Pull Quote: ‘The problem of racism, invariably, lies at the heart of the middle-range and micro-institutions, generally not too ‘gung ho’ about public transparency and public accountability; and these are the institutions that people come face-to-face with every day in their lives; and these are the institutions that are fertile grounds for racial discrimination and oppression; in short, the sources for a high prevalence of institutional racism’
This article was previously published on January 23, 2011 with the intention of continuing the discourse the following week. Because of the time lapse, however, I have decided to run it again so as to make it easier to follow my line of argument next week when we resume the discussion in Part II. THIS EARLY New Year 2011 brought a thousand points of light, hope, a spirit of unity, and camaraderie, when the Guyana government launched two events of significance: the UN-sponsored International Year for Peoples of African Descent; and the One Laptop per Family (OLPF), which will reach 90,000 poor families. This is the year, too, when the Guyana-Norway partnership on the Low-Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) begins to draw-down dollars for national development.

2011 also is election year for Guyana. And to be sure, elections are more than casting a ballot for a party or candidate on Election Day. Nevertheless, casting that ballot is critical, as it symbolizes a person’s line of thinking which each Party Presidential candidate may impact. Therefore, in democracies, electoral norms dictate that Presidential candidates tell the nation what they would do for their country, vis-a-vis Party platforms; and that each candidate’s philosophy, programmes and policies of national development must be within the public domain.  

And it is a well-established view that universities/higher education, whether in theory or in fact, do have an active relationship with national development. Former President Cheddi Jagan and current President Bharrat Jagdeo resolutely believe that higher education is inextricably linked with national development; President Jagdeo strongly advocates quality in higher education, and appropriate curricula consistent with national needs, among other things. This is an area to which I will return; but for today’s perspective, I want to address another major factor in national development, that of race relations and national unity.

It is clear to me that without national unity, there will hardly be any development worth its salt.   Malcolm Cross (1972) advanced three reasons to explain why a society with diverse ethnic origins, and with British colonial experience, would, indeed, flaunt racial problems. First of all, in the colonial period, colonialists used race to organize the colonized (Africans and Indians); next, the colonialists’ belief in the inequality of the human races became the mantra to maintain social order; and as a final point, the effect of the two-party system is certain in societies like Guyana, with two major ethnic groups, to construct and reconstruct racial cleavages.

There is not much trouble with the first two reasons. The third, nonetheless, is debatable. The two-party system has become infected with superficiality. One school of thought posits that change in the parliamentary system from a two-party model to a system of power-sharing would bring resolution of race matters to a new high. Nonetheless, several experiments with parliamentary tinkering in multiracial societies did not effect the desired management of race conflict. And racism today in democracies is more de facto than de jure; and for this reason, the source of racism is unlikely to be in macro institutions, with a world-view and implicitly democratic, like the parliamentary system, or some other democratic system of governance. Nevertheless, racism will thrive in less transparent and accountable institutions implicitly undemocratic.

The United States Congressional system is a good case in point. With all the preserved democratic elements in Congress and the Constitution with armoury from Congressional concern for justice and equality, the U.S. still remains intrinsically a racist society, notwithstanding numerous race relations and civil rights diktats; that is the case because racism is largely de facto.

For this reason, tinkering with the Congressional system to eliminate racism will hardly impact the lives of minorities, since this Congressional system is a macro institution, and as such, has a world-view, or an overarching framework (race relations and civil rights legislations) of governance that directs the other institutions (middle-range and micro). The problem of racism, invariably, lies at the heart of the middle-range and micro-institutions, generally not too ‘gung ho’ about public transparency and public accountability; and these are the institutions that people come face-to-face with every day in their lives; and these are the institutions that are fertile grounds for racial discrimination and oppression; in short, the sources for a high prevalence of institutional racism.

Thus far, I have touched on the reasons for the display of racial problems in diverse ethnic societies with a colonial experience. Well, are these racial problems happening because they are in the blood?  And if they are in the blood, then they may be due to genetics.

Invariably, there is a tendency to explain racial problems by ‘blood’ and ‘culture’.  How authentic is the ‘blood’ explanation?  Are there other explanations?  The CornerHouse Briefing (1999), written by Nicholas Hildyard,  pointed out that ‘blood’ and ‘culture’ have long persisted universally with ‘commonsense’ explanations for ethnic conflict. He suggested that hatred between Muslim and Serb, or between Hutu and Tutsi, must be “in the blood” (Keane 1996).
But when we inspect below the surface of ethnic conflict, we can expose the superficiality and falseness of ‘blood’ or ‘culture’ explanations (Appadurai 1996).  “Tribal hatred comes not from “nature” or from a primordial “culture”, but of “a complex web of politics, economics, history, psychology and a struggle for identity” (Keane 1996).
Fergal Keane, a BBC Africa correspondent, explained the genocide of one ethnic group by another ethnic group in Rwanda in 1994, thus:
“Like many of my colleagues, I drove into [Rwanda] believing the short stocky ones had simply decided to turn on the tall thin ones because that was the way it has always been. Yet now, two years later . . . I think the answer is very different. What happened in Rwanda was the result of cynical manipulation by powerful political and military leaders. Faced with the choice of sharing some of their wealth and power with the [insurgent] Rwandan Patriotic Front, they chose to vilify that organisation’s main support group, the Tutsis . . . The Tutsis were characterised as vermin.  Inyenzi in kinyarwanda – cockroaches who should be stamped on without mercy . . . In much the same way as the Nazis exploited latent anti-Semitism in Germany, so did the forces of Hutu extremism identify and whip into murderous frenzy the historical sense of grievance against the Tutsis . . .This was not about tribalism first and foremost but about preserving the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the elite.”
Keane’s description is about the Rwanda genocide of 1994, which culminated in the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in fewer than 100 days. Professor Thompson (Pluto Press 2007) noted that the radio and print media became a tool of hate, where they egged on neighbours to hate and hurt each other; these were the notorious radio broadcasts that fanned the flames of hatred. Keane suggested that these racial problems may be socially constructed. 

Next, I will explain how we determine the state of race and ethnic conflict in society, and then proceed towards the social construction of ethnic conflict as an influencing factor in national development.