The minority report

DEAR READERS, I have some information to share with you today that may just blow your minds! Now bear with me, because it might be something that some of you more enlightened readers may already know, but you would be surprised how many Trinidadians are oblivious to this fact. So here goes… Believe it or not, there actually are white people who are born and bred in Trinidad! Yes! It’s true! I know it is shocking and some of you may not believe it, but I swear to you it is a fact! But wait – that’s not all! I’ve heard from some very credible sources that there are actually white people who also are born and live in other Caribbean islands as well! Pretty incredible, isn’t it? Yes, that means there are white Barbadians, white Antiguans, white Grenadians and even white Jamaicans! That means there are thousands of them all over the region – even tens of thousands of white people in Trinidad alone!

All jokes aside though, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me where I was from, or how long I was visiting Trinidad for, or how long I’d been living here, I’d have more money than those folks in the Piarco Airport Scandal. Being a minority of Trinidadian society can be a bit annoying because nobody likes being regarded as a foreigner or a tourist in their own homeland. It is as though if you are not Black, Indian or somewhere in between, you simply do not fit the image of an ideal Trini. It’s like that song from Sesame Street: “One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just does not belong!” Allow me to give you a few examples of incidents that happened to me recently that will help illustrate my point: One night outside of Jenny’s on Cipriani Boulevard, as my friend and I parked the car on the street, a piper approached us and in a really bad fake American accent, said, “Hey where’re you guys from, eh? You enjoying Trinidad? How long you been here?” It was only when my friend replied, “For the last 32 years of my life,” that he realised we were in fact not tourists, and pissed off to harass some other people down the road.

One day while shopping on Frederick Street, a young man started walking alongside me, saying, “Hola chica! Aye muy bonita! Oh mi amore! Como estas senorita?” until I turned around and said, “Aye, I am not a flippin’ Venezuelan, all right!” He then replied, “Well, you don’t look like no Trini!” More recently, at The Pelican pub in St Ann’s, a friend and I ventured into the ladies room and encountered an intoxicated woman, who threw her arms around us and kept asking if we wanted to lime and drink with her. After telling her that we were in fact okay, she asked the golden question, “Where you’ll from?” When my friend, who is also white, responded, “We’re from Trinidad!” the lady looked us up and down, skinned up her face and brayed, “Nah! Nah nah nah, you’ll cah be from Trinidad, you’ll are too white!” But sadly, this not only happens in Trinidad, because the mentality that only Black people live in the Caribbean is rampant in other countries as well. Way back when, while attending orientation week at my university in Toronto, a young Canadian man turned to me upon hearing my accent, and asked, “Where are you from?” When I told him, he had this very confused look on his face, and he said, “But… but… you’re white!”

And, most recently, in New York City about a month ago, I got a little lost and asked three young black guys standing on the corner outside of Old Navy for directions. One of them opened his eyes wide like saucers, and said, “Aye it’s a Trini! Listen to her accent! She talks like my mother!” His friend said, “No way man, she can’t be a Trini! She’s too white! And I’ve never seen no white Trini before!” Now these two examples may be a bit more forgivable, because many North Americans are a little ignorant about life in other parts of the world. But what I can’t figure out is why Trinis can’t tell the difference between a local white person and a white tourist in the first place! Do we really all look alike? I don’t wear socks with sandals, nor do I walk around with a camera around my neck, I have very nice tanned skin (so much so that I often also get called “Reds”) and think I carry myself in that distinctive way that saucy Trini women do, so why oh why would anyone think I’m a tourist? This is why the whole “Afro-Indo” polarisation of this country is particularly insulting, because what about all the people who are everywhere in between and who make up a sizable percent of the population? Don’t we exist? What about the Chinese people? What about the French Creole people?

Or the Dougla people, or the Red people? What about the Syrian/Lebanese people? What about the half-Chinese-half-Black people? Or the half-white-half-Indian people? Or the quarter-Indian-quarter-Chinese-quarter-White-quarter-Black people? Are they not “real Trinis?” In my opinion, regardless of if your ancestors came from India or Africa or Japan or China or Lebanon or Canada or Ireland or Guyana, once you live here and here is home, you are a Trini, no prefixes needed. The insistence on using the labels of “Afro-Trini” or “Indo-Trini” to separate yourself from everyone else is unnecessary. You don’t see a Chinese person say they are an “Asian-Trini,” you don’t see a Lebanese person say they are a “Syrio-Trini” and you don’t see me saying I am a “Half-Canadian-Half-Trini-with-Portuguese-and-Scottish-and-Indian-roots Trini.” No man, we all simply say, “I am a Trini.” End of story. So folks, now that you know that there is a sizable “minority” population in Trinidad who are born in the same hospital as you, listen to the same radio stations you do, eat the same food as you, and sound like you do, please resist from asking fair-skinned people if they are enjoying their stay in Trinidad! You can’t judge a book by its cover, and you can’t judge a Trini by their colour! emilydickson@yahoo.com