Latest update April 11th, 2026 12:02 AM
A matter of inclination and personal choice
DEAR EDITOR,
Examining the question of what makes human beings tick – motivation – is always an interesting exercise and I found this so when reading a recent letter about racism in your column. Not having read the two letters referred to in that letter, I cannot express a view about them. However, my husband and I are always discussing the difference between the Afro and Indian communities in the
UK, as we see them. The Guyana scene seems much the same.
We see the differences as cultural rather than racial. It is a tradition handed down. ‘Afros’ seem to prefer safe white collar career jobs, with assured pensions at the end of their working lives, while Indians are
Business-orientated and prefer to ‘work for themselves’. I agree that “the black minibus driver is just as hardworking as the Indian”, but who owns the minibus?
In the UK, Indians are helped to attain their goals with the encouragement and assistance of the extended family. And they have a clever way of getting there. Many of the younger generation start out by working in
British-owned supermarkets, learning from the bottom up, and then move on – either setting up their own businesses or initially joining the family in theirs.
Many family-owned Asian groceries are run on a 24-hour basis, family members working in shifts. I once saw a programme where the head of one such outfit explained that the family helpers are not paid a wage or
salary, they just help themselves from the till whenever they need to pay for something! They trust one another absolutely, because the family as a whole stand to benefit.
My husband has many friends from India and Pakistan and they all tell him that they could never spend their entire lives working for someone else. His Afro friends, at the same time, now ‘rest’ quietly at home, enjoying
occupational pensions. A matter of inclination and personal choice.
I think we are all aware of “the beauty, energy, intelligence, sportsmanship, etc. of fellow Guyanese”; no praying is required.
Geralda Dennison
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