First it was Jamahl Simmons and Gwyneth Rawlins. Now, outgoing UBP MP Maxwell Burgess is calling upon his own party to address racism within it's ranks. The Royal Gazette reports:

The United Bermuda Party must acknowledge and address vestiges of racism within its ranks, 25-year veteran Maxwell Burgess urged in an impassioned retirement speech last night...

Mr. Burgess, who has announced he will quit politics at the next election, took the opportunity to tell some of his party colleagues they are in denial about what he called "potential racism in the United Bermuda Party."

Now that Mr. Burgess is retiring, he can afford to speak the truth about a party with a long history of both harbouring racists and tolerating those who espouse racist ideology. And, like Jamahl Simmons and Gwyneth Rawlins before him, Maxwell Burgess has experienced the very racism many of his UBP colleagues refuse to acknowledge exists.

(Burgess) said while he believed them when they claimed not to see this: "Don't you ever believe that because you haven't seen Jesus he doesn't exist..."

Continuing a speech met by stony faces from his party colleagues, Mr. Burgess said he believed the last vestiges of racism had to be broken down. While he was not going to name individuals as racist, he said, he wished to tell the House about a man he once dealt with at Public Works who, upon being challenged about racist behaviour, told him: "I'm only doing what I've always done."

Mr. Burgess continued: "It's not good enough to tell me 'I'm merely doing what was done before me...I have spent 25 years of my life hoping we would have a Bermuda a little closer to home than what we have today."

Can Bermuda afford to allow a political party that still harbours racists and racist attitudes to run the island? And, even scarier, can Bermuda afford to allow a political party whose leadership refuses to even acknowledge the racism that Jamahl Simmons, Gwyneth Rawlins, Maxwell Burgess and many others have experienced?