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Try again, Ms. Ritch
THE EDITOR, Madam: WELL, I see Dawn Ritch has seen fit to call my name in her latest diatribe, which this time is masquerading as a response to letters received by The Gleaner from people who objected to her clouded, myopic view of history. Ms. Ritch, I would not take ANY history lesson from someone as biased as you have shown yourself to be. I learned Caribbean history in school and from my wife's textbooks from her days at Ardenne, as well as my own personal reading of people like Marcus Garvey, Michael Manley etc. As for being an "American flag waver" as you have put it, yes, I love my birth country, but I have come to love Jamaica as my second home country. It is the land of my wife's birth. And I have respect enough for anyone's culture to get my facts straight before offering public criticism. Contrary to your statements that because we speak different languages, we share no history, you prove your ignorance even further. We are indeed all the sons and daughters of cultures grown out of a common history of colonialism. Though our daily tongues may differ, there is much we share in our past history. Whether descended from African slaves, European indentured servants or religious, or political freedom seekers, our fates have been thrown together in the "New World". Ms. Ritch, we are all creoles here in the Western Hemisphere, and we are all the better for it. Your misty-eyed imaginings of European royal blood somehow coursing through your veins is misguided, to say the least. Further your compact history of Napoleon has nothing at all to do with the matter of your unreasonable anti-American bias and snobbery and your inaccurate pronouncements on anything historical, or should I say hysterical. Yes, there are things that the U.S. could do much better and fairer, especially when speaking of foreign policy towards developing nations, but this does not mean that I, or anyone else, has to sit still when your brand of bigotry is evidenced. And although you deny it, your rampant Anglophilia is again evidenced by your response that "England is the mother of representative Government". They made a nice try, but they still have a Queen (and attendant decadent royal family) that can remove Common-wealth heads of state (see Austalia etc.) if it suits. Check and see how many countries have followed the U.S. version of democracy (and constitution) vs. the British and you may surprise yourself. And these days Ms. Ritch, any idiot can get access to e-mail, as you have amply illustrated, but it takes someone with an extreme inferiority complex coupled with a faulty intellect to write the nonsense that you have come up with. You are the only Jamaican that I have had experience with that needs to look down on others in order to feel better about themselves. Jamaicans big up demselves long time a'ready dem nuh need oono fe dat!
I am, etc., DONALD CALLUM E-mail: dcallum@billcom.com 355 Park Avenue South New York, NY Via Go-Jamaica
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