By all accounts, Tourism Minister Ewart Brown’s speech to the African Diaspora Heritage Trail forum on Thursday was a powerful piece of oratory. It was also, in the main, drawn from a land of fantasy.

Dr. Brown discussed his Government’s supposed efforts to empower black Bermudians after centuries of slavery and segregation that, he correctly said, had left an indelible mark on their psyches.

In a striking bit of rhetoric, he said: “Ours is a curious nation. In 2006 we are still forced as a Government to defend policies that are aimed at empowering a majority of the population and made to consult with representatives of the minority to reverse years of economic injustice against the majority.”

He added, in what he later told The Royal Gazette <$>was a reference to the PLP’s Social Agenda: “Even the suggestion of a programme aimed at addressing the ills of a segment of this majority population is met by protest and accusations of undue favour.”

That’s all powerful stuff, and no doubt received a good reception at the conference.

Nor is there anything wrong with talking about empowerment; indeed, it is a national requirement. Only the blind could not to see — as has been stated repeatedly in this newspaper — that Bermuda suffers from a wealth gap between blacks and whites. It must be bridged if the Island is ever going to heal its racial divisions and move forward with social stability and security.

In fact, there has already been wide amount a debate among blacks and whites about the question.

Where Dr. Brown goes from fact to fiction is in the idea that the Government has been pushing empowerment.

The fact is that the United Bermuda Party — Dr. Brown’s “plantation party” — has been much more forward thinking about the issue while the supposedly-Progressive Labour Party Government has lagged behind. Only in the last year has it begun to even address the question, and then in an entirely piecemeal way for which it has, at least at the time of writing, very little to show.

This newspaper cannot find any evidence at all of where the Government was accused of “undue favour” as a result of the Social Agenda. The major criticism of the Social Agenda when it was unveiled was that it was virtually an empty shell, with little in it beyond what one would expect any government, anywhere, to be doing.

As for the “policies aimed at empowering the majority”, what are they? The answer is they do not exist, or at least not in any recognisable form.

There have been efforts to move Government contracts and business towards black Bermudians. But these have been entirely ad hoc and informal, resulting in suspicion of cronyism and even corruption because of the lack of transparency. No one outside of a magic circle of politicians and senior civil servants knows what criteria, if any, was used — or anything else.

Finally, there’s the ongoing Berkeley scandal, which some Government politicians have tried to put up as an example of empowerment. But Premier Alex Scott insisted while he was Works Minister that the contract was awarded purely on the merits of Pro-Active Management Systems’ bid. Only later, presumably when there was some advantage in doing so, did he turn around and say it was an example empowerment.

Opposition MP Maxwell Burgess and others have said that Pro-Active’s problems and subsequent firing (by Dr. Brown’s empowering Government) probably set back black-owned businesses by a decade, and there may, sadly, be some truth in that.

The truth is that few dispute that there is a wealth — and opportunity — gap between whites and blacks and it needs to be eradicated. There will, inevitably, be debate about how this should be done. Many will argue in favour of improved education (where successive Governments have failed the young people of Bermuda) and better training. Others will want more to be done to ensure equal opportunities for all, and others still will want a targeted programme for people of African descent.

All approaches have strengths and weaknesses and a substantive debate is needed. What is not needed is the kind of fiction that Dr. Brown produced last week. All that does is set the debate back.