"The threat of a joint uprising by Africans and Indians", class, race - Groundings 13 June, 2020

Still taken from  Walter Rodney - Race and Class Video

I started writing this at 8pm on 13 June, 2020 , forty years to the moment almost when a bomb exploded and killed Walter Rodney in Georgetown.

Sherlina and I decided to go online for our version of Groundings., Groundings without the free books,seedlings and the banner on the road side.

Theme was 'Let us take direct action to end racism in Guyana'.

Idea was to get people to brainstorm some 'direct actions by the people' to quote Rodney, to end racism in Guyana. To say now we see the problem, experience problem , are hurt by the problem.. to move on from the hurt and anger.

 One woman joined from Trinidad.  Others from Guyana, and the USA.
One woman was in front of St John's Episcopal Church in Washington DC. She and others were providing food to the protesters there.

These are some of my impressions and learning from the conversation. There was much more.


How do y'all remember Rodney?
The young woman from Trinidad asked.. 'How do Guyanese remember Rodney'. She had come to learn and read Rodney in Trinidad, becoming impressed with his Groundings - of going into grass roots places and talking and sharing. We talked about why he was only remembered as a man who get bomb in 1980. Or as a fantastic scholar. And of how his ideas are still dangerous today to the political party interests who continue to use race as a way promoting their interests.

We talked about the lack of organising in the Caribbean and Guyana, and how organising was transformed into NGOs doing matrices and so on and adopting terminologies. And how we talk Rodney but we don't do what Rodney was doing .

One of Rodney's contemporaries in the call said.. "We need to f....k.g transform the World."

 Direct Action : Transform the world

Direct Action : Keep educating Guyana about Rodney's ideas 

(there is a course in preparation at the University of Guyana, other ideas for Groundings in schools and other places )

Race/Class
Rodney in his lecture said (Thanks Krysta Bisnauth for the text of all the quotes) "Whenever there were clashes between Africans and Indians in Guyana... we must try to determine whether a clash between Africans and Indians is always a racial clash..
..or if  it was an interclass conflict rooted in the inequalities of the socio-economic structure  and, it seems to me, that many of the conflicts which are erroneously described as tribal, ethnic, racial and the like  in the third world are precisely conflicts of that type that would have taken place within an ethnically or racially homogeneous society...  one simple yardstick...I ask myself whether the conflict would have occurred in a racially homogeneous society? And in many instances, this is precisely what one finds. That the kinds of struggles between African  and Indian were really struggles that were rooted in the lopsided nature of colonial social relations - social and economic relations ...."

I thought of this.  Indian person walks into a Black managed service provider in short pants and rubber slippers and does not get service. Sees other Black persons getting services. Immediately thinks it is racist. Tells a few people. Complains.

 Black person who has walked  into same service provider in short pants and rubber slippers, did not get service. Does not bother to complain.  Hears about the experience of the Indian man.
No space though for them to meet.

Service provider says they are not racist and they love everybody who walks in the door.

No space though set up for Service provider to meet and discuss anything.. so even if one was race and the other was class.. how to move forward on that.



White supremacy continues
 We talked a bit about how white supremacy is the heart of anti-blackness - regardless of who is doing the anti-blackness. We talked about systemic racism in the US , and the idea that Indian people were perpetuating the White racism in Guyana and Trinidad.

Direct Action : Understand where your ideas about the other come from.

Difficult conversations
We talked about how we perpetuate racism in jokes and assumptions made even if we think we were not racist. And that challenging those needed some conversation.

A woman said that there is a lot of hurt and anger. People are hurt. Another woman questioned 'do we have the language, or the methodology for the conversation?"

I thought we did, that even though the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that we could have the conversations and fix things.

Direct Action : Develop the will, the intention to transform the relationships, to acknowledge the hurt,  the language to have the conversations about racism in Guyana. Have the conversations.

A young man of Indian origins on the road was cursing loud about the 'f..g' black man and the elections and punishing for 18 months.  Another  time I might talk to him about whether he was punishing less under the PPP, but anger is not a good time to talk. I reach out to a man I know a little about one of his Facebook posts. He said thanks and changed the post.


"The threat of a joint uprising by Africans and Indians"

"If you insist that race is a fundamental and cultural category that overshadows all else then in fact, it is extremely difficult for individuals to come to an understanding of how the contemporary society is going to resolve problems that are real or imagined between racial groups.. there is a certain defeatism in the pluralist approach because, if it is correct, then presumably Indians must always continue to be Indians and Africans must always continue to be Africans and at best, they might co-exist amicably but they certainly could not create a unified society with a single dynamic "

Rodney recounted that the British had shut down one of the African uprisings when they learned that Indian labourers were going to join. They could not face the 'threat of a joint uprising by Africans and Indians'...  Imagining what a joint uprising could be like now.. no longer against the British, but the 'single dynamic' against poverty, against the destruction of the climate and the environment (the sea is not racist)

Imagine the promise  of a joint uprising instead of the continued threat of an uprising against each other to continue the destruction.

Direct Action : Keep dreaming about the promise of the joint uprising of Africans and Indians

Updated 15 June, 2020 to share an interview with Protoje in which he talks about Rodney and Garvey. We had talked about this in our groundings.


Thanks to technology and so, we can listen to Rodney directly.