By now most of the newspaper and TV year-end reviews have appeared, as have the forecasts on what 2009 will hold. But I'd like to have my say on what we have witnessed in the year just past, and what we may expect in 2009.

This year will be a special one for Bermuda as the island joins together to commemorate four centuries of continuous human settlement.

Bermuda is one of the oldest settlements in the Western hemisphere, its discovery dating back to 1503, when Juan de Bermudez, a Spanish navigator, spied the islands during a transatlantic voyage. It was not until 1543 that shipwrecked mariners first came ashore, landing off the South Shore and leaving their mark at Spanish Rock. Only last century was it determined that the inscription was probably the result of a Portuguese vessel wrecked on the reefs on the way back from Santo Domingo. It was exactly 400 years ago this coming July that the English naval hero Sir George Somers and his men deliberately drove the Sea Venture onto Bermuda's reefs, landing the island's first 150 residents – and one dog – on our shores.

No doubt all the right words will be said about the quadricentennial, with numerous events planned to mark the occasion. However, in my opinion, this anniversary also marks two great failures.

Firstly, after 400 years, Bermuda still has not evolved into a nation in its own right. Secondly, we have failed to fully come to terms with the question of race relations in this country.

There is no greater symbol of these failures than the two controversies that have broken out on the eve of Bermuda's 400 year commemoration. For one, there is the argument over the size and scale of the Sarah (Sally) Bassett statue on the Cabinet grounds.

Then there were what I describe as two interpretations on the part of black and white Bermudians to the historical presidential election victory of Barack Obama, the first African American to become President of the United States.

There is, as I see it, a dual interpretation to the election of Barack Obama in Bermuda. White Bermudians may perceive it as the end of racism, as clearly President-elect Obama clearly would not have won the election without significant white voter support. Black Bermudians, on the other hand, see his victory as a milestone in the long struggle for racial equality, and not necessarily the end of racism.

I suspect that white Bermudians, and perhaps white Americans, were just relieved that the question of race did not play a major role in the US presidential election. President-elect Obama did not put race at the forefront of his campaign, although it would have been natural for him to do so as a leader of African American heritage.

Neither white America nor white Bermuda has yet acknowledged the economic legacy of slavery, or the nearly two hundred years of racial segregation. Rather than embrace a culture of victimhood on the part of black people, I believe we should look upon it as a story of courage and survival; of a brave and resilient people who overcame everything a racist society could throw at them. Now, we have a great symbol of victory in the election of Barack Obama.

White Bermudians were taken aback by the Premier's suggestion that they would have voted for John McCain en masse. Many white Bermudians with US citizenship publicly stated that they did indeed vote for Barack Obama. But, did they ever stop to question whether Dr. Brown's opinion was his own, or whether his comments represented the black community as a whole?

I believe white Bermudians are used to ignoring the opinions of the black community. They never even considered that they'd have to take the opinions of black Bermuda into consideration until the Progressive Labour Party finally formed the Government in 1998.

Some white Bermudians may wonder what they can do to mitigate the question of race in Bermuda. From my point of view, they must arrive at the point where black Bermudians no longer see them as white.

Dr. Barbara Ball arrived at that point. Years ago, as a member of Bermuda Industrial Union negotiating team led by Dr. Ball, I saw how a white person could be seen for more than simply her colour.

Here we had a situation where a white woman was leading a union team largely comprised of black men, who trusted her without reservation to hold our interests in her hands and to make the right decisions on our behalf.

Last year, we laid an aunt of mine to rest, and PLP MP Zane DeSilva was one of speakers who paid tribute. Hearing his words, it became clear to me that MP Zane DeSilva had reached the point where he is no longer seen as white by the black community.

He has arrived at the same point as Dr. Ball. These two Bermudians, though they are white, have a bond with the black community. That is the key to the evolution of race relations in this country, beyond the clichés that often substitute for race relations.

Let me go on to address Bermuda's economy. Recently, in a speech, Opposition Leader Kim Swan appeared to be calling for the return of the College Week tourism trade. This influx of spring break college students once played a big role in our economu: it was a lynch pin of Bermuda's tourism.

I was working in the hospitality sector in the waning days of the tourism trade, and during those times the college students who came here were content to go to beach parties, take cruises and have Ted Ming's Bermuda Strollers play for them. In those days, the Bermuda Strollers were so popular that they could go to the college towns on the east coast of the US and be treated like rock stars.

But the behaviour of college students started to change over the years, and more and more I saw that drugs and alcohol were becoming the two mainstays of spring break.

They trashed their hotel rooms and the police had to be called much more often. I remember working in a small hotel where they even threw their motor bikes in the pool. Bermuda could no longer sustain that type of assault on their tourist infrastructure and so, in that original form, the College Weeks had to come to an end in the 1989s.

Yet the Opposition Leader seems to want to blame the Government for the decline of the Golden Age of Bermuda tourism, although as far as College Weeks are concerned these rowdy students brought it on themselves. The fact is the era of the Bermuda Strollers is dead, just like the era of Mark Twain's gentrified Bermuda is dead.

But still, we must redouble our efforts to revive Bermuda's tourism product.

As we have seen in this current economic climate, with the threat of recession or even depression, our financial centre is not as safe from the economic consequences outside our shores as we may have thought.

In my opinion, the real reason some of these companies are relocating to Switzerland is for that jurisdiction's resistance to the forces that want to close down or control financial centres.

Now I have heard people who should know better cast aspersions on Bermuda's tourism industry.

They seem to have forgotten that during the heyday of tourism in Bermuda, we owned much more of the infrastructure than we could claim of the offshore business infrastructure, which, as proven, can uproot overnight. We call it our international business, but could we come up with billions of dollars to bail out AIG? That should give us pause for thought.

Now for a final comment on the year past.

More than ever, young students are being thrown off Bermuda's buses for their bad behaviour, which has upset some parents. I was talking to my daughter who lives in America about this issue, and she said bus drivers in the US stop the bus and call the police if confronted by such behaviour. Perhaps that is the solution here.

The police must respond quickly, of course; perhaps a single officer could ride the bus until it arrives at the end of its route. This is not to put fear in the students but rather to instill respect. It took a long time for Bermuda to accept that we have a gang problem. Even the police were slow to call it what it was until very bad things began to happen. Can we still say, "Bermuda is Another World?"

These are just some of my thoughts as we begin 2009, the year that marks 400 years of human settlement on these isles.