May 5, 2007

YOUR correspondent “Bemused” (Mid-Ocean News<$>, May 4) writes: “It’s his (Dr. Ewart Brown’s) brother’s bank that’s going up on the ruins of Trimingham’s, people”. If it is “his brother’s bank” it is because the shareholders approved of its sale and Mr. Philip Butterfield’s subsequent promotion to the top position. And who were the shareholders? The people who sold the bank to HSBC may or may not have envisioned the demise of Triminghams, or they may not have cared. As you suggested in a recent Opinion, greed may have been the only thing that mattered.But the sale of the bank was one of the rare occasions when black and white Bermudians worked together for something a few of us did not believe was in Bermuda’s long-term interests. A black Progressive Labour Party Government made the sale possible and largely white Bank of Bermuda shareholders did the rest.

We have integrated around greed and the pursuit of money. With the removal of Government-sponsored segregation far too many blacks have only the goal of “integrating” by pursuing (with some achieving) the “white man’s salary” (with others selling drugs to do so) and the white man’s social value rather than continuing to pursue justice for all.

I am frequently accused of being responsible for perpetuating our racial divide. On this occasion I am acknowledging our “integration”. There is great irony in the fact that ridding ourselves of Government-sponsored segregation — which we pursued with such passion from the time of Emancipation — we in the black community have ensured that many in the younger generation have turned their backs on the very values which brought us this far: self-discipline, a willingness to sacrifice for long-term goals, a desperate collective desire for highly valued education and a sense that we are all in this together. We all knew we would not achieve “the white man’s salary” overnight and there were no drugs to sell in those days.

One factor in this ongoing discussion on education that no one in an official position dare mention is this. During the days of overt segregation our black teachers motivated us by reminding us of our social realities, the realities of racism. We responded. We knew we had to concentrate on being our best and doing our best because the barriers of racism would be there to obstruct us. In those, more difficult days black parents had to make tremendous sacrifices for us to even go to school.

Today when we, as a black community, are no longer united under the banner of “Justice for all” and we can no longer challenge our young people with the social realities of racism because we are “integrated” and a few of us are indeed achieving the “white man’s salary”, there is clearly no longer the same desperate collective motivation within the black community whether it be teachers, students or parents.

Since we must pretend we are no longer segregated (despite the United Bermuda Party’s policy of mega-schools which ensured the continued segregation of public education) but are integrated, we in the black community have rejected the positive social values which served us so well.

These included the single-minded commitment to education which we once rightly attached such importance to.

EVA N. HODGSON

Crawl