A dangerous myth has raised its head; it must be open
Kaieteur News – These are the words of a prominent Guyanese, Vincent Alexander, who I believe has a voice that many African Guyanese listen to. I am not an African Guyanese. I am not an Indian activist. I am a Guyanese academic, media activist and human rights activist.
I do not have a pair of racial lenses to use in those three horizons that I operate on, so my mission is to write about and correct wrongs perpetrated by people in general. The pen I have has no interest in protecting any ethnic group, including the East Indian race, whose DNA is part of me without my having no original choice in that (not that I care which ethnic parents I was born with of them).
Before we come to elaborate on the heading of this article here, an expression of me is important. I know this country. I know his people. Negative things that are said about me won’t stop me. That’s life. This aspect of life will remain with civilization forever. One has to do the things that are in one’s heart, soul and mind and ignore the ranting and galloping of limited minds by racial groups and political prostitutes living in miasmatic cocoons.
Alexander wrote in the letters section of the Stabroek News on February 5, 2021, “As African Guyanese, my firm conviction is that African captivity and the post-slavery institutionalization of their subjugation, in Guyana, have left them economically disadvantaged and scarred psychologically. “Any Guyanese social scientist trained in political economy, political sociology and country history who can accept that statement with the exception of the last two words, is either ineligible or academic charlatan.
I am not African and I am not a descendant of African slaves so I cannot be so stupid and intimate as to determine how African Guyanese feel psychologically about their ancestors’ captivity. But I have little authority to comment on things I see among African Guyanese since I grew up among them, lived among them all my life and I have several African nieces and nephews from three African brothers-in-law and one African sister-in-law.
In this country, the Africans and the East Indians have a complex connection between the Africans and the East Indians so it is absurd to tell an African or Indian that they know nothing about each other’s race. From where I stand historically and in modern times, I did not see and do not see the psychological scars of slavery that were determining and currently shaping the psychic and mental structure of African Guyanese.
What I think is that African politicians and some big Africans with a particular agenda have used the “psychological scar feeling” for sinister, narrow purposes. I continue to write about that statement made by Melinda Janki in 2020, that the people of Guyana are not racially driven but the politicians, who drive the hatred of the race in the country.
My task here is to allocate the part of Alexander’s statement that refers to the economic disadvantage of African Guyanese. It cannot withstand historical and scholarly scrutiny. It is a dangerous myth with the purpose to mislead young African Guyanese. He should be confronted and defeated.
Professor John Gafar wrote in his book, “Guyana: From State Control to Free Markets,” on page 41 about who owned Guyana’s wealth, “Burnham PNC Government … took control of over 85 percent of total investment and over 80 per cent of recorded import and export trade, small foreign banks and insurance companies, established a system of price controls, exchange rate and trade…. ”
Professor Ramesh Gampat wrote in his book, “Guyana’s Great Economic Downswing, 1977-1990, on page 171” about who owned Guyana’s wealth under the PNC government, “The Government was responsible for 85 percent of capital formation gross domestic… private domestic capital fell from 70.5 per cent to less than 20 per cent during (sic) 1978 to 1988. ”
The obvious question then was who owned Guyana’s wealth in those days when Black’s open party was in power and his hegemony complete? Here’s some informative statistics from Gampat, “In 1977 public and private fixed capital formation as a share of GDP was 20.5 percent and 5.3 percent respectively.”
I returned from study abroad in 1984 after a short stint with the Government of Bishop Maurice in Grenada. I went into JP Santos supermarket and it was empty. Rice farmers were literally ruined by the Burnham regime. The Office of External Trade regulated all commerce at the time. Where was the Economic Disadvantage of African Guyanese? More later.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)