Dear Sir,

On June 16, Lynne Winfield made a presentation to the Chamber of Commerce on Bermudian status.

Mrs Winfield has a seat at the table, and what she says can influence people’s opinions on this issue.

She, therefore, has a responsibility to get her facts straight so as to avoid fanning the flames of divisiveness.

Mrs Winfield made the quite startling claim that, based on the 2010 census, only four out of ten white Bermudians are born in Bermuda.

This is completely false. In fact, 65 per cent of the 12,348 white Bermudians living in Bermuda in 2010 were born in Bermuda.

Furthermore, between 2000 and 2010, the number of foreign-born black Bermudians living in Bermuda increased by 1,992 people, an increase of 140 per cent; whereas the number of foreign-born white Bermudians living in Bermuda increased by only 722, an increase of 21 per cent.

I do not have the time to fact-check the many other claims in her presentation, covering hundreds of years of history. However, if she is unable to get basic census information right, then it makes it hard to take the rest of her claims at face value.

It is a poor thing to use race to deny rights to people who have spent the best years of their lives in Bermuda.

It is an even poorer thing to use false racial statistics in support of this.

PETER SANDERSON

Barrister