Travel to parts well known

I have no doubt that his perspectives on our stratified society have been discussed ad nausea with many not appreciating his forthright approach to a food programme. This however is not a commentary on what Bourdain said, but on what was said to him .

As someone who has also travelled to parts unknown, there is much to be learnt in conversation during a meal. For instance, while breaking the fast with Palestinian friends during Ramadan, they explained to me the sense of belonging beyond borders that is an important aspect of their faith .

As you can imagine, occasions such as these have helped me understand my own country better .

So as Bourdain ate his way through Trinidad and Tobago we are able to share meals and conversations with people we may not otherwise have the opportunity. This was not as pleasant a journey as we may have liked. Certainly for me there were views expressed that excited and encouraged; there were views with which I did not agree and things said that reinforced my own thinking; there were also comments so stunningly insular as to keep me up at night worrying .

Overall the picture of who we are and how we see each other was not one of a common sense of belonging .

In fact, we presented ourselves as far from cohesive and not the euphemistic “rainbow country” that Archbishop Desmond Tutu so lauded when he visited many years ago .

I have written before about the visit to Trinidad by the noble laureate economist Amartya Sen and how impressed he said he was with Dr Eric Williams as “a shrewd social analyst (who) paid a lot of attention to the issues of identity.” The point being that for better or worse, Williams tied his development strategy and, needless to say, his political future on understanding the politics of diversity .

Prof Richard Drayton, son of the Caribbean soil and scholar of imperial history, similarly argues that manipulation of social divisions as a colonial strategy was deliberately perpetuated by the architects of our independence in the Caribbean .

Whether it can be said today that manipulation of social and, as was exposed in the Bourdain documentary, ethnic divisions is a deliberate strategy of leadership in this country, it is clear that a strategy to promote social cohesion is urgently needed .

Social cohesion, just to be clear, is something far more meaningful than “celebrating” diversity by increasing the number of public holidays, or the nonsensical declaration that “God is a Trinidadian” or the ludicrous claim that Carnival is “we thing.” Social cohesion is a proactive strategy for building a sense of belonging amongst all citizens of… yes, you got it... “every creed and race” all with the elusive an “equal place” .

No society is without the stresses caused by divisions. No society is without ethnic and cultural diversity .

A cohesive society is one which has developed satisfactory ways of coping with these strains in an open and democratic manner .

This means taking action to reduce inequalities and restore equity so that divisions remain manageable and do not threaten stability. There is another thing also, even where social cohesion once existed, as I believe we all feel it did in Trinidad and Tobago, things can change. It is a stability about which we must be ever vigilant .

Social cohesion is an ideal to be striven for rather than a goal capable of being fully achieved. In a wonderfully diverse and complicated country such as ours, social cohesion strategies have to be constantly nurtured, improved and adapted. Each generation has to find afresh a manageable equilibrium of forces .

This is a constantly shifting equilibrium which has to adapt to changes in the social and economic environment, in technology and in national and international political systems. In other words, all our leaders have some work to do