What utter nonsense, every newspaper editorial and talk show host has nothing to draw on. Except daily you can hear and read everything in the world you ever dreamed or thought about in this country being brought to a common denominator called “The Race Card,” coined by some white media person when it suited them to turn on any black person who dared to assert his or her rights in the United States of America. They are advised not to use the fact that racial bias is what in fact caused them to be in their current dilemma because to mention racial atrocities against a black person by a black person is simply taboo. What utter nonsense!
Simeon Weisenthal tracked hundreds and possibly thousands of Nazis for over 50 years bringing them to what is called justice. The world applauded everytime a Jewish person decided to malign a nation over atrocities. They called it the Nazi holocaust and everyone is comfortable with that. I don’t read in any local newspaper that is wrong or any radio talk show host railing against it.
Just let a black person who lived during the dark days of the 30s, 40s, 50s and yes even into the early 60s speak of those atrocities blacks endured at the hands of the white masters, the black radio talk show hosts go after them with a venom. They should not play the “race card”. What was the late “Charlie” Bethel playing when he went abroad to a commonwealth conference and said that the whites of The Bahamas kept the black in virtual servitude through “careful planning”? Was that the race card? What is wrong with Bahamian blacks educating the younger ones about how their parents and grandparents were kept in virtual servitude? Why should we pretend that it never happened and take the advice of the poet who wrote, ‘Let the dead past bury its dead”?
“Only in The Bahamas.”
A few years ago I read an editorial in the Tribune which tried to connect Francois Duvalier to The Bahamas by asserting surreptitiously that his lineage was Bahamian. Without going into all the aspects I have a copy of a birth certificate of one Francios Duvalier who was born in Port au Prince, Haiti in 1907. Without going into any detail everyone knows that the Duvalier surname is as French as Dupuch. To my knowledge, which is limited, there was a family of Duvaliers, which migrated to The Bahamas much the same time that Captain Stephen Dillet did from Haiti. My grandfather and Captain Nat Adams who were Bermudan via Turks and Caicos traded with Haiti on a regular basis during those early years.
The greatest and longest lasting race wars have been raging since Abraham slept with his slave and fathered a son. Who’s playing the race card in that African fiasco? The Americans and the British didn’t want the Israelis, Arabs, Saudia, Lebanese and Persians to be associated with Africa because that brought a picture of black peoples so they invented the term “Middle East”. As far as I am aware those nations are as much a part of Africa as China is of India or Asia. Now we in The Bahamas are prone to every bit of foolishness, which enumerates from our great friend to the North. The other day when it suited them we heard coined by their media the scourge of ” Black on Black” crime. What utter nonsense! Why do we never hear of “White on White” crime?
Discrimination in the new millennium with a new face of suitability, yes? White Americans, Russians, Germans, Swedes, Swiss, French, Spanish and all Eastern Europe kill rob and malign one another every day the Lord sends. Of course that is not referred to as “White on White” crime. White people simply don’t do that to one another. Ha! Ha!
I remember several years ago when I was holding a poll for my friend Pierre Dupuch one of the persons that was also working the poll for him took a break. We were sitting on St. Matthew’s Church steps opposite the Sunday school where the poll was being held. He said to me, “George, why is it that when the black people come to vote they all seem to vote for the PLP?” I answered by saying to him, “The same reason the ‘Conchy Joes’ vote for the FNM.” He became enraged and said, “You’re a racist.” I answered by saying to him that “You are right! You have been racist in this country for over 500 years, so what is wrong with me being a racist for a day?” He retorted, “You’re a … crazy racist.” And I answered, “That’s right.” Anyone who wants further details may ask Sidney Whitfield who was also there.
So I would ask these radio talk hosts and editorial writers to quit sensationalising this “Race Card” foolishness and allow the history of this new nation to be told. It has been said down through the ages “If you don’t know where you come from, how can you know where you are going?” As with the Duvalier case some people are hellbent on distorting history so as to suit their personal agenda whatever that may be.
Yours etc.,
GEORGE CAPRON
Reprinted from The Nassau Guardian
