Jose n George ! Jose, I agree with you that "caste" is like any prejudice - including racial discrimination. After the clubs were opened to everybody, were non-brahmins agreeing to dance with "outsiders" - notably the local folks- africans ?. I do not have concrete evidence.
Strangely enough,africans did not join the club en masse. The few that joined were either schoolmates at the St. Joseph's Convent School in Dar - the country's most cosmopolitan school with a 40 per cent goan population- or joined because of the other sports facilities. So the very few that did come for dances were well known to the women. Most africans also prefer to frequent dance halls and nite-spots that feature african music; and in my trips to other social clubs that were also "opened", I noticed that they preferred "hanging" around the bar. I have however heard complaints from certain goan women that the african men like to dance "too close" and coupled with the fact that their mouths stink of "booze" and some have body odour. George, like Gabe,Milton,Eddie, Cornel and Mervyn, I am a product of the high class British English teaching system called Senior Cambridge. That included Essay/Composition Writing, Comprehension and Precis Writing- far cries these days. In fact, many Indians joined the St. Joseph's School -where I did most of my studying-to improve their written and spoken English. I was also fortunate to have one of the two best Black South African English teachers in the country at the Aga Khan School in Iringa,southern Tanzania. The other was attached to the Goan School in Dar es Salaam which had a goan majority. My teacher is now a Senior English Professor at a British University.(Remember, this was after independence when many black south africans were allowed in the country on a refugee status). The Cambridge system discontinued in Tanzania after 1965 when they introduced the Tanzanian system which is similar to the American system of multiple choices. I do not know about Kenya and Uganda. And as a journalist working at the country's only English newspaper - the "Standard", I noticed the startling difference; for when editing stories written by college graduates- with a Literature bias-basic english grammatical erors were so conspicuous. Getting back to your question about being biased towards african-americans; this varies from person to person -given their "exposures" and up-bringing. But I was surprised if not "shocked" to note that some goans are "stereotypes" even after they have broadened their "horizons" and consider themselves staunch catholics. When-ever they read something negative in the newspapers , and it happens to be about blacks, many "blurt" out - what can you expect. To them there is no white "trash" and everything positive is done by whites and Asians. Some others do make a distinction between African-Americans and recently arrived africans from Africa. It depends what the issue is about. Tony Barros. Union, New Jersey. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
