THE news that the May 24 Bermuda Day Holiday is going to be renamed National Heroes Day has provoked much criticism - but not for the reasons some have advanced publicly. For instance, some have claimed the holiday as it is now celebrated is intended to bring all Bermudians together and changing the name and emphasis of the event will politicise it. But the truth of the matter is, just like the Labour Day Holiday, Bermuda Day is essentially marked and celebrated by the black Bermudian community. It is we who participate while the white community, by and large, is conspicuous by its non-participation. So if the Bermuda Day Holiday, introduced as a result of a recommendation on building community spirit contained in the Pitt Commission report into the 1977 Bermuda riots, was supposed to bring us together as a people it has been a grand failure.

However. with the Bermuda Day holiday now renamed National Heroes Day, the white community is not going to be able to engage in their traditional response when it comes to holidays such as Bermuda Day and Labour Day - a response that amounts to indifference to what the rest of us are engaged in.

The idea of a National Heroes day in itself holds a higher significance than the amorphous "Bermuda Day" in terms of what has been our collective historical reality in this country and the Bermudian national identity as a whole.

There is a real fear in the white community that the Bermuda of the future will see them becoming less and less of a relevant component in Bermuda's national identity, in its political and cultural existence.

Hence we are seeing a muted but nevertheless growing protest coming from within the white community, especially as regards the renaming of important Bermudian landmarks after black Bermudans. To some this effort on Government's part to commemorate significant black Bermudians, to celebrate their lives and contributions to the Bermudian community, would seem to be ignoring the presence and/or existence of the white community. But this is to ignore the fact the black community, from the beginning of the settlement of Bermuda, has been more or less ignored when it comes to the naming of national landmarks in this country.

And then there is another factor at play in all of this. Throughout its history, Bermuda has given priority to its colonial identity when it comes to the naming of its landmarks, streets, parishes and the like. And this has been at the expense of both black and white Bermudians (even the City of Hamilton is named after a former Governor, not one of Bermuda's homegrown founding fathers).

I can see why the white community is going to have a real problem with the creation of a Bermuda National Heroes Day because if the criteria for what makes a national hero is accepted as an individual who struggled for social reform and the enhancement of human and civil rights within this country and who suffered as a result (or even gave his or her life for the cause), then from this perspective the white heroes will be few and far between.

For unlike in the United States, as racist as that society was (and still is in many respect) the white community in Bermuda did not join the black community in the struggle for civil rights and the democratisation of this country that began in earnest in the 1950s..

In America, when black Americans began their struggle for civil and human rights, a good many white Americans stood along side them.

Young white students rode with black students in the Freedom Rides in the segregated Southern States and were beaten right along with their black countrymen.

Black and white Americans engaged in the voters rights campaigns and paid the price of joining Martin Luther King's non-violent movement to desegregate the United States. And some whites, just like some blacks, paid for their principled stands against entrenched social injustice with their lives.

For instance, Andrew Goodman and Michael H. Schwerner were murdered along with their black colleague James E. Chaney by Ku Klux Klan terrorists in Mississippi as they sought to engage in the cause of the black Civil Rights movemen in the South. A white Civil Rights worker and mother from Detroit named Viola Liuzzo was shot to death on US Highway 80 as she drove her fellow black Civil Rights workers from a civil rights meeting. Three members of the Ku Klux Klan were convicted of her murder.

These are just a few white Americans along with others who were martyred along with many black American citizens in the struggle to ensure Civil Rights in America.

When I pose the question as to what I, as a black Bermudian really have in common with my fellow white Bermudians this is what I am talking about. Did we join ranks in the battle for a better Bermuda? Did we fight together to change a hidebound, backward-looking community into the modern Bermuda we all enjoy today?

This has nothing to do with so-called racial integration. It is not about social interaction between black and white Bermudians. It is not about our shared cultural traits. It is where you stand when it is time to stand for what is right; it is whether we have enough commonalities to go forward to create a Bermudian nation.

There is at least one white Bermudian who I regard as a hero, however, an individual whose actions decisively answered my question in the affirmative. To me this person is a Bermudian living legend.

I am talking about Dr. Barbara Ball, long time Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU) Research Officer and former chief union negotiator now retired.

A white Bermudian and Bermuda High School for Girls graduate who trained as a physician, Dr. Ball turned her back on what could have been a life of comfort in the early 1960s. She endured ostracism by members of her own race and generation after she joined the BIU and championed the cause of her fellow Bermudian workers and played a leading part in the struggle of Bermuda's trade union movement.

Dr. Ball is a genuine champion of social justice, a woman whose life and achievements I would be proud to celebrate on a Bermuda National Hero Day.