Dear Editor
Response is being made to the false allegations of Donald Ramotar (KN 17TH Jan 2021) and Vishnu Bisram (KN 13th Jan 2021).
Asking Sam Hinds, as former Prime Minister and President during the PPP/C government, to provide evidence of what he did for the Black community in his respective portfolios is justifiable. It was Cheddie Jagan, in identifying Sam as his prime ministerial candidate, who said Hinds will be “the bridge” to the Black community. It is downright dishonest therefore for Ramotar to accuse those who are asking Sam to provide his performance record of “continu[ing] to pursue that racist line.”
If Jagan, who so viewed and identified Sam as “the bridge” is not being attacked or accused of pursuing a “racist line,” how in heaven’s name those who so seek to hold Sam accountable to Jagan’s statement are the target for attack and accusation? Something is definitely wrong with Ramotar’s reasoning or he is deliberately setting out to deflect, deceive and sow further divisions based on lies. He is behaving like the other Donald (Trump), displaying the penchant for distorting truths and stoking ethnic tension based on falsifications.
Now to Vishnu Bisram. Nothing he says would change the fact that he thrives on promoting racial triumphalism. In this instance it’s his professed ‘knowledge’ about the role of U.S Vice President Kamala Harris’ Black Jamaica father, Donald Harris vis-à-vis her East Indian mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris. Even were he to be shown, for instance, a Harris’ post on her Instagram account (June 2020) he would continue to argue her father did not play a “significant role” in her life.
The foregoing are Harris’ words: — “My parents marched and shouted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It’s because of them and the folks who also took to the streets to fight for justice that I am where I am. They laid the path for me, as only the second Black woman ever elected to the United States Senate….” There would be no surprise if he finds some other reason to devalue this excerpt, given the equal prominence of both parents, which would make persons of his thinking uncomfortable.
To his alleged claim of supporting Black causes in the U.S where he is a beneficiary of the African Americans struggles for civil, voting, fair housing, equal employment opportunity, affirmative actions and other rights, he is reminded “to whom much is given much is expected.” On the issue of other races and ethnic groups’ role in Black American struggles, Bisram is reminded that such support is not unlike the white abolitionists in the Black struggle for emancipation, not unlike the struggle in India to end white colonialism or in the West Indies for independence.
Minority groups have always played a role in the struggle of an aggrieved predominant group. What such action confirms is the solidarity nature of decent people in the fight for universal justice. It is borne out of recognition and appreciation that what affects one invariably affects all, that your peace is intertwined with my peace. And whereas he is allowed opportunities as a minority race in another man’s land he creates roadblocks to the Black struggles in Guyana to enjoy what he enjoys in the U.S.
I remain unapologetic in my firm stance defending lands in Kingelly WCB that are still owned, as per Transport #4246 dated July 1851, by my great ancestor Cudjoe McPherson. As a descendent and one of his many heirs there shall be no wavering in ensuring the unoccupied lands remain in the family’s possession. I shall not be deterred or distracted.
Let me remind Bisram he entered the conversation with a lie that “workers he spoke with say Lewis should take positions like that of his predecessor Joseph Pollydore and be supportive of what is right not what favours his race.” In all his responses he has failed to provide any shred of evidence where I have acted inimical to the rights of any group, any race, including mine. No worker told him anything but over the years he has been allowed to run free trafficking in lies.
In societies such as ours, where the authors of lies and reckless statements about individuals in the media go unchallenged, the purveyors of these public mischiefs are shaping a false narrative and besmirching the names of those who worked hard to build and maintain their character. We cannot allow these mischief makers to create an alternate reality, where truth is no longer the truth because they say so. They are playing a dangerous game and together they do society more harm than good. The affected must fight back by speaking up.
Regards
Lincoln Lewis
