THE EDITOR, Sir:
THROUGH MY favourite, refreshing, irreverent columnist, Melville Cooke, my attention was drawn to Dawn Ritch's column about race, colour and leadership of black people in Jamaica.
I comment here in the interest of truth and the integrity of The Gleaner, a newspaper I had been buying since age 17. I did not find Ms. Ritch's column edifying or informative.
In response to Ms. Ritch's column, Melville Cooke mentioned Alexander Bedward, Leonard Howell and Dr. Walter Rodney, three black men who were engaged in the "black struggle". In her reply, Ms. Ritch wrote of Dr. Rodney thus: "A foreigner from Guyana, Dr. Rodney came to Jamaica in 1968 where he spent nine months. He fermented discord which led to a violent riot and race war against the Chinese in downtown Kingston. The then Prime Minister banned him and with very good reason."
Rubbish! The late Dr. Walter Rodney, a very outstanding scholar, historian and political activist was a lecturer at the regional University of the West Indies to which Guyana was subscribing. Rodney had come to lecture in his country's university.
He did not ferment "discord which led to a violent riot and race war against the Chinese in downtown Kingston". This is uninformed rubbish and mischievous nonsense.
In 1965 a black woman, working with a Chinese family, was allegedly set upon and beaten by members of the family. When news of the incident got out it sparked an attack on the Chinese community by some angry black people, in revenge.
I was among the student body at UWI in 1968 which planned a demonstration to protest the Government's refusal to allow Rodney back into the island from a visit to Canada. We took to the road, all of us in our red gowns as a means of identification. We were to face the police with guns and tear gas. In downtown Kingston things became very ugly when the people on the street literally took over the demonstration and started to riot.
This was the heyday of the Black Power Movement of which Rodney was an advocate. Books written by black people, like Malcolm X, were banned. An unpopular Shearer Government was, understandably, quite frightened. And it was all very disturbing to the ruling elite generally but particularly the "black aristocracy" and "wee-droppers", many declaring that they were not Africans but "Jamaicans" or "West Indians".
Of course Rodney did walk and talk freely with the people below Torrington Bridge where so many of the privileged elite will say they don't go, perhaps not so much out of fear of anything, but rather to stake out social class pedigree that necessitates a denial of ancestral roots in Foster Lane.
He was mixing with and talking to people - 'A Grounding with the Brothers' - who in seeking employment in the establishing of the ruling elite must hide their inner-city addresses if they fancy a chance of getting employed.
I must confess to being fascinated by Ms. Ritch's 'Code Noir', which excludes Hugh Shearer and Michael Manley as black. It reminds me of a story I heard as a youngster. It is about a Jamaican woman who revelling in her witnesses and delusions, went to the USA and was immediately classified as black. Grievingly she declared that all she had was a wee-drop of African blood. From henceforth she was called "Wee-dropper".
I am, etc.,
TED DWYER
98 Hope Road
Kingston 6
