Posted September 20th. 2003. - Special Feature by David Hinds

Ethnic heritage is not opposed to nationhood

Those who are busy condemning the GIHA for organizing an all-Indian cricket match do not speak for me. Sorry, I want to have the right to get together with African Guyanese to celebrate Kwanzaa and dance Queh Queh, talk African Guyanese business and do my African thing without somebody calling me racist. My Africaness is not all of my Guyaneseness, but it sure is central to it; it's a big part of what I bring to the Guyanese table. And I bring it not so that it can be erased, but so that it can enrich Guyana and be enriched by Guyana. If Guyana does not recognize and respect my Africaness then it has no use for me. I know that I am Guyanese when my Africaness converges with my Guyaneseness.

That's why I am simultaneously an Africanist and a multiracialist. Why is there all the fuss about the GIHA organizing an all-Indian cricket match? Guyana seems to have two attitudes to the issue of race-use it to claim victimhood and/or deny that it exists. For some people Guyana is a multiracial country without races. We speak of being Guyanese as if racial and ethnic heritage are diametrically opposed to nationhood. How on earth can Indians organizing and playing a cricket match among themselves divide Guyana? Since when does one have to stop being Indian or African or Amerindian in order to be Guyanese? The talk about race in Guyana is deformed and uninformed. Leave the people to do their thing and celebrate themselves. How is an Indian cricket match dangerous to Africans?

So long as an all-Indian activity is not promoting hate and superiority, please let it be. Having said the above, I agree with Sarwan and the Arjune brothers to pull out from the match. In our usual blindness we can't even see that what Sarwan responded to was not the notion of an all-Indian affair, but "anything that divides us." It is not the game that divides us, but rather it's the divisive hype we developed around the game that is the culprit. That is what Sarwan responded to. And the GIHA does not help matters by suggesting that Sarwan is a weak Indian. Uncouth behavior? No GIHA, please withdraw that description. All for the freedom to be also race-conscious in Guyana. We are far from colour/race-blind.

David Hinds lectures in Caribbean and Africana Studies at Arizona State University in the USA. He is also a political and social commentator who has written extensively on Guyana and Caribbean politics. More of his writings can be found on his GuyanaCaribbeanPolitics.com website.