The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Breaking Belize News
By Nuri Mohammad: There is a conversation that Belize needs to have, but it is a difficult one because the minute you introduce race or ethnicity into a discussion, people become uncomfortable. Somebody will accuse you of trying to divide Belizeans. Somebody else will say you are playing the race card. But sometimes we have to ask uncomfortable questions.
Over the last twenty or thirty years, I have noticed something happening in Belize. I see increasing numbers of Mestizo Belizeans occupying senior positions in government, the public service and the professions—CEOs, department heads, administrators, managers and other important decision-making positions. At the same time, I don’t see Black Creole and Garifuna Belizeans reflected at those levels to the degree I remember from an earlier Belize. Maybe my observation is wrong. If it is, the statistics should prove me wrong. But if it is right, then we need to understand what happened, and I don’t believe the answer is simply racism.
We must begin with demographics. The dramatic growth of Belize’s Mestizo population did not occur only because the old Spanish-speaking Belizean communities of Corozal and Orange Walk suddenly began having exponentially more children. Belize experienced substantial migration from Central America, particularly beginning with the political upheavals and wars of the region during the late twentieth century. Thousands of people came from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and elsewhere. They settled, raised families, became Belizeans and changed the demographic composition of the country.
At almost the same time, another demographic movement was occurring. Beginning particularly in the 1960s and continuing for decades, thousands of Creole Belizeans migrated to the United States. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other American cities developed significant Belizean communities. So while one population was entering Belize in considerable numbers, another population was leaving. That alone was bound to change the country.
There was a time when the Black Creole population had a significant presence in the civil service, teaching profession and other professional occupations. That was partly a product of colonial history. Creoles were concentrated in Belize City, spoke English and had relatively greater access to the educational and administrative institutions of British Honduras.
But the country changed. As Belize’s population expanded, including through immigration, the educational system had to expand with it. More schools, teachers, classrooms and government resources were required throughout the country. That was necessary, but resources are never unlimited. So here is a question we should investigate rather than assume we know the answer: as Belize expanded educational opportunities nationally, did some of the older Creole schools in Belize City deteriorate in quality and resources? And if they did, what was the consequence?
Somewhere along the road, particularly among Creole boys, we began seeing fewer young men moving successfully from primary school to secondary school, from secondary school to sixth form and from there into university and the professions. At the same time, something else was growing rapidly on the Southside of Belize City—the street.
Over the last twenty-five or thirty years, gang culture has become normalized in sections of Belize City in a way that would have been unimaginable in an earlier period. The Southside became associated nationally with gangs, shootings, poverty, dysfunctional families and crime. Eventually “Southside” stopped being simply a geographical description. It became a social label, and labels have consequences.
A young man can walk into an interview carrying more than his résumé. He carries his address, his accent, the school he attended and the neighborhood he comes from. Sometimes he carries his complexion. Nobody has to tell him, “We don’t hire Black boys from Southside.” Prejudice rarely announces itself that clearly. Instead, words like professional, reliable, presentable, articulate, stable and qualified can sometimes carry assumptions that we don’t even realize we have.
A young person from a poor neighborhood can therefore enter the competition already carrying a social profile. After twenty or thirty years, the stereotype begins feeding itself. Poor educational outcomes produce fewer qualifications. Fewer qualifications produce fewer professional opportunities. Limited opportunities strengthen street culture. Street culture reinforces the stereotype, and the stereotype makes employers more reluctant to take a chance on the next young man coming from that community. The circle closes.
Maybe racism is too simple a word for what we are seeing. What we may be looking at is something much bigger—the intersection of race, ethnicity, migration, education, geography, class and opportunity.
We must not be in denial and pretend that prejudice and colorism don’t exist. They do. There are those who have actually said to Creoles, in one form or another, “You have had your turn at leadership; it is our turn now.” Those sentiments are real, and we should not be afraid to acknowledge them. Prejudice, ethnic competition and bigotry are part of this conversation. But I believe there are much bigger forces at play than prejudice and bigotry alone. Demographics, migration, education, class, geography, the breakdown of communities and changing access to opportunity may have done more to reshape Belize over the last several decades than any single prejudice could have done by itself.
We should ask a very simple Belizean question: Does the Belize at the top look anything like the Belize at the bottom?
Walk through the ministries and look at the CEOs and senior administrators. Look at the department heads. Look at banking and corporate management, statutory bodies, universities and professional institutions. Then look at who fills the lower ranks of the Police Department and BDF, who fills our classrooms as teachers, who works in the call centers and BPO industry and who occupies the lower-paying service jobs.
And don’t guess. Count.
Break the figures down by ethnicity, gender, geography and age. Then we can have an intelligent conversation.
But Black Belizeans cannot have this conversation honestly if everything is blamed upon somebody else. We also have to ask what happened inside our own communities. Why have so many Creole boys fallen behind educationally? Why did gangs become such powerful institutions of identity and belonging? What happened to the old community organizations, sporting clubs, neighborhood leadership, strong schools, apprenticeships, political education and other institutions that once helped socialize young Black men?
What has migration done to families? What happened when some of the most ambitious, educated and upwardly mobile Creole Belizeans left for America generation after generation? That is potentially a form of brain drain whose social consequences we have never adequately measured.
If one community loses a significant part of its emerging professional class through migration while another growing community is putting its children through secondary school, sixth form and university, twenty or thirty years later we should expect the occupational landscape to look different. That isn’t necessarily conspiracy. That is sociology. But sociology can eventually produce inequality just as surely as deliberate discrimination can.
The answer cannot be to resent successful Mestizo Belizeans. A young Mestizo woman who studies hard, earns her master’s degree and becomes a CEO has not stolen anything from a Creole child. Neither should Maya advancement be regarded as somebody else’s loss. Maya Belizeans themselves suffered generations of marginalization and exclusion. Garifuna Belizeans have likewise fought extraordinary battles for education, cultural survival and recognition.
The question therefore isn’t, “Why are they moving up?” The more important question is, “Why are some of us not moving up with them?”
If the answer reveals institutional barriers, then those barriers should be removed. If it reveals educational failure, then fix the schools. If it reveals discrimination, then confront the discrimination. If it reveals family breakdown, then address why families are breaking down. If it reveals migration and brain drain, then understand their consequences. And if it reveals that our assumptions were wrong, then be courageous enough to accept the evidence. But first we need the courage to look.
Independence was supposed to mean more than replacing British administrators with Belizean administrators. It was supposed to create a society in which the child from Punta Gorda, Dangriga, Orange Walk, San Ignacio, Corozal or the Southside of Belize City could develop his or her ability and participate fully in building the nation.
So perhaps we need a national opportunity audit. Who is succeeding and who is falling behind? Who enters university and who drops out? Who becomes a CEO and who becomes a police constable? Who owns businesses and who works in them? Who migrates and who goes to prison? Most importantly, at what point in the life of a Belizean child do these roads begin to separate?
Because by the time one person is sitting behind the CEO’s desk and another is standing outside guarding the building, the real story may have begun twenty-five years earlier.
That is the conversation I think Belize needs to have. Not Mestizo against Creole. Not Black against Brown. But a serious examination of whether, in this changing Belize, we have quietly created a social structure in which your ethnicity, your neighborhood, your school and your class increasingly predict how high you are likely to climb.
If that is happening, we need to know. And if it isn’t happening, the evidence should settle the question.
Either way, let us count before we quarrel.
The post Who Is Moving Up — and Who Is Being Left Behind in Belize? appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Breaking Belize News By Nuri Mohammad: There is a conversation that Belize needs to have, but it is a difficult one because the minute you introduce race or ethnicity into a discussion, people become uncomfortable. Somebody will accuse you of
The post Who Is Moving Up — and Who Is Being Left Behind in Belize? appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
