Racism - not just about black and white on the Rock

Speaking of star power, we were talking in a seminar the other day about why Hitler didn't capitalise on his own in 1940 to launch the invasion of Britain.

He'd just relentelessly mowed through Europe, on such a roll that the French sealed their own humiliation by practically handing Paris to him on a silver platter. The British had only begun to think the Germans might actually mean business a year or so before, and the Americans hadn't upped their production capabilities yet - i.e. there was no fleet of shiny American-made Spitfires at hand for the British to buy and turn on the Germans. And the German people themselves, while still a little dazed and confused about what they had actually done by giving this man power - and certainly not pro-war - were buoyed by the prospect of a quick and powerful knockout punch to Britain. The end was in sight.

But Hitler hesitated, for a whole month and a half. By the time he finally started attacking from the air, the British had rallied. The invasion was delayed, and delayed, and finally H turned his sights on Russia and the eastern front, and the full scale invasion of the United Kingdom never came about as planned.

So why did he hesitate?

We were throwing out theories left, right and centre - well, the rest of the people in my class were, I was busy making mental notes to Google phrases like "battle of Britain" and trying to remember who Goring was (the handicap of attempting a history Masters' while never having studied history before continues). Anyway a discussion was raging around me, and then our prof finally stepped in to offer his own theory.

Even though so much of WWII was anchored on issues of race, people rarely take that issue into account when debating what happened, he argued. The fact was that Europe itself was divided into three different races. This caught my attention immediately - clearly growing up in a culture where "race" is defined solely by "white" and "black" had conditioned me, for as soon as he said it, I thought: "But Europe is practically all white, what's he talking about?"

The three different races were the Anglo-Saxons - that is, the Aryan race, the Latin people, and the Slavs. He argued that Hitler, naturally, viewed Germans at the top of the totem pole, and had seen no problems with enslaving all the Slavic countries and rolling right over France, a Latin country. (And murdering all the Jews he could find, of course.) The problem was that with France under German occupation, the war had been reduced to a war between Britain and Germany - that is, roughly, an Anglo-Saxon war. That Hitler may have seen it as cousins fighting cousins - Aryans against Anglos. Suddenly an unnatural war. That he truly and honestly thought Churchill would also understand this, and would come around and accept peace. On Hitler's terms of course.

And so he hesitated, giving Churchill time to see the light. Clearly ol' Winston had other things in mind.

The point is, however, that even though I had always thought of Europe as one race - white - the argument did (and presumably still does) exist that Latin and Anglo-Saxon are two different races. Something which for some reason had never occurred to me.

The next day I had lunch with two Bermudian friends, and in discussing home we somehow boarded the subject of how Bermuda classifies Portuguese people as "Other". Black, white, or Other. I wasn't in thinking mode and the seminar of the day before had clearly left my mind already, so we all joked and laughed about how silly that seemed, to classify Portuguese as something different from white when clearly, since neither are black, they must both be the same. "We must be the only country in the world that does that," one friend said.

That afternoon, in another seminar, we were discussing English colonial rule in Africa, comparing it to French and Portuguese colonial rule. One quote jumped out at me: that the English colonial administrators wanted to be nothing like the "oily woily Portuguese". Suddenly, the penny dropped.

Clearly there is a severe race issue between blacks and whites in Bermuda that we are all focusing on and that will hopefully be resolved within a generation. Because of the sheer population numbers involved, that should definitely be a priority.

But to what extent is race a problem between Bermuda's Latin population and its whites and blacks? Do Bermudians (both black and white) view the Portuguese population as inferior? (Do we have a common bond in our views on the third significant chunk of Bermuda's population?) How much of a problem is this right now and what, if anything, should be done about it?

"Who's driving this clattering train?"

My spidey sense is telling me the PLP are afraid of Gina Spence-Farmer.

I think I would be too. She could do it. Could the UBP actually be uniting? Or am I reading too much into it? Get Gina out there talking on the issues - done, she's in the Senate. Now, force a by-election somewhere, preferably in a UBP stronghold, get her into the House as an elected representative of the people - now she can do some real damage. Now, all of a sudden, she could become leader of the party.

Could.

If all that were to happen - and to happen before the next election, which if P really wants to spin out this Independence debate won't be happening until it absolutely has to - the scene could shift very, very quickly.

She's new to politics, so people aren't sick and tired and disillusioned with her yet. However she's not some unknown, people know who she is and what she stands for. She appears to have a generation of young people on her side - college students who may have been too young to vote in the last election but will be voting in the next one. I don't know how they feel about her within the party, but there appears to be no one else they will rally behind - no one has been able to get the required support to challenge Grant Gibbons for the leadership. (Yet.) Maybe Grant's pushing her now - maybe he doesn't want to leave (ok, he doesn't want to leave), but, maybe, being an intelligent man, he sees that the writing is on the wall, and is determined to at least depart on his own terms. (It's incredible how it all swings on something as seemingly inconsequential as charisma. The battle of the Davids for the Tory leadership is the perfect example. Has star power always been such a potent political force or is this just another symptom of our mass media age?)

Back to them byes. Who else could there be? Christian Dunleavey called the Wayne Furbert suggestion. It is weird that Furbert should be named a deputy leader along with Dunkley two years ago - and still be referred to as deputy up until July of this year - and then Jon Brunson be named a deputy with Dunkley just weeks ago with no mention of what happened to Furbert's role. If they've been asked about that yet I haven't seen it.

Then there's the triumvirate of Barritt, Dunkley and Dodwell - all of whom could do it and do it well. They're dedicated, they're passionate, they're determined, they've got the experience, and so on and so forth (I know what certain people out there are thinking - to them I say, aw shuddup already).

The problem is, they've all been around for so long, (oh yeah and they're all white and rich - seems to work for US presidents and, oddly, wannabe Tory leaders, but definitely a handicap in Bermuda politics). Everyone seems to be so tired of both the PLP and the UBP Old Guard (apparently even the PLP is tired of its Old Guard - how quickly loyalty dissolves on both sides once the bonds are cut) that it would be hard to get excited about any of them. Gina could rally that excitement.

Unfortunately, she'd also be suffering from Ashfield-syndrome. I strongly doubt that a woman who's been in politics for such a short time, who hasn't even served time as a backbencher or in a Shadow Cabinet, who is completely and totally untried, could reasonably be catapulted to the very top position inside of three years.

But it's a watch-this-space thought. Maybe the next election is a tad soon, but there's always the one after that. Who knows.

In the meantime, on a slight tangent, I'm sure that reading Shirer's Berlin Diary for hours and then reading the news from home immediately afterwards was probably too potent a cocktail for the old imagination. Simmer down, there, Sarah. This is most certainly not the Third Reich, even if the rhetoric does seem to be ... well, echoing.

It all does raise a few questions though. Someone is driving the train. Is it the Premier? Does he wield that kind of star power? Or is it someone else?

Back to paganism - or, better yet, atheism!

So, there's those who claim Independence for Bermuda is the symbolic casting off of the last shackles of slavery.

Unfortunately for that argument, slavery existed in Africa long before the Europeans ever arrived. Not only did the Arabs have a fruitful little business going enslaving Africans from around 600 A.D. on, Africans themselves were enslaving Africans when the Europeans arrived - and both Africans and Arabs may well have continued merrily on their caravanning way were it not for the arrival of Europeans like David Livingstone, who was horrified at what was going on and dedicated much of his well-publicised life to speaking out against it.

This is most definitely not a defence of imperialism. Those white people definitely were arrogant and badly behaved, and the effects are still wreaking havoc, in the East as well as Africa. But freedom from slavery as justification for breaking away from Britain - when placed in the historical context - doesn't appear to make much sense.

Ignoring that detail for now, however, I take issue with the use of the word "last".

Because while those repressed British were running around shooting elephants, spreading white European models of government in countries that did not want it, and - according to several of the books I've come across lately - spreading rampant VD everywhere they went (Randy Andy indeed), they were also imposing one more thing on every country they colonised: Christianity.

Well, VD we can control now, so that doesn't necessarily have to be a problem anymore (safe sex people!). Again, ignoring minor historical details, we can go Independent and say that's another symbolic stand against slavery. But that's not the last shackle.

So what, in a country with one of the highest concentrations of churches in the world, where a vocal minority appear to be demanding sovereignty as part of the continuing civil rights movement, are they planning on doing about Christianity?

That is, if the goal is to cast off slave shackles and Independence is one way of doing it, shouldn't Christianity therefore be cast off too?

The prince! Is marrying the sea witch! In disguise!

Wow, Becca. Way to introduce me to yet ANOTHER Sad Song.

First it was Rufus Wainwright's Hallelujah, off the Shrek soundtrack. I wonder how many hours we managed to waste in good ol' Conde y Elcano listening to that song on repeat and "philosophising" about the nature of love and Malbec (and having Special Bed epiphanies about the "only thing I learned from love" line). (To everyone else, that sounded really sketchy but it honestly wasn't. Honestly.)

Then there's Daniel Beddingfield's The One, which was an important Hangover Sundays installment back on the Rock - Shakira's No, which took up entirely too much time in Gallegos - Sarah McLachlan, who I often discovered certain roomates sobbing noisily too after traumatic boyfriend incidents such as him neglecting to say "I love you" on hanging up the phone (what a jerk) - I even seem to remember a KCi and JoJo song that would actually reduce certain people to tears in Trinity before the opening chords were even completed. (Wow. Girls really are crazy.)

And now, thanks to Becca, it's James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover. Way to tell me about that one so that I downloaded it and now can't stop listening to it while playing Solitaire and trying to stop myself from charging to Tesco's with my laundry bag and buying all the chocolate they have in the store. (That's what the laundry bag is for. To put all the chocolate into, instead of wasting tons of plastic bags. Climate change is going to be The Challenge of the 21st century, you know. That's what Paul's argument regarding America as an international outlaw basically was: America sucks but hey, everyone, we're all going to melt and the earth is going to implode if we don't do something about climate change soon. It might even be too late already, but reduce, reuse, recycle anyway!)

The point being, James Blunt is sapping all my desire to complete my essay on whether or not the Iranian Revolution was truly Islamic or not (what does it matter when his lover is going?? What happened to his lover anyway? I don't understand, is she leaving him? But doesn't she love him anymore? Did he disappoint her? Why would she leave him when he clearly loves her so much? Is love just not enough? Must I listen to it again and again and again until I understand these mysteries? And isn't the "You have been the one for me" line the saddest ever - imagine saying that to someone! I mean, we still have The One took look forward to - imagine saying goodbye forever to The One, and knowing that there's no more Ones to look forward to, cuz of course if there were then The One wouldn't have been The One! And, worst of all, that it could be your fault that you are saying goodbye to The One! What a leftover life that would be!)

Yeesh. Good one, Becca. Here's to the Year of the Faith. A little Islamic fundamentalism is a nice cheerful alternative to James Blunt. Now, off to download Disney's Under the Sea ("yeah we in luck here, down in the muck here!").

Well, drastic times call for drastic measures.