Sometimes I cannot help but get the feeling that my fellow Afro-Guyanese have their heads in the sand. But listening to Brother Eric Phillips on television still offers some hope that a few among the black collective can still advocate a course different from the plunge my ethnic brothers and sisters seem bent on taking. Brother Eric’s call for thrift and industry in the black collective must be commended and supported. But the voices of Brother Eric, myself and a few others are like drizzles on the Sahara desert. Nevertheless, while our pleas may bear fruit very sparingly, we must also exhort our black leadership to accept that our people, particularly our youths and children, are astray and clueless as to where their salvation lies. They seem destined to be perpetual pawns to some leaders.
Let me assert here that we should stop blaming slavery and marginalisation, etc, etc, for our present predicament. Other races had their share of hardships, not as bad as the slaves, of course. But their focus is not anchored to four centuries ago. They constantly look ahead, while we keep looking back.
The deep concern I wish to express in this contribution is the painfully large number of our youths engaged in crime and the ever growing number of single-mothers.
Our black leaders would like us to believe that we are being done in by other races. Is that really so?
Who does us in when we dropout from school and pursue a life of quick money, our tool being the gun? Check the prisons.
Who does us in when a young woman at 25 already has five children for four different child-fathers?
Who does us in when we feed off the spoils of robberies, often resulting in blood-shedding?
Who does us in when our yards are overtaken with grass, while our ‘not-want-to be employed’ lime at the fore-corner smoking dope?
There is a Zulu saying: The tree perishes when the root is severed”. In our mad rush to create an identity, we have lost our identity. We have distanced ourselves from the values which earned us pride of the place in history. Now, we are in another mad rush to rediscover our roots and our culture. Do we have the will?
I cannot be silly to suggest that every un-employed black can make a living off the land, although trying to do so is a better option than stealing. But I do advocate that in our genes we have that connection to God’s earth! Our forefathers were kings and farmers and owners of cattle and industry. Proportionately, what are we today? We are stereotyped as not wanting to work, as filling up the prisons, as dangerous in the streets, as thieves, as unstable. Do we or do we not deserve these stereotypes? What is our stereotype of ourselves?
I can hear the murmurings of Black leaders: We are politicians and teachers and policemen, etc, etc.
My question: Can we feed ourselves? That is the most basic of all human capabilities.