December 20, 2012Dear Sir,Pat Ferguson’s letter (December 19) which you highlighted, underscored for me (a) the racism of the white Community and (b) the ongoing attempt to manipulate (often successfully) black folks into believing that the Progressive Labour Party is responsible for the racial divide when, in fact, segregation of the races was imposed (and maintained) by the powerful white community in 1834 in order to ensure the economic, psychological, political and social inferior role and subordination of the black community. It underscored the racism of the white community because the many colours of the One Bermuda Alliance is because black folks (with their many shades of colour) have made every effort to “integrate” any white organisation that they possibly could and they joined the white political party, even in the days of official Government sponsored segregation. Here they were welcomed since Whites could not gain or retain power without black supportAt the same time, despite the naive efforts made by the PLP at its inception when it replaced a long time black politician, Levi Pearman, with a white woman and ran her in the “blackest” district to ensure that she would win, white folks, with rare exceptions, were not only not going to join anything initiated by or controlled by black folks but they vindictively punished any white person who did. The PLP were, for 30 or 40 years naive in pretending that racism and segregation were not an issue until the former Premier, Dr Ewart Brown, disgusted with the pretence, put it on the table (from which it was promptly removed when he left). That gave white folks an opportunity to show their contempt for black intelligence by charging the PLP with playing the racecard when without the deliberately imposed segregation there would be no “racecard to play”.The current Premier has talked a great deal about “togetherness”. It will be interesting to see if that means he can get any white folks to “integrate” anything that is initiated by, or controlled by, black folks, or if it means that now black folks with similar qualifications will be paid the same as white folks. It certainly does not mean equalising the generational wealth accumulated by white folks during the days of official segregation and the deliberate economic exclusion of Blacks. He talks about a PLP member in the Cabinet. If there is a genuine difference of political philosophy between the parties and not just race what good would that do since anything that the PLP member proposed would be out voted by the other six, seven, eight (?) or whatever number of OBA Cabinet members! If he were serious about political “togetherness” he would, in the words of Walton Brown (and I believe often supported by John Barritt), appoint the traditional Joint Select Committees.EVA N HODGSONCrawl