15 August, 2014

Dear Sir,

In response to “Arrogant and Condescending”.

As a reasonable black Bermudian I think it is condescending and arrogant that anyone would try to dissuade me that at least 95 percent of PRC holders will be white, and we can safely assume that the majority will vote white establishment, not labour, and that opinion has just as much to do with economics as it does with race.

It is unfortunate, but in Bermuda the two are still impossibly entwined. Traditionally, for most Bermudians, the issue with PRC holders was not that big a deal, as long as we had a job to go to. Everyone now is understandably a little nervous.

The average Bermudian today is very concerned with putting food on the table. Whites historically not understanding, or not caring, about the way blacks felt is the very reason why initiatives like CURB were developed in the first place.

Very few whites have really been prepared to acknowledge the need to publicly address the issue of white privilege, and the need to understand what has developed in its wake.

Today in a country where the minority population controls the majority of wealth I think you would still be hard pressed to find 20 black owned businesses that employ more than 20 people, the same as 30 years ago.

To try and equate or compare white Bermudians’ struggles with the struggles against the violent, physical, and socio-economic policies practised by various institutions then, and now, which Dr King fought against is condescending and arrogant.

In fact in Bermuda the symbiotic relationship between white minority and economic rule is so well entrenched that after 14 years of so called “black rule” and the civil rights movement 50 years ago has done nothing to change it!

I don’t dare to suggest that white people don’t struggle all over this world, but the whole western hemisphere has the air of a bastion of white privilege, and unfortunately Bermuda has, and is, playing its part.

Bermuda is not another world, and we are dealing with labour issues, immigration issues, race issues, and more importantly, youth related issues. I am not in any way minimising the difficulties that whites in Bermuda may have had to face growing up as a minority, but I am sure very few, if any, would like to have traded places. Bermuda is too small a society to be brushing difficult issues under the mat because they remind us of hard realities that exist.

They will eventually show up elsewhere very quickly. Unlike most other countries we are too small to have a ghetto where we can hide undesirables, or those who we dismiss for whatever reason. The reality is that the person who feels marginalised for any reason, doesn’t have a job, and very little hope, lives right across the road from you.

Yours sincerely,

Odinga Hodgson