Understanding White and Black Experiences

There's another must read piece from Lynne Winfield in today's Bermuda Sun. In order to understand the social makeup of Bermuda today, we have to understand our history.
Lynne Winfield outlines two hypothetical experiences that reflect the stories of many white and black Bermudians. While everyone's stories are certainly unique, stories like these are all too common across our island. The White Experience:
You are a first generation Bermudian male, your father/mother having arrived in the late 1960s or 1970s as part of a large influx of whites from the U.K. responding to increasing opportunities in international business and the ongoing general Government policy of encouraging whites to settle in Bermuda. Your parents were working/middle class and they arrived with barely a penny in their pockets and a high school education. Unknowingly your parents jump to the top of the hiring pool, not understanding that at the time of their arrival segregation had only just ceased to exist, and that negative white attitudes/perceptions towards black Bermudians were still firmly entrenched.
Within seven years your parents achieve Bermudian status which opened doors and provided more advantages. They moved up in their organizations, perhaps achieving positions of power and influence. They worked hard, bought a home and sacrificed and saved to send you to private school and then you were the first one in your family to go to university. This was possible because your parents were able to get a loan against the equity in their house. With solid pensions built up over the years and their home fully paid for your parents are now retired. Their major medical is still covered due to an arrangement with their ex-employers to continue to keep them on the company's medical plan at the lower rate.
At 21 you have graduated and are now living in an apartment under your parent's house paying a low rent, while you save towards the down payment on your first house and the knowledge that your parents will more than likely help you secure your first mortgage in a couple of years. You have a terrific job in the international business sector. The sky's the limit.
This is a story of opportunity, and, that opportunity was created by a combination of individual initiative and historical and social circumstance. Now, let's examine a very different story - The Black Experience:
Compare this to the black Bermudian experience in the 1960s and 1970s with a similar high school education. By and large jobs in the service industry were open to them with the concomitant low pay. Due to continued racist attitudes and stereotypes, there were minimum opportunities to move into higher paying jobs with a future or management training progammes.
Mortgages were virtually unavailable due to continued racism, low incomes, and the stereotypes about blacks being high credit risks. Your father had excelled at high school but because of the times could only obtain work in the construction industry and your mother was a domestic. Both industries provided inadequate to non-existent pensions. However, your parents worked hard, saved hard and held down two jobs. Through sheer effort and sacrifice they saved enough to buy a small piece of land in Pembroke, and through the help of friends and neighbours bit by bit built a home, but money was scarce and despite your graduating near the top of your class at high school, there was nothing to spare for further education.
Your parents would like to retire but cannot afford to do so. The government pension combined with the little private pension they have accumulated since 2000 is just insufficient to meet their needs. They only have HIP insurance because they cannot afford Major Medical insurance. A long term illness would be catastrophic for the whole family, financially. You live at home; you've been working full-time since you were 16 and now at 21 realize that you need to take evening classes at the Bermuda College if you want to move up into management.
You hope to be able to eventually save enough to complete your degree overseas or at the very least get a business degree by correspondence courses. This all depends on your parents' ability to keep working and maintain their health, as otherwise you would need to continue to work full time in order to help support them. With luck it will be five years before you graduate and you'll be 26, but then you still have to find a job and get experience in the field before you can start making some 'real' money.
Two life experiences just a few miles apart. Both families with similar values, beliefs and attitudes towards hard work, family and trying to get ahead, but with widely disparate outcomes with regard to education, employment, housing and health!
The PLP Government is committed to promoting opportunity for all Bermudians. We're addressing these social and historical concerns through initiatives such as the Big Conversation. We're also committed to improving education and creating job opportunities for all Bermudians.
These historical and social injustices will take time to heal. We all believe in moving toward equality. That's why we must not be complacent. We must learn from the past lest we be doomed to repeat it.

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