‘I am a new world person’

TRADE and Industry Minister Ken Valley said yesterday he does not deny his past and “the period of Emancipation must embrace all of us and enlist our commitment to the highest purpose of creating a nation in which racial or ethnic background would never again be used as the basis of determining our status or economic position as happened under slavery.” Valley said recent comments he made in Parliament about his preference “in dress and national ascription” were misquoted in the media. “While I am a firm believer of the need for the celebration of Emancipation, I venture to suggest that the time has come when it must be a celebration of achievements of pre-defined goals. For too long, emphasis has been on our history. We know that history.

“We know that the worst form of exploitation of man by man existed in this country during the days of slavery. Now, our freedom must be used to inform our vision and our positioning — against the background of that history. We must be future driven. As our Jamaican brother Bob Marley counsels we must ‘emancipate ourselves from mental slavery’,” he declared. The Minister said none of his recent statements in any way suggest that he does not recognise his African ancestry “but it is obvious that there is no one country called Africa.”  “I do not have to be dressed in a dashiki to feel a sense of brotherhood with another person of African descent in Trinidad and Tobago, nor do I have to be dressed in a dhoti to feel an equal affinity with my brother of Indian descent. It is in this sense that I am a Trinidadian.

“My ancestry remains African but my psyche and being have been formed in this place called TT and I am sure that I am no deviant in terms of my perspective on the self and fellow nationals, all of various ancestries. Thus, I am not denying my past. I am however affirming my present and my future when I make the point that I am Trinidadian-Tobagonian if you wish but certainly not African. To me, this means a commitment to all of us however dressed, whatever the appearance, colour, religion and creed,” Valley stated. He said just as every citizen is entitled to his or her own creed and form of worship in terms of religion, “I regard myself as equally entitled to commit myself to the nation in a way that recognises and affirms its future, without ignoring its past.”

“Whatever the antecedents, I am today a ‘new world’ person with a strong commitment to TT and the Caribbean. This is the culture that I share; this is my reality. There is so much more that unites us than should be allowed to divide us as a nation. It is those features of our Trinbago that make us a nation, that are the driving force for me as a person and more so as an elected representative. “Today we are all born free. Let us not allow ourselves to be enchained by the history of colonial domination and racial exploitation of an earlier period. We must not forget the past but rather to build a future that will be the best testimony to our willingness to accept the oneness of all of us in this beautiful little country,” Valley declared.