Feel the drum beat, Mr Valley

THE EDITOR: I am forced to hold Ken Valley’s hands to the fire for his remark: “That he is Trinbagonian but not African.” Our TT culture cannot even be defined as a culture; we are a people of African descent. As a matter of fact, while very many Afro TTs, are for the most part first and second generation Trinbagonians, the only “pure-Trinbagonians” are the Caribs and Arawaks. We should be reminded that when TT was discovered by Columbus, the Caribs and Arawaks were already here.

Ken Valley’s other utterance can at best be categorised as hyperbolic-rhetoric and he crowned it all with his analogy between our existence in the New World and that of the Australians of European descent, who were English convicts dropped off in Australia whose descendants regard themselves as Australians now enjoying many more privileges and higher social status than the aborigines who had already inhabited the country. The morale of the story is: we are free to call ourselves anything we wish, which does not have to be true.

I call on Ken Valley to address the beat of the drum’s influence on him, and I would go further and ask him to compare the common traits and diets of our Indo counterparts, with our own. Ken Valley continues to put the cart before the horse in his remark that: his ancestry remains African (how lucky can they get?). But his psyche was formed in TT. He may not be aware that one’s psyche has to do with the soul and mind of the individual, which also leaves me to believe that Ken Valley has never heard of the Soul of Black folks. A book written by W E Dubois the African American writer. Politicians are of a different breed of people. As a result one gets the impression that Ken Valley is just out pandering for votes when he inadvertently lumped all the citizens of TT as “one.”  Are we to believe that we are the same as the Syrians, Lebanese and Indos who reside in TT? I don’t think so.

Ken Valley elaborated saying: “I must feel equally entitled to draw from other philosophies and ideas of other parts of humanity.” And as an after thought he allegedly mentioned something about the spirit of Sankofa, which he said, means to look back, but with the focus decidedly on the future and moving forward to achieve it. The latter he referred to as being a concept from “West Africa.” As an astute politician, Ken Valley is strongly influenced by “group-think,” that is expected to be the practice of every politician, to do otherwise, could be problematic for him. He forgot he was a politician and went ahead and expressed his point of view which politicians are not supposed to have. They are not afforded such luxury.

Ken Valley’s identity problem is manifested by his indictment of his culture, which is an indication that he is not comfortable with who he is; as such he should be viewed with guarded optimism. I have nothing against Ken Valley; as a matter of fact, I must let him know that I empathise with his predicament, but remain apathetic to his sentiment.

ULRIC GUY
Point Fortin