Both sides have used race for their own political ends

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 14: I appreciate Bryant Trew’s willingness in his Bermuda Sun article of November 9 to take on the subject of racial rhetoric being used as a ploy to “pit OBA/PLP and whites/blacks against each other for political gain.”

But I would like to interject some balance into the discussion.

He states that “in 2012 we have a choice of letting history repeat itself, or voting out politicians who have consistently utilized political tactics intended to deceive and exploit us for their own selfish benefit”.

However, we must remember that during our history, the then-white oligarchy used exactly those tactics to ensure they stayed in power for hundreds of years right up until 1998.

I personally recall discussions in the early 1990s within the UBP wherein it was stated ‘well, we don’t have to worry about the white vote, so how do we manage to convince blacks to vote for us?’

This was accepted political strategy, using race to ensure continued power. Doesn’t that also mean that the then UBP took the white vote “for granted?”  However, that doesn’t mean that Mr Trew’s opinion is not of some validity, as similar tactics were used within the PLP.

 Politicians on both sides have unashamedly used race for political ends, but we must ask ourselves, ‘what is it about our society, our history and its legacy that continues to encourage this sort of behaviour?’

Even Mr Trew’s article, with its emphasis on the negativity of using racially divisive tactics, will be viewed by many as implicitly using race to create political divide by implying that the PLP are the only ones who use racially motivated political tactics and that those who vote PLP are being “taken for granted or treated like fools”.

 I do not know if the title of Mr Trew’s article “Voters: Don’t be taken for granted or treated like fools” was created by Mr Trew (as that statement was not in the context of his article) or whether it was created by the Bermuda Sun’s editorial staff, however it is an example of an ‘implicit racial message’.  The implicit message being that “those” [Blacks] who vote for the PLP are fools.

Reprehensible

Another implicit racial message was used by the UBP, the notorious photo of Delaey Robinson wearing locks, with the caption along the lines of “Would you vote for someone who looks like this?”

Whereas, Lavitta Foggo’s warning prior to the last election in 2007 could be viewed as an explicit racial message: “A UBP vote is a vote back to the plantation. It is a vote that will return the shackles to our feet!”

One is covert and the other overt, both are reprehensible.

Using the term ‘playing the race card’ is one that is often thrown out by all political parties, and it is a phrase that is used to describe racist and anti-racist attitudes by accusing others of racism.

What we need in this country is a thoughtful analysis of the real underlying social injustices that prompt the racially divisive tactics that continue to be used in our political arena by both sides.

Unfortunately, conflict over race has over the years become institutionalized within Bermuda’s party system, and when they accuse each other of ‘playing the race card’ to (almost) quote Shakespeare, “They doth protest too much, methinks.”

The reality is that race is a major component in Bermudian politics and it will continue to be a major component as long as we as a society are unwilling to do the work necessary to understand its history and its legacy.

The tension between the existence of racial conflict and the culture of silence about our racially divisive past that has been created in Bermuda, produces indirect forms of communication, that is, we tiptoe around the issues without fully confronting and facing that which divides us.

We have a party system based on the cleavage of race, yet we blindly continue to try and make race irrelevant in our political discussions. 

Real change

We need a new political norm, which can only arise from a concerted effort of the people demanding that new political norm, AND it will take a bipartisan commitment by the political parties to bring about real change.

The norm of racial equality was furthered by the Progressive Group through actions that encouraged legislative change and pushed the concept that racial inequality was an immoral principle.

Much has changed since those days with a new norm being that the majority of whites in Bermuda have a genuine commitment to basic racial equality. However, understanding that racially divided past and the legacy of underlying distrust and social injustices it has left us with is something many don’t understand or even know about.

In understanding our civil and political history we better understand why race continues to be used by both sides today.

Establishing a new political norm is achievable, as it has happened in the past when segregation was abolished and legislation was revised to ensure that equality became the injunctive norm.

Whichever party forms the new Government, there needs to be a commitment to address the racial divide through a process of education and transparency.

Facing our past and its legacies will be difficult but not facing them would be disastrous.

• Lynne Winfield is Chairman of the Reconciliation Working Group for Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda (CURB)