People are free to chat nonsense and to hold positions that are inimical to their self-interest, materially bad for the community and morally repugnant to the human spirit. So in a free, democratic society it is allowable for one to argue, for example, that slavery was a good thing because slaves were fed and clothed and ensured of full employment.

So, too, does democracy tolerate the xenophobic diatribe that passes for reasoned and reasonable argument from people like an American called Runoko Rashidi, and more, affords him the right, and privilege, of having his jingoistic sentiments published by respected media, including this one.

For those who don't know, Mr Rashidi was in the thick of things at the September conference on racism and reparations in Barbados that voted to kick-out the handful of whites and Asians who were present. It was a black thing, they held.

Indeed, with the irrationality of the absurd, a white European who lives in Barbados was told that she had to leave the conference while her daughter, who has a black Barbadian father, was given leave to stay.

But Mr Rashidi doesn't know to quit when he is ahead.

Sometime ago, he had himself invited to a conference on Africa's contribution to the world at the University of Technology (UTech) in Kingston and was soon beating the drums of jingoism and xenophobia in defending the folly at Bridgetown.

"There is a role for whites in the struggle, but they can do that among themselves," he said. "We did not need their help..."

Black people, or perhaps more correctly in the context of Mr Rashidi's argument, black Africans and people of African descent, should retreat into themselves and dialogue among themselves.

Mr Rashidi's logic would give unto black people, not nation states, but Bantustans, which would be in disconnect from the realities of the global environment while basking in the glory of an amorphous utopia.

The great shame is that there are still issues of substance to be discussed about race, ethnicity and reparations. But that demands a genuine dialogue, in decency and decorum, face-to-face. Not on the basis of a new apartheid.

And it needs to be a real conversation. Not people talking at each other, if the aim is the arrival of truth and even reconciliation. Even in this dialogue, raw nerves will be exposed but in the end they will heal. But importantly, black people will not have retreated from the world, becoming the inheritors of the racism from which they suffered. It is this morally and intellectually corrosive process that people like Mr Rashidi represent.

It is the same cock-eyed principle that allows Mr Rashidi to dismiss whites and Asians from the Barbados conference that allows him to fully endorse Mr Robert Mugabe's crass and crude chasing of white farmers from the land in Zimbabwe.