Last week, I ended my analysis of the first part of ethno-national identity with a series of investigative questions. While I may not be able to answer all those questions here, I will show that the maintenance of ethno-national identity can be a stumbling block to nation-building. I will also show that ethno-national identity is not restricted to the boundaries within the nation-state. Actually, ethno-national identity exists in the Diaspora with strong and significant strings attached to the parent-homeland, which arguably, provides a deep anchorage for sustenance and ultimate survival.
The mere quest for an ethno-national identity in multiethnic Guyana, Trinidad, and Suriname can be problematic, leading to ethnic tensions. The jockeying for power along ethnic lines in these countries can result in hegemonic control and the exclusion of other ethnic groups in important sectors of society.
Favouritism and competition for limited resources-jobs, housing, land, education, and credit-can fuel discontent and civic strife making the above countries virtually ungovernable and trapped in a cycle of wasted opportunities.
One has to be living under a rock for the past fifty years not to realise that ethnic favouritism has dominated Guyanese politics in which the both majority populations – Indians and Africans – have taken turns distributing the country’s spoils according to ethnicity. There is no indication that this perilous pattern of ethnic patronage will change, certainly not from the decorative coalition regime.
What is certain is that there are no set repressive measures (eg in the constitution) implemented to suppress and make demands on one ethnic group. But there is this perception that the majority African population that controls the levers of power in the coalition government has engaged in witch-hunting against Indo-Guyanese.
How much of this is accurate will depend, in my case, on more investigation but the public outcry amongst Indo-Guyanese has certainly created a perception that witch-hunting exists. Worrying, too, is that there are no sound plans from both sides of the political divide to remotely address the perception of witch-hunting. There has been, so far, an exercise in finger-pointing.
Witch-hunting aside, ethno-national identity is not restricted to one’s nation of birth. It is expressed outside one’s nation of birth in diasporic communities such as in North America and Europe.
In these distant and different communities, Caribbean Indians, for instance, find out very quickly upon arrival who they are, and consequently, are quick to declare and express their ethno-national identity.
Until recently, an average white person in the United States does not differentiate between black and brown people. To them, all non-white people are black.
To some people, such as Caribbean Indians, especially from Guyana who were scarred by the former PNC regime, the non-white-people label is offensive.
I label these Indians in the Diaspora as ethno-xiles, that is, they were exiled from their country because of their ethnic description. To these Indians, an association or a misplacement of their ethnicity is an attack on the very essence of their humanity.
Similarly, Caribbean-Indians in North America and Europe feel rather uncomfortable when mislabelled and mistreated as South Asians, although not with the same intensity as being mislabelled as an African-Guyanese, for example.
To demonstrate, in the US and Canada, no category for Caribbean-Indians exists in the census and so they are given the choice to identify themselves as black West Indians or South Asians.
Coming from an environment where race and ethnicity are more important to them than class, Caribbean Indians find being treated as blacks, South Asians, or Arabs to be demeaning and have strived to maintain an identity that suits them.
This is when ethno-national identity is reconstructed in a foreign land, which essentially means drawing on departed homeland ethnic sentiments to develop a sense of resurgence rather than resignation.
What generally happens in the Caribbean Indian Diaspora is that if they are mislabelled as black West Indians or South Asians they may go at great lengths to educate whites in small, immediate, and friendly circles about where they come from and who they are, even though they may have little meaningful contact with their former homeland.
From an open standpoint, the collective classification and subsequent identification of Caribbean Indians as something other than themselves misrepresent and undermine the unique differences among Caribbean people in North America. It is risible because no one wants realistically to be mislabelled for something else, particularly in developed countries of the world where higher standards are expected.
Nonetheless, the very urge for separate identity, however, may prevent Caribbean Indians from forming alliances with other ethnic groups to achieve greater goals such as racial equality in white societies as well as in their departed homeland.(Send comments to: [email protected])
