Ryhaan Shah responds to Freddie Kissoon again

Oct 15, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Friends who read ‘Kaieteur News” have called to tell me that Freddie Kissoon has “cussed” me out yet again in his column of October 14, 2020.
Kissoon finds that his self-hatred places him at a disadvantage in the context of Guyana’s burning issue, racism. When the Indian Guyanese community is able and willing when under attack to state clearly who their attackers are – a very normal human reaction – Kissoon views their truth as racism.
His self-hatred places him at a further disadvantage in that he has, for all of his adult life, embraced, praised, and placed even as gods in the heavens, several African Guyanese who he proudly boasted were his closest friends and allies. This “racelessness” is his main plank in his flawed determination of who is racist and who is not.
It was also why his chosen friends, in turn, embraced Kissoon as a useful ally in their stance against the Indian Guyanese community and as a decoy that helped them mask their own world view, i.e., they cannot be deemed racist if the Indian Kissoon supports them.
Kissoon now feels betrayed by these friends when the truth is that he, during all those years, failed to see them for who they were. (I understand that he has also “cussed” them out individually through his columns.) It took the five-month imbroglio when they supported the attempts to rig the March general election before the entire world to unmask them for Kissoon who now has to publicly admit that his judgement of their character was wholly flawed.
His continued attempt at the false equivalence of comparing me to his once-chosen friends who supported those attempts at rigging is perhaps a last ditched effort to deflect from his public humiliation at finding himself in the wrong.
He also has to admit that there were many of us who always saw those friends of his for who they were and had said so, much to Kissoon’s chagrin. While his world view is determined by his self-contempt, it was our ethnic consciousness that helped the Indian Guyanese community to see the truth of those around us and helped in our defence of ourselves.
It is very unlikely that Kissoon will give up his self-hatred despite it being a stumbling block to his world view even to the extent of placing him at a decided disadvantage in assessing the true character of those he embraces as friends.
His self-contempt is the one characteristic that actually fully defines him and now that he finds himself friendless and on the wrong side of history, his pain and devastation at seeing his once-close comrades as unprincipled and immoral is quite understandable.
It is the likes of Kissoon and his sempiternal inability to rise to the important national issues at an intellectual level that makes me very tired of Guyana. His columns prey on the fears and prejudices of his readers rather than enlighten them and in our preferred “cuss-out” culture, he undoubtedly takes pride in being much admired for being cock of that particular coop.

Sincerely,
Ryhaan Shah

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News