---

Dear Sir,

Perception is not necessarily reality. Your columnist, Larry Burchall, perceives parity between the races despite the various recent reports that have highlighted the economic disparity between the races, both in income and opportunity when we see that white expatriates are given preference over black locals. I believe even your paper published one such report.

In the fifties, when racism was unabashedly rampant and segregation existed in every area of our lives; when a concession was made (later withdrawn) to let black children play on the government tennis courts for two hours provided that they used the outside toilets and no black adult was allowed on the courts; when no black people, not even foreign Prime Ministers, were permitted to enter hotels and restaurants; when the press refused to give any black person a title. At that time, white MPs perceived no racial problems and, like many today, decried all mention of race. They declared they “hated motivation of issues on racial grounds”. They contended that “Honourable Members” of the House, such as Mr. E.T. Richards, were “obsessed with the idea that there was prejudice against them because of the colour of their skin” and “this obsession did not matter”. “They were trivial”. Like many whites today they would “have nothing to do with it”. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, after visiting Bermuda, perceived “no racial discrimination in Bermuda” just as Limey perceives none today. The Prime Minister “had heard no complaints of treatment which bore unjustly on the colonial citizens of the Island”.

Intimidated

Perhaps he had not been allowed to meet the black MPs, or perhaps, like many blacks today, they were too intimidated. Just as Limey would be justified in stating that “parity exists today between the races” because a black columnist says so. That did not make it true then, nor does it now.

Your columnist, Tom Vesey, with whom I frequently agree, “perceives” that the PLP projected itself in the sixties as a black liberation party. He could not be more wrong. At the outset the PLP was so anxious to be seen as “integrated” that they displaced a long time black politician (Levi Pearman) in favour of a newcomer white woman (Dorothy Thompson). His perception is undoubtedly the result of the rhetoric used at campaign time in more recent years. His perception, which whites and UBP supporters like to reinforce, frustrates me because if the PLP had begun by attacking racism they would have won the government years ago. But they chose to emphasize class division — not only as a labour party that drove away some blacks but the founding members spouted a lot of “socialist” rhetoric which whites turned into “communism” and alienated most blacks for many years. Mr. Vesey’s perception is totally wrong. The PLP began to use race because no whites would join them in spite of all their efforts to “integrate” and blacks did not care about socialism, but they did care about racism. In the fifties it was white people who perceived segregation was fine; today it is often black people like your columnist who perceive the continuing disparity to be fine.

I suspect Tom Vesey was a young white person in the sixties who would not have any way of knowing what was going on in the black community. But the perceptions of those who ignore the problem are not the realities of those who suffer from the injustices.

Eva N. Hodgson

Crawl

[[In-content Ad]]

---