Missing Government ads

October 14, 2008

Dear Sir,

I almost missed the deadline for payroll taxes as I have always relied on Government advertising in The Royal Gazette which reminds employers of the quarterly due date. If an employer missed the due date there is a penalty to pay.

I am self-employed with one part-time staff. I had to close my retail store for one-and-a-half hours to drive into Hamilton from St. George's to pay the tax. The Government portal for e-tax was not available to me as the site has been experiencing difficulties.

All would have been avoided if the Government still advertised deadlines for tax payments in the daily paper.

Thanks Brown government! I lost one and a half hours of retail sales.

SMALL BUSINESS OWNER

St. George's

BTC behind the eight ball

October 11, 2008

Dear Sir,

For years, the Bermuda Telephone Company was our only local telecommunications supplier. Seems they got snug and smug and fat.

So when a major failure occurs (like on Friday) when telephone calls, internet and ATM machines are down, they hid behind their clients to try to explain the mess. Shame on you!

It wasn't until the middle of the day that someone from their PR department surfaced to admit there was a problem.

Unlike other service providers, such as Belco, who through their PR department advise immediately of problems, BTC continuously is hours behind the eight ball.

Get yourself a proper public relations firm and let the public know, please.

DISGRUNTLED BTC SHAREHOLDER

Warwick

Alternate car days

October 12, 2008

Dear Sir,

I see that Beijing has implemented traffic controls based on a simple system of even and odd numbered licence plated cars/trucks being restricted on certain days of the week. This has resulted in less congestion, less pollution, more car parking spaces in the City and more use of public transportation.

Even better, 69 percent of the population actual support the restrictions because it affected everyone equally.

Why don't we try it ?

D. KENT STEWART

City of Hamilton

Before we re-name school

October 10, 2008

Dear Sir,

In the RG of October 8, Minister Dale Butler reprimanded the people of St. David's because they don't want to change the name of their school. Government wants to re-name St. David's Primary School to honour Mr. Hilton C. Richardson – a respected past headmaster. St. David's islanders are justly proud of the current name and want to honour Mr Richardson's memory within the school.

With all due respect to Minister Butler, I suggest that he get his priorities in order. What would Mr Richardson want? To have his name arbitrarily imposed on a school – or – have his ideals in education upheld for the children of Bermuda?

I venture to suggest that if headmaster Richardson and others of his generation could see into most of the classrooms of today, they would be horrified.

Most of the children who passed through their hands had a thorough grounding in the three 'R's' – they respected their elders and each other. They knew they had to behave themselves – or else. They went out into the community equipped to face their futures to the best of their abilities. Can we predict these things for the children of today?

When one compares results between many of the government schools and the private schools, the disparities are glaring. Notwithstanding the private schools have a selection process and the Government schools do not, the fact still remains that within the private sector Bermudian children are achieving high standards. I believe one of the reasons is in the management of the particular school. As in any business, good management produces results and clearly the private schools are being well managed. Also, their teachers are hired based on merit and performance.

Some foreign residents think we have always had a low standard in education because of what they witness today. They don't know that we once enjoyed one of the highest literacy rates, per capita, in the world – all thanks to teachers like Hilton C. Richardson and many others we could name.

Many years ago, children in the aided/public schools often outdid the private schools in examination results and cultural achievements.

These days, anxious Bermudian parents move heaven and earth to secure places in the private schools for their children. Many have to scrimp, save and sacrifice to pay the fees.

What about the other homes where parents want the best for their children? Not everyone can afford private education and why should they have to?

But, a 'good' Government school is becoming a rare commodity.

In the past, Bermudian children achieved high standards – often in one room buildings with few amenities. This fact alone should cause us to demand answers as to the reasons why too many of our public schools are failing today.

I suggest we honour our heroes by adopting their values and what they stood for. With that in mind, Minister Butler and Minister Horton, before we change names and put up new signs, can we at least try to make sure our children can read them?

KATH BELL

Paget

Racism without racists

October 9, 2008

Dear Sir,

I found the following article very interesting, and would like to share it with your readers.

PAT FERGUSON

Warwick

"Racism Without Racists" by Nicholas D. Kristof, printed in the New York Times on October 5.

One of the fallacies of this election season is that if Barack Obama is paying an electoral price for his skin tone, it must be because of racists.

On the contrary, the evidence is that Senator Obama is facing what scholars have dubbed "racism without racists".

The racism is difficult to measure, but a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama's support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white. That's significant but surmountable.

Most of the lost votes aren't those of dyed-in-the-wool racists. Such racists account for perhaps ten percent of the electorate and, polling suggests, are mostly conservatives who would not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate.

Rather, most of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president — yet who discriminate unconsciously.

"When we fixate on the racist individual, we're focused on the least interesting way that race works," said Phillip Goff, a social psychologist at UCLA who focuses his research on "racism without racists." "Most of the way race functions is without the need for racial animus."

For decades, experiments have shown that even many whites who earnestly believe in equal rights will recommend hiring a white job candidate more often than a person with identical credentials who is black. In the experiments, the applicant's folder sometimes presents the person as white, sometimes as black, but everything else is the same. The white person thinks that he or she is selecting on the basis of non-racial factors like experience.

Research suggests that whites are particularly likely to discriminate against blacks when choices are not clear-cut and competing arguments are flying about — in other words, in ambiguous circumstances rather like an electoral campaign.

For example, when the black job candidate is highly qualified, there is no discrimination. Yet in a more muddled gray area where reasonable people could disagree, unconscious discrimination plays a major role.

White participants recommend hiring a white applicant with borderline qualifications 76 percent of the time, while recommending an identically qualified black applicant only 45 percent of the time.

John Dovidio, a psychologist at Yale University who has conducted this study over many years, noted that conscious prejudice as measured in surveys has declined over time. But unconscious discrimination — what psychologists call aversive racism — has stayed fairly constant.

"In the US, there's a small percentage of people who in nationwide surveys say they won't vote for a qualified black presidential candidate," Professor Dovidio said. "But a bigger factor is the aversive racists, those who don't think that they're racist."

Faced with a complex decision, he said, aversive racists feel doubts about a black person that they don't feel about an identical white. "These doubts tend to be attributed not to the person's race — because that would be racism — but deflected to other areas that can be talked about, such as lack of experience," he added.

Of course, there are perfectly legitimate reasons to be against a particular black candidate, Mr. Obama included. Opposition to Mr. Obama is no more evidence of racism than opposition to Mr. McCain is evidence of discrimination against the elderly or against war veterans. And at times, Mr. Obama's race helps him: it underscores his message of change, it appeals to some whites as a demonstration of their open-mindedness, and it wins him overwhelming black votes and turnout.

Still, a huge array of research suggests that 50 percent or more of whites have unconscious biases that sometimes lead to racial discrimination. (Blacks have their own unconscious biases, surprisingly often against blacks as well.)

One set of experiments conducted since the 1970s involves subjects who believe that they are witnessing an emergency (like an epileptic seizure). When there is no other witness, a white bystander will call for help whether the victim is white or black, and there is very little discrimination.

But when there are other bystanders, so the individual responsibility to summon help may feel less obvious, whites will still summon help 75 percent of the time if the victim is white but only 38 percent of the time if the victim is black.

One lesson from this research is that racial biases are deeply embedded within us, more so than many whites believe. But another lesson, a historical one, is that we can overcome unconscious bias. That's what happened with the decline in prejudice against Catholics after the candidacy of John F. Kennedy in 1960.

It just might happen again, this time with race.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and to join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.