T<$>HE one thing I have to say to my constant critic Dr. Eva Hodgson is that we, as black people, must stop thinking of ourselves as victims — we are survivors. This is, in fact, the fundamental difference between Dr. Hodgson and myself when it comes to race and the question of Bermuda’s racial legacy. As a black man who has developed what I like to call a free black mind, I have long since developed a mindset that has allowed me to endure — conquer, even — the unhappy twin legacies of slavery and institutionalised segregation. I do not see myself as yet another casualty.

I made this clear in the last Commentary I wrote on the ongoing plight of the young black male in Bermudian society but Dr. Hodgson is unwilling — or unable — to accept that.

I maintain that it is not in the best interests of black people to continue to wallow in a state of victimhood for this closes our eyes to how we survived as a people despite all that the racists threw at us. We are here, still standing, today.

Further, it is an insult and a dishonour not to draw on the strength of our people who resisted in every way they could and whose shoulders we collectively stand upon today.

I am no trained historian, I am a student of history. Dr. Hodgson is a trained historian but I am at a loss to understand why she does not draw the same conclusions that I do about the collective experiences of blacks in Bermuda. Why is it that she seems to want to focus on the perceived weaknesses of black people and not on that which gives us strength?

What if the 12 ex-slaves in Devonshire who built the one-room school for the children of ex-slaves had been content to only remember the injustice of slavery and to flounder in a sea of victimhood? What if they did not have the vision to want to build their people a school in order to give them a better future?

We should honour those men more than we do for the example they provided in how to move forward despite their meagre circumstances.

I remember that little school house for I studied there for a year at the time it had been incorporated into the old Elliot School. But it was a tremendous shame that we school children were never told about the historical significance of that little one-room classroom we sat in during our third year at primary school.

What a lesson that would have been, teaching young black minds about black self-determination, about acting and not depending on anyone else, not thinking of ourselves as victims.

I have stated that it is not in our interests to think of ourselves as victims of racism and I will give another example why that is so. Over the years we black people have attended many meetings and talks and lectures about our circumstances in a racist society and how this has impacted on us as a people.

Some time ago in a meeting at the Bermuda Industrial Union which addressed this subject, a young black Bermudian got up and made the statement that he did not see where the black man had advanced economically in Bermuda. I remember <$>thinking that this blanket statement could not be true in the strictest sense — for here we were holding a meeting in an air-conditioned auditorium, the Dr. E.F. Gordon Memorial Hall, with plenty of seating for all with a further large meeting hall upstairs if the need for additional space was there. We built that union headquarters, the workers of Bermuda, just as our ancestors built that one-room school in Devonshire. I should have got up and challenged the speaker’s opinion. Indeed all of us who remembered the very first union meetings — ad hoc affairs held out where the Bermuda Industrial Union gas station now stands — and even the ones held in the claustrophobic meeting hall at our first headquarters should have got up and challenged that speaker.

Is modern Bermuda a perfect society? No. Is it a more perfect society than it was before black Bermudians took stands against racial discrimination and inequality? Undoubtedly. The fact we challenged oppression — the fact that in the 1950s and ‘60s we spearheaded a reform movement that changed the face of Bermuda — demonstrates we weren’t content just to regard ourselves as victims in those days. We took a collective stand. We took action. We remade Bermuda.

But today — 30 years on from those heady days — too many of us are stuck in neutral. We choose to wallow in victimhood instead of focusing on what we ourselves have achieved. We need to take the viewpoint that we are not victims of Bermuda’s old racial realities but rather we are survivors — warriors, even — who helped to bring down a rotten old order and replace it with a more egalitarian one.

Dr. Hodgson’s dead-end point of view is not one that we should encourage our young people to adopt. Rather, we must teach them that they must strive to overcome every manifestation of Bermuda’s racially divided past that they encounter on their journeys through life. After all, we are a people who overcame far greater adversities in the past.

How have I reached the point of not seeing myself as a victim of Bermuda’s racial past nor of its ongoing legacy? Apart from the examples I have provided above and my conscious decision to develop a way of thinking that has allowed me to have a free and open mind, there has been one other major influence on my personal philosophy.

This is a story I have told before but I will repeat it here for Dr. Hodgson’s sake.

The Bible says that a little child shall lead them — and a little child has led me to think about race in a different light. That child is my own daughter. Once, when she was little, my mother wanted to give her a white doll. No way, I insisted. My black daughter is not going to have a white doll. But my mother had such a sad look on her face that I eventually gave in and let her have the doll. But if I thought it was all over, I had to think again. My daughter does not stay with me but on the next weekend that I had her, I had to take her to her ballet school and, of course, she wanted to take the doll which happened to be sporting a ballet dancer’s costume.

No way, I said. A big fight ensued.

Leave the doll in the car, I insisted. The more I insisted, the louder her protests grew and we know what that means when it comes to children. Dad had to give in and let her take the doll. But the child was right and her Dad was wrong.

It was not that I feared that my daughter would become culturally brainwashed by white society if she played with a white doll.

No, her Dad did not want Bermuda to see him walking with his daughter in the streets of Hamilton, holding her hand while she was clutching a white doll. It was more about me than her. So I had to face that reality.She<$> is still on my case. When she comes to my apartment and we watch the music channel and I see the Jewish reggae singer Matisyahu and remark, “He is pretty good for a white boy”, she fixes me with a look and says: “Dad, you are being racial.” For years I have been on the front lines regarding race, full of fire and brimstone. But when it comes to my daughter, I have to submit to her point of view. I have to accept that the world which is coming is her world. I have no right to impose my world view on her.

In some ways, the foundations we laid in the 1950s and ‘60s are being built on.

In some ways Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream has been fulfilled — my daughter is <$>living in a nation where, by and large, she will not be judged by the colour of her skin but by the content of her character.

And things will be even better for her children if we carry on in this way.

That is my answer to Dr. Hodgson with her view that black people should continue to consider themselves as victims of Bermuda’s racial past.

As a famous Lebanese writer once wrote: “The world our children will enter, we cannot follow.”