Letter from Bermuda: Playing the race card

Although our internal differences are often put down to economics, the theme running through Bermuda society these days is racism. No one plays the card better or more frequently than members of our first PLP- controlled black Government, elected in 1998 after what we constantly refer to as “400 years of abuse” at the hands of whites.
The first PLP government set out to change the economic order by favouring blacks in the awarding of government contracts. Such behaviour is entirely illegal under our Constitution, but we don’t worry much about that. Just this week, our Minister of Transport, Dr. Ewart Brown, who is black, said that Government was embarked on a policy of “compensatory economics — compensating for the injustices of the past.”