Ministers' ugly racial attacks teach our youth bigotry

In response to questions about Government’s treatment of the Bermuda Cement Company, two Cabinet Ministers, according to news reports, made racially and ethnically derogatory comments in the House of Assembly last Friday.

Works and Engineering Minister Derrick Burgess allegedly derided MP Trevor Moniz, reportedly saying: “Come on, Trevor, you are the Portuguese consul and can't speak a word of Portuguese — cut your nonsense out boy.

“You never thought you would have to come to slaves’ children for an answer or a decision.... [you] better get used to it.”

Sports and Environment Minister Glenn Blakeney shouted across the floor to the Opposition benches: “You are doing your master’s bidding — you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Bitterness

If these were isolated incidents they might be excused. But they are not.

These are the latest examples in which black political leaders have used racially charged epithets as verbal, personal attacks — attacks that have nothing to do with the subject at hand.

It is hard for me to understand why those of us who know from experience the bitterness and frustration that attends racial discrimination, would now be promoters and baiters of racial disharmony.

My fear is that the flames of racial hatred are being fanned solely to retain political power.

This is not a new strategy. It was done in every imaginable way on all continents to enable the plundering of the new world.

It was done to enable the mining of Africa for its human and oil energy, for its diamonds and gold, for its territory.

It was done in the Americas to gather the silver, precious minerals and the territory.

It was done in colonies around the globe to transfer the energy and belongings of vulnerable peoples into wealth for a minority.

Bermuda’s story, different from that of the Caribbean islands, was that of a minority white population dominating a majority black population.

It wasn’t always like that. The census of 1832 was the first recorded where the black population of Bermuda out-numbered the white.

Before then, the island’s white population had justified its domination based on its majority. 

That rationale had disappeared but in its place was a distorted franchise to maintain white political power and laws and customs to thwart black economic power. The ugliness of race-based economic and political policies persisted through the 1970s.

Moves toward racial justice accelerated in the ’80s and ’90s, reaching a high point with the 1998 election of the PLP as Government.

Following a period of promise, Bermuda’s politics now seem to have been taken over by mean-spirited bigots — people who want to go beyond justice and equity to engage in payback and settling scores.

Don’t our leaders understand that if they resort to using the same kind of language and behaviour of the very people they love to hate, they risk becoming replicas of what they hate.

And, having become behavioural offspring of the targets of their hatred, they are in danger of being consumed by self-hatred.

Let me declare outright that there are non-black people in leadership positions in our community who are also manipulative, arrogant, deceitful, exploitive and worse.

They should not be models or excuses for gross behaviour from black leaders.

I can understand black leaders wanting to shield black youth from systems that might result in their incarceration.

I cannot understand leaders setting examples of behaviours that, if followed, are destined to result in senseless confrontation, verbal-to-violent attacks, incarceration and deaths of those same black youth.

What can black youth learn from the words of Minister Burgess except how to be arrogant, blustery, how to bait and how to taunt?

Petty

What can black youth learn from the words of Minister Blakeney except how to be manipulative, deceitful and petty?

What can they learn from the tit-for-tat bluster, the smarmy talk, the belligerence and disrespect of some black leaders in the House and Senate? Nothing of redeeming social value.

Our race-based history does not deserve to be repeated, even with the players reversed.

Black leaders should strive to exemplify the best, not mimic the worst.