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Tony Brannon didn’t get what he wanted from the Human Rights Commission, but what did the guy expect?

Is some appointed commission ever going to decide whether or not a politician is being offensive, nasty, or even harmful to the country and the well-being of its people?

Not likely.

That’s our job, as citizens and voters of this country.

Of course, we already know what Mr. Brannon thinks on the subject.

He found it offensive and racist that the Premier declared, in his famously misdirected e-mail, that he was “getting tired of listening to, and taking crap from people who look and sound like Brannon.”

We know what Mr. Scott thinks too.

He defended his use of the words “look like Brannon” but apologized for saying “crap”.

Now we also know the views of Mr. Scott’s cabinet colleague, Works Minister Sen. David Burch as well.

At a press conference last week, he supported the Premier’s views on the use of “looks like” and declared that Mr. Scott is not a racist.

But he obviously differed with the Premier on the use of the word “crap”, because he used his press conference to complain about the “crap” Mr. Brannon sends around in his e-mails.

Sen. Burch himself is the subject of a separate complaint to the Human Rights Commission, charging that he referred to anti-Independence callers to his radio talk show as the UBP’s “house niggers”.

The Human Rights Commission will, I trust, toss that complaint aside as well.

At the same press conference, Sen. Burch issued the obligatory denial of racism.

But with the refreshing mixture of offensiveness and disarming bluntness that has become his trademark, Sen. Burch added:

“I confess to being prejudiced because all people are. I’m prejudiced about a lot of things but I judge people as I find them, not necessarily on their colour.”

He complained that bickering about this Tony Brannon business was distracting Bermuda from real issues. “No one in this country has any real discussion on race,” he said. “It’s all superfluous and fluff.”

Sen. Burch raises a very important point: There is a huge amount of discussion on race, but not a lot of it is constructive.

Bickering about “looks like” and “house niggers” really is a diversion.

The problem, of course, is that calling people “house niggers” — or saying you’re tired of dealing with people who “look like” somebody of a different skin colour than your own — is pretty much guaranteed to derail constructive discussion on race.

It’s going to upset some people, offend some people and make other people defensive. It will make some people cheer, some people angry, and some people shrug their shoulders and wonder what all the fuss is about.

It is, though, hard to imagine a scenario in which calling people “house niggers” or grouping them by what they look like, advances racial equality or opportunity one iota.

It is hard, too, to see how it could possibly improve the standards of politics and government in Bermuda, increase harmony among our citizens, or really accomplish anything positive at all.

It is surely not the tone of leadership that’s best for Bermuda.

But the Human Rights Commission was not set up to judge whether name-calling by Mr. Scott and Sen. Burch is best for Bermuda.

It would be convenient, of course, if we could let some committee handle this unsavoury business.

But Bermuda is a democracy, so that burden falls to us.

The first tier of judges must be members of the Cabinet, whose sworn duty it is to do what is best for the people of Bermuda.

They are, I hope, not sitting on their hands but calling their colleagues to task and making sure this crazy name-calling comes to an end.

The second tier of judges, surely, should be the people of Bermuda.

It is important that we don’t sit on our hands either, and allow insulting name-calling to become part of the way our island is misgoverned.

Mr. Scott and Col. Burch, and Mr. Brannon too, all care deeply about Bermuda and its future, and they have bucketfuls of solutions, and their own ways of going about it.

But this is not their country — not theirs alone.

It is not the Human Rights Commission, not Sen. Burch or Mr. Scott or Mr. Brannon, who should determine what words and ways of talking we find offensive in public life.

That decision, ultimately, is up to us.

We need to speak up and be firm: This is not good for us, this is not good for our country, this is not good for politics, this is not good for the PLP, this is not good for government, this is not good for our children, this is not good for improving racial equality or opportunity.

It is not good, in short, for anything.

And we don’t need a commission to tell us.[[In-content Ad]]

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