Debate over Premier Dr. Ewart Brown?s attack on former Opposition Leader Dr. Grant Gibbons continues, even though Members of the House of Assembly seem to have decided that it?s not worth it.

What is concerning about some of the defences of Dr. Brown is the idea that almost any behaviour is excusable if it is preceded by the perception of a racial slight.

Thus. it is OK for the Premier, who is sworn to uphold the laws of the land and who one might expect to set an example to all in terms of good and law abiding behaviour, to threaten violence against someone else because he perceived that his wife had been slighted.

Never mind that for a moment that Dr. Gibbons did no such thing, but instead raised legitimate questions about a US corporation donating to an unregistered charity established by Wanda Henton Brown and then receiving a Government contract for a still undisclosed amount of money, without any form of tendering process, within weeks of Dr. Brown becoming Premier.

Similarly, the Premier is entitled to suggest that Dr. Gibbons is a racist because he once described former Premier Alex Scott as a political eunuch. This, Dr. Brown claimed, brought back memories of ?castration stations? in the United states for blacks, and thus could be seen as being racist. Never mind, again, that this is a term in wide usage and was even used by a former British MP as the title of his biography, or that Finance Minister Paula Cox used the same phrase during the run-up to the PLP leadership contest or that an admittedly brief Internet search for linkages between castration and slavery brings up nothing after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Once the claim is made, it must be true.

This is not to say that horrendous actions took place in Bermuda and elsewhere during the era of slavery and after the subsequent period of segregation. They did and that is a matter of shame to us all, as is the reality that slavery and discrimination take place to this day.

Nor does it suggest that Bermuda still has much work to do to end the legacy of slavery and to ensure that all Bermudians, regardless of race or creed, enjoy equal opportunities. The legacy of slavery and the insidious nature of racism means that it is an issue that needs to be aired and debated. But this needs to be done honestly and openly. Using racism as a justification for bad behaviour of any kind does not move the debate or the issue forward. Nor does assailing a person as a ?house slave? or a ?sambo? because their political beliefs or their solutions to these problems do not happen to coincide with one?s own. Instead, they tend to divide and freeze debate.

Dr. Brown has promised an open debate on race and has warned it may make some people uncomfortable. That?s fine. For many people, black and white, it is an uncomfortable topic. But unfair and unjustified attacks do not constitute a debate. Instead, they will cut off all debate, and there?s nothing healthy about that.

Many people have welcomed the news that a proposal by a company called Unified Resorts Ltd. has received a special development order for a Ritz Carlton Hotel on the site of the Par-la-Ville car park. Any new hotel developments are welcome, as are the plans on the site to include a residential segment, which should help to ease the housing shortage and will bring residents into the centre of the City of Hamilton.

It can be argued that there is demand for another business hotel, given that a large proportion of the Island?s visitors are businessmen and women, although the operators of the Fairmont Hamilton Princess and other other Hamilton hotels may disagree. This newspaper too has concerns that this property may turn out to be a white elephant, but one would assume that the developers, some of whom remain a mystery, have done their homework, as no doubt the Ritz Carlton ? one of the finest hotel chains in the world ? has.

What is of broader concern is that once again a special development order has been issued with very little public input. It is true that the hotel?s plans were advertised in the Government notices, but one would have thought that this application would have been put before the Development applications Board, if only for an obligatory rejection given its scale, rather than getting fast tracked through the planning process.

That was the process taken by the Bank of Bermuda, and it was right that it received a full public airing. By contrast, the infamous Loughlands SDO received virtually no public input, and this application has received very little.

The claim that the developers were in a hurry in no way justifies an abuse of the planning process. It is precisely this kind of abuse of process that causes people to lose confidence in the planning process and in those entrusted with the good governance of the Island.