---

There was way too much noise last week, on television news and radio talk shows, about the anticipated racial make-up of a 'Forum for Change' event outside the Cabinet Office on Friday.

You'd have thought by now that Bermudians would have noticed that they have grown up in a racially divided society and even today, despite whatever advancements we have made, too much of what we do is done with people of our own race.

Most gatherings - churches, schools, parties, weddings, funerals, restaurants, sporting events - are skewed one way or another.

Even while the Forum For Change gathering took place outside the Cabinet Office, the make-up of the Cabinet inside is skewed, as is support for political parties.

So the particular racial make-up of any particular gathering, whether to praise the government or to criticize it, is not notable in and of itself.

It reflects the overall sickness of society - or should I say, how painfully slow its recuperation is from sickness - but in and of itself it is kind of meaningless.

It doesn't reflect whether or not the gathering itself is good or bad, or whether or not the participants have anything good or bad to say.

Praise or criticisms of a government, or an opposition party, is neither more true nor more false based on the proportion of white or black in the audience.

Criticisms of a black government made by white people is no more inherently wrong than criticisms made by black people, back in the day when Bermuda's government was mostly white.

Often they were, and are, completely true and warranted.

There is also something inherently distasteful about appealing to people not to attend a gathering because of its anticipated lack of blacks, or whites.

First of all, if the appeal is at all successful, then the criticism becomes self-fulfilling.

If blacks are urged not to get involved because not many blacks are involved, as appeared to be happening in the prelude to last Friday's gathering, then the problem gets worse and not better.

Secondly, such appeals tend to sabotage events, turning the focus on the race count of or participants instead of the issues they have gathered to discuss.

A lot of people, black and white, simply won't go to events where they think the racial make-up will end up being a focus of attention.

They fear being seen as "uncle Toms", disloyal to racial solidarity, contributing to somebody else's racist agenda, or simply affecting the racial head-count in a way that hurts whatever cause they believe in.

It's natural, in a place like ours.

I suppose most Bermudians scan the racial make-up of almost every crowd they enter - especially political meetings or protests or anything else that might end up being controversial.

Even if we aren't there in person, we find ourselves scanning the TV news or newspaper photographs to decipher the colouration of the crowd.

We mentally balance the numbers to see if the gathering meets whatever subjective colour test we, individually, have chosen to apply.

The "perfect" combination - let's say 30 per cent white and 70 per cent black - gives us a pretty good assurance of racial credibility. It creates the impression that the issues being discussed and opinions being given are pure and true, unadulterated by whatever prejudice and bitterness that racial history has left us with.

This is what we want for causes we believe in.

And for causes we disagree with, we probably hope - at least subconsciously - to see some kind of severe racial imbalance.

That will allow us dismiss whatever is we didn't like anyway.

And we won't have to bother ourselves with listening to the arguments, weighing the pros and cons, and figuring things out for ourselves.

One day, I hope before I die, we'll have a lot healthier racial balance in just about everything we see and do in Bermuda.

In the meantime, I hope just as strongly, we'll have the patience and tolerance to talk and listen across our racial divides.

[[In-content Ad]]

---