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MPs congratulated themselves heartily after their impromptu "race debate" last Friday.

But in truth our politicians should be ashamed at their own hypocrisy and lack of achievement.

They have built a beautiful prosperous country, but have allowed - and often deliberately encouraged - festering racial divisions of fear and suspicion and inequality to thrive and grow.

While praising themselves for launching a "big conversation" on race among the Bermudian people, they have proven to be almost totally incapable of mature sustained dialogue on the subject.

The fact is that both parties relentlessly play the race card when it suits them, and Bermuda has suffered profoundly as a result.

Yet they stood there last Friday night and blithely blamed the rest of Bermuda - the people who make comments on the street, the voters who vote along racial lines, the ignorant masses of other people who somehow don't seem to get it.

Does the irony escape them?

Do they not realize how ridiculous they look when they praise themselves for "elevated" discussion, and then come close to blows just a few seconds later?

Don't they see how crazy PLP MPs sound when they claim Sen. Marc Bean is Bermuda's Barack Obama (as Zane DeSilva did last Friday)?

Quick question: Was it Obama, or Sen. Bean, who declared his election opponents had a "neo-fascist agenda" and "if they have the opportunity they will lock all of us up. It's true."

One of the many reasons the Premier was so astoundingly offensive the other week, when he said white Bermudians wouldn't have voted for Obama if they were true to their local form, is that some kind of Barack Obama is exactly who white Bermudians desperately want.

White Bermudians - and black Bermudians too, for that matter - are yearning for somebody who can tackle their country's problems - including the problem of racial division and inequality - without pushing us forever backwards with name-calling, stereotyping, and other forms of mindless divisiveness.

All the "big conversations" in the world won't work one whit if our leaders aren't capable of having a sustained, sane conversation on the subject themselves.

Until they can do that, they're just hypocrites, blaming the rest of the world for the problems they themselves are making worse.

There were, in fairness, some hopeful comments last Friday night.

Most outstanding was Wayne Perinchief, who spoke boldly about the use - or rather abuse of race - to manipulate and stoke fears for political purposes.

"We all fall into the trap sometimes of pandering to racism, pandering to racists, because it suits our own political ends....Stop maintaining the status quo. Step up, step out, stop the rhetoric."

Yet even this was undermined by his own party whip, Lovitta Foggo, who was busy trying to persuade Mr. Perinchief to shut up and sit down.

Ms Foggo's major contribution to race relations, of course, was her pre-election speech that included such enlightening thoughts as this one: "We must hasten to employ measures which ensure that our people and our children know that a UBP vote is a vote back to the plantation. It is a vote that will return the shackles to our feet!"

Dame Jennifer Smith had encouraging words to say: "My voters, like my constituents, are black and white and brown and all the others in between. They voted for their best representative."

Yet others, despite their good intentions, seemed to lapse into denial:

Dale Butler remarked, quite hopefully, that "the next step means less division, more work, more respect, more caring, more understanding."

Yet in his next breath he claimed he had heard "absolutely none of the racial rhetoric" while on the campaign trail over the last decade.

There was, of course, racial rhetoric aplenty, much of it from his own colleagues and his own party's political advertising.

We have in our House of Assembly plenty of good men and good women, who understand Bermuda's racial problems and have the brains and energy to help Bermuda push its way through them.

Indeed, that is their job and their responsibility.

The country is looking to them for leadership.

But instead of clear and calmly-reasoned action, what they are dishing up far too often is backwards-looking childish rhetoric.

This formula does not work, it will not work and it cannot work.

The road forward is inevitably difficult. But until our leaders change their tone, it is will be completely impassable.[[In-content Ad]]

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