by Colin Hyde
If you answer the question, “Was George Price a racist?” with a NO, then you have to face the unfortunate fact that either you are an ostrich, or you are a racist too. Yes, I said TOO. Okay, I use “racist” here strictly in respect to our physical appearance. In other countries, like the US, we would have to expand the discussion to mental capacity, and even the possession of a soul. But those two we can rule out in Belize. In Belize it is strictly a “looks” thing, and I am telling you that our Dear George was a racist blank. And he couldn’t have been otherwise.
It is natural to have affinity for the first faces in our lives, the ones of our parents, and the face we see every time we look in the mirror. Everyone gets a pass there. Bah, thanks to centuries of brainwashing, some black people wish their skin color was different. But hurray, what is natural will be when we’ve freed our minds from mental slavery. Continuing, when it extends beyond our like of self, when we start looking down on others, we enter a different world. I don’t think we have to further discuss how this fraud came to be. Yes? Okay then, it’s the damned Europeans who concocted a blond, blue-eyed, white-skinned, narrow-nose son of God, their phenotype, and with their gun superiority took over the world.
Don’t be nervous about exposing George. Heck, get the sense: in 1960 there were black people here who thought they were superior to Philip Goldson, black people who looked down on black people too!
They, black Belizeans, looked down on PSWG because his looks were from the south side of Africa. The facial bone structure of people in the north side of Africa is very much the Caucasoid ideal. It’s the color of the skin and the texture of the hair that separates them. For some Asians, it’s only the color of the skin that makes them lesser than whites, in the eyes of whites and all those who subscribe to white superiority.
It’s a serious number that was done on black people, especially those from the south side. Remember the great and famous Muhammad Ali, how he put down Joe Frazier on his looks? Yaa, Ali looked like an African from the north side of the continent, and Joe looked like he was from the south.
You have to accept that George P had his share of bias. I’m not blaming him. After 500 years it’s in every DNA. Now, having accepted that, and the truth of 1960 Belize, you will accept that that cultivated bias had influence over our electoral politics, that Goldson’s phenotype weighed him down—bwai, all that in a predominantly “black” country! You will also accept that color was a factor in the rabid rejection of federation.
Ouch, the daam white British had no problem bringing Barbadians and Jamaicans to Belize because to them there was no brown superiority; we were all not white.
GOB foots the bill
This isn’t a lobby against any or all of the 14 public and bank holidays we have each year. It’s just about seeing things for what they are, and knowing that knowing gives us greater perspective on what’s going on in our world and so forth. We can choose to do what we want with facts.
We just celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance Day, the 11th public and bank holiday of the year, and there are three more on the calendar until the end of 2023. Working on a straight line, my rough calculation shows that for GoB alone each holiday costs $881,000. World
Salaries says a public servant averages $15,300 per year; the GoB Press Office says government has 15,000 employees, and if we put those two pieces of data together in a calculator, we see government’s expenditure on salaries is BZ$229 million per year. A work week of 5 days, and 52 weeks in a year, adds up to 260 workdays per year, and when we divide the workdays into the expenditure on salaries, we arrive at the GOB paying out $881,000 every workday.
It’s not so straightforward to figure out the cost of public and bank holidays to the private sector, though some entities like the banks can come up front with their numbers. Public and bank holidays are a boon to some in the entrepreneurial sector, those ones in the entertainment business, and those ones who sell prepared food and drinks.
D Barrow said John B is a word mixer
There isn’t one person in Belize who didn’t understand that when PM Briceño made his “invade” speech, what he meant was that if we were strong like the US, we wouldn’t tolerate Guatemala abusing us. That resonates with every Belizean, because since we know wiself we have suffered, been kicked around by Guatemala like how that strong man used to yooz op that 100-pound weakling at the beach, in front of all the girls.
Congratulations to PM Barrow for explaining that da man has a habit of mixing up his words. PM Briceño’s strength is that he is big on business. But he got his words mixed up there too. His objective being to emphasize the importance of competition in business, he said he would forego his mom’s panades for the neighbor’s if it was nicer.
Oh, he made his point. But not mom’s panades! If mom remained a notch below, her shop would have to close down, and there’d be no money for John’s school fees, so he would have to drop out, and then he wouldn’t get a job, and then he wouldn’t be able to buy any more panades from the neighbor.
Because we want “their” things
Why did a Belize government give a logging contract to a Malaysian logging company? The big reason was that the government was looking to earn foreign exchange, so it could buy supplies from abroad, so it could back up the dollars it paid to its employees, so they could buy things from abroad. All the winnings from that Malaysian logging company didn’t go back to Malaysia or wherever that company came from; some of the spoils paid for education for young people, in every district, and some went to a few employees who were hired, and some propped up our dollar.
I’m just pointing out that we need to look at things in the entirety, because we certainly don’t want to fall into hypocrisy. I say again that I voted for Judge Conteh’s decision, but I have a little difficulty with the totality of the MLA ambition.
Said Musa said a number of famous and enlightening things. On the coming of television to Belize, he warned that it was like an army of 10,000, that it would have our people hankering, salivating, panting for “theirs”, what they have. One PT Barnum, a circus man, said a sucker is born every minute. Well, we are human beings, no different from Americans who get suckered by the packaging.
Mr. Musa said that his people like “gud ting”. It is a strain on our governments to deliver the “gud” things. We, we want the best of both worlds—our warm weather pristine, and the trinkets of the cold north. But wait, some of us would jump on a plane this minute to go get our share of the glittering goods da foreign. Hmm, at that difference between the two villages, did I see a lady activist for communal land ownership drive up in the symbol of the American dream, their SUV?
Said Musa warned of Balkanization in Toledo. I don’t think when he said that he was only concerned about the isolation of the land, 10% of our land mass. My belief is that Mr. Musa was also seriously concerned about the cultural diversity within that land mass. Father of the Nation absolutely was gung ho on cultural diversity, the mixing of our tribes.