Dear Editor,
Professor George Lamming’s powerful little book, Sovereignty of the Imagination: Language and the Politics of Ethnicity – CONVERSATIONS III (House of Nehesi Publishers, 2009) is an antidote to the poisonous politics of ethnicity, a social-political phenomenon, a kind of corrosive social virus that has plagued humanity through the ages.
This virus lies dormant for long periods in varying degrees and features, but it never sleeps soundly; it can easily be nudged out of its slumber, ready to engage in attack when the defense of the body politic, for whatever the reason, becomes weakened and vulnerable. There is a virulent, revengeful strain of this virus that has been summoned out of its light sleep and is active in the USA nowadays. It might become quite dangerous, even deadly contagious, if the so-called Democrats succeed in defeating the supposed Republicans in November of this year.
George Lamming’s robust little book remains as pertinent and timely today as it was when it was published ─ in Philipsburg ─ 11 years ago. If democracy continues to flounder or to be perceived as floundering in the USA, this vile virus, the politics of ethnicity, will most likely be nudged and awakened worldwide.
Professor Lamming’s book informs on this social-political phenomenon that has ravaged the Caribbean from the annihilation of its original people to and through the eras of colonialism and imperialism. To varying degrees, this phenomenon is ongoing in the Caribbean since independence. The politics of ethnicity is corrosive; it has been destructive whenever and wherever it has raised its angry, hateful head.
The legendary Barbadian novelist and social critic, one of the Caribbean’s most eloquent, most experienced and well informed literary and social spokesmen, has gauged the nature and danger of the politics of ethnicity. He argues for “a way to immunize sense and sensibility against the virus of ethnic nationalism … to negotiate the cultural spaces that are the legitimate claims of the Other, and to work toward an environment that could manage stability as a state of creative conflict. … Creative conflict is the dynamic which drives the Caribbean imagination” (pages 78-79).
Lamming, who has travelled extensively and has lived and worked abroad in Trinidad, in England and in the USA, discusses the politics of ethnicity in the context of the Caribbean in general, and specifically, as it relates to Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana. But wherever it has raised its poisonous head, in the Caribbean as elsewhere in the world, the politics of ethnicity has had the same effect of contaminating the body politic by stifling debate, blocking compromise, inciting disorder, violence, injustice, chaos and death.
Professor Lamming reminds us that “Hegemony like Imperialism [and we may add Globalism] is the domination of one class over another or all others, and not necessarily through force but through a process of social, political, and ideological indoctrination in order to achieve the consent of the dominated class” (pages 21-22).
He quotes Dr. Eric Williams, the imminent historian and the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago: “Education in the modern world is, more than anything else, education of the people themselves as to the necessity of viewing their own education as part of their democratic privileges and their democratic responsibilities (pages 23-24).
Lamming explains that, in the Caribbean, “Independence has not yet won the right to sovereignty,” that “Grenada was both a heroic and tragic suicidal experience,” that “Guyana emerges as the least worthy of respect,” that “Michael Manley was the victim of external pressure in the form of national sabotage, which was the weapon the privileged classes of Jamaica used against his administration” (page 16).
Lamming praises Dr. Walter Rodney, the Guyanese political activist and historian whose “scholarship helped to dismantle a tradition that, before and after Independence, has used the device of race to obscure and sabotage the fundamental unity that married the destinies of Indians and African workers through their common experience of labor” (pages 44-45).
The author quotes a fellow Bajan, “the journalist Robert Goddard, a member of a very powerful white Barbadian merchant family [who] makes a charge of Afrocentrism and its debilitating effect on the project of regional coherence: Black nationalism in the region is predicated on the idea that the West Indies is actually black, and by implication, racially black as well. To be black is to be authentically Caribbean. …”
Lamming adds that he offers this quote as “an example of the truth we are very reluctant to accept; that race and ethnicity are socially constructed categories. Mr. Goddard’s voice on the telephone is ethnically black. …”
Lamming heralds the “novel kind of generosity, the possibility to which Derek Walcott refers in his 1992 Nobel speech: Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love that took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. … This gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles.” (pages 68-75).
It is obvious that although George Lamming is reviewing what we may refer to as Caribbean governance, Caribbean social/political realities, this well-informed witnessing, these observations can enlighten people worldwide on the politics of ethnicity, a phenomenon that is human, all too human.
People worldwide, and in the USA particularly, may do well to consider and ponder the exceptional witnessing of this most senior and distinguished Caribbean novelist, this social-cultural critic whose long quest for freedom and a sovereignty of the imagination has been intimately linked, intrinsically connected to education, to language and politics, and to democratic privileges and responsibilities.
Gérard M. Hunt
Dear Editor,
I, Michael Somersall, would like to take this opportunity to thank the president, party leader, board and members of St. Maarten Christian Party (SMCP) for welcoming me into the SMCP family. It was an honor to be able to represent St. Maarten and SMCP as Deputy Minister Plenipotentiary in the Netherlands.
Without exception, every flight I have ever been on from the United States to Curaçao has been sold out. And there have been many. Whether it was from New York, Charlotte, or Miami, the planes were always full regardless of the season.
Americans from the United States love Curaçao. If they did not, there would always be plenty of empty seats. Yet US air carriers and the tourists they would bring to the island are blacklisted.
The border opened July 1 for so-called safer countries, including the originator of the coronavirus and before that the SARS virus, China. Really? Is it due to the low coronavirus infection rate of the billion-plus populated nation?
Make no mistake, the state-run media of China will tell the world what they want them to know, and that is rarely the truth. Until China changes its inhumanity towards wild animals, another virus outbreak will surely arise from its exotic meat market. But that subject is for another time.
Italy, Spain, and France also make it on the “preferred” list, yet these countries reported the highest European viral infections. It is also worth noting that very few people from these countries ever visit Curaçao because they have their own former and current Caribbean territories to go to. Ever hear of Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe and Martinique?
As far as Italians go, they are not that interested in the Caribbean and prefer their own Mediterranean islands. Canada? It made the list, but their tourists only visit Curaçao in the winter.
Tourists from the United States come year-round. The same entry requirements could easily have been applied to US travellers wanting to visit Curaçao, but they are not due to politics.
Let us be realistic. All the countries on the list are there because no one in Curaçao came up with the list to begin with. This was decided across the Atlantic in Brussels as a tit-for-tat game with the United States.
It is unfortunate there do not seem to be any adult-acting decisionmakers on either side of the Atlantic. Moreover, this is a game no one wins. Such tactics only prolong the economic and social pain already inflicted by the coronavirus outbreak.
How sad that Curaçao’s government and its people are manipulated by hidden strings attached to the aid package from the Netherlands due to politics of the EU and US. Using the coronavirus as a political weapon helps no one and serves up nothing but more misery.
People do not elect children to lead their nations; they vote for what they hope are adults. There is an expectation with that vote of confidence that government will do what is good for the people. Sometimes that requires swallowing one’s pride and standing up for a greater good.
Whether it comes from the EU or the US, someone needs to take the social and economic high ground.
Gunsor Buther
Curaçao
Dear Editor,
My intention was to write to you about a few facts concerning Geert Hatzmann’s, the dean of lawyers’, behavior, both inside and outside the court, but I believe the following is more important.
By now your readers might have gathered that I try to be as fair as possible in my criticism about government whenever the people are not served. The word is “gloat”.
When we were children and we had a dispute with each other and then later something not so pleasant happened to one of us the other would say “Good fo’ you.” From then already I had to look up the meaning of “to gloat” in the dictionary. It is not positive.
I read two articles in the paper of July 7, and that’s the sentiment I got in reading both articles. My reaction was “What are you doing about it. Just sitting back waiting?” I know one of the known expressions by members of Parliament is “but they do not listen”. After a while I asked myself, “listen to whom?” Listen to people who continuously are laying and waiting while planning to topple me?
Talking about toppling each other, I was taught that I should not criticize anyone or anything negatively unless I can offer a solution to what I am criticizing about. From what I read, again it is the people who are about to suffer the consequences of whatever is not going right. The people did not vote for Ministers, they voted for those same members of Parliament who are complaining. Those same members who went up on podiums and promised solutions.
Again, they do not have to pledge to support the governing party to bring proposals to the table. Yes, proposals to make life better for the people, and not of “what’s in it for me?” So instead of asking questions, since they know it so well, they should put the people first and put heads together with the government and see what can be done for the people.
For a while now I have been wondering and wanting to know who is really behind the toppling of these governments. As a teenager I used to read The Hardy Boys and since then I always looked for the plot in mysteries. So as the years went by and it seemed as if Holland did not literally do anything to curb the constant toppling of our governments, I would ask myself, “What is it profiting Holland not to be a little more severe in helping to avoid this kind of behaviour?”
Especially because this was costing the government a lot of money.
This brought me to the Dutch saying “Twee honden vechten om een been, de derde loopt ermee.heen” and usually there was the thought of the saying “United we stand, divided we fall.” All of this made us weaker.
So weak that we do not even have any time or anyone to research our Constitution to see if there is a breach in the way Holland is taking measures in connection with conditions of the emergency loans, etc. We have lived so long with the Dutch and we have not learned essential things about them. The Dutchmen never go against each other in our presence. They always call them back to Holland if they are going to prosecute them. We fight each other and ask them to be the referee.
What about fighting each other and when they come around, stop fighting and unite ourselves in their presence and when they leave, if necessary we continue our fight later. Would not that demonstrate maturity?
There is an African gospel song “Nara Ekele Mo” which starts with the words “You’ve done so much for me. I cannot tell it all.” I am longing to hear anyone of our people who have been in government over all those years say the same thing to the people and mean it. The same people who, when I judge by the content of these articles, might be the same ones who they, in our case more than usual, have been going to for votes. The same people for whom they have not done anything since 2010.
If they know it so well and really mean well, they should bring forward those proposals and if they are not accepted then the people can be the judge. This is definitely not the time for continuous playing of politics among each other whereas the people’s future is in imminent danger. Hunger does not discriminate and it is not a myth that a hungry man is an angry man.
Russell A. Simmons
Dear Editor,
In life, a person creates the legacy that he or she wants to leave behind; but not very often one can identify someone who has served in such a capacity that fits the title above. When an individual consistently exhibits this extraordinary performance, it is difficult to hold back the thoughts that support this heading.
Too often when a person leaves one institution to work for another, but especially for an organization of a higher caliber, his or her attitude changes, depending on the position that is being offered. Either he or she becomes egoistically bloated or that individual chooses the path to observe, learn and appreciate the opportunity to grow.
Fortunately for the community, our highly admirable Secretary-General of Parliament Nancy Guishard-Joubert has demonstrated that the quality of her character always supersedes the title of her profession. Truly, this public servant understands the principles of integrity and practices them with decency and neutrality.
Nancy Guishard-Joubert journeyed into parliament when the institution was in the building-up stage. But, her work experiences at the Department of Legal Affairs, where the laws intertwine with those of parliament, gave her that jumpstart to transition easily into her current position as Secretary-General.
It has been eight years of consistent dedication of herself to parliament and the wider community. Nancy Guishard-Joubert does her work with no fanfare nor has she been hostile towards any politician, whether he or she is a minister or an MP. Actually, during the many public meetings, one can see how she consistently expresses the responsibility of fairness and politeness.
Not everyone has the ability to manage conflicts, but it is obvious that the standard of good conduct is a principle that the Secretary-General values very highly. Without a doubt, what really stands out is her professionalism – the way she is able to manoeuver in such a politically charged environment as parliament, without leaning towards any political party.
When someone can execute his or her task without exhibiting political affiliation, it reveals maturity, wisdom and proficiency. Does this kind of work ethics occur just like that? No! It takes a well-grounded, diligent, poised, well-disciplined and impartial individual to demonstrate such elevated level of competence.
Nancy Guishard-Joubert will be leaving a legacy that will be difficult to match. But as she extends her career into the private sector, one can only envisioned that she will take with her the same work ethics, so that the public can continue to be served by another genuine professional.
Joslyn Morton
