Dear Editor,
A few years ago, I asked a dear Afro-Guyanese friend a blunt question: “Do you consider the damage you are doing to your children when you walk into that church to worship a white God?” What followed was a healthy discussion, and my friend made some changes to how his children are exposed to religion.
It is this same type of question that came to mind when I saw that Professor Marjoleine Kars (a white European woman) was the speaker for the International Decade for People of African Descent Assembly-Guyana’s (IDPADA-G) event, “The 1763 Revolution, Celebrating our Heroes,” on the 31st of August.
Here is what was said/published in a 2021 interview with Dr. Kars: “It was the biggest and most successful slave rebellion in the Caribbean — until Haiti’s revolution decades later. And it likely would have been completely forgotten, were it not for a chance discovery by historian Marjoleine Kars.”
Kars says in this interview, “I was in the national archives in The Hague. I’m Dutch… And so I was poking around, and I found all these records about a place I had never heard of — called Berbice.”
I now truly understand how indigenous people feel when they are told that Columbus discovered the New World; Kars ‘discovered’ a revolution that all Guyanese are aware of from early childhood, but the millions of us are colored, and I guess until the whites ‘discover’ something, it does not exist.
The question of why IDPADA-G would indulge in promoting ‘white privilege’ when the theme for the International Decade is “People of African Descent: Recognition, Justice, and Development” completely eludes me, as does the need for ‘white’ validation of the 1763 rebellion. There are numerous Guyanese with in-depth knowledge of the various slave rebellions who would be more appropriate for such a talk. This IDPADA-G action is myopic, misguided, and runs counter to the expressed goals of the International Decade.
Editor, I am not closed to experts in fields being of different races, and no doubt IDPADA-G can reply with “how great thou art” about Professor Kars. Still, in my strongest opinion, I do not believe any history lecture by ‘whites’ serves the purpose of the International Decade and (again, my opinion) is of great detriment to the psyche and soul of the recipients and those looking to IDPADA-G for leadership.
May I suggest a workshop for IDPADA-G on dissecting the meaning of Bob Marley’s seminal work “Redemption Song”? For I truly believe “none but ourselves can free our minds”; God is not white, stay woke.
Sincerely,
Robin Singh
