WHEN I first began to express my political and cultural opinions publicly, starting when I wrote Letters to the Editor in The Royal Gazette many years ago, I devised some simple rules to determine how and when I would address a topic — and how and when I would respond to any detractors.My guidelines are, I think, straightforward enough:

1. Never write about a subject that you did not know anything about.

2. Always be prepared to defend your opinion at least once, and

3. Never write anything unless you sign your name to what you had written.

Most times if I cannot answer those who disagree with my opinions following at least two attempts to do so — and feel that I cannot bring more light to the subject I am being challenged on — I will let it go.

However, on some occasions I will break my own rule. This is such an occasion. I feel I must answer my detractors whose critical opinions have recently appeared in the pages of this newspaper.

Let me begin with the opinions of the letter writer who signs herself as "Bermudian University Student". She states that I would have barked even louder if the previous letter writer who I responded to, "Margaret", had said that her husband was black instead of brown?

On what basis do you make that statement, "University Student"? I know the context in which you stated this. I called no one a racist but I am ever mindful of the Eurocentric vicissitudes of this society and its great aversion to the term black.

I merely attempted to probe behind her use of the word brown to describe her husband's colour. I just wanted to know why did she not use the more common term "black"?

Now if her decision to employ the term "brown" was done in all innocence and not under the influence of this Eurocentric society's prejudices and preconceptions, then I happily yield.

But let us go on and discuss the opinions of "University Student" herself, for I believe that through her words she has proved my point, that in the heart of whiteness there is a fear of the dark (of course, by using this term to describe the state of the racial divide, I am speaking metaphorically not literally).

"University Student" states that she has no phobia when it comes to colour yet she fears being labelled a racist, a circumstance which I will address presently.

However, let us deal with the white man's longstanding fear of the dark. Yes, I fully understand that the use of the term black in the negative came into use among Europeans long before their interaction with black peoples, people of colour.

The European lived in caves at one time in their history, before the general use of fire and human advancement in engineering and weaponry. So the coming of the dark, of the night, held great terror and posed threats to their existence, real and imagined.

But the following is very important to understanding the racial divide that remains with us today. When the European embarked on his Voyages of Discovery, so-called, to far-flung lands and continents, in the villages and the hinterlands and the bushes of every territory they explored there was the face of a black man staring back at them — people of colour who inhabited those lands.

The Europeans did not come in peace. A well-known saying makes this quite clear: "First came the Bible, then the gun, then we lost the land."THE European made war on people of colour and you projected your fears and your negative feelings of the colour black on us. It is in your language, it is in your perceptions, it is in your psyches and your culture. And it exists within the Bermudian society which history has fated us to share.To understand me, "University Student", you must understand where I have come from, on whose shoulders I stand. I must tell you that as a black man with a free black mind, I do not fear the dark.

To me the darkness is natural. Without the blackness of the night sky, we wouldn't see the beauty of the stars. In the womb of a woman a child, a new human being, is nurtured in the dark by its mother before it is born into the world. Even the Bible speaks of the light coming forth from the dark and that must mean that the dark is the essence of creation.

I will assume that "University Student" is still doing her studies abroad. But if she hopes to return to this country, which will still have a black majority, then she must come to understand us more fully. Make a detour in your studies and discover the term "black" did not come into full acceptance only during the era of the civil rights struggle and black cultural revolution in the 1960s and '70s in America. Its use goes further back than that. It existed during the Negritude movement in the 1930s when it was employed by the Martinique-born poet and statesman Aime Cesaire in discussions with Leopold Sedar Senghor and Leon-Gontrotran Damas when they were students in France. Leopold Senghor would later become the Prime Minister of the former French colony of Senegal and would become a leading light in the Negritude movement in Africa. THE popular use of "black" goes back to the days of Marcus Garvey, who stated that blacks in the West are descendants of the greatest and proudest people on the Earth. It is a gift from Mother Africa which has never forgotten its children and reaches out to us even now.Now let me address to this prevailing white fear of being labelled a racist no matter what they say or do, a fear which was articulated by "University Student". Well, that fear exists because black people have won at least one battle decisively. Through our struggle we have made the idea of being an overt racist in some parts of this world a dishonour. In some areas we have driven racism underground. But to fully end the racial divide, the heart of whiteness must fully overcome its fear of the dark.

[bul] One last comment addressed to the letter writer who goes by the pen name "Cultural Vulture". You would like to see myself, MP Dale Butler and Premier Alex Scott expelled to Cuba in exchange for Cuba's Rastafarians coming to Bermuda.

I have this to say — yes, in the days of the openly racist Bermuda the slave masters used to do to this black people. They would expel those who dared resist their system racial oppression, so much so that they almost succeeded in getting rid of the warrior genes among black people.

But today is a different day and some of us still have the warrior genes and if it is your desire to banish me from Bermuda, Cultural Vulture, then I warn you, bring your army.