Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 08, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Every young Guyanese person who wants to understand how troubled this country is should read a brand new book on the Caribbean. There is a section in reference to the love of white complexion by the Jamaican and Guyanese people that I like, the author wrote; “slavery was gone but its inequalities remained.”
Written by an historian with a doctorate from Cambridge, Carrie Gibson’s Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day,” is simply beautiful reading of the portrayal of a brutal, tragic history of a placid, “cool,” underdeveloped part of the globe named the Caribbean.
If you lived in Guyana in 2014 and you read Carrie Gibson’s book and what she had to say on colour in Jamaica and Guyana, then you would see how one progressive era comes up, takes its place in history and then is supplanted by a zeitgeist that is unimaginably anachronistic. One of the great ironies of the 21st century is that the election of a Black man to the US presidency has exacerbated racial tensions in that country.
In her book, Gibson looks at skin colour in Jamaica and Guyana and one doesn’t know if she traveled to Guyana to do research for her book (though I doubt it; where would she have procured her research material) but if she was in Guyana, she must have remained speechless for the duration on her visit at the rate people in Guyana are obsessing over light complexioned.
Elizabeth Nunez in her review of Empire’s Crossroads, had this to say when she reached the part where Dr. Gibson looked at skin colour in Guyana and Jamaica; “In his popular book, “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell observes that ‘the brown skin classes of Jamaica came to fetishize their lightness’”.
It was exactly the same in Guyana with the League of Coloured People who rejected Forbes Burnham for membership because he was not light in complexion.
It was the same with the urban middle class East Indians who scorned dark skin and came to glorify white people. If there is anything wrong with the East Indians in Guyana, it is this fanatical attraction to white skin and ugly contempt for brown and dark complexion.
I remember years ago I did a column disparaging the emphasis of Indian films on white-skinned actors, an aberration that has gone on since the Hindu film industry was born and best explained by the caste system.
One of Guyana’s most prominent medical doctors then, and still is, met me on East Street and with a broad grin on his face, referred to the article and said to me, “Freddie I love them bad, love them white skin girls in the films you talk about.” I still chat with this doctor because if there is something he has about him, it is his honesty. He told me how he truly felt.
I remember what Rudy James’s secretary once told me in the early nineties. Law professor, Rudy James, remains one of my favourite Guyanese. He was at the time the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at UG. I cannot remember her last name but I know her first name was Molly.
I knew a lecturer who had liked her and I was making a joke about her marrying the guy. Molly said to me; “He’s nice but I want a clear-skin husband.” I then responded in a way I should not have but it just came out. I said; “But Molly suppose the clear skin man you want thinks just like you?” Molly couldn’t speak. I am dark and Molly was much darker.
If Carrie Gibson had come to Guyana in 2014, she would have seen in evanescent glows of what colonialism has done to the Guyanese psyche. For over five years now, the advertising industry has “blacked” (what a pun) out dark-skin faces. This is not something that you have to look hard to see. It stares you in the face.
Pick up any one of the four daily newspapers, tune in to any television station, and the advertisements feature ether Caucasian images or visages of very light humans. Missing completely from the landscape are the images of African people or dark-complexioned faces.
Even sadder than this reversion to colonial domination is the complete absence of any criticism from Guyana’s African rights groups. At least in colonial society you had organizations that denounced this ubiquity of white image. After the efforts of Forbes Burnham, the power of decolonization, the influence of Black power, the rise of Black faces in Hollywood, great Black athletes and Barack Obama, in 2014 Guyana still loved white faces.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
Apr 24, 2024
Round 2 GFF Women’s League Division One Kaieteur Sports – The Guyana Police Force FC on Saturday last demolished Pakuri Jaguars FC with a 17 – 0 goal blitz at the Guyana Football...Kaieteur News – Just recently, the PPC determined that it does not have the authority to vitiate a contract which was... more
By Sir Ronald Sanders Waterfalls Magazine – On April 10, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States... more
Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.
Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]