My work on the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR) held in Durban, South Africa, broadened my understanding of oppressive systems and ideologies and why societies must do more to dismantle them.

Coming out of Jamaica, I went in keenly aware of anti-black racism, classism, and sexism. I left with a deeper insight into myriad other forms of oppression and the barriers they constitute to progress and peace, wherever they exist. I committed then to opposing oppression however it appears and in any way that I can.

My conversation with a Dalit, a group designated as “untouchable” in India’s caste system, left me reeling with anger at the nonsense of it all. The mere accident of a Dalit’s shadow crossing that of someone from a higher caste could mean death or the loss of a limb, he explained.

While India had banned Dalit discrimination in 1950, real change had been slow because biases against them remained ingrained in the culture. At great risk to himself and his family, this activist was fighting for their rights. He took it to the WCAR to attract global attention.

A Carib from St. Lucia was another subject. I can still hear his voice as he pleaded with me to imagine what his life has been like in a region in which the rest of the population believes his ancestors were cannibals.

I could. I know how good we are at stigmatising people, and I could pinpoint exactly where in my colonial education the Caribs were presented to me as cannibals in independent Jamaica.

I understand now that they mounted the fiercest resistance against the European invaders and that a narrative, other than inhumanity, was needed to explain their treatment — in the same way that sub-humanism was needed to justify the exploitation of black people.

In the Western world, including the United States and Jamaica, to varying degrees, black people continue to live with racism. Out of this recognition, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) declared racism a public health crisis with research establishing clear links between some chronic diseases among people of colour, and their comparatively shorter life span, to toxic racism.

“Racism, both structural and interpersonal, are fundamental causes of health inequities, health disparities and disease,” the CDC says on its website.

Interpersonal racism describes interactions between people that include both verbal and non-verbal acts of hostility, and even violence.

The comment by Jamaican Member of Parliament Everald Warmington deriding Opposition Leader Mark Golding, and his right to participate in the politics of the country, is an example, I believe, of interpersonal racism.

Contemptible as it is, this is not the most harmful form of racism. It is even less so when the perpetrator has an established record of unacceptable behaviour on multiple fronts; when there are no threats or actual violence involved; and, as in this case, when the speaker has no power over his target.

Compared to interpersonal racism, structural racism describes policies; institutional norms and practices; socio-cultural representations; and dominant cultural narratives that favour certain group or groups, and disadvantaging others.

A lawyer, Rhodes scholar, and son of a white physician who dedicated his life to poor people, Mark Golding knows that structural racism exists in Jamaica and he knows how it differs from interpersonal racism.

In response to the commotion following comments by People’s National Party (PNP) general secretary and physician Dayton Campbell and Lothian Cousins, an attorney and constituency caretaker, both alluding to race/class divisions in the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Golding said:

“Our party…affords discussion…of the realities of class, race, and inequality… even in terms that some may find objectionable. Even though visceral discomfort can arise…when attention is drawn to these issues, it is our…mission… to address these matters and to set them right by creating a more just and equitable Jamaica for all Jamaicans.”

Beyond observations, there are tools that can be used to prove or disprove the statements made by Campbell and Cousins, unlike those made by Warmington. And, if our only defence is simply “Out of Many, One People”, it reinforces the idea that the Jamaican National Motto is an example of structural racism — a tool artfully designed to smother legitimate agitation against race-based inequities by the black majority.

To be clear, I reject all forms of bias against anyone, especially because of race or skin colour. I am especially appreciative of anyone who, rather than deploying whiteness — pure or proximate — as tools to exploit black people, work to help uplift them instead. For obvious reason, this does not include toxic benevolence.

How much more impoverished would we be without the work of Michael Manley, Sir John Golding, Diana Macaulay, Denis O’Brien; Marjan de Bruin, and others like them whose way of being in the world serves to blunt rather than perpetuate racism?

As long as Mark Golding is similarly disposed his race is 100 per cent irrelevant.

Race is an accident of birth. Systems of oppression are man-made; the fight against them must be loud, resolute, and unyielding — all the time!

Grace Virtue, PhD, is a US-based public affairs practitioner, educator, and social scientist.