TWO STEPS BACKWARD

Today, I’ve decided not to toy with surreal, or rather, extraterrestrial images of MPs and their flying saucers and instead share with you a most dark, but quite earthly secret. I have “dreadlocks.” There. I’ve said it. What a weight off. Don’t think that I do not recognise that by making such a dreadful confession this Sunday morning, I run the risk of offending the most virtuous among you, upright persons like Sister Adrianna Noel, principal of the private St Charles High School in Tunapuna. You, the country’s morally sound, will probably never read me in the same light again. You might skip this page altogether. To you, I say go in peace. I shall not call you a racist baldhead or label you members of a certain cult. We shall take our separate paths, no fuss, no fight, no broken teacups, no hurt feelings, sore cheeks or egos. I, unaffected and unmoved by your prejudice, will continue to write. You, indifferent to diversity and human rights, will continue to judge.

Twelve-year Kalifa Logan however, because of her age and social position cannot help but be affected by the stigma attached to Rastafarians. Indeed, because of her very youth and social position she is powerless to fight a backward nun and an equally backward Education Ministry, both of whom have come to the mistaken conclusion that Kalifa’s locks are a hairstyle, not an expression of her faith, both of whom haven’t the slightest notion that this is a multicultural, multireligious society, that this is a New Millennium and that they have denied Kalifa the right to an education and to freedom of worship. Kalifa is a lesser citizen, unable to counter the unsubstantiated hypothesis that having locks means you lack moral fibre and discipline. She is helpless against a Ministry that confuses dress codes with Kalifa’s hair as if her locks were a wig the little girl dons every morning to make a fashion statement. She is toothless in the face of the school’s and Ministry’s rejection of the 1995 hijab judgment in favour of Muslim student Summayah Mohammed and against Holy Name Convent in which a High Court judge ruled that she found no evidence to support the school’s claim that wearing the hijab led to indiscipline and that the convent’s action had been unconstitutional.

Kalifa is powerless and she has no one to fight for her constitutionally guaranteed rights. The Ministry of Education is not only backward thinking, it isn’t going to ensure that when it pays for places for students in private schools, the schools cannot reject a student on the basis of his or her religion. No representative of GOPIO, the Maha Sabha or ASJA is going to bat for Kalifa. The National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP) hasn’t uttered a condemnatory statement on the issue, probably because the principal of the school is not Hindu or a member of the UNC. No MP has offered to shout or throw objects for Kalifa. No one is counting Rastas and thus, Rastas do not count. Discrimination in Trinidad and Tobago is defined solely as Indian against African and vice-versa. Don’t believe either that Kalifa’s plight will bother the Chamber of Commerce, the TTMA and all the other normally vocal business groups. None of them is going to yell “outrage” on a Rasta child’s behalf. They’ll only yell “outrage” when a child, deprived of an education, grows up to be a criminal and kills a cop on duty.

Even TTUTA is waffling on the matter, strangely in sync with the Education Ministry, its first vice president, Sally Siriram talking nonsense about schools and parents having dialogue over dress codes and about schools taking pride “in their own culture,” completely missing the point that Kalifa’s hair is not something that falls within the ambit of a “dress code” and that it is unconstitutional and wrong to deny a child the right to entry in a school because of her religious beliefs. Siriram, as an educator, should know there is no link between a child’s hair and his or her performance and the importance of not only an education, but having self-esteem. Yet it sounds as if she and everyone else want Kalifa to cut her hair to meet certain standards, standards whose origins and ethics no one questions. If not Kalifa must transfer “down” from a five year school to a Junior Sec.

Thus, thanks to an uninformed and unwavering nun who refers to students as “flies,” Kalifa Logan has been crushed at the tender age of 12, taught the ugly lesson of religious intolerance and hatred in 2020 Trinidad and Tobago before she can reach adulthood.  She has learnt what it is like to have no power, no rights, no one to fight for you. She cannot go into the Minister’s office and break Hazel Manning’s china; she cannot curse anyone. She can only stay at home, imagine what her Form One classmates are studying, and contemplate what being a Rasta means in this Trinidad and Tobago of the New Millennium. And what do you think Kalifa is going to feel? Hurt, anger and resentment. And do you know what she is going to conclude because of a last century nun, ministry and society? That she is and always will be a second-class citizen because she is a Rasta. That she will never have the same rights as children without locks. And that you don’t have to be Rasta to be dread.
suz@itrini.com

Columnist’s note: This column probably reads in a disjointed fashion. It has been written in a hurry between constant power outages and thus, readers will have to forgive. I realise now that not only do I have to have a water pump and tank in my house, but a generator, too. One step forward, two steps backward.