I always enjoy reading Walton Brown’s well written and insightful articles, and his July 26 column, “Comeau’s speeches miss the point”, was no exception. It raised a number of interesting points about racial equity.Unfortunately, there were a couple of “facts” in Walton’s article that are incorrect, which I would like to address.First of all, there is an undercurrent in his column suggesting that my writing about racial inequity was somehow politically motivated. For the record, I have no connection whatsoever with the OBA, UBP or PLP. I was simply trying to point out that struggling black Bermudians are the ones suffering most from the way Bermudians, both black and white, deal with the race issue.By way of background, I come from a working class family, and I have spent much of my time since I retired in 1999 trying to help out Bermuda’s disadvantaged.I have personally financed more than 15 scholarships for struggling black Bermudians, I have tutored young men in the prison and at CedarBridge Academy, I have spent much time on charitable boards, and I have devoted literally thousands of hours developing policies and programmes with the aim of making Bermuda a better place.So with that background I found it alarmingly hypocritical that Walton Brown failed to reveal to the Bermuda public that it was Walton himself who asked me to address the race issue. In an April 19 e-mail to me, he said he believed that I “could play a critical part” in the struggle for racial equity in Bermuda.While he may not like some of the points that I made in my speech, particularly the parts that suggest the PLP has harmed struggling black Bermudians by abusing the racial-equity issue to fend off questions about Government corruption, Mr Brown and the PLP have no basis to suggest that my efforts were anything other than to help out struggling black Bermudians that so desperately need our help during these very difficult times.He also forgot to bring to its logical conclusion his claim that, under the leadership of Frederick Wade, the PLP had phased out the “black authenticity” construct (“United we stand; Divided we fall) in the mid 1990s. If that were true — specifically, if the PLP had moved on to the “Morality-based” construct as advocated by Dr. Cornell West, Dr Louis Henry Gates, Jr, Tavis Smiley and other leading American racial equity advocates, as discussed in my Rotary speech then Walton is, in effect, saying that every racial-equity advocate was duty bound to publicly speak out against those PLP Cabinet Ministers who used racial metaphor (e.g., “That’s a plantation question”) to shield themselves from probing questions about their own possible corruption and financial misdeeds. And since not one racial equity advocate, including Walton Brown, publicly voiced their outrage, he is, in effect, saying that he and they have let down not only their race but also their country.My point here is not to vilify Mr Brown or those PLP supporters who remained silent, but rather to point out that the facts simply don’t support his assertion that the PLP and Bermuda racial-equity advocates have moved on from the black authenticity construct. Until they do, political corruption will be the natural result because, as Dr Cornel West so eloquently makes clear, the black authenticity construct prohibits any racial-equity supporter from publicly criticising other blacks and thereby removes all accountability of those who hold public office.Which brings us to the corruption issue. Walton claims that there is no evidence of Government corruption. I have repeatedly explained in a number of articles why it is highly likely that there is massive Government corruption in Bermuda. (For example, see “Response to Premier Cox’s Press Release, “Shame on Kevin Comeau” found on the Good Governance Institute of Bermuda website (www.bdagoodgov.org.)) The essence of the argument is this:Numerous Government capital projects over the last ten years (e.g., Berkeley Institute, Port Royal Golf Course, Heritage Wharf, the new Courthouse, TCD) have collectively resulted in cost overruns exceeding $100 million. Generally, only two things can cause large cost overruns: managerial incompetence and financial corruption.When you consider that the cost overruns on some of these projects exceeded 100 percent of the initial cost estimates and that Government had at its disposal civil servants with collectively more than a 100 years of architectural, engineering and construction expertise, it is hard to conclude that only incompetence was at play. Someone at the highest level of Government had to be doing something unscrupulous, either at the front end or through kickbacks and undisclosed interests. Individually and collectively, these and other large Government contracts simply don’t pass the smell test.Not only were tendering rules violated and the recommendations of civil servants ignored in the granting of some of these and other large Government contracts, but inordinately large change orders were frequently made, a sure way to slip much larger profits to connected contractors. When you add to this the multiple damning reports of two Auditors-General, we are left with strong circumstantial evidence suggesting political corruption.To date, not one PLP member, including Walton Brown, has publicly addressed the logic of the assertions I have made above. Instead, they have simply attacked me, which suggests they have no logical rebuttal. So I hereby challenge Walton Brown to either prove the above statement to be logically false or to admit that the PLP Government is either massively incompetent or corrupt.Finally, I would like to address Mr Brown’s assertion that I place “the blame for the continuance of racism on black people”. This is a blatant misrepresentation of what I said, and because I believe Walton Brown to be above such a shallow deed, I will simply assume he made an unintentional error. But in any event, I will clarify the issue.As stated in my Rotary speech, compared to yesteryear, there are very few blatant racist acts in Bermuda today. So it is misleading for Walton Brown to asset that I blame anyone, let alone blacks, for the continuation of racism because I don’t believe that present-day racism is even a relevant issue in today’s Bermuda.What I did speak about at length was the much larger problem of the legacy of slavery, segregation and racial glass ceilings (the blame for which falls squarely on the shoulders of white Bermudians of those eras) and the economic, educational, psychological and social problems that exist today in the black community as an indirect result of such past racist regimes.Those problems, as manifested in generational family dysfunction and gang violence, are now harming everyone in Bermuda. Unfortunately, these problems will only worsen unless two things happen: the white community actively supports programmes that go to the very core of these problems, and the black community truly follows the advice of Frederick Wade and the American racial equity leaders by denouncing the “black- authenticity” construct in favour of the “morality-based” construct.Only then will blacks be free to speak out against corrupt politicians, and only then will whites be able to fully appreciate that the only viable solution for a prosperous Bermuda is a unified people.