Dawn Ritch, Columinist

When the Prime Minister says of the leadership of the People's National Party (PNP) and, particularly, the Opposition Leader, that 'Dem dark bad', he is only demonstrating what a common man he really is. He may affect a slightly middle-class accent, but his constant gesticulation and use of nasty language reveal him as irredeemably lower class.

Phrases such as "intellectual depravity" and "termites infested in the brain" would be surprising coming from any political leader, were they not so disgusting, and especially coming from a prime minister. I don't know why Golding thinks it so necessary to attack Portia Simpson Miller personally, except perhaps that he's convinced that this is the only reason why he was able to eke out a narrow electoral victory in the first place. He obviously believes this is a winning strategy. It may be class warfare, but he is hardly the person best suited to wage it.

Were he confident of his own social standing and relevance in this country, he would not find it necessary to ensure that Desmond McKenzie stands alongside him in every single photograph. At least Simpson Miller is confident enough of her own self-worth to have Lisa Hanna beside her. Hanna is not only better looking, but a lot better educated than Desmond KcKenzie, and certainly far more intelligent and cultured than both Golding and McKenzie combined.

Golding is trying to make Simpson Miller's concern for, and identification with, the Jamaican working class sound like old-time PNP communism. The purpose of demonising her thusly is to make rich Jamaican white people feel afraid that she's going to take away their wealth and give it to poor black people. This is nonsense, but the mere thought of it is enough to frighten many of them anyway.

Black capitalism

They have just had 16 years of P.J. Patterson, who ran a capitalist government; but it was black capitalism. When he came to office he saw that it was only the Jamaican browns who were getting ahead. His predecessor, Michael Manley, had been the country's last brown socialist. Patterson looked around and saw all those ill-educated brown people buying yachts, and started to give out everything to black people. Under him came the birth of the black bourgeoisie. Usually professionals, they suddenly started to have loads of cash and inordinate influence. Understandably, this pleased neither the brown people nor the white people.

By 'brown people' I mean everybody who is not white, and that includes Syrians, Lebanese, Jews, Indians, Chinese and the mixtures thereof. These are all the people who travel to America and are alarmed to discover that they are not 'topanaris'. They are the descendants of the poor brownings who had no family money, but who started to make it in the opportunities presented by the 1950s and 1960s.

They have all had to take a back seat since 1989, and comfort themselves with their smoked salmon and champagne. Today, they buy two-bedroom apartments in Jacks Hill for $26 million just because they can. They are the children of the first brownings with knotty heads who made it big. Some of them still have knotty heads, but there was nothing they hated more than to see people from working-class backgrounds 'arriving' all of a sudden under Patterson.

Sixteen years of that under Patterson was quite enough. Simpson Miller was a threat, so they didn't care what the face of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) looked like, just as long as it was somebody put up by the JLP. So they got Bruce.

The irony is that Simpson Miller is regarded as the first working-class black capitalist woman to lead the country. Regardless of how she cares to describe herself, I don't believe that she's either working-class or black. Race is not only appearance, it is also accent and attitude, and it certainly is not grammar. Were it grammar, there are a whole lot of white people in Jamaica who could justifiably be regarded as black. Race is such a fluid thing in this country, that the word 'browning' is often used to describe not only brown Jamaicans, but any foreign white person who appears friendly.

Simpson Miller has beautiful manners and a physical bearing that cannot be taught. They can only be bred. Somebody brought her up that way, and I doubt it was the late Ray Hadeed, who, though a kindly man, wasn't noted for any polish. Furthermore, her physiognomy suggests that she's as much a racial mixture as any of the rest of us.

The long friendship between Hadeed and Simpson Miller has a certain societal significance for Jamaica. Neither of them would have been publicly accepted by white Jamaica. Even some of the monied brownings, just one remove from working class themselves, would have found their grammar embarrassing. But it certainly meant that both could form close personal attachments outside their own racial type.

No record of rudeness

It should be noted that there is no public record whatsoever of Simpson Miller having been rude, personal or insulting towards Bruce Golding. Not from a political platform, or a party conference podium, nor in any press interview. Indeed, she hasn't been rude about a single soul.

Nevertheless, the press, Golding and her other political opponents, habitually portray Simpson Miller as a dunce and a virago. And this, despite a total lack of any evidence to support either contention. When she said 'Don't draw my tongue', she was warning them. And, indeed, her tongue has never been drawn, unlike all of theirs.

Anybody interested in social harmony would wish for a Jamaica in which no particular racial type predominated either socially, politically or financially. Once it was white, next it was brown, then it was black, and now under Golding's leadership, it would like to pretend to be white again. Hence, his desire to caricature his political opposition as 'Dem dark bad'. It appears he embraces the racial stereotype of black people not only being dark, but stupid.

Simpson Miller has never been so classless as to term her opponent's brain anything at all, much less termite-ridden. She has never suggested that rather than jump on a political platform, he should dance in a nightclub instead. Nor has she spread any rumours about his personal life. What is more, the cartoonists have given every support possible to Bruce Golding. Three months later, there has still not been a single cartoon of his wife Lorna in her undergarments, and very few of him. They're still lampooning Simpson Miller and drawing her husband Errald in his underwear.

Golding's classlessness has, therefore, been supported by certain boorish elements of our press. I would never have thought it possible that the so-called members of the Jamaican establishment could behave in such a vulgar fashion, nor that such a lowbred farce could pass as public commentary.