Mark Nash, a 36-year-old white Bermudian, has experienced something akin to a spiritual awakening over the last six years. And it has nothing to do with religion.
The way he describes it, he’s come to a newfound realization of the role that race continues to play in Bermudian society — even though segregation ended decades ago.  
He said: “If you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have said, ‘I’m against racism; there should be equal opportunities for everyone; you shouldn’t be discriminated against on the basis of your race’. Many white Bermudians would say the same thing today.”
“What I didn’t realize,” he added, “was that 350 years of white supremacy, slavery, laws and systems that were put in place to give extra opportunities
for white folks — that has advantages. That has knock-on effects for our generation because (white) people have been able to accrue wealth and have
opportunities for 350 years.”
His transformation has come about in large part because of his wife, Tina, a 40-year-old Canadian who has lived in Bermuda for 11 years. Being raised in a multi-ethnic environment in a poor Montreal suburb has given her a strong connection with the powerless and a keen interest in issues of race, class and gender.  She was working in Ottawa when she was hired to work as a special education consultant at CedarBridge Academy in 1997.
She said the racial dynamics of Bermuda were so obvious to her, she couldn’t understand why others didn’t get it.
 “CedarBridge had just opened up,” she recalled. “I was appalled how people were treating the kids.
“I did my own rebellion by wearing the school uniform every day to show solidarity with the students.”
She says she’s an “angry white woman” who has “not been really good at being calm about racism.” When she challenges racist remarks she has been accused of being too sensitive. She makes no apologies for taking people on.
“If people of colour heard the backroom discussions in all white spaces — it’s awful,” she said.
Mark and Tina, who met at Rock Island Coffee and were married in 1999, struck it off in most areas —but not when it came to race.
She started attending racial awareness workshops and hosting group discussions at home where words like “white privilege” would fly around the room.  Their initial discussions about race would often become heated — Mark remembers being quite “defensive” — but they never stopped.
“Each of those discussions,” he said, “ brought me to a greater point of understanding of Bermuda’s history and how we as white people have built a society that gives us privilege essentially.”
He feels both groups have paid the price.
Mark, who works in risk management for an international company, initially countered Tina’s observations, by saying his parents had worked hard to get where they were. From his standpoint the notion of white privilege did not apply to him. He attended Saltus, where students from old money had lorded it over him.
He said: “At that point, I wasn’t seeing that the advantages that were freely given to me were not freely given to everyone. Yes, my parents worked hard, but that doesn’t mean that other people didn’t work hard.
“They worked equally as hard, but there weren’t opportunities that were available to them, whether it was accrued capital or friends who had money.”

Whites wrapped in a veil
He said he eventually came to see that a majority of whites are wrapped in a veil and have been taught and socialized “not to see the world as it really operates.”  Unwrapping the veil can be so painful, most whites fight against it.  
The unwrapping process took him about six years.  He began by talking to anti-racism campaigner Dr. Eva Hodgson and reading a slew of books about racism. The first was Tim Wise’s White Like Me. He talked to Mr. Wise, an American anti-racism campaigner, when he came to Bermuda.
About two years ago, he and Tina joined Citizens Uprooting Racism In Bermuda (CURB) and earlier this month, the couple attended a white privilege workshop in Springfield, Massachusetts that attracted 900 people.  
But up to then, he had been operating in “the back room”.  On April 10, he went public with his views on race when he agreed to be a panellist at a whites-only summit as part of Government’s Race Relations Initiative.
He admitted he was initially worried, even afraid, but decided “at some point I had to have the courage of my convictions.” The summit, which was attended by about 60 whites, went well. The following day, he had lunch with a friend who has made “snide remarks” in the past and has called him “Mr. CURB”.
“We have never had what I call ‘the discussion’— the racism that exists, the white privilege. We had that talk on Friday. It was a heated discussion and it went on for an hour and a half.”
It ended when his friend said something “so grossly inappropriate” that he walked away.
 “At every turn it was the insinuation that the reason that black people haven’t got ahead in Bermuda is because they haven’t worked hard enough,” he said.
Still, some of his friend’s counterarguments were similar to what he would have said 10 years ago. It’s for that reason that he won’t give up on his friend. “I was where he was at one point.”
Tina currently works as a guidance counsellor at Bermuda High School, where she moved after CedarBridge was unable to offer her a long-term position.
She admitted she had reservations about working at BHS, but decided being in a predominately white environment would give her the opportunity to make positive change, as an anti-racism activist, than at CedarBridge, where students are predominately black.
Both feel that the best way forward for them is to work with whites through CURB, rather than through any forums organized by the PLP government because it would allow whites to opt out by saying they were political.
“CURB can really help move us forward by having an all-white group work on our own development and growth and our place in the anti-racist struggle to alleviate the pressure on the PLP so that they don’t have to be seen as playing the race card,” Mark said.
Both believe in the principle of reparations although Tina said she is not sure how it would implemented. She said: “It should be up the black community themselves, whether it be in educational opportunities, housing allowances… I don’t have all the answers, I have some ideas.”
Mark said: “When I think of reparations, I think of things like the Workplace Equity Act. I see better education as being a reparation. Fixing our public education system and making it world-class so that people would want to leave private school to go to public school would be a form of reparations.”
Asked whether getting more whites to come around to his view will be an uphill battle, he said: “It’s an uphill battle, but not a lost cause.”
Whites are more resistant because a black government is now in power, he believes, adding that they need to engage in discussions about race or risk being marginalized.
Overall he is optimistic. “I can see already in some of my friends that I have had these discussions with. They are starting to see and recognise the advantages that they have been given and I think it’s a generation thing. My parents have really become more open to the idea. They have come a long way. ”