“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin.

Christopher Famous’ January 9, 2026, commentary on Cayman’s immigration rules offers a useful regional contrast. Bermuda’s deeper problem, however, is not a shortage of workable ideas. It is decades of paralysis, fuelled by inherited political paranoia on both sides, where inflated fears, dressed up as principle, repeatedly override evidence and basic best practices in democratic representation.

The trauma is real. The UBP’s documented legacy of immigration policy to dilute black political power and weaken labour organising was not paranoia but a legitimate historical strategy. Like South Africa’s architects of apartheid, they understood that democratic systems inherently threaten minority power holders who lack numerical advantage.

Bermuda’s 1981 general strike, which resulted in a pyrrhic victory for the BIU, remains one of the most extreme paradoxes from this political stand-off between minority rights and majority power. The “success” of the biggest labour uprising in Bermuda’s history decimated the tourism industry and accelerated the advent of international business, ultimately hurting Black workers in particular and BIU membership rates in general.

This same pyrrhic victory from 1981 was reinvoked by PLP leadership as recently as 2016 to promote the civil unrest at parliament that prevented “pathways to status”. Nearly a decade later, with an overwhelming majority in parliament, this devastatingly effective PLP leadership strategy has been overshadowed only by the equally obvious fact that they have made no substantive difference in achieving “comprehensive” immigration reform.

Acknowledging historical wrongs does not exempt us from present accountability. When legitimate grievances calcify into reflexive partisan responses, we abandon the very democratic principles our ancestors fought to secure. Black Bermudians were the primary champions for universal adult suffrage and democracy itself. The psychological inheritance of that struggle now all too often prevents us from practising what we preach: evidence-based governance that serves all constituents.

The Emperial Group’s work on youth engagement in the 1998 election cycle, particularly with the most disaffected and “hardcore” constituencies, demonstrated this principle. Rather than patronising young voters with superficial appeals, we built authentic connections by addressing their actual culture and concerns, creating infrastructure for sustained civic participation that persisted beyond a single election cycle.

Similarly, our management of Minister Louis Farrakhan’s 2009 visit demonstrated that addressing the root of problems yields better outcomes than surface-level reactions. We facilitated dialogue that acknowledged historical pain while creating space for necessary community conversation, proving Bermuda could handle complexity with nuance rather than knee-jerk tribalism.

These examples share a common thread: they required moving beyond inherited fear responses to ask what actually serves the community’s interests. This is not about abandoning vigilance or forgetting history. It is about refusing to let historical trauma be weaponised into present-day paralysis.

Today’s landscape reflects what happens when we fail this test. Authority conflicts create defensive responses to new ideas. Tit-for-tat behaviour prevents addressing real issues. We have leaders who lack both proximity to the problems they’re meant to solve and the skill sets to execute solutions effectively. Community unity efforts face resistance from those who benefit from keeping old wounds fresh, who mistake confrontational energy for actual strategy, who confuse maintaining power with effective leadership.

The question becomes: do we understand the systems we’re working with, or are we just going through the motions? Are we building infrastructure or merely surfing what others have created? Are we taking responsibility for our own governance through self-policing and accountability, or waiting for external oversight to force our hand?

Leadership effectiveness depends on sustained action rather than intermittent efforts that lose momentum. We need representatives who actually understand constituents’ reality, who see value in unexpected places, who recognise that dismissed ideas might be breakthroughs.

This requires confronting our inherited fears honestly. The PLP’s historical suspicions are justified and baked into their psyche through lived experience. White Bermudians’ resistance to full equality often stems from privileged positions they fear losing. Both positions are understandable. Neither justifies abandoning democratic best practices.

Bermuda stands at a crossroads where we can either remain captive to our historical traumas or face them honestly enough to move forward. Baldwin’s wisdom applies: we cannot change what we refuse to face. The question is whether we have the courage to build something better than what trauma has left us, or whether we’ll continue letting inflated fears override the evidence-based, inclusive democracy our ancestors fought to secure.

The choice, as always, is ours to make.

· Eugene Dean is leader of the The Emperial Group