Commemorating Walter Rodne's 25 Anniversary.

BLACK WORLD-VIEW
THE POLITICIZATION OF RACE IN GUYANA A CONVERSATION WITH WALTER RODNEY
Vol. 1, # 4

In a previous issue Brother Rodney discussed some aspects of events surrounding Guyana's independence from England. That revolution being accomplished, there then began a process of revolutionary change within the context of independence. William Strickland talks with Rodney in this excerpt.

STRICKLAND: You mentioned distributing PPP [People's Progressive Party] pamphlets to people's houses and discovering class differences in the process. The impression I have was that there was a period when 'the racial divisions in Guyana seemed impossible to overcome. Could you say something about the nature of the race relations during that period and their evolution since then?

RODNEY: We have, as many people know, the peculiar problem of African and [East] Indian people residing and working and living within the same society. So for many Guyanese, when the word race is used, they don't think about the question of white domination and white values and so on. That is important, but by and large they mean this confrontation between Africans and Indians. I grew up in a divided society, in which the majority of one's day to day contacts were with one's own ethnic group. So there was a certain isolation. But I didn't regard it as a condition of hostility. I inter related with Indians at school, etc. They were just other Guyanese. But there was that sense that there was a potential rivalry and that one had to guard [one's interests].

The images that were common in the black community were images, for instance, which set one into thinking that one had, of necessity, to maintain certain standards because the alternative would be the threat of being overcome by Indians. It was a curious kind of double standard. In one way it was anti Indian. In another sense, it raised the Indians to a position of the ideal type, because black people had a way of saying, "you see those Indian students. They go to school and they go back home and they help their parents." So you must help your parents. "You see that Indian fellow there. He isn't spending his time around some jukebox joint. He's studying hard." So one must study. So it was in a sense of competitive and contradictory and almost an idealization of the Indian. I don't think it is really true, in fact the dedication and solidarity of the Indians and that sort of thing. But black people were always saying, "We're so divided. The Indians all move together." Or on the cultural level, "See, the Indians still have their names and still have their clothes. We don't have any thing." There was that sense of envy and, to the extent of which I just spoke, competition. Eventually, there was also strife.

The actual strife began in the late fifties when the differences became politicized in the wake of the division of the PPP into the PNC [People's National Congress] and the PPP. From that point onward, once the racial differences were raised to a political level, one saw its tremendous divisive and explosive capacity. I saw very little of it. But in 1960 we had seen the phase of electoral politics, where people were lining up on one side or another, the PPP if one was Indian and PNC if one was African. That was very clear.

I recall very well, as late as 1961, being very confused on the question of whether one went for the PPP or the PNC. As I listed the pros and cons, I said, well the PPP says it's a Marxist party but it's not operating that way and it has Indian races. On the other side, the PNC didn't even claim to be Marxist or even a serious socialist party. Yet it had the Africans, and for those of us Africans who were struggling for some clarity, struggling to take a progressive position, it was extremely difficult. Many who had joined the PPP as the better of a bad choice actually had to leave the party. And ultimately, because of those racial questions, a generation of us has actually stayed clear of the two dominant political parties.

The whole history of the 1960's was a history in which our political choices were fundamentally dictated, not by any class position but by the on going race conflict. And it made it extremely difficult for any progressive, African or Indian, to intervene in the Guyanese situation, because it was already so formed that the moment one intervened, one was doing so in a ready made contest of Indian versus African. In that respect I was actually more comfortable in Jamaica because there the confrontations were clear. Class and ethnicity ran along the same lines. When I wrote The Groundings With My Brothers, I referred back to the Guyanese African and Indian situation, trying to make it clear that the way in which one was using the word "black" in West Indian context must of necessity embrace the majority of African and Indian population because I knew that the word "black" could well be interpreted in a narrow sense to mean only African, and hence anti adverse responses to "Black Power" to the Indian. And there were, in fact in Guyana, some extent that people perceived it as pro African and exclusive of Indian. Unfortunately, Brother Stokely Carmichael was in Guyana on one occasion and didn't help the situation very much by introducing what I thought was essentially an alien, North American conception of race. He came across I wasn't there at the time but what ever he said, the common consensus when I returned to Guyana was that he had said Black Power is for African people. And that meant African people must defend themselves against Indians. This was the issue: that black people must fight for their own rights over and against all others including Indians. It caused considerable consternation because it came at a time, 1970, when many serious Guyanese young people were looking for a solution to the African - Indian racial issue. They were looking for some political forms outside of both the PNC and the PPP, which would once more integrate black political activity, both African and Indian. And, therefore, Carmichal's intervention was rather negative.

At the present time I would say we have seen the depths to which a people can sink and we are probably now seeing some recovery in that from 1962 to 1964 the racial problem was politicized to the point that it became social violence race riots, communal riots between Indians arid Africans. Since then, just over a decade ago, there has been no overt racial violence. The hostility and antipathy of that period has obviously carried over. But I believe we're on the road back to a more healthy appreciation of politics, because the experience of the last few years is, more and more, convincing. Large sectors of the population are beginning to realize that exploitation has little or nothing to do with whether one is African or Indian in the Guyanese context.

The African sector of the population, which in 1964 supported the present government, the PNC, almost 100%, was involved in the racial riots. Africans fought for themselves. They had to defend themselves. And they were sometimes on the aggressive against Indians, perpetuating, you know, communal acts of barbarism. The Indians did the same and they were backed by the PPP. Now I think that we are looking in both communities at the process of political education that comes from the 10 years of experience and practice. African people in Guyana who look around them today recognize that their material, social and political condition has not advanced, and in many cases has declined, in spite of the existence of this so called African government. That, for them, must be a very important learning experience.

They have to stop and ask themselves, "What does it really mean when we say we have an African government; we have some people in power?" The Prime Minister and most of the ministers are Africans. But this has not affected the reality of the lives of the masses of the African segment of the Guyanese population. They can look around and see who among them have advanced and recognize that the system is one that gives opportunity only to the few, for the Indian population, on the other hand, it is rather easier to maintain the racial interpretation because they can say, "Well, we as Indians are being excluded from power. There is corruption in the electoral system which has insured that the African minority would retain power although we are now the numerical majority in this country." And many of them would just state that as an unqualified position. However, among the Indian working people, and some of the intelligentsia, there is a growing awareness that while the petit bourgeoisie that dominates Guyana is largely African, it is not exclusively African. It is engaged in alliances with certain kinds of Indians with the Indian businessman and other Indian petit bourgeoisie. And ultimately in this corruption and anti people policy, they can perceive, too, that it is not really benefiting the masses of the African people. So there is a general awareness that is growing, I believe, in the roots of both of these communities that surely the time must come when the African and Indian people will organize around their interests as producers in the Guyanese society as distinct from pursuing this myth of racial superiority or racial subjugation.

STRICKLAND: I was wondering whether or not you see any similarity between this racial strife in terms of advancing the political interests of one group over the other, and the point that Fanon makes about the use of tribal politics, for example in a place like Zambia or Kenya.

RODNEY: It does have some of those over tones. I always like to distinguish between the existences of ethnicities, whether they be called tribes or races and the politicization of the tribal or racial factor. You can exist as different entities without those differences being politicized; certainly without their being politicized through an act of confrontation. However, there is a little more to it in Guyana and Trinidad, than just a case of ethnic groups. Many of the ethnic groups in African societies did not necessarily have any conflicting interests in production. But in Guyana, it is true that there has been a problem that historically the working class has always been divided because of the manipulation of the planter class. The Indians were introduced into the society specifically to counter and break the development of black working class movement after slavery. So it is not simply as though they co existed without any material relation one to the other. The Indians were purposely introduced to thwart the developing black working class movement and so economic competition between Africans and Indians was deliberately created within the construct of the old capitalist order. It was in the interest of the planter capitalist class to bring large numbers of Indians, not because there was a shortage of labor but to create a surplus of labor that they could use for lowering the wage rate. In that sense, the Indian and African historical encounter took place within the context of these contradictions with capital, which was not necessarily the case with ethnic groups in Africa.

STRICKLAND: So the economic competition at an earlier stage has been converted into the competition for control of the state at a later stage.

RODNEY: Precisely. Because even within the petit bourgeoisie, there is a very serious feeling of ethnic competition. The African sector of the petit bourgeoisie has always been conscious of the growth of an educated Indian group and the possibilities of this group superseding them in posts which traditionally they considered to be theirs. Therefore, in a sense what the new African dominated state is doing is trying to insure that some areas of the bureaucracy are closed off as preserves for the African section of the petit bourgeoisie, especially given the dominance of the Indian petit bourgeoisie in mercantile activities and the like. So, the competition is reflected today in a way more sharply at the level of the petit bourgeoisie than it is even in the left of the working class; because in the sugar industry there is large unemployment. The unemployment there is largely Indian now. It's no longer Indian versus African in that industry. Very clearly, almost exclusively an Indian working class. So they now have no racial "red herrings" to come in between themselves and management. They can understand the struggle for what it means. But at the level of the petit bourgeoisie, there is much more of the racial manipulation on both sides.

Walter Rodney, a native of Guyana, is presently there doing research in Guyanese history. His published works include The Groundings With My Brothers and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. William Strickland is a professor in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Both are Associates of IBW.