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| Sunday, 05 September 2010 |
Street Speech
by Walter Rodney |
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Written by Walter Rodney
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Friday, 25 November 2005 |
Note: It is important to understand that the following comments were made specifically in the context of the Guyanese situation.
You see, we have had too much of this foolishness of race. I'm not
going to attempt to allocate the blame one way or another. I think more
than one political party has been responsible for the crisis of race
relations in this country. I think our leadership has failed us on that
score. I think external intervention was important in bringing the
races against each other from the fifties and particularly in the early
sixties. But I'm concerned with the present. If we made that mistake
once, we cannot afford to be misled on that score today. No ordinary
Afro-Guyanese, no ordinary Indo-Guyanese can today afford to be misled
by the myth of race. Time and time again it has been our undoing.
Does it have anything to do with race that the cost of living far
outstrips the increase in wages? Does it have anything to do with race
that there are no goods in the shops? Does it have anything to do with
race when the original lack of democracy as exemplified in the national
elections is reproduced at the level of local government elections?
Does it have anything to do with race when the bauxite workers cannot
elect their own union leadership? Does it have anything to do with race
when, day after day, whether one is Indian or African, without the
appropriate party credentials, one either gets no employment, loses
one's employment, or is subject to lack of promotion?
It is clear that we must get beyond that red herring and
recognise that it is intended to divide, that it is not intended in the
interest of the common African and Indian people in this country. Those
who manipulated in the 1960s, on both sides, were not the sufferers.
There were not the losers. The losers were those who participated, who
shared blows and who got blows. And they are the losers today.
It is time that we understand that those in power are still
attempting to maintain us in that mentality - maintain us captive in
that mentality where we are afraid to act or we act injudiciously
because we believe that our racial interests are at stake. Surely we
have to transcend the racial problems? Surely we have to find ways and
means of ensuring that there is racial justice in this society? But it
certainly will not be done by a handful of so-called Black men
monopolising the power, squeezing the life out of all sections of the
working class, and turning around and expecting that they will
manipulate an issue such as the Arnold Rampersaud affair and get the
support of ordinary black people because we will say, 'After all; is
only an Indian. We could hang him. No sweat.'
Because, as I said before, you start with one thing, you end
with another. The system doesn't stop at racial discrimination. Because
it is a system of class oppression, it only camouflages its class
nature under a racial cover. And in the end, it will move against
anyone irrespective of colour. In the end, they will move even against
their own. Because, don't believe if you are a member of that party
today, that you will be protected tomorrow from the injustices. Because
when a monster grows, it grows out of control. It eats up even those
who created the monster. And it's time that our people understood that.
"What I am trying to say is simply this: The revolution is made by
ordinary people, not by angels, made by people from all walks of life,
and more particularly by the working class who are in the majority."
- Walter Rodney
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