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The leaders of an ongoing series of race workshops have complained that white people are adding to the island's racial tensions by being "too polite" to speak out.

It's not a healthy situation, to be sure, but it's hardly surprising.

It's not that white people don't notice or care about racism, and the inequality between the races in Bermuda. Most do notice, and most do care.

It's just that (to sum things up one little list) that white people feel:

n Incredibly guilty and awkward about the whole subject;

n Confused and uncertain about what they should be doing about it;

n Defensive about the accusations that are made about themselves, their families and their community in general;

n Afraid they will be attacked or embarrassed for saying, thinking or doing the wrong thing;

n Responsible (directly or indirectly, though sometimes only by association) for one of the most infamous wrongs perpetrated by humans on other humans;

n Powerless and outnumbered (despite their allegedly dominant position) as a minority in a black-dominated country.

If you felt like this, you wouldn't be speaking out about race either. You'd almost certainly be keeping your head down low, hoping the issue would miraculously disappear.

White people can make a lot of excuses (it wasn't me, it was in the past, black people had slavery too, etc). But the fact is, it was white people who enslaved people - at least in our part of the world, and in our time in history - and white people know it.

When slavery finally ended, white people kept black people repressed and suppressed, and white people know that too. There are still huge gaps in wealth and power and understanding, which white people know as well.

Which is kind of awkward to talk about, especially if you are white. And especially if you think black people might be quite angry with you, which a lot of the time is how things seem to white Bermudians.

The assumption is widespread that whites still have real power and blacks do not. It's a subject that has come to the fore quite publicly, in recent months, in discussions over who really wields the power in the UBP, for example.

In Bermuda, where blacks hold a huge majority in the population and control just about every aspect of Government, it is easy for whites to believe exactly the opposite. That's all the more reason for whites to keep quiet on the subject of race: They are outnumbered and outvoted by a population by a powerful majority who has every reason to be angry with them.

Nor do the reasons for white people to remain silent end there.

Foot-in-mouth disease

There is the famous foot-in-the-mouth disease to deal with: Whenever anybody (white or black) tries to speak on a sensitive subject, the odds of saying something incredibly stupid and offensive increase incredibly.

You can get away with this with someone you know well because they'll know what you really meant to say, or at least give you the benefit of the doubt and still love you anyway. But blacks and whites generally don't know each other too well, in Bermuda.

A terrible self-consciousness results, and it stifles talk about race.

Another big challenge in getting whites to be open about race - and anybody in Bermuda to be open about any controversial subject, for that matter - is our tendency to confuse harmful deeds with bad people.

In fact, harmful actions are routinely perpetrated by good people. They may be oblivious, isolated or ignorant, or simply lack the courage to stand up against the status quo; they maybe so accustomed to a political or social system that they cannot see the harm it is causing. In fact, most humans (black or white) seem to be alarmingly comfortable with whatever system they live in.

Sincere God-fearing clergymen routinely accepted slavery in the 1700s; former American slaves interviewed in the 1930s frequently praised their former masters and yearned for the good old days of bondage. Even today, most people just go with the flow, and accept whatever is normal in the society around them. So white people, I think, often sidestep the subject of race because they hate being put on the defensive. It's not easy for anybody to be told he is bad, or that his family or friends or ancestors were bad people. These are their people. These are the people they love.

Here's one final point to bear in mind. All these things I've said above, I think, are true from the perspective of most white people in Bermuda.

Yet most of these white people - even as they think and feel this frustration and powerlessness - know that they aren't the ones who have suffered under racism.

They were the big beneficiaries, so how can they complain?

And so, for the most part, they remain silent. That, of course, makes things worse.

Leaders of anti-racism programmes and workshops, who complained this week that whites were "too polite" and "paranoid" in talking about the issue were 100 per cent correct.

But they - and all the many other people who are working hard to tackle racism in Bermuda - must remember that they aren't dealing with a powerful white brotherhood so much as a confused and scared minority.

And white people must remember that their silence - however comfortable and understandable - makes the country's problems almost impossible to solve.

There can only be understanding if there is dialogue, and there can never be dialogue when one group of people, by and large, refuses to speak.[[In-content Ad]]

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