The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

BAHAMAS Public Services Union leader John Pinder made comments recently on a radio talk show about the ‘Gender Equality’ Referendum.

I don’t like the concept of unions or the way they operate in The Bahamas. It could just be my imagination, but they appear to be comprised predominantly of unambitious people content with average and happy for the be-all and end-all of their work to culminate in holding a cup or bottle of liquor and grinding on each other in the streets when a loud speaker goes off. The only other time you see them come together is when they want more money.

So very rarely, if ever, do I agree with them - unions and their leaders - whenever I listen to them, so I don’t. But, by accident, I heard Pinder’s comments the other day and have decided to accept the fact that I agree with him and his estimation of what the people feel about today’s referendum.

In a nutshell, things were going fairly okay vis-a-vis referendum education, better than it was for sure, until the YES vote campaign started.

As far as I’m concerned, the Bahamas government has hijacked its own campaign for a favourable outcome, by tainting said campaign with extreme bias. The YES campaign has been too little, and perhaps too late, and an education campaign it is/was not.

Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s inherited, but I cannot stand feeling like I’m being pressed into a direction, a belief, a decision, when there are other directions, beliefs, and decisions I can make with the same amount of rationale.

I’m the kind of person for whom the YES vote profile pictures popping up on Facebook yesterday and today will have no effect/impact. I understand it shows a preference, maybe even solidarity, but for some people who do use their brains it actually has the opposite effect. It’s off-putting. I will be less likely to vote YES when I see a picture of you telling me (persuading me, suggesting to me) to vote YES than I would be if you didn’t post that. Or, am I mistaken and there is another reason for doing this other than to persuade? Some might think I’m just rebellious, but what it is is that I detest coercion.

And I know many who display this photo are my family, friends and colleagues, but I’m just compelled to tell it like I see it about the politics of Facebook … which leads me nicely into the concept of the Facebook democracy.

Facebook gives every person with a computer or smartphone a voice in cyberworld. But how closely does cyberworld approximate the real world? How closely should it?

It’s great that people who may not have been heard or ‘had a say’ now can be heard or do ‘have a say’, but I fear it also leads to a diluted intelligence … in effect, people just spitting out thoughts and words to be heard, not because they make any kind of sense.

Out of this Facebook democracy has grown unusual support for a person like Donald Trump.

Would Trump have gotten this far in his bid for the US presidency, if it was 1996 and not 2016? I mean, without the benefit of modern technology, the internet, social media? Whereas in 1996 he couldn’t scrape the bottom of the intellectual barrel, he can in 2016, and raise up the extra support when it or they make(s) absolutely no sense.

I’m not saying Donald Trump is completely wrong about everything he says, nor am I saying he has no right to have an opinion. But now that he - and everyone else on Facebook - has an opinion and a wide open platform to unleash it, who, what is best for the people being led?

In all honesty, do you get the feeling that Trump is the bringer of harmony and equality?

His recent possession of an African-American at one of his rallies has made many people blink twice. To them, it sounded like Trump transported himself to the early/mid 1800s, where he might have been praised for a comment like “my African-American”. Though I’m sure other words would have been used back then. Did Trump mean harm by his choice of words? I don’t know … I think he’s just a buffoon, and that’s his buffoon language. He is no orator. He’s callous, and he already told you, he doesn’t give a damn what you think about him. But some people see more sinister threads there. Which leaves them asking the question, how on earth can Trump make America great again if he doesn’t espouse the concepts of equality and harmony … and maybe still thinks he can own a human?

Many people compare equality of the sexes, presumably the focus of today’s referendum, as being just as important as equality of the races. I agree with this, except to say that up until now, you couldn’t change your sex. And after now, you still can’t change your race, though some pale-skinned people in a tanning booth would like to try, and so would some dark-skinned people wearing skin bleaching creams.

Are the two things - sex and race - comparable anymore? That is, equality of the sexes and equality of the races? Is the concept of equality clear … when you can no longer identify what you’re dealing with? These are some of the concerns we have to face again and again and no one seems wiser about them after all this time.

After all this time, women born with female genitalia are battling to have the same rights and privileges as men born with male genitalia. That’s what today’s referendum should be about - levelling that playing field. And in any way the Bahamian man is not regarded as equal, he should be made to be. That is also what today’s referendum should be about. You have to decide if it is. And if you think it is, you have to decide what’s right and acceptable to you. Maybe if they called it equal rights for equal people, civil rights, or a human rights referendum, as opposed to gender equality referendum, we would have gotten further, sooner, with this effort at achieving a balance of rights. But confusion prevails even now as you go to the polls.

Think of this as you do, in keeping with the similarities that should be between equal rights of the sexes and equal rights of the races: people are still arguing about who is black enough to be called black in The Bahamas and in America. Black people don’t agree on who is black enough to be black, and in this disagreement they create another form of racial prejudice, one no referendum can alleviate.

Some of you may be aware that there is a black American educator doing good for the sake of humankind, raising awareness about poverty and inequality of the races based on class and economics, raising the bar on education for underprivileged young black Americans, men in particular, and on the comment wall of his fundraising campaign is an argument by black people about Harry Belafonte and Eartha Kitt and their children not being black enough to be called black. And they’ve pulled mixed race President Obama into the mix, too, analysing his blackness. His wife Michelle is black because she looks dark-skinned enough to be black, her younger daughter is, too, because she looks like her mother, but not her older daughter because she’s got more of the white gene from her father’s white mother.

Where are we going, people? Why is this still a thing? How did we get here from the 1960s? Is this what Martin Luther King was fighting for? For people of direct African descent to further divide themselves on the basis of what others already used to divide them? Surely not.

You know what my dream is? That all the ‘races’ of the world would blend so well and so quickly that the entire population of the earth becomes ethnically ambiguous and no one knows who is what and it no longer matters because they can’t tell anyway and the lines of ‘race’ are forever blurred. Then maybe the ignorance will finally begin to abate.

But never mind that for now - you’re still voting on equality of the sexes.

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