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David Crichton had a passionate commitment to social justice.

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The first comedian to earn a degree in social work, David, was active in the desegregation movement in the late 40s and early 50s,

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playing a pivotal role in the clandestine printing of an analysis of the media, social problems, achiness arguing for the dismantling of segregation.

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He left the island in 1953, believing race relations would never improve and not wanting to raise his children in a racist society,

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but was urged to come back in the early 70s by the late William McPhee.

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He spearheaded the establishment of the Child Development Project and the formation of the Royal Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

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He also participated in many initiatives to improve race relations in Bermuda, including the anti-apartheid movement.

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His eldest daughter, Wendy Davis Johnson, will be reading from his book Shackles of the Past.

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I'm really honoured to be here today to represent my father, David Critchley.

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And to join this distinguished panel, I hope you'll forgive me, I've just come from the funeral service of a really dear friend of mine.

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And actually read Camp, some of you may know him and so much of what was said about Reed resonated in what I'm about to say about my dad.

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So forgive me if I get a bit emotional here. Thank you, Alexa, for organising this event, and I am so honoured to join this distinguished panel.

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I wish I wasn't standing in here for my dad and that he could be here reading from his book.

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Last week, my family celebrated my mother's 90th birthday and all of us at a party rest.

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My father was still with us. He would have turned 90 in July.

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My brothers, my sister and I know that if my father was still alive, he'd be fighting the good fight.

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That was the focus of his life. There's no reason that we can think of a data kitchen to care so passionately about race relations.

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He came from a traditional white Bermudian family.

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It wasn't a particularly wealthy one, but he had all the privileges of being white in Bermuda that he chose to buck the system.

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He graduated in 1948 from the University of Toronto with a degree in social work and

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spent the rest of his life trying to improve the way people relate to one another.

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My father believed that while human interaction is complicated.

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There were two specific areas that keep us divided in Bermuda.

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The first is that we let our perceptions of each other get in the way of really listening to and hearing each other,

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and that's what I heard and read suggests that he was a man who really listened and had such an impact because he didn't judge before he listened.

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So there's a lot of judgement in the way we interact, and that puts us in a divided position before we even begin a conversation.

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The second point that was a real focus of my dad's life is that our school system does not support children at

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risk and generally because we live in a predominantly black community to many of these children were black.

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He felt this had serious long term repercussions for Bermuda that needed to be addressed systemically.

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That had some very specific recommendations about Bermuda school system.

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But tonight I'm going to focus on some of his comments from his book Shackles of the Past, about what he felt divided Bermuda in 1989.

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So these are this is just straight from one of his chapters.

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There's no question in my mind that Black Americans have more than gone the second mile by accepting an outstretched hand when it was offered,

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whether from service, clubs, churches or other areas where the doors were closed or open, according to skin colour.

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It required trust, forgiveness and often putting up with paternalism.

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Many black comedians have been criticised and even scorned for being so naive

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as to trust honkies or to compromise themselves for a piece of the action.

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I fervently hope that these same black brown unions, as well as others,

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will recognise that the time for polarisation on the basis of colour has gone not too long ago.

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The major challenges in Bermuda were unquestionably related to segregation and discrimination,

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and it was a rare raping union who even questioned the way it was much less thought it should be otherwise.

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This is no longer true. We are now threatened by problems that do not respect Jim Crow,

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and that will swamp us if black and white comedians are not able to rise above division on the basis of colour.

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It would make little difference if every white person ritually Bermuda tomorrow the same challenge would remain

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the challenge of how best and most equitably to just distribute the economic pie and that challenge of crime,

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mental illness, drugs and other evidences of personal and social breakdown.

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We just can't afford to be divided and deterred by those who insist on getting intellects and for the sins of the past.

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Of course, the challenge to the white residents of this island is massive.

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So many of us don't seem to be able to get beyond throwing up our hands and raising our eyes to heaven and asking What do they want now?

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I have no trouble in accepting that black comedians are right when they say

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it has been a one way street and the impetus for change has come from them.

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Raping it ends, with a few notable exceptions have gotten by on Sir Henry Tucker's coattails and have basked in his reflected glory.

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They have gone along with integration reluctantly and with little conviction, and the extent of their commitment seldom has gone beyond being polite.

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However, I should say here that when I expressed this opinion to a white Bermudian, it was very indignant with considerable feeling, he said.

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If anything was, it was the other way around. White comedians, he said, have done more than their part in support of this.

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It was his and others belief of many white people that in contrast to the old days,

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people are being appointed positions to positions because they're black anyway, he concluded.

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There's just too darn much talk of colour.

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Of course, for the purpose of what I'm saying in this chapter, whether the greater effort is being made by black or white is not important.

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It is just another example of one of the many honestly held but unproven and irrelevant beliefs that divide us.

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It calls to mind the childhood argument I did more than you did.

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The therapist, Dr. Albert Ellis, refers to it as ABC thinking with a being an event or situation B,

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what we tell ourselves about it and see our feelings or our opinions.

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Ellis suggests that much of what we tell ourselves be is negative or faulty and a cause of many of our difficulties.

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Thus, when we're sitting hot and tired on a bus after a hard day's work, someone steps on our flight.

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That's a we start mumbling to ourselves. What a clumsy idiot he is.

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That's b what we tell ourselves. We look up to admonish him to watch where he's putting his feet.

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C Then we see white cane. He's holding and we jump up to off our seat thinking, poor soul.

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Why didn't someone help him? Anybody can see he's blind.

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Same person and same situation, a different message to ourselves be with the result that anger see is replaced by sympathy and concern.

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I know see, our one reaction brings out irritation, the other evoke sympathy and concern, but to continue with examples of us and them thinking.

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And these are examples from 1989, the annual Berkeley Berkeley Square Fair is an event that makes many black

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communities feel that integration is a one way event fewer white people attend,

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thereby reducing its effectiveness as a fundraiser. Yet black families account for much of the success of the Mount St. Agnes Fair.

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The virtual absence of labour unions at Cup Match is seen by many black from unions as another example of white flight.

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Since Romanians were well-represented at cup match when I was young, I suspect other reasons may be responsible.

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I found it had lost its attraction for me when I returned to Bermuda in 1972

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because the sound of boomboxes prevented me from hearing the bat hitting the ball.

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For Al B.W. advice, jokes and insults from spectators to players and the occasional profanity that was much enjoyed by all.

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Of course, a less comforting explanation is that the absence of white people, except for tourists,

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is a reflection of the underground of suspicion and ill feeling that exists between black and white.

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However, black as well as white from the audience.

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Have you had similar reasons as mine to explain the dropping of cup match in from their annual must see list?

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But if this does at least partially explain the fall off and white attendance,

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it has been another example of our tendency to polarise life in terms of black and white.

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It is also an illustration of the lack of honest dialogue between black and white comedians.

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We reach our conclusions about each other without first checking them out.

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It's that ABC thinking of work again.