years like Africans and in some cases like the resident Mongolians of the Americas that we call Amerindians, who have endured demeaning subliminal definitions as colonising policy of justification. This era is not yet over, others have embraced this mechanism towards their own interest with vigour. A great example is the assault declaration by Major General Ret’d Joe Singh against President Granger and the APNU-AFC supporters in Stabroek News March 19, 2020. Is one such direct transference of guilt by the imposition of public accusation and posture, to bury the facts that an opposition putsch along ethnic lines was launched, that caused injury to many including children, to which he was hypocritically silent about, but his duel personality was evident before, however, I wish to thank Colonel Ret’d Desmond Roberts and other Military officers, and especially the young grounded APNU parliamentarian Jemaine Figueira for his contribution in unmasking Joe Singh. I knew Linden London, we shared the 16th November birthday, but different years. I also know Captain Mc Allister and understood well how he was placed in harm’s way and understood why silence followed. Once you realise that social accommodation must be guarded not from one’s own cultural niche, there will be in discourse easier to understand looming agendas against human honesty, I’ve always advised friends to understand African history and Cultural Revolution you must study European history and Cultural Revolution, likewise, all else must be applied.
Rely on the words of our ancestors, “By a man’s works, shall he be known”, not by his smiles and gifts (Bribes). Hitler used Aryan supremacy within the arena of the colonising doctrine of white supremacy to lift German self-esteem to reclaim the losses of the treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI, and to justify the mass slaughter of Russians to steal their oil fields and spaces of farmlands for his mythical Aryans, to which historians and Archaeologists cannot yet find an ancient civilization and its monuments to point to, as an Aryan civilization, faith in fictional dogmas can also move social mountains.
In the context of Guyana, the efforts and successes of the colonial plantocracy colony management that destabilised post-emancipation African businesses has left a narrative and propaganda template that is still used today. The secret today is in the absence of Laws and contract frameworks supported by the consciousness to assist and protect ideas, and businesses against commercial theft. The racism manifests as a consolidated effort to marginalise and insert the financial self into all innovative efforts, understand the racism and leave nothing unguarded, pay attention to “Greeks bearing gifts” and protect the legacy you wish to leave with your descendants, guard against the enemy without; and his slithering eunuchs within.
