Hinds: No regrets over race talk

PNM MP Fitzgerald Hinds yesterday defended his statements in the Parliament on Thursday, saying that race was a reality in the world today and in Trinidad and Tobago.

“One would be foolhardly to attempt to do or say otherwise,” he said. He said he heard many of his colleagues in the PNM dispassionately discuss “the business of race.” He said one could discuss race dispassionately without being horrible, nasty and racist, which is ungodly. Hinds said that what he was trying to do in the debate on Thursday was quite in sync with what the PNM always did. “That is to say that we ought not to see race as an issue on which to decide on the way people are treated. We are an inter-racial party with respect for all religions, all races and that is what I was trying to say,” he said. Hinds said he called as an aid the text of the founding father, “Inward Hunger.” He said Williams’ point was that there were those who were trying to use race to farther their political ends. Noting that Williams described this as a danger that beset Trinidad and Tobago, Hinds stated:  “I was making the point that it was a danger then and it still is a danger now.” “So that the very thing that I am being accused of — that is to say being racist — is the thing that I was speaking against,” he added.

Hinds said he was trying to point out to members of Parliament that there were those who were trying to use Williams’ “innocent words” to construe it as though he was a racist, which was unfair to his legacy. Told that the East Indian community was no longer a minority, Hinds said he was merely quoting Williams who had described them as a “recalcitrant minority.” He said he made the point in the debate that recalcitrant meant uncooperative, out of control and there was nothing inherently racist about this description. “I was actually analysing what Dr Williams had said...And now I find myself being the subject of scrutiny for what I have said. It is quite peculiar. But this is Trinidad and Tobago. It doesn’t surprise me,” he said. Asked whether he ignored the call which was being made to him (by Leader of Government Business Ken Valley and Prime Minister Patrick Manning) as he rose to speak, to give way to Pennelope Beckles and to allow her to wind-up the debate, Hinds said he didn’t know anything about that.