Dr. Walter Rodney speaks on Ethnic Identity, Ethnic Antagonisms and National Unity
I always like to distinguish between the existence of ethnicities, whether they are called tribes or races, and the politicization of that ethnic factor. You can exist in different situations without being politicized, or certainly without being politicized into an act of confrontation…
What we must try and understand (and this is a point I'm always trying to make very clearly) is that there is no contradiction between saying that, at this particular point in time, a man needs to assert his given identity, so that, at another point in time, he won't he wouldn't have to assert it...And I think that within our community of Guyana, different ethnic groups need to assert their identity, need to put themselves together, to pull themselves together, and when they have and when they can operate on the basis of mutual respect, which they are not doing now, then I think that the way will be clear for building a new society, a society of a mixed unity…
I feel that there are at least two levels at which one must try to organize against the prevailing condition of racial antagonism. One must organize within the African community, within the Indian community, too, to build different forms of consciousness, different types of social bases, which will ultimately be the form of the new State, and, simultaneously one must begin to find effective revolutionary integrative mechanisms, both organizational and ideological, in terms of people, purely and simply, people, you know, as contributors to the new concept of group consciousness, group power, as for example, like putting six persons three Africans, three Indians, not just in terms of a symbolic show (they have, of course, to be ideologically consistent and so on), but putting them in a meaningful, nationally powerful position of leadership, and as a unit.
Now, you have, at the second level, to begin to indicate what you would like the society to be like, what that unit should be about, because, if you organize separately, this may well be construed by each group as something exclusive and hostile. So, you have, at the same time, while doing that bringing-together, which is historically necessary, to produce the integrative mechanisms, and act in the kind of fashion and use the kind of language which makes it clear to the other group (let’s say the African and Indian are the main groups) what the national aims are.
