December 26, 2008

THERE is every sign the coming year will be a difficult one for Bermuda.

It is fair to predict that retail businesses and restaurants will be hit very hard. Some of them will fail.

Joblessness will stretch from the construction industry to retail clerks to the upper levels of international companies.

Rents will drop and a significant number of houses and condos will sit empty.

Tourism? Forget it. Expensive Bermuda with its so-so service and its outrageous taxi prices coupled with its uncertain weather will be low on anyone's list of must-visit resorts.

If anyone thinks that new hotels are about to be built in Bermuda then that person is in need of help. Politicians routinely lie to us and mislead us when it suits their purposes.

Charities will suffer and some will fail because "King Bountiful" is now a church mouse.

The list is much longer but that is enough gloom for one day. Except, one more thing, the thieving is about to start in earnest.

WATCHING

Paget

December 26, 2008

LEADERS of this Government fail to understand that when they support or tacitly condone criminal activity they effectively give permission for criminal behaviour.

They also fail to understand that supporting or condoning racism against white people will create more racism and lead to a white backlash.

20/20

City of Hamilton

December 23, 2008

YOUR columnist Alvin Williams' circa 1968 "Get Back At Whitey" approach to political and social issues is as tiresome as it is unhelpful in a multi-cultural society.

Can you imagine the reaction if one of your white columnists had said that, say, Frederick Douglass was the only black American in that country's 400 year history worthy of his admiration?

Mr. Williams would be among those leading the charge to have any such writer branded as an unrepentant racist and chauvinist. And he might well have a point.

How sad that Mr. Williams insists on maintaining his extremely narrow, keyhole-view of history rather than looking at the vast, panoramic scene and recognising that innate human goodness and innate human evil have existed in all peoples at all times.

The capacity for evil is hardly the exclusive preserve of those of European descent.

SADDENED

Sandys Parish

December 26, 2008

SINCE Alvin Williams was busy handing out Christmas gifts in his Commentary column this week, I have a belated present of my own for him: Toni Morrison's new book A Mercy.

You really need to read it, Mr. Williams. Set in the 17th century when slavery was becoming institutionalised in the American Colonies, it tells four interlocking stories about four women: one white, two black and one Native American.

It's an exceptional book and once again Ms Morrison demonstrates she is more interested in addressing universal truths rather than narrow racial or feminist ones.

She emphasises that all but a very few people were viewed as commodities rather than human beings until relatively recently in human history.

She also emphasises that as people progress, we learn. All of us. Old prejudices are finally overcome, old blood feuds are finally settled, only by men and women of good will. Of all backgrounds.

Despite her well-known views on the Atlantic slave trade and the ongoing impact of slavery in the Western hemisphere, Europeans are certainly not the only serpents in the garden according to Ms Morrison.

In A Mercy Ms Morrison also chides Africans for their role in the slave trade her chief argument, advanced by an African woman captured by rival tribesmen and shipped to Barbados, being that the same basic oppressive power dynamics are common to all societies and cultures: "I think men thrive on insults over cattle, women, water, crops," says the enslaved African woman. "Everything heats up and finally the men of their families burn we houses and collect those they cannot kill or find for trade ..."

None of the less pleasant characters in the novel are wholly evil: they are weak and corruptible and and contemptible rather than cartoon villains. Nor are the characters we support particularly saintly. They are all human and they all demonstrate human virtues and failings. Before Mr. Williams next decides to demonise all white Americans who have ever lived except for the abolitionist John Brown, he might want to take some of these themes and universal human truths into consideration.

Human nature, after all, is one thing we all really do have in common regardless of race, creed or religion. Happy reading, Mr. Williams.

S. CLAUS

The North Pole

December 27, 2008

PEOPLE don't tend to stay where they aren't welcome. And it's clear from the recent utterances of Bermuda's Premier ("Whites must be made to suffer ...") and his flock of trained parrots like Alvin Williams and the various organisations and individuals involved in "The Big Conversation" ("Big Con"?) that whites (and particularly white Americans, who still contribute the most to Bermuda's off-shore and tourism economies) aren't welcome in Bermuda anymore.

The One-Size-Fits-All solution to Bermuda's social and racial problems being advanced by the Premier and his cronies amounts to "Blacks Equal All Good, Whites Equal All Bad". It is being used to "explain" all of the complicated facets of race relations and social interactions. But this grand unified theory is both overly simplistic and, frankly, simple-minded. It amounts to the worst kind of kitsch Marxism so popular among radicals on university campuses in the '60s and '70s. And just as Marxism could not explain the totality of human history and human relationships based solely on economic factors ("Workers Equal All Good, Capitalists Equal All Bad"), nor can the intellectually and logically incoherent views advanced by the Premier and his fellow travellers hope to explain the totality of race relations.This type of rigidly black-and-white view of society will do precisely nothing to solve Bermuda's racial or social problems. The insinuation that those blacks who have fallen behind are locked out of the good life by invisible powers ("institutional racism") and that all whites are intrinsically racist and evil whether they know it or not does nothing to advance the cause of equality - for either the former or the latter. If whites were to disappear from Bermuda tomorrow, would you then have genuine liberty, brotherhood and equality? I don't think so.

There would still be class and social divisions, there would still be clashes between the "Town" and "Country" gangs, there would still be all manner of inequities. If people like Alvin Williams and CURB and CURE carry on spotting "institutional racism" and "hidden racism" where none exists, if they carry on trying to portray all whites as potential victimisers and all blacks as potential victims, they may get their fondest wish: those who are not welcome will indeed leave. But you can be guaranteed they will not take Bermuda's tribal and sectarian divisions with them.

ONION SEED

City of Hamilton