Black affirmative actionDecember 29, 2011Dear Sir,It is not only in crime that there is an enormous difference between the black and white Communities. It is in every area of our lives: social, economic and psychological. It is not the result of natural evolution. The difference is because for decades, centuries, there were deliberate policies and practices intended to destroy the souls and minds of black people and to ensure that all and sundry believed they were inferior beings, less than human and to be economically exploited to prove the point. It should be no surprise that the policy has been effective.What little change has taken place has only served to create blacks like those in the OBA who lack the understanding to recognise that it will never be “safe to go back into the water” while these enormous differences exist. It is hard to sell the argument that it is only education that matters when there are so many educated blacks who have, and still do, remain unemployed. How can there be racial harmony in the face of these enormous differences? How people vote is only a manifestation of these differences and does not really matter as long as these differences continue to exist.It took centuries to create this society with its deliberately imposed destruction of the black community that we have and there has been no serious effort to change it. The crime today is the professed innocence of the white community of what they and their forefathers have deliberately done to an entire people.White affirmative action has been the most significant instrument to create the intended objective of destruction of the black community and the first step in even acknowledging this past is an unabashed policy of black affirmative action. It has taken centuries to create this society and it is naïve to believe that even under those circumstances we can bring about the desired change in a few decades. But we have not even begun the process and the white community has made it clear that they do not wish any change that will recognise the full humanity of those in the black community. Those blacks who support them are guilty of an even greater crime.We can, and perhaps should, come down hard on those blacks who are killing each other. But that alone will not solve Bermuda’s social problems. We must begin the long journey of bringing justice to the black community by ensuring that it has the same worth, in every respect, economically, socially and psychologically as the white community. That may not happen in this generation but it must begin in this generation by a policy of black affirmative action.EVA N HODGSONHamilton Parish