Dear Editor,
AUBREY Norton’s and like-minded opposition individuals’ racial rants are a disservice to Guyanese of every ethnicity.
Quick to deny their promotion of racial politics, they seldom refrain from propagandising Guyanese into thinking and believing that the PPP/C is an Indo-Guyanese party. This they do so pretentiously, ignoring the historical and current compositions of the PPP as a truly multi-ethnic party.

Even after Burnham’s departure from the PPP, individuals such as Brindley Ben, C.V. Nunes, Jessie Burnham (Forbes’s sister) Fenton Ramsahoye, Rudy Luck, Martin Carter, Francis DeSouza — to name a few — constituted ranked members of the party.
Today, the multi-ethnicities of prominent PPP/C representatives are quite evident, well known, and regularly visible.
Knowing this factual multi-ethnic composition, why then do Norton and others pretend to be anti-racists when they aggressively and unabashedly proclaim the PPP/C to be the Indo party? Is there a motive?

In labelling the PPP/C as the Indo party, Norton and his associates are thereby inculcating indifference, hate and hostility for Indo-Guyanese in the minds of Afro-Guyanese. Such vintage display of political opportunism serves as the catalyst for mobilising and solidifying Afro-Guyanese militancy against the PPP/C, and hence the Indo-Guyanese.
It is a classic demonstration of fostering racism and racial strife by accusing the other of such activity. As the German sociologist Georg Simmel explained, the perceived threat from an outside source serves to unify and mobilise a splintered group in combating the “so called” threat.

If then, Afro-Guyanese perceive Indo-Guyanese as a threat, they most likely would mobilise and solidify support to resist that threat, even if it means resorting to violence — as already evidenced by disturbances in various parts of the country.
Instead of being victimised by opportunistic politicians seeking to elevate themselves through the advocation of racial indifference and strife, Afro and Indo Guyanese need to recognise, and acknowledge their commonalities and interdependence rather than focusing on, and emphasising, their ethnic differences.

They should be reminded what Dr Walter Rodney eloquently stated in his book, A History of the Guyanese Working People, that the British colonisers utilised and capitalised on ethnic differences to make Africans and Indians suspicious of each other and kept them divided.
This treacherous act by colonisers served to discourage Africans and Indians from forming alliances detrimental to colonial control and domination.

Following from the above, Guyanese should also be constantly reminded of opposition politicians and quasi-politicians who embraced the divisive system created by colonials to keep Afro and Indo Guyanese disunited, suspicious and antagonistic toward each other. As the cultural historian Russel Jacoby cautions: “Social amnesia is society’s repression of remembrance-society’s own past.”

Hence, failing to remember the history of ethnic divisiveness, and how opposition politicians regularly reconstruct and reshape cultural differences to promote hate and disrupt Guyana’s stability is insulting, and is tantamount to living with social amnesia.
To avoid the syndrome of social amnesia, Guyanese need to be awake and alert to the historical and current opposition propagandistic activities to create instability and derail efforts of unity which benefits all.
In opposition to the divisive political forces, the PPP/C government needs to de-emphasize Afro-Indo ethnic differences in its articulation and implementation of its One Guyana policies, if it is to be successful.

It also needs to stress the commonalities between Afro and Indo Guyanese in its promotion and formation of a true Guyanese unity. For example, unlike the Amerindians, the majority of Afro and Indo Guyanese live side by side in ethnically mixed, and ethnically exclusive villages, along Guyana’s rural coastline.
By their residential location, they all have access to the same government services, agencies, facilities, and resources which bring them into daily contact with each other. Most of their children attend elementary schools taught by ethnically mixed staff, while some attend secondary schools with mixed student populations.

They seek medical care and healthcare from the same Afro, and Indo doctors, or practitioners. In their daily lives, adults interact with each other through trade as buyers and sellers, which enables them to establish cordial and trusting relationships.
As producers and consumers of such commodities as rice, other farm products, and engagement in animal husbandry, they exist in a state of interdependence, socio-economic reciprocity, and cooperation, all of which help in the strengthening of communal and national bonds.

Through these intersecting and intertwining daily contacts, social relationships can be solidified that help in resisting the inculcation of hate and indifference, behaviours known to impede the development of a national unity, a national identity.
To this end, the PPP/C can capitalise on the community outreach efforts by its multiethnic governmental representatives to provide services that reassure residents of the government’s commitment to improve the lives of all Guyanese.
This can be undertaken while continuously exposing Norton and associates’ internalization and utilization of the British colonizers policy of indoctrination and discrimination to preserve ethnic divisiveness that hinders unity in the progressive formation of One Guyana – One people, One Nation, One Destiny.
Yours sincerely,
Narayan Persaud, PhD
Professor Emeritus