Political racism is different from structural racism

Dear Editor,
Most analysts writing on Guyana rely on “racism” as the primary factor in understanding and explaining our politics and society. In doing so, they erect a Manichean Maginot line by which they equate the PNC/APNU with Afro-Guyanese and the PPP/C with Indo-Guyanese. Just as easily, they forget people of Indigenous origin and persons of Mixed ancestry. Next, they attach socio-economic wellbeing and political identities according to these fixed schemata.
The problem here is that political behaviour in Guyana has little to do with “racism” per se, and a lot more to do with the politicisation of racism, a process I choose to call “political racism”. The developments around City Hall and its Mayor, Ubraj Narine, offer the opportunity to illustrate the argument that racism is different from political racism. The former is structural, whereas the latter is tactical.
Structural racism is founded on supremacist ideology that is deeply institutionalised and backed up by policies that are intended to subjugate a group or groups of people based on assumptions of inferiority. Tactical racism is more fleeting, based as it were on techniques of political mobilisation.
I am suggesting here that Mayor Narine’s recent behaviour is one of political racism, because it relies on theatrical performances to mobilise and excite supporters, who otherwise would focus on the Mayor’s pathetic record for the job he was elected to do. The real, substantive issue at hand is that Ubraj Narine is a catastrophic failure in political leadership, if measured by the tools available for management assessment.
Ubraj Narine’s attack on President Ali and his administration in the language of Western-centric Islamophobia is intended to shift the ground of public discourse from the stench under Mayor Narine’s responsibility to the always available resource known as anti-Muslim bigotry. The setting of developments brings further evidence to the claims of political racism made here. Ubraj Narine is an Indian and a pandit. These are the same categories (Indians, and in particular Hindus – pace Keane Gibson) that are accused of practising structural racism against Mr. Narine’s political supporters. How ironic it is that an Indian Pandit is telling a mostly Afro-Guyanese group of cheering supporters that the PPP lacks dharmic principles of governance.
Ubraj Narine, the Indian pandit, was received with unfathomable excitement by his mostly Afro-Guyanese supporters, the very people who are the sufferers of the Mayor’s near dereliction of duty in Georgetown. In my view, these supporters ‘gave themselves’ to Narine, the Indian pandit, because they are from the same political party, or have the same political aspirations. Put differently, Narine is a ‘good Indian’ because of his politics, and Edghill is a bad African because he belongs to another political party.
I submit to you that unless an analytical distinction is made between structural racism and tactical political racism, you will not be able to understand what, on the surface, appears to be contradictions. Behind every bullet are words, narratives, political discourses. No one can draw a straight line between the politically inflammatory rhetoric of Ubraj Narine, with the Leader of the Opposition at his side, and the violent breach of State House. Yet, given the temporal proximity between Narine’s Islamophobic political racism and the attack on the President’s residence, one must at a minimum pose the question of responsibility.
The PPP as a political party has always taken the position that our central differences are not racial in nature, but political. The incidents surrounding the removal of encumbrances around the GHP, and the response by Ubraj Narine and top PNC officials bring great credibility to that argument.

Sincerely,
Dr Randolph Persaud