By Dr Victor Look Loy

Quite a while ago, in the 1980s if memory serves, I went to get a garment at the Two Sisters store in George Town; in those days, the doctors wore white coats everywhere and I had my stethoscope quite visible in the jacket pocket. I entered the store and asked to see the items. The very nice elderly lady took one look at me and asked if I was one of those new porters at the Hospital. I replied “yes” and began to wonder how on earth did she know?

In 2009, believe it or not, that mindset seems to have persisted to some degree in these fair isles. Over the years, more so recently, I have heard the local black professionals complain about similar situations in their professional lives. There seems to be problems in the legal profession with respect to offering partnership to black, or female or Caymanian lawyers.

Similarly one only has to look at the civil service over the last 20 years and count how many senior people were black in colour or come from a poor family background. Only a handful of permanent secretaries or chief officers were not “café au-lait”. The political arena is also not an exception to what I refer to as the “fair-skinned phenomenon” which to me suggests that the preference also extends into the psyche of the general population.

Brilliant Caymanian people are paid lip service and left out in the cold by their own to languish on the sidelines whilst people of lesser ability flourish sometimes to the detriment of the population as a whole. That ostracism takes a toll on people who then become disillusioned and bitter, which only further validates the initial perception that they are indeed, useless and unworthy and angry.

We in Cayman not surprisingly do not celebrate “Emancipation Day” but perhaps in the light of everything that has happened to us in the past four years the new government may want to consider such an annual celebration not so much as an accomplished fact but in an aspiring sort of way.

Some of the very people who are responsible for the present economic plight of the world are regarded here as valuable assets, indispensable advisors and “key employees”; exalted above the immigration policy designed to foster and protect Caymanians. Their utterances are taken as gospel and our laws are changed to accommodate them.

It reminds me of the situation that obtained when the health insurance laws and regulations were being drafted. Look where we are with that today!

We had to create CINICO in order to insure the sick people of this country and who gets to cherry pick?

We as a people need to trust our own common sense, we need to validate our culture and our roots, stop pretending that somehow we are different and morally superior to and wealthier and more holy than our Caribbean neighbours while bending our collective knee to North America and Europe. Not even the tourists want us to be American and the Europeans that live here don’t even know that we exist.

The only people who benefit from this absurd adulation are those involved in the real estate “industry” and the legal profession. The harm that the real estate industry has done to the average Caymanian is beyond belief but that is for another day. We also need to de-emphasise a bit, government’s obsession with big business and concentrate on our people and our youth.

Big business is why we still have not passed the Tobacco Law and the Minimum Wage. The Chamber of Commerce should be officially given a Ministry.

Who cares about Tiger Woods and his mega yacht?

Caymanian children need the North Sound for themselves, not to get the scraps thrown overboard by the rich and famous.

Foreign cultures have been allowed to come here and successfully change the accepted pronunciation of the word “Cayman”. I would be hard-put to find another place on this planet where locals also willingly participate in such a cultural coup.