Sometime in early July, a White Bermudian of Portuguese descent was allegedly beaten up by four Black Bermudians. The event occurred outside the Docksiders Restaurant on Front Street.

As of today (July 16th) no arrests have been made. Hence it is not known exactly what triggered the attack. However, Mr. Robert Pires has concluded that the assault had its origins in increasing racism in Bermuda and immediately started a campaign to address this supposition.

His campaign gave rise to a meeting at Vasco Da Gama on Wednesday, July 12, 2006 and a rally on the steps of City Hall on Friday July 14th 2006.

The meeting at City Hall was organised by a young white Bermudian named Jonathan Starling who succeeded in persuading me to speak at the rally. I agreed because he assured me that the Union President would be speaking. Unfortunately, on the day of the event, Brother Chris could not attend because he had to complete urgent union business. As a result, I became the only official BIU representative in attendance.

The prelude to Friday:

My original reluctance to attend was based upon the obvious elevation of racial fears prompted by several articles printed concerning the ten-year-old Middleton Murder Case and the beating of the white male. In addition, the Middleton family had just received a financial settlement from the Government of Bermuda that was substantially below their expectations.

The fact that the murder and subsequent failed prosecution occurred under the governance of the United Bermuda Party was obscured in the street talk that was generated by the many articles on the subject.

Since the PLP happened to be the Political Party in power at the time of the settlement, they are being saddled with blame for the poor settlement and, for some people, the young girl's murder as well.

With this discussion buzzing around in the background, it was of no surprise that Mr. Pires would seize the opportunity to claim that there was increasing racism in Bermuda and that both sides needed to come together to do something about it.

Personally, I took offence to the charge that my race was engaged in increasing racism. I certainly did not feel that racism was increasing nor did any of my close friends.

To some extent this is no doubt due to the fact that increasingly major labour disputes are settled between a BIU official and a human resource manager that is usually black.

For this reason, most of us who are employed by the BIU do not expect race to be an element in our dealings with management on behalf of our members.

It is obvious that this is not the case for Mr. Pires and others who operate in the 75 percent of Bermuda that is not unionised. Hence, they are likely to jump quickly to the conclusion that a dispute involving members of both races has racial origins even if there is little or no basis for reaching such a conclusion.

What happened on Friday, July 16th 2006:

The meeting on Friday at City Hall, included nine speakers, one of whom was not scheduled. Those who spoke prior to myself, all made nice little statements on the need to love one another. These speeches were accompanied by loud applause from large segments of the audience.

When it was my turn to speak, I suggested that two things needed to be appreciated, if we were serious about improving race relations: Firstly, we had to recognise that virtually all of us find that we cannot live with our chosen life mates in perfect peace and harmony. This is true despite the fact that we meet our life mates every day. I then asked: "Why do we expect to engender peace and love with people that we may meet at most, once a month and then in a carefully designed social setting?"

Secondly, I stated that discrimination comes about in two forms. The first form is our tendency to join with people whom we believe share our belief and value systems and generally look like us. On the other hand, we tend to avoid those people whom we think do not share these values and beliefs and do not look like us.

The second form of discrimination occurs when we refuse to permit people to enjoy dwellings we own, jobs we create, and social settings we organise if we believe they do not share our belief or value systems and do not look like us. I emphasised that this second form of discrimination requires power.

I stated that before November 1998, White Bermudians had much greater economic and political power than blacks and therefore were in a very strong position to exert the second kind of discrimination. I noted that even though White Bermudians have lost political power, they can still exercise considerable discrimination because they have much greater control over Bermuda's economy than do their Black counterparts. Clearly, it is this second kind of discrimination that is of most concern to black Bermudians.

When I pointed out the ability of White Bermudians to exercise the second form of discrimination to a far greater extent than blacks, the audience heckled and yelled at me although they had not done this to any other speaker.

Hence, when one heckler said I was off the subject or something like that, I retorted, "I will talk about what I want to talk about and you can go to hell".

I was immediately told I was disrespectful and a burly white man threatened to enter the stage to do 'bad things to me'. He stopped midway and simply stood there shouting disrespectful statements.

A second white man, Mr. Pires, dashed over to me and said he might as well go home. I replied "go ahead, I could care less".

Still there was support for what I had to say. When I completed my speech and left the stage, about a dozen persons ? mostly white Bermudian women ? said "thank you for telling the truth about how you felt about Bermuda's racial situation". One young white man of Portuguese origin told me that he understood what I had to go through personally since he had to wait until late in life to educate himself because of the hard time his father had in getting enough money both to build a house and to assist him with his schooling.

However, the most significant statement of support was made to my wife by a white woman who assured my wife: "It is so good to see a man that has the guts to speak the truth about Bermuda's racial situation".

Conclusion:

The events of last week should make it clear that Black Bermudians are no longer prepared to accept blame for something just because the blame is being advocated by white Bermudians. After all, Black Bermudians did not express hatred of white Bermudians even when they had more than enough reason to do so.

Black Bermudians intend to obtain largely increased access to Bermuda's employment and construction markets.

This is obviously our right given our position as the largest group in Bermuda which has the right to call ourselves Bermudian. To the extent that well-off white Bermudians are prepared to help Black Bermudians attain this limited goal, improved race relations will almost certainly result.

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