January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Stuart Hayward: The real political hooker?
I wonder sometimes whether excessive immersion in Bermuda's political scene, particularly on the part of those who venture into the arena of race relations, should now come with a health warning from the Chief Medical Officer [we have no Surgeon General]: "CAUTION : COULD CAUSE INSANITY".
If he hasn't gone completely bonkers, Stuart Hayward needs to apologize, at least to Dr. Eva Hodgson.
As politicians, we can suppose that Premier Brown and Rolfe Commissiong are expected to take this kind of attack on a regular basis and let it roll off their backs like water off a duck's.
But, as to the inclusion of Dr. Hodgson in his tirade, this was an entirely unwarranted and gratuitous attack on the character and intentions of a lady who deserves to be recognized for who and what she is: Namely one of our few remaining (and living) icons in the struggle against the doctrine and philosophy of white supremacy and institutionalized racism.
If, which I seriously doubt, Dr. Hodgson actually said what Stuart Hayward claims she "suggested", this would represent a sea change in her approach and thinking in discussing race relations in Bermuda.
No, Dr. Eva Hodgson would never have said or implied that all whites are racist; she has worked too hard and too long with whites in Bermuda and overseas in the struggle against institutionalized racism and white supremacy. And, anyway, whites do join the PLP; under the current leadership of Dr Brown, they are doing so in record numbers, albeit they may not be quite the same whites who have enjoyed UBP patronage for generations. Getting to the point, Stuart Hayward knows better. So what's his motivation? Did Brother Hayward "lose the plot" months ago when he finally realized that his retrograde, "this is Bermuda, let's keep it that way", anti-growth, anti-creation of opportunities, and anti-development plan for Bermuda's development, is not the way of the future?
While in making these recent attacks on those of us who take "the Struggle" seriously, Stuart has made a virtual declaration of war. Do we want to take Stuart on at this time? No. But while it would be preferable to stay on higher ground, it has to be admitted that Stuart has now gone a bridge too far. He has angered too many of us.
Because he knows better, his attack was not only unfair; it was entirely disingenuous; a transparent and (to use his word) "cynical" attempt to resuscitate a political career whose time has come, and gone, on the back of a reputation which did not deserve to be so besmirched. Stuart has willingly presented himself as an agent for those whose primary aim is to discredit and to destroy the reputation and effectiveness of what is left of real leadership within our community. Shame on him.
Only those who have really followed and listened to Dr. Hodgson over the years will know that she is a committed intellectual, a lover of all humanity, and that she hardly deserves - particularly at this stage in her life - to be callously and intentionally misinterpreted, misconstrued and misquoted merely because some political huckster wishes to score brownie points with those whose company and support he is addicted to.
So, in light of his recent column in the Bermuda Sun, what do we do about Stuart? Do we "F" him off, thereby getting it out of our system, and move on? Or should we just ignore him? As a people still steeped in Christian virtue, should we just keep loving Stuart and simply hope he recovers?
Or should we just tell him as frankly as we can that with his increasingly bitter attacks on Premier Brown and the PLP, and his one-trick pony attachment to the rapidly fading tree-hugging constituency, he is looking more and more like a past-her-sell-by-date political hooker?
When it comes to understanding and/or discussing race relations in Bermuda, I willingly take a back seat to Dr Eva Hodgson. We all should. I sincerely doubt that there is any living individual, in Bermuda or elsewhere, who could with any degree of credibility lay claim to Dr Hodgson's credentials and scholarship in this realm.
This erudite lady has, after all, devoted her entire life, since the publication in 1959 of her great work "Second Class Citizens, First Class Men" to heightening Bermudian consciousness regarding the impact of institutionalized racism upon our collective psyche and our ability to honestly get along as one people, despite our diverse backgrounds and chromosomal structures.
Dr Hodgson deserves, in her lifetime, to be lionized as one of Bermuda's greatest educators, sociologists and community activists. She deserves our gratitude. She is, and, throughout her life has been, a woman of great courage, virtue, consistency, candour, determination and fortitude. She has withstood many, many disappointments in the development of her career as an educator and contributor to the development of social policy. She has been insulted, attacked, and passed over for positions of authority and official service to this community by individuals possessing talents and levels of experience far beneath hers. Sadly, but all too predictably, many of the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" which have been levelled at her have come from the hands and designs of some of the same people on whose behalf she has devoted her life in labouring for the complete removal of the shackles and vestiges of racism. She speaks truth, and has done so consistently. Lesser Bermudian mortals would have given truth up a long time ago; that's what we do. They would surely have either moved on or shut up and - had they possessed them - moved to apply their own comparatively limited skills, concerns and energies elsewhere; somewhere perhaps well away from Bermuda or in the direction of their mortgages, in any event where they might have received a more receptive audience and greater personal economic benefit. Where they might have been less - let's use a term which we do not use enough in Bermuda - unappreciated.
On she goes
Yet on and on she goes, writing letters to the newspapers much as she did while sitting in front of her classes (I was in a number of them) at Berkeley, giving interviews, writing books and articles, and simply telling it like it is, not like we wistfully wish it were. Her combined and accumulated writings on Bermuda would doubtless file a volume the size of the Concise English Dictionary. Many of them should be required reading in our schools, all of them.
Yes, I deeply admire Dr. Eva Hodgson and I should have said so a long time ago; better late than never, I guess.
Dr Hodgson wrote in 1989 a booklet entitled A Storm in a Teacup, with research credited to Dale Butler, now Minister of Social Rehabilitation in the Brown Government. You can purchase a copy from The People's Pharmacy [and, no, I have no shares, although I wish I did!] When you do read A Storm in a Teacup, you will be struck by three things: (i) Dr. Hodgson's love and concern for the Bermudian people, ALL of us; (ii) the ease with which she extrapolates from and compares Bermuda 1959 with Bermuda 1989 and, most importantly (iii) the sheer relevance and urgency of her 1989 analysis to what is shortly to become Bermuda 2009. We should take heed. We are in trouble.
On Friday, in the second instalment of this rebuttal, I will discuss the ideas and notions developed by Dr. Hodgson in A Storm in a Teacup, which commenced with a discussion of the great Theatre Boycott of the 1950s and which carefully and thoughtfully assessed how Bermuda had "developed" by 1989. In the meantime, buy the book.
Dr Hodgson's writings and analyses are not the utterances of a lady bent on fomenting racial hatred and distorting the race debate for partisan political purposes.
Stuart's attack was unfair and unwarranted. Stuart, you know better. Be a man. Apologise.[[In-content Ad]]
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