THE CANCER OF RACISM

All forms of racism whether by the spoken or written word, for example speeches, statements or articles designed to bring an ethnic group into contempt and/or to stir up animosity or hatred against the group for business, social, community or political reasons should be punishable upon conviction of the offending party (or parties) by a term of imprisonment. It is not enough that there are United Nations Declarations and Conventions aimed at combating racism and racial discrimination by which this country is bound. In addition it is not enough that there are laws on the Statute Books of Trinidad and Tobago outlawing any manifestation of the cancer of racism if persons with an agenda are allowed to spit in the face of the laws and Declarations and Conventions with seeming impunity. Yet every week, even with the examples of Bosnia, pre-Martin Luther King United States of America, Rwanda, Canada, the Sudan and Nazi Germany, among others before us, there are politicians and mischievous persons who make public statements that are clearly racist and meant to divide the population.

This negative behaviour was and is not limited to individuals and groups of any one race.  Indeed, all races carry within their bosom individuals given to sowing the seeds of racial discord, or to the promoting of the sick philosophy of racial superiority. Many Trinidadians and Tobagonians, who are descendants of slaves and indentured labour, had been victims of active proponents of the “master race” theory long before Adolf Hitler and his band of Fascists would warp and sully the minds of the German people. Racism is never stopped, never curbed by a passive approach or by leaders affecting to believe that if they ignored incipient racism, even when it was inescapably glaring, that it would fade away and die. The leader or would be leader, who for dubious political mileage tells those who would be his followers that members of another ethnic group are seeking domination of their own should be made to account for his statements. 

I spent the first three decades of my life as a colonial.  It was a humiliating experience. There were senior jobs in the Civil Service (now Public Service) and in the Police Force (now Police Service) that were reserved for persons of a certain ethnic group, preferably expatriates. But then colonialism was unashamedly racist.  The silence of politicians and other leaders on what was clearly racial injustice was instructive.  For the record, it was only in 1943 that non- Europeans were able to become Commissioned Officers in the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.   It has long been held that it was the June 19, 1937 Social Revolution led by Tubal Uriah Butler which had been the prime factor in these hitherto left out Trinidadians and Tobagonians being given Sam Brown belts.  Butler, of West African descent, and Adrian Cola Rienzi, of East Indian and European descent, had linked up and would sensitise the many as to their rights as workers and human beings, and would point the way forward out of the long lingering valley of colonialism. 

Amid all of this the politician-leaders, many of them perhaps anxious for invitations to receptions, dinner and cocktail parties at Government House, home of Governors and the repository of British colonial power, remained loudly silent on the openly prevailing racial injustices.  And the injustices suffered were the daily lot of the non- Europeans, whether of the two major races or of the several minor ethnic groups.  The silence of these leaders was once more instructive. In turn, there was compelling evidence of racism at the purely social level.  In San Fernando, the town (now city) where I was born and spent most of my early childhood, there was a club with a membership policy whose pillar was that of racial exclusivity.  Only Europeans or persons of full blooded European descent were allowed to become members.  But it went further than this in that no non-Europeans, save for hired help and these through the back door, were allowed into the club.

The policy was so obscenely absurd, that the non-European spouse of a member could not gain (even physical) admission to the club.  The wife of a prominent surgeon was a member, and he could drop her off at the club but could not enter. And when he returned to meet her, he had to wait in his car and could neither go into the club, nor proceed to the entrance to let her know he was there. Admittedly, because of the colonial mode of the society at the time protests would have met with the proverbial deaf ear. Today, racial prejudice has been largely replaced by shade, address, class and/or bank account prejudice.  But I should add a footnote to the club with the racial policy. When its membership dwindled,  a group, most if not all of whose members would have been excluded from membership or admittance in the old days, except as hired help, proudly purchased the building.  They could now enter through the front door.  But I have strayed. The country has to be vigilant with respect to racial discrimination and be prepared to punish those who practise it whether at the level of private clubs or in the public or private sector. 

However, those who pretend that people of their ethnic group are being discriminated against on racial grounds, in the hope of their mobilising political or other support, are equally as bad as or perhaps even worse than those who practise racial or shade discrimination. The aim of these sick people, who remained silent in the face of rampant racial discrimination during the colonial days, is to divide the country along racial lines.  The threat comes from either side of the ethnic divide.  Sometimes the call is subtle, but on most occasions transparent and crude. Nonetheless, there are always those who will feel rejected by society, and who because of economic and/or social factors provide fertile soil for the reckless filth of the politically unstable.  Those who knew first hand or took the trouble to be informed of the work of Rienzi and Butler, Gerald Wight, Gerard Montano and Dr Tito P Achong, Dr Patrick Solomon and Dr Ibbit Mosaheb and that of FEM Hosein, Dr Eric Williams and Ajodhasingh, as well as the undoubted racism of an earlier age will, hopefully,  not prove fertile soil for the insecure architects of misinformation.