December 31, 2001

Dear Sir,

I do not plan a perpetual dialogue with Robert Pires. But, in fairness, permit me to point out to him that it was not I who forgot, or ignored, black Portuguese. It was Jessie Moniz to whom I was responding. It was she who forgot, or ignored, the fact that no amount of "miracle dust" would make black Portuguese "white". It was she, a white Portuguese, who forgot them!

It is only because Mr. Pires is himself so biased that he chose to point to me rather than to Jessie Moniz. He is trying to pretend that it is not black or white that is the most significant fact in Bermuda but ethnicity. From the beginning young white Portuguese girls out of Primary school were hired in some retail shops while young black women with GCEs were denied employment. If black Portuguese were assimilated into the black Community it was because to white Bermudians, black was black. It was they who refused to assimilate with white Portuguese whom they had imported to displace newly freed slaves. The same black slaves who for two hundred years had demonstrated the skills to fish, to farm, to build ships, to sail, to build roads and to perform whatever other task the economy required, while they were not only "insulted" but dehumanised by enslavement. Mr. Pires needs to take a look in the mirror if he wants to discuss bias, prejudice and discrimination because the person who pointed to Mount St. Agnes also pointed to other "white" schools which are not Catholic but which he has chosen not to mention.

EVA N. HODGSON

Crawl