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One of the things that a government — any government — is required to do is lead. With all his inadequacies, even George ‘Dubya’ Bush understood that America had to do something after 9/11. Dubya led America.
Admittedly, Dubya went wrong. He led America into the wrong war in the wrong country, and ended up creating and fighting a brand new wrong enemy. But at least he tried to do what he, as the elected leader of the American people, was elected to do and was supposed to do.
    It’s not the same here in Bermuda. Here, someone decided that there was a need for a ‘big conversation’ between black and white Bermudians. Following that decision, there was an immediate influx of expensive hired-hand Americans who claimed all sorts of expertise in handling something that they called ‘race relations’. These American experts decided that what us Bermudians needed to do is engage in a series of complex public discussions about race and the past.
    Being brash over-confident Americans, they wowed some of the locals and much like Dubya going into Iraq, they created a series of public events which they said would deal with Bermuda’s ‘race problem’.
    Again, like Dubya going into Iraq, they created and defined a new set of problems, proposed their own solutions to this new set of problems, and wowed the locals with the wonder and magic of their proposed solutions.   
    Meanwhile, all over and all through Bermuda, thousands of ordinary black and white Bermudians have simply been getting on with their ordinary everyday lives. They’ve quietly worked things out with their friends, neighbours and workmates. They’ve done what, even through the centuries of slavery, Bermudians have always done. They’ve adjusted. They’ve changed. They’ve acknowledged some of the new and changed power relationships.
    But the run-up to the December election succeeded in stirring up old emotions. In the aftermath of that election, right up to now, there has been a feeling of increased dissatisfaction. The dis-satisfaction is primarily black dis-satisfaction that shows up as increased small daily frictions between some blacks and whites. It is expressed by some whites as a disquieting feeling of greater discomfort with matters to do with race.
    I see no positive result that can flow from the ‘big conversation’ objective of causing ‘whites to address the past’. The past is past and it is unchangeable. The present is now and we can change and fix some things today. The future is yet to come and today’s actions will provide a better — or worse — tomorrow. The ‘big conversation’ dwells only on the past. The ‘big conversation’ does not deal with today, nor does it seek to deal with the future.

A national distraction
    For me the ‘big conversation’ is a big ‘con’. A big national distraction.
    With this black-led, black-run government, what I certainly do see is no new black construction companies picking up multi-million dollar building contracts. I see no real change — not even a believable promise of real change — in the quality of education delivered to the 80 per cent black student body in Bermuda’s public education system. I see a government fussing about a privately owned newspaper and its journalistic practices.  Meanwhile, I see the same government allowing people to sell off and knock down a key and large part of Bermuda’s irreplaceable black heritage and black history. In short, I see a government that is playing a game.
    The ‘big con’ is a distraction. It is the kind of distraction that cynical governments have cynically taken in the past. The idea is simple: “Get the people to focus on something that will take their minds off the real issues”.
    So for us lot out here at 32N64W, it has been: “Let’s have a ‘big conversation’ about race. That way we can shift people’s attention from the still-worsening public education mess. While they’re tussling with each other over race and the unchangeable  past, they also shouldn’t notice that we’re going to allow greedy developers to take a big chunk of what little remains of Bermuda’s black heritage and black history and destroy it by smashing it to smithereens.”
    Bermuda’s ‘big conversation’ is on par with Dubya’s now recognized big lie — sustained for over two years — about Saddam Hussein having weapons of ‘mass destruction’. It’s an exercise in national cynicism and national trickery. In 2008, the unfortunate and evil spirits of those cynical and selfish slave-selling African chiefs of old live on. It pervades the genes of some elements of this black-led, black-run government.
What do you think? Email editor Tony McWilliam with your views on race relations:
[email protected] or leave your comments below.[[In-content Ad]]

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