Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 14, 2014 Letters
Dear Editor,
I have noted the response of Mr. Dave Martins (“My response to Freddie Kissoon,” KN, September 12, 2014). I hope Mr. Martins did not take personal objections to what I have written or think that I am personal in my writings. I have never spoken to or met with Mr. Martins. I acknowledge his contributions to Guyana’s culture, though I must confess I have never been a fan of the type of music he composed.
I read Mr. Martins’ columns, find them interesting and will continue to do so. But Mr. Martins must know that as a prominent Guyanese, what he writes will have an influence on the minds of others. Columnists then are bound to respond to opinions from influential citizens that they feel may be bad, terrible, harmful, excessive, unbecoming, distasteful etc. I myself have been on the receiving end of accusations with these adjectives in front of them. I have not been deterred and will never be afraid
I found two columns of Mr. Martins to be sociologically dangerous. And I use the word dangerous deliberately. Guyana has been a tragic case in the non-appearance of democracy within a historical context. Colonial rule was essential an authoritarian system and post colonial Guyana since 1966 (right up to the present moment) has expanded the cruelties and bestialities in ways and directions that even the White colonial oligarch would find horrible.
In terms of the possession and practice of moral values, post-colonial leaders in Guyana, right up to the moment, are inferior in comparison to the White colonials. You may hate the White colonial, but the non-white, post colonial leader has turned out to be far less civilized. One is entitled to fool oneself in thinking that the Africans, Indians, Arabs, Mandarins, Persians, Jews are better than the Western white man. Post-colonial reality is another matter altogether.
It is against this background that people like Mr. Martins should be more cognizant of Guyana’s tragedy when he writes. In Mr. Martin’s sociological analyses there are no contexts. His essential and maybe unforgivable fault is that he compares countries across space and time that cannot be compared and he needs to be more careful abut that impossible methodology
For example, in his February 23, 2014 column, he wrote; “the irony is that when one considers how the rest of the world is dealing with its ethnic/racial/religious divisions, our situation is more benign than most.” With due respect to Mr. Martins, no trained Guyanese sociologist would say that. You cannot make that general statement in scholarly research.
You have to factor into your research, age of the country, its population, economy, political system etc. Mr. Martins lived in many countries and with his age should come the experience that there are many mechanisms and nationalist leaders in racially torn societies that work to prevent the journey to the precipice. In the US, many powerful nationalist politicians in both major parties would not allow the US to disintegrate into racial madness. In Guyana, some leaders want that so they can survive politically. In that same column Mr. Martins keeps making comparisons with other countries and Guyana in terms of the race divide and the comparisons are unworkable because you are talking about states that have almost nothing in common.
In an equally egregious column way back in 2012, which carried an obnoxious title “mental myopia,” he wrote that he saw corruption in many other countries. So what was his point? He explained it and his explanation was equally egregious. He couldn’t understand why we are so concerned about corruption in Guyana when he sees corruption among serving politicians in the US. Mr. Martins was accusing us in Guyana of being mentally myopic for lamenting corruption in our country. I could be discourteous and suggest Mr. Martins stick to writing and singing calypsos. But I will be circumspect and say to him that he should really write a column or a letter to the media and officially withdraw that column and ask Stabroek News to remove it from it archives
Frederick Kissoon
(Editor’s note: This discussion is closed)
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